Now the report in its fifth edition, it is now spanning 23 countries where the opinions of senior innovation executives or the equivalent are sought out, covering 2,748 executives, with 1,915 being in the C-Suite.

This year the barometer decided to explore the perceptions of the (informed) public for their thoughts on innovation’s growing impact and in particular, the future of work and they interviewed 1,346 to gain some useful insights and pointers that separate business and the citizen in their understandings.

The report covers a significant amount of areas across innovation. Here I wanted to pull out just a couple that initially caught my eye. I might add to this in further posts.

The top line according to GE has six supporting key findings, many supporting their strategy, which sometimes leaves me uncomfortable but partly expected. Are they just looking for their own validation but are they drawing out the downsides and implications that might bring and challenge their model. Hopefully yes, they do have a head-start over many in the way they have been undertaking transformation in my opinion.

The top supported findings were:

• Creativity and problem-solving will be key for future work forces
• Minds and machines are working together (expected perhaps from GE)
• The ROI on Collaboration is constantly improving
• The Emerging markets are more fearless in embracing innovation
• The (constant) call for greater Government support to break down barriers
• The energy sector is ripe for disruption (again GE specific)

The four main themes that did emerge from the key findings from this report see’s pressure is rising but optimism as still prevailing. These needs considering as they do cover some of the critical forces that will push or limit the 4th Industrial Revolution many are talking about and discussed further below. These are:

• A welcome revolution. Both business executives and informed citizens are optimistic about the digital transformation of the world. In emerging markets they actually feel “empowered” by this as a radical transformation point. More on that later
• The Embracing of New Models and Technologies. The continued adapting of investments, partnerships and collaboration opportunities will inform decision-making far more.
• Disruptive Innovation: the solution and the challenge. The recognition that business needs to innovate radically most are mindful of the risk, yet fear being left behind and obsolete.
• Everybody’s starting up. The balance between safer, pursuing incremental innovation and protecting the core business is growing. Inertia and risk-aversion are growing. Yet meanwhile the “start-up” ethos is growing creating different innovation cultures within companies of all sizes.

Getting past the GE shaping in the opening part of the report when you dig a little deeper there are plenty of ‘nuggets of pure gold. I want to pick out a few only here. There seems a lot of denial, delusion and inertia under the surface.

Firstly setting this into context: The 4th Industrial Revolution is challenging us all

This report is timed for the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum 2016, starting this week. Within the themes this year is the 4th Industrial Revolution is one of the main focal points, I felt we ought to bring this into this review of mine.

Dr. Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the WEF wrote about this 4th revolution recently. He points out we stand on the brink of a technological revolution altering the fundamental ways we live, work and relate to one another. This is rapidly underway for each of us. It has scale, scope and complexity that is unlike what has come before. It is characterized, in his opinion, by a fusion of technologies that are blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.

Its power will lie in velocity, scope and impact it will bring, more breakthroughs, exponential rather than linear in pace and will disrupt almost every industry in every country, it will eventually, sooner than later transform entire systems of production, management and governance.

The real fear is on the impact on business

The impact on business will be huge. In Dr.Schwab’s constant conversations with global CEO’s  is that the acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption are for most hard to comprehend, or even anticipate. The drivers of this revolution will deliver constant surprise, even for the best connected and most well informed.

Entirely new ways of serving needs, massively changing value chains disrupted constantly will require highly agile responses as the growing access to global digital platforms will oust well-established incumbents with improving on quality, speed, price and availability to serve emerging needs that are highly valued by the end user.

The main effects of this 4th revolution will be on seeing different customer expectations, changing rapidly product and service enhancements, the need for constantly adapting and collaborating in different ecosystems of partners and constantly changing organizational forms.

Nearly all we know in business will require some significant level of rethinking. It is against this scene the GE Global Innovation Barometer helps to unpick much of the complexity. The GE Innovation Barometer report is extensive it what it is providing. It has many avenues to explore

Early ‘stand-outs’ for me from this Barometer report at first glance

The aspects I pick out initially here are around Digital Darwinism, and The Start-Up Ethos, Internal Inertia and Ineffective Business Models

Digital Darwinism or is it simply full-swing Darwinism?

The consensus of both the business executive and the informed public is that more and more businesses face extinction, rapidly becoming obsolete, as technology is evolving far faster than many can adapt too. The feeling is that only a few are performing as quick adapters and implementing emerging technologies, many are simply lagging. One that I tend to believe does explore and exploit is GE, although its leaderships foresight and speed with the need to adapt is struggling to equally bring its organization up to speed, possibly it is not working “all the pumps” on this one. It needs too.

The gold standard is “being disruptive” but it is such a challenging goal. According to the report, even though 90% of innovating companies are claiming they not just launching new products and services but are creating a new market that did not exist previously.

Now I must admit I just find this totally at odds with what I see or read on a constant basis. I really would want to dispute this or those making this claim have very low threshold of what they define as ‘new’ and being created. Is this more delusional, believing incremental innovation is determining “new” in the broadest sense, to simply justify this claim? So where is all the real growth in the worlds business organizations then if this claim is valid? A question going beyond “not only launch” but ones that are proving real impact on the top and the bottom line (defined criteria needed) would define innovation a little better.

Time and time again I read reports on the lack of innovation, of dedicated resources, even the leadership has such limited time to put behind innovation. I really question this result.

Also 47% are claiming the development of entirely new products or services has contributed to the performance, yet 60% state it is difficult to come up with radical and disruptive ideas is still a key challenge. Definitions of ‘new’ certainly need clarifying. This slide shown can be highly misleading on real innovation progress.

Turning to the Digital Darwinism, it is not just digital in my mind, it is in understanding what is really in need of radically changing and adapting that companies need to do, in  innovating to meet this revolution that is clearly underway.

On the other side of this positive view of innovating reported, we then get the result that the majority of business executives continue to favor a “safer” approach to innovation. They want to maximize existing revenue (58% of those interviewed), protect the core (64%) with only 34% recognizing the development of new business models has contributed to the performance within their company. That is more in line with what I ‘see’ in the market.

The report also points out most businesses innovate incrementally as a way to mitigate risks, even while speed to market is increasingly a differentiator.  63% use incremental to improve existing products and solutions, while 46% try to get to market as quickly as possible to keep an edge over (existing) competitors (for me viewing in the back mirror) and not scanning for the upstarts or disruptive forces coming from different places .

When you look at the country breakdown, this protecting the core is dominant for most countries and a real lack of looking for long term payoff for innovation dominates company thinking. Most executives within most countries have difficulty coming up with radical and disruptive ideas with a growing challenge the highest concern in the USA, South Korea, France, Canada, Japan, Sweden, with the one sizable exception being China.

A growing perception difference on Innovating

The informed public think internal inertia and lack of leadership prevents business from innovating efficiently, while the exec blames ineffective business models (the poor worker blames his tools perhaps). The report specifically asked each, the business exec and the informed public to clarify the challenges preventing businesses ability to innovate efficiently. To level inertia and lack of leadership is a damning reflection of what the public think holds innovation back. I would not disagree.

Darwinism is certainly tapping on every organization’s door in the need for evolution. There are new ideas, concepts, combinations and much more all emerging. If organizations hold onto the totally mistaken belief that incremental will allow them to survive then we are seeing many heading for extinction.

In the past business has found ways where they thrived through stable markets and interlocking in ways we have known to keep thriving. In recent years we are losing many of our known beacons of business , whole rafts of previously well-established business sectors or industries, or ones are being forced to merge as they failed to evolve.

We will continue to lose many of our present organization as they are approaching the edge of a sheer cliff from keeping in denial.

Is this any different from our endangered wildlife species we are in the early stages of a mass extinction event if our businesses fail to become more radical, prepared to disrupt and challenge in a fashion unknown before. Of course the future is unknown but there are things we do know and we need to adapt and work with what we are being provided in this revolutionary period.

The fear of being obsolete is worrying that it is becoming faster than many can adapt to, it seems. This is something each business leader has to face up to and radically change within themselves and their organizations. It is the challenge of today.

I would say, others may not agree but I feel GE are attempting to head of these warnings in their way and taking to heart much within the Barometers past and present.

The “Start-Up” ethos and the chase for the talent has growing implications

• How are different parts of the world trying to catch up, leapfrog over others and become more radical to make this valuable to them?
• How is the larger company equally attempting to stay incremental for their core to protect it but also in using this “start-up” ethos increasingly?

The challenge is how to create an innovation culture within companies of all sizes that allow this- often referred to as the “dual” approach of simultaneously exploiting and exploring.

The report observes with digital transformation there is the rise of the nomad employee. These individuals do not seek full-time employment but favor freelancing or contracting modes. 71% of Business Executives confirm this trend and 84% of the informed public (the very people searching for this). This has implications on building a loyal cadre of employees or holding them within the one environment without significant adjustments to changing the working environment.

It is from the questions to the informed public they see the top elements to create a more productive work environment as 89% flexible working hours with a level of freedom to choose these working hours, 80% want participative management principles with a growing say and 79% want remote working on a regular basis. Other productive environments consist of flexible holidays (75%), more open (flexible) offices (71%), Minimal hierarchy (69%), Satellite offices (62%), participative salaries (60%) and hot desking facilities (50%)

The interesting ‘tension’ within companies is they are looking for creative problem solvers but this entrepreneur spirit is not fully embraced. The “start-up ethos” is not being fully exploited as it potentially might challenge the core and unleash ‘uncontrolled’ disruption within the organization that prides itself at being, foremost efficient and effective. These often run counter to entrepreneurship, and innovation.

The main attributes are still aligned to the business as usual not the need to think new Business Models, become more radical, look to be disruptive, although the Business Executive thinks perhaps they are embracing this “ethos”, the effort supporting these initiatives are “just but a toe in the water” testing the concept today.

Again I feel some level of denial, of not wanting to really embrace or face up to the real race for talent. Often we mistakenly ask the question to the company “what do you look for in candidates” but it is the candidate today that is asking “do I fancy working for them” and how does it fit in my personal journey, in my terms and wishes to achieve.

We come back to the embracing of the 4th Industrial Revolution

It was surprising within the Barometer report that most Business Execs and informed public are optimistic in embracing the 4th Industrial Revolution. That was surprising.

Embracing any future is full of uncertainty. According to this report there is surprising optimism, even some feeling of empowerment and the developing countries are leading this charge. Indonesia, Nigeria, Israel, Turkey, Algeria, China, Mexico, India, Poland, Malaysia, Brazil, Russia and South Africa feel certain positivity.

Those stuck in uncertainty are the ones who lose the most, these being Australia, Canada, USA, Sweden, France, South Korea, Germany and Japan.

It is within this group of ‘reluctant’ countries we find the most tension. The fear and needs in protecting the core, the difficulty of implementing (or wanting too) new business models, the worries of becoming obsolete, of being disrupted alongside the pressures of failing to attract and hold the talent as they are fighting in some respects and not fully embracing the “start up ethos.”

There is a lot to lose but equally to win. By not accepting that within any revolution, you can’t simply defend, you have to know where and how to attack, adapt and experiment, learning to evolve and embrace the changes at a really agile speed. Playing safe is not a winning option.

Safety first is a long-term losing strategy in my opinion

This ‘safer’ approach really needs changing. The absolute need is to embrace a more radical, disruptive stance of advancement. The urgency is where the leadership should be really  taking the important time of working all the revolutionary forces, exploring them, making them work to understand their changing environment, then disruption will be a force that catches them completely out. The CEO should devolve the day-to-day to the COO and get back to much deeper strategic thinking.

The challenging that needs to go on today is that most of the existing, prevailing assumptions are needing revising, even uprooting, forcing of the operating teams to relentless adapt, and become continuously good at innovating through new business models, products and services. Leaders need to be a whole lot bolder in setting a disruptive, technology driven agenda that radically alters the present offering. GE is certainly attempting this in my opinion.

We need to guide the evolution and find ways that are mostly yet to come so we have to be highly adaptive.  We need to break out of linear thinking, stop being absorbed by multiple crises and think strategically and longer-tern about all that is disrupting us and how innovation must shape the future.

The GE Innovation Barometer can only signpost, it is for us to extract the value it provides to help in any change journey. Find a copy and understand its implications on you personally, and more importantly its implications on your business.

Here is a link into the GE Innovation Barometer Report 2016.

The post GE and its Global Innovation Barometer 2016 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

It seems in all I keep reading that we are being extorted to disrupt our enterprises before someone else does.

The constant threat of both those known to us and those unknown competitors who can simply raise money based on a disruptive concept, provide a different business model and then attack tomorrow. It is not a comfortable feeling is it?

We are told It is in our ‘complacency’ that we are losing our competitive advantages, even face extinction from those that attack and tear down, replacing it with something different and supposedly better. Did we really need it?

Can we learn to adapt as fast as all that is seemingly coming toward us?

There is so much disruptive power being harnessed that we are all facing an exponentially more complex and challenging environment. Why is there seemingly this determination to tear down many parts of the fabric of our society by challenging institutions, businesses and government structures?
Are many of these organizations so bad – inefficient granted, complacent most likely, and complicit in holding onto what they have achieved, most definitely. So arguably many can be rightfully challenged but what will be the eventual price for this disruption that is occurring all around us?

Unhealthy shifts in the chase for economic growth
The shift has placed the emphasis on the role of destruction rather than creation in driving different economic activity in present times. Will that change? This is getting uncomfortable, is this good for you or me, perhaps not?

This is becoming the game for a few to make money, I mean big serious money and are these not so worried over the wealth creation aspects of creating jobs, building communities, cherishing certain values or just recognizing those communities built up over many years can just shut down and life moves on?

Whole communities are being disrupted, left derelict, with hope changing to hopelessness; we are seeing a lot of social destruction, wrought by much of this current chase for change that is blowing through our global businesses.

The balance seems out of whack but from whose perspective? The incumbent or the usurper? what about the employee or the society that built up whole communities, reliant on that firm for its very existence. What are we destroying in the name of progress?

Looking for the trillion-dollar disruption or seeing whole industries being wiped out

So we will be seeing not just the young start-up rapidly scaling and replacing larger incumbents but new trillion-dollar businesses emerging, wiping out other trillion-dollar businesses, this is a foretaste of the disruption to come even more than we are already witnessing.

Presently we are having to deal as much with fear and anxiety as we are scratching our heads and absorbing this pace of change, all driven by technology and the flow of money into it

Big Data and harnessing technology seems to be threatening everyone in its path
The ramping up of rhetoric around Big Data certainly is fueling this angst of fear and anxiety but is pointing us towards the changing landscape we are travelling towards.

Clearly, the emergence of Big Data is a phenomenon we can’t ignore. But will it disrupt as much as being talked about, or just simply allow the incumbents in the marketplace to respond and adjust their businesses to accommodate this? Time has an impact that is immediate, but also it has an influence on our futures.

A McKinsey study finds French companies that have undergone thorough digital transformations may unlock revenue gains of up to 40 per cent, while companies that do not quickly become digitally integrated could lose up to 20 per cent of revenue to competitors, now that is significant by any account.

Harnessing technology, adapting business models, exploiting data, scaling fast all become vital to adaptive infrastructures, even I’m told building stacked ecosystems, all modular, layered, highly granular and extendable as you go, are the requirements within this disruptive world to thrive.

Increased rhetoric is not helping me at present, it is making me uncomfortable

One of the big consulting firms writes “winning big by thinking big” and is suggesting larger companies will turn out to be among the biggest beneficiaries of initial big data implementations. Why?

In their words, “although big data projects still pose challenges, larger companies appear to bring more to the table.” I’m not sold on this. I feel the usurper has the edge over the incumbent. New models are like new species, they are faster at adapting to the changing landscape

Maybe we all have to be on edge, it makes us sit up and focus as others go jumping over the cliff screaming “disruptive whoopee” for our lemming moments. Are we all jostling for the leap, caught up in the moment, feeling great about the launch into the unknown?

Disruption and change is all about market transitions

I was listening to one of the World Economic Forum’s debates around “digital in context,” it confirmed much. The discussion led off with “watch for market transitions”, “don’t be slow to adopt” and “if you don’t reinvent, you will fail.”

The underlying message was that data has a real currency to all our organizations. They were suggesting that 40% of our current enterprises will be gone in 10 years and with the digital revolution, there will be a completely different landscape of winners and losers. There will be no hiding place with connected technology.

So we will increasingly see technology killing off jobs, causing dis-location, forcing many into life-changing choices. We are seeing increasing conflicting and fragmenting positions that are causing growing uncertainty.

The “cost to serve” is continuing to be driven down, and data is driving this. Add dislocation and deconstruction to disruption, destruction and digital.

We all need to keep moving
We are all being warned to “keep moving”. I often feel we have become like our forefathers, a nomadic tribe that is both physically being forced to move, to hunt for the jobs that allow us to live and to keep applying knowledge found through the internet to survive and thrive.

So it does seem we are in the “disruptive era” but I prefer to think this is more a ‘transformation’ period, often uncomfortable since much of its boundaries and borders are not clear.

It is fluid and we need to adapt to this flow until the disruptive events subside into something we have learnt to accommodate and manage. It is transforming much of what we know, our technology and all that comes with it.

Yet, we need to equip ourselves to be empowered in this transition, we need to keep constantly engaged and attempt to figure out what’s next or at least go with the flow. We need to keep our focus on outcomes and not get caught up in the inputs or the process.

The return of the hunter-gatherers.
Hunting and gathering have suddenly returned as an increasingly important part of our lives, it is changing us back. Nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes follow the animals they hunt; we need to follow the jobs and opportunities.

We are perhaps facing the same constant transition, so it is not a disease but a symptom of what is needed in our future lives, at least for the foreseeable future.

We need to embrace transition as the future way of living

My need, and I think yours as well, is to stay alert and be aware. In many of our jobs, there must be this chance to evolve, or we should move on. I don’t feel we can stand still long enough; we need to change it far more by taking a number of different risks. Keeping moving is part of our future.

I believe we do become far more empowered in any transition if we chose to actually make the change, instead of rejecting it on the premise that there is no need for movement. There is no hiding place it seems.

I just feel far better ‘in transition’ it is that feeling that I am still pushing forward, what I do is in my hands than the alternative, when that moment that I have stopped I am being threatened with disruption and destruction. Both are a little scary and will get exhausting.

Extinction is very threatening, oh just screw it, bring it all on… whoopee”.

The post Disruption, Destruction, Digital Our Way of Future Life? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Lets focus on the bigger picture here.

Developing our knowledge and then putting it to good use gives us the potential for securing a competitive position- that goes without saying, perhaps.

Living in Europe offers us enormous history, diversity and a constant respect for the make-up of its different cultures.

Europe is a very proud continent forged from this history of competitiveness but it is grappling with its place in the global world where others seem to have a greater present-day advantage.

For many, Europe seems stalled; in jobs, growth and its future space, it seems not so sure on what and where it can effectively compete in a complex and challenging world. There are so many competing voices within, draining vital energy, while others outside Europe are getting on with the job of equipping themselves for the changes taking place to effectively compete in today’s world.

The forging of the European Union needs more ‘heat’ to meld into the force that many want, yet every time it seems to be getting to that required temperature for effecting a real change, someone or something comes along and throws ‘cold water’ on it.

“Herding cats”

Perhaps that idiomatic saying of “herding cats” summarizes many of the discussions and debates that often occur all over Europe, offering up their part of the solution to what seems to me, increasingly an intractable problem. There is this ongoing attempt to control or organize what seems intent on staying uncontrollable or chaotic.

It just seems incredibly difficult to get the required direction or united determination to channel ‘our’ energies, perhaps impossible is a growing feeling that is fuelling even more the nationalistic pride built from centuries of disputes and disagreements in alternating alliances of the day.

Europe in whatever eventual union or collection of entities needs to stop focusing inward as that seems simply not to help. It needs to look outward and recognize the challenges it needs to go after and organize around, that shift the ground it competes on, so it can offer the foundations to build from for many of these individual voices to unite to move all those concerns that need clarity, work and a sense of clear direction. We are focusing on the right aspects to unite behind, to identify with and combine our unique resources.

At present we are all pulling in our own directions, to secure our own piece of the declining economic pie and that is undermining any ability for improved performance.

“Fiddling while Rome burns”

You do get this sense we enjoy “crisis and opportunity”. The institutions and bodies that are set up to lay out the broad direction within the EU, start with good intention and then occupy themselves with a host of unimportant or less important matters and neglect priorities during a crisis. They get lost in the details, determined to defend and spend the budgets and lose sight of the need for clear commercial or social outcomes.

The source of this “fiddling while Rome burns” is the story that Nero played the fiddle (violin) while Rome burned, during the great fire in AD 64. The flaw in this was there was no such instrument as the fiddle (violin) invented in first-century Rome. Equally the events of a fire have been constructed in all the rivalries and conflicting accounts that came after. I get a sense of this today within the EU, we are failing to orchestrate even the violin player, everyone is playing their own tune!

Europe stands at a real crossroads today, where it travels determines its future

It can stay locked up in conflicts, often chaotic decision-making, in its many disputes and simmering rivalries or it can learn from those events across its history and find a different path.

I doubt that path is integration of countries, even freedom of movement or common currencies or a given language. These are ideals suffering from imposition yet we can integrate and combine in ways that allow us as individuals to prosper and grow but also to unite in projects and across challenges that deliver a more promising future.

Grand challenges we can unite behind.
These come from the challenges that should be of the uttermost importance to our future well-being:
1. The long drawn out integrating the digital infrastructure across Europe to bring down the present barriers and allow less of a divide across Europe.
2. The ability to connect across a European energy grid that delivers on security, and is moving purposefully towards clean and efficient alternatives that are economically viable alternatives.
3. The formation of a scientific research community
4. The harmonization of intellectual property to accelerate invention not just protect it
5. The overhaul to our educational system to deliver the required skills we need for the future not based on the past.
6. Putting in place the roadmap to renewables that give investment confidence
7. Adding even more momentum towards key-enabling technologies
8. Having a reusable framework that reduces the ‘throw-away’ culture and mind-set
9. Tackle health and wellbeing in clear, coordinated and integrated ways across all.
10. Redoubling the efforts on food security, sustainable agriculture and land and sea management through a greater agricultural revolution.

I could add a few more but these are all ‘big bites’. We should possible go back to the approach to EU flagship programmes where the big agenda gets the required focus from politicians, bureaucrats, business and our institutions, at every level and engaging in meaningful ways with our broader society, then we are achieving more in ‘common cause’ and integration than where we have been heading recently.

We should push the EU agenda towards delivering integrated models to offer new value and opportunities, the innovation part, as central to achieving the need for new growth and jobs.

These big challenges give us our future, they break down the barriers, they open up our minds to what is the real borders to protect, to push out towards in different ways If we can unlock the barriers and ring-fencing on many of these that are the blocks today, we are laying in the foundation for growth and jobs.

There is nothing new in this appeal but the speed of change occurring outside Europe requires us to shift internal disputes and channel this energy into resolving the big challenges.

Europe needs to shoot for a different moon.

Structural issues are longstanding, we are attempting to protect far too much, we are falling to move towards a ‘creative destruction’ where innovation-lead solutions provide the better alternative in growth and challenge We link to these common causes as they benefit the individual, as well as the communities we are in (national, local, scientific, educational etc).

The push for a common market of ideas and knowledge that are allowed to flow

I detect some positive movement in seizing some of these outstanding big challenges in the way the European Commission is being set up and structured. The new commission structure is pointing to big issues; it is veering away from past integration mantras, wanting to deliver on some of these challenges suggested above.

I just hope it does not extend the list too much or we go down the path of dilution, spreading and stretching our capabilities and resources too thin and ending up with the usual past compromises, all wrought out in eleventh hour late-night deals. Of course this is perhaps wishful thinking and certainly early days.

Can we move out of our fiscal consolidation mind-set? We must

As we continue to have fiscal consolidation, we get rising Euroscepticism. We nibble away not so much at the edges we are actually attacking our core and this is where we are facing the defence of knowledge assets and finding ways to promote by, perhaps, uniting behind our bigger EU challenges.

So where does innovation fit, I’d say front and centre. Every conversation in every boardroom, in every political meeting, at each EU summit and discussion, it is the outcomes we await to hear. These need to be far more centred around innovation in the outcome, not just in nice declarations with little behind them but in cohesive plans that move us towards this agenda of tackling the ‘Big Challenge Agenda’

Scaling and building innovation waves

We need to scale and create the positive waves through innovation. Reality is not in what is going on inside Europe, it is what is happening elsewhere. It is the organization of those knowledge assets to scale and develop the waves of innovation that Asia and America are clustering around in better ways than in Europe.

These can be seen in numerous ways as geographical regions all look for ways to become the dominant force for innovation. Asia, especially China is testing that existing dominance and Europe and others in the West need to embrace that challenge, not attempt to defend against it in legislative efforts but in this necessary knowledge asset re-equipping.

Keeping innovation high on the EU agenda but in new bigger ways
Innovation features higher in national policy than ever before in many parts of the world. Let us all hope Europe does not drop the innovation ball, but cutting its commitments to what has already been hard-fought over, delivered in the Horizon 2020 programme.

Equally let’s not dilute its effort and whittle away its value in thousands of small, perhaps meaningless gestures built on political threat and fragmented thinking.

Getting Europe moving again will need a much bolder vision and then stay focused on funding it if it links into these grand challenges in clear or valuable (experimental) ways that can be a catalyst for others to pick up and run with over the next mile, as innovation is not a sprint, it is a marathon to run, at this big challenge level.

Who is that knocking on my door?
* China has set itself some ambitious innovation targets, in its production of patents, in producing more PhD’s in science and engineering than US institutions or European ones and twice as many undergraduates in these fields than the US.
* China is going about outpacing the US in investments in research and development, it is growing R&D expenditure by 15 to 20% per year, not just to catch up but to drive innovation into its future.
* Asia and America invest more than Europe in R&D at the ratio of 3:3:2. The technology-intensive activity in the Asian region is fast approaching that of North America and Western Europe.
* China’s invention initiatives are producing rapid results as the government seeks increasing actively in cooperation’s with its Asian competitors. Asian countries are mutually fuelling one another’s innovative success
* The precise impact of Asia’s IP expansion is impossible to predict. But its transformative potential is obvious as the commissioners of the patent offices of Japan, South Korea, China and, to a lesser extent, Singapore and Taiwan meet increasingly to define and coordinate their intellectual property (IP) policies although a number of territorial disputes and political divides do often get in the way.

Each of these examples is building future knowledge assets to unlock innovation potential.

* America equally continues to work through a clearer innovation framework than I feel we in Europe seem not to have, or it seems incapable of delivering in our current fragmented view of innovation understanding. We want to spread innovation either too thinly or distort its value and meaning. We need a clear overarching innovation message.
* Take the reports from the “NII Innovate America Council on Competitiveness” or the White House view on “A Strategy for American Innovation” as debate documents or guidance indicators that offer an overarching view of how innovation needs to work and on what is needed to achieve and maintain a competitive position for America, written by both Business leaders and Government officials.

So what’s next?
The European Union has consistently failed to exploit its potential for innovation-based growth. Europe remains less inter-connected in critical areas due to political grandstanding and catering to vested domestic interests.

Does Europe lack the capacity for change as we constantly fail to convert much that seems promising, we are often not commercializing on all our hard work? Others pick up the baton and make the ‘risk’ investments off of the work and initial investments in Europe.

We constantly get caught up in the politics of the day, that seem to continue to divide and rule in old fashion ways, yet technology, science, and innovation are moving at a force and speed we are often guilty of not appreciating its impact or wealth-creating prospective. Innovation does not respect borders, it seamlessly moves across them but we need to forge the infrastructure to allow it to flow in more efficient and effective ways.

It is high time we did understand the real value of innovation, it ‘touches’ us all, we can all ‘feed off it’. We need to mobile around innovation and find the right ways to release our knowledge assets that are residing across Europe in a myriad of guises, waiting for the organizing forces and challenges to unite behind and solve.

We have the latent capability clearly.

**Note : A really useful source of knowledge is this overview of the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2014 highlights some major developments in international and U.S. science and engineering (S&E) that explores many useful indicators in the race of Science, Research and Technology. It’s worth a read.

The post The Real Race is to Invest in Knowledge Assets and Grand Innovation Challenges first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.