Computerworld Conference SIngapore - Friday 18th Feb

Yours truly waxing lyrical about the need for innovation as organisations seek to adopt emerging trends like Cloud Computing, Social Networking and so-forth.

BTW Folks - In case you haven’t heard…. Powerpoint is DEAD (oh so Dead). Check out Prezi.com for a new way to communicate visually. It’s AWESOME

Peter Day - BBC World Service - Interviews Andrew Witty of Smith Kline Beecham. This provides and excellent and short précis on how innovation can be institutionalised. The Pharma’ depends on successful innovation. GSK is a large corporation. However, they have been successful in addressing many of the institutional gotchas relative to innovation and have clearly embraced a lot of key ideas in their new innovation model. Enjoy….

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio/worldbiz/worldbiz_20110110-2306a.mp3

During the past decade, the pursuit of innovation and creativity in business have become a topic of much debate; yet we live in an age where so much has already ‘been done’. How many of us observe phenomena like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg) with not a little envy, as we search for the next ‘paradigm shift’ in our own particular specialty or business space?

How to find the break through idea that will take us to the next level ofsuccess, fame and hopefully fortune?

Continuing to innovate is the key to gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage. The consequences of not doing so are obvious for commercial enterprise but is it not also the case that governments, public services, education and other institutions such as NGOs have need of innovative solutions to the problems of this era, even though the motivation might be different (From the commercial drivers)

With their traditional hierarchic structure, corporations and other large organisation are in many respects the last place where innovation, vision and strategy for success are likely to spring forth. There is also a particular conundrum presented in many, if not most publicly owned companies.
Investors are less motivated by innovation than they are by immediate return on capital, as well is demonstrable performance resulting in strong dividends (earnings), preferably with some degree of predictability. Short to medium outlook strong capital gain as reflected in the stock price are expected as a given; not that they always materialise. We live in a world of quarterly reporting to the analysts and investment community. It is therefore not surprising that the folks responsible for leading and managing these business entities are not going to be rewarded for backing a breakthrough innovation unless it is accompanied by short term certainty in results. Most breakthrough business innovations have a long time to market. Returns are likely to be unpredictable. Yet in the flattening world of globalization, business needs to innovate in order to prosper and flourish.

Most C Level executives talk a great deal about innovation. Some go as far as encouraging creativity behind the firewall. Many organizations work internally or with highly paid legions of external consultants on supposedly ‘disruptive’ reviews of strategy, business model, operations and so forth. Is it not the case that once the findings are concluded in these strategic reviews, that most organizations revert to the safer option of comfortable inaction?

Innovation is crucial for organisations of every type. CEOs discuss the need for innovation as they seek to design successful enterprises of the future. However, It seems that leadership teams and CEO’s who are willing to take the necessary leaps of creativity and faith to realise the potential benefits of innovation are in the minority.  The conundrum for business is around comfortable inaction versus uncomfortable (risky) action.

The history of innovation proves that innovators are people who are prepared to create, experiment, fail, learn – and then restart the cycle time and time again. Innovators are not blessed with the “I” gene. (more on that another time). They are however, driven to work very hard in pursuit of the creative process. For such people there is a sense that eventually that breakthrough idea moves beyond the drawing board and:-

1. is perceived as being viable because the idea becomes accepted by one or more people for its originality and – above all – its value to society, institution, or business.
2. can be realised through execution, despite the attendant risks or challenges including cost.

These two characteristics of innovation are posed by leading Harvard Business School creativity researcher Theresa Amibile. - and quoted form “The Medici Effect” - Author: Frans Johansen - One of the most profound and readable texts available on the process and psychology of innovation.

Part 3 of this topic to follow soon on Strategic Soup

We live in exciting times. The acceleration of mankind’s evolution and the threads of innovation that go hand-in-hand with that process are fast approaching another historic vertex; potentially of far grater significance than the invention of the printing press, the industrial revolution or the communications revolution of the past 20 years.

All evolutionary processes are characterised by the formation of a paradigm that; having been realised in nature or technology; facilitates and drives the subsequent evolutionary phase. This is as true for the dawn of life arising from the beginnings of raw organic chemistry on our very own planet; as it is today with the social, economic and political changes playing out following the explosion of communications and the internet over the past 20 years.

Within the next 10 to 20 years several dominant trends will together change almost every aspect of life as we think of it today.  Ray Kurzweil calls this “The Singularity”.

$1,000 will soon purchase a unit of computational power (calculations per second) and memory that is equivalent to the power and retention capacity of a single human brain. Some few years after that, this will buy us a computer roughly equivalent to the aggregated power of every single human brain in existence on earth today. Neurological and computer sciences are rapidly approaching complete reverse engineering of the human brain/mind/memory. The combination of these two events will give rise to seamless extension of human intelligence with artificial intelligence.

The intersections of biology, chemistry, engineering and computer sciences are progressing at an astonishing rate towards mankind’s mastery over its own physiology, life expectancy and the physical environment in which he/she continues to live and evolve. Nanotechnology will soon be working inside of us and ubiquitous in the environment around us.

In his book (The Medici Effect) Frans Johansson also points out to us that the sciences are converging. In most if not all fields of science we are finding that our basic understanding of things is close to complete.  The significant majority of new developments arise from intersections across scientific disciplines.

The movement and mixing of people globally resulting in the dissolution of cultural boundaries.

While the fundamental laws of economics remain unchanged we are likely to see a dramatic shift in the relationship between business and consumers. For six decades, big business and government have benefited from the relative luxury of maintaining a high degree of control over their consumers.  The communications revolution is shifting the balance of power in this equation. Traditional controllers of media and content are also losing their ability to control their markets and consumers.  Social frameworks are no longer constrained by the socio-economic boundaries of the past. Nor are they limited by proximity and geography. The new consumer is essentially taking significantly greater control over their choices in every aspect of their lives – including the products, commodities and services they wish to consume.  They are now living within an extended neural network empowered by the connected anywhere/anytime experience and the emerging social fabric of the network.  Whilst that network touches the people, corporations and governments who are ‘selling’ something, the balance of power (control) is shifting dramatically towards those who consume and away from those who produce.

There has never been a more important time for organizations to embrace the emergence of these emerging social and economic trends as they work to identify strategies that will create sustainable enterprises for the future.

Part 2 to follow

P.S. Dec 13th. Just saw this excellent article on TechCrunch all about “Singularity University” which is well worth the investment of your attention: maybe-there-is-hope-for-silicon-valley-and-the-world-after-all