Is innovation simply a fad and fashionable to talk up when we are in the present economic uncertainties? Is innovation durable or will executives move on to new ‘feeding grounds’ as they smell that possible wind of change?  Yes, possibly, I hope not. Innovation is still a very fertile feeding ground.

Innovation is meant to be the catalyst of fresh jobs, new growth and leading us all out to the promise land of wealth and security. Can we place such a burden on the slim shoulders of innovation?

Politicians here in Europe and America are using the past tool kit of tried and tested methods to kick start their economies, restructure the mountains of debt we have accumulated and generally stimulate growth.

Our economies remains stuck, entrenched and resistant, even some are about to possibly plunge even further back.  So it becomes “time for playing the innovation card”.

Is innovation leading us to the promised land of milk and honey?

I think we are all getting a little cynical about leaders’ motives and intentions when leaders attempt to deliver inspiring messages, many people react with scepticism, question whether leaders are just trying to work them or us even harder. It often leaves a bitter taste, not a taste of future promise.

Work for many has changed in its central position. It has moved from having a higher meaning and purpose as it is increasingly felt as individuals we are not really making a difference. Ah but through innovation, you can, goes the mantra.

The problems today are very structural and systemic. We are all being measured against past performance, against other people, against other organizations, against other countries, the messages are unrelenting. Our solution is to become more innovative. Often these are one shot solutions.

Do they advance us, most probably not much but we need to be measured. Do all these one shot activities help us or are they simply short term?
We have also lost identification with our public leaders and our institutions. We increasingly see them as obstacles to progress; we see them as not very innovative.

Overload and the crisis of no time to focus

Today we are bombarded with information, with knowledge, with data 24 hours of constant streaming if we want it. We have difficulty in switching off. We constantly look for all those breaking innovation and wealth creating opportunities.

Regretfully we are on a horrible treadmill and asking innovation to help us get off it is not a solution. It helps, yes possibly.

Steve Deming wrote a series of articles on his Forbes blog, start here http://onforb.es/iQiMrr about the sorry state of innovation. It is depressing reading. It does seem innovation is not succeeding.

Can we change this, he thinks it is, yes possible but we have to radically change our thinking about innovation and its part to play in the bigger scheme of things.

The EU announces a state of innovation emergency

This week the European commission issued its Innovation Union Competitive Report, it is long, detailed but thankfully has an executive summary. Start here http://bit.ly/jzE7w6.

The upshot of the report, the headline is “Europe’s innovation emergency”. Innovation performance needs major improvements in many areas if (note if) the Europe 2020 strategy is to deliver on its promises. I don’t want to sound cynical but I just get the feeling of “no chance” will we deliver on the promises with where we are and what is facing us.

• Innovation delivery is tied to Innovation Union and as most people know Europe loves the idea of union. The problem today is there are many worrying signs that the dream of EU ‘Union’ is about to implode with the public financial crisis, that is not going away with the heavy dose of austerity measures needed by most. Excuse me, but how does innovation flourish in austere times, usually not very well actually. So innovation is becoming the whipping boy. Yes probably.

• The EU report suggests we need to be more innovative ‘smarter’ by focusing on specialized areas of activity. The difficulty for me is many of these offer limited jobs and simply chase the ‘smarter’ qualified person. So we get some wealth creation but for a narrow band of (lucky) people and have we not just been through one of those bailouts for the banking sector? So more of the same solution as policy suggestions for innovation. Yes probably.

• We are asked to invest more in research and innovation. The EU is slowly advancing towards a target of 3% of GDP to invest in research and development. The problem I have with this is this:  there are so many reports disputing this R&D focus is the real growth area, it should be in entrepreneurial start ups. I tend to feel this seems to generate more jobs but start ups are having extremely hard time raising money from the financial institutions. We have not yet achieved a structural change to a more knowledge-intensive economy.

• We are also told we have weak framework conditions that are preventing our knowledge to flow and be transformed into marketable products and services. The developed world is most likely continuing to lose ground in the exploitation and translation of innovation.

• Many commentators have spoken of a new deal, to get the many back to work. This is based on knowledge and being innovative. The reality is our education system; many within our work forces are not as equipped as they need to be to make this knowledge-intensive switch. We will have to wait for significant changes in our education direction, significant upgrading and retraining of many knowledge unskilled people to make this critical change. Yes probably.

Innovation can be the growth stimulus, not our current tired formulas of financial bailouts as the approach.We need stimulus not proping up the weak.

Is innovation our stimulus? Innovation remains often abstract, certainly over used, and not well understood by most people on its full force and ability to deliver but can it, when it often stands on its own and everything is expected from it?

Innovation is expensive to do well. It is now global and access to knowledge is essential; Innovation can also be very slow and incremental but it can be disruptive, revolutionary and amazingly quick in generating growth and jobs. Innovation is a community endeavour, it dies in silo’s and we need to increasingly find ways to wire and connect ourselves even more to leverage the collaborative nature innovation requires.

Innovation requires resurgence and deep commitment

If innovation can be our answer then it needs a clear resurgence. Innovation needs a place at the top table of politicians, businesses and society and not just used as the star attraction, called upon to divert our attention from all the issues that are around us.

Innovation can lead us out of this mess but it has to be ‘front and centre’ in its importance but it has to be fully understood. Is it by many at this time abstract and lacking the defining meaning of why innovation should be treated with importance?

Innovation to become part of real sustaining policy needs to be re-thought. Innovation by its nature needs to be nurtured by the process of discovery, the linking of insights for the creation and exploitation of new ideas by entrepreneurs and businesses alike and translating them into a new end result.

Innovation is uncertain, lets simply recognize that and move on

Innovation is by nature radically uncertain, it is very unpredictable, although Governments believe they can capture innovation activity but they don’t. We need to encourage experimentation and ideas even more; luckily we still have our creativity even if we don’t have access to the means to deliver on it.

This is where we should be spending our money, not in bailout of old institutions or 20^th century industry models but on experimentation and exploration of the new work factory, collaborative innovation sharing, to solve our societies and planets big issues with inventions that generate a new deal that transform us away from current dependencies the planet is rapidly depleting.

A new melting pot of delicious innovation stew

We need to find a new ‘melting pot’ where innovation forms the central ingredient but it really does need plenty of other components or constituents to be readily mixed together to produce this elixir of new jobs, growth and wealth creation, it can’t simply stand alone.

It needs to change from the whipping boy to the poster boy but it needs a sea change in our thinking or it does go bust and fail to deliver on all those promises being made today.

Innovation needs attachment

So is innovation dead, is it about to go bust, to end up as another nice idea?  I hope not, it is durable but in a different form than we currently frame it in.

It is time we put innovation really to work but it has to be ‘attached’ to something specific to thrive and grow upon. It can have durability if we understand it better and invest in it.

It needs to be fixed firmly onto something else. We do need to do this mind shift in innovation understanding now though, we just can’t simply keep talking about it as the ‘magic’ dust you sprinkle around.

The post Is innovation today expected as the panacea to solve all our problems? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Regretfully the next Titanic is waiting to happen.

In recent months there has been considerable activity to formulate the new policies to support innovation through EU funding. The EU has been inviting dialogue and offering a mountain of guidelines and suggestions to help us all.  Much of the focus is on streamlining what is already in place.

I’ve called this on some different discussion blogs a little like “reorganizing the innovation deck chairs on the titanic as it heads towards an iceberg”.

There is enormous activity and pressure to perform as the past results of many of the EU initiatives have not delivered on the goals set, and there is this real urgent need to reflect upon the lessons learned from the failures of the Lisbon strategy.

It does seem the present ‘effect’ is put on more steam, lighten the load where we can and let’s try and navigate through these challenges (or icebergs), no time to lose.

Everyone is on high alert in Brussels and around the EU all busy doing their job to contribute to present dialogues on making innovation a success. We need to take really radical action in my view.

Perhaps we should be shouting “all stop”

Maybe we should be shouting “all stop.” Can we keep going on layering more onto a system of innovation that has not worked in many cases or provide even further policies that clearly do not fit the order of magnitude of change taking place around innovation?

We are simply shuffling the innovation deckchairs and this is not going to be enough to confront the new global innovation changes taking place. The ones that are slow to respond, regretfully the EU is a shining example of that, that lacks that real agility to read, react and respond (more the later ones, better at the reading ones in the EU’s case) is simply going to consistently lag and not lead in the new global innovation race. Can we afford that?

The EU needs to be bolder in its innovation agenda for a number of reasons:

• It does not have low costs, abundant labour resources and a pricing advantage against many of its competitors. It has to leverage different competencies for advantage.
• The world is more interconnected and competitive than ever before and harnessing 27 odd members onto the same view is ‘herculean’ irrespective of the issue.
• Other nations are rapidly replicating any competitive advantage quicker than before,
• The infinite global creative workforce is forcing everyone to go where the resource (human, knowledge or natural) lies to gain economic advantage. Innovation does not respect borders.
• The multiple converging forces, perhaps a new infliction point, is, I feel, actually happening. Society is gaining empowerment and possessing the tools to shape and influence. The consumer or individual voice is growing and organizing in new ways that will radically change, in collaboration and influence.

When you are progressively stripped of those traditional past bastions of advantage, innovation needs to become THE essential core competence to survive and thrive, to respond and build around. It seems we all at least agree on that, the issue is how to go about it is where we diverge.

Stepping back is stepping up

The EU must pull back. It simply can’t continue to design, manage, fund, lead, guide and judge as an ‘all-in-one’ for innovation. It needs to stand well back. It needs to revert to what Governments or Institutions like the EU should be:  the providers of the essential backbone, the infrastructure and clear the path to allow all others to find their way.

It should set out the big challenges, the societal challenges, which in all fairness the EU is doing, and set about laying in this backbone or foundation for others to work from.

Innovation Business and Social Platform Ecosystems

My view as a serious proposal is to build multiple Innovation Businesses and Social Platform Ecosystems as part of this different thinking needed.
The EU needs to tap into the combination of strengths within the different regions for them to coalesce around the notion of Innovation Business Platform Ecosystems.

It is partly developing the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that are increasingly available, combining these with the social media platforms so a greater number of parties are working on the solutions and challenges required to resolve these BIG societal challenges.

This will be based on these eco-platform BIG challenges in an open collaboration forum where a number of different stakeholders (or actors) who have potentially different business & social model needs can come together.

The scale and scope of ecosystem platforms can become the fuel of energy, knowledge, specialisation, and collaborative know-how for innovation to happen, that provides benefits and value to each person or entity that participates.

The Government or EU  provides the necessary support and investment into this ‘innovation backbone’ to enable distributed organisational models based so interaction and collaboration can go on and looks to clear the way for the successful delivery of personalized high-margin products/services that leverage local identity and economic structure.

Measuring Innovation Ecosystems

The aim fits the EU objectives, that is to foster an inclusive and participative society, grow wealth within the community, and create jobs which support broader economic inclusion.  These ecosystems empower the creativity and the participation of all potential participants of EU regions (public and private organizations, small and micro enterprises, communities, universities, institutions, individuals and the critical final consumer) in open socio-economic processes.

Specifically, the EU or the separate Governments can measure progress

I’d argue we should forget the old measuring system of the 20th century, hungover from the manufacturing of measuring inputs, processes, outputs, it gets too complicated. The only one I’d always keep is outcomes, as the only real measure of (commercial) progress, something the EU admits it is not good at doing- generating successful commercial outcomes.

I’d radically measure innovation differently, through:

Innovation linkages– the productivity of relationships, alliance collaborations achieved, interactions taking place, the forming of new knowledge networks, clusters and sharing of complementary assets. It evaluates the different intersections to spot new possibilities

Knowledge diffusion– the content, its value, its adoption rates and absorptive capacity within and outside the ecosystem for accessing knowledge, anchoring it (within the EU) and diffusing it on a broader scale. It can also judge knowledge response (learning).

Intangible assets– it can promote intellectual capital and facilitate long term support for innovative solutions that look promising. It can re-equip people, the most intangible element to manage better within these ecosystems.

Improve the conditions for innovation to grow– by monitoring the dynamics within these ecosystem platforms (demand, impact on society, adoption/ diffusion, skill obsolescence etc) where the commission plays the role of lead policy influencer.

Do innovation ecosystems answer all the problems?
No of course not, but it fundamentally challenges the way we are currently doing things and dismantles the way innovation is being managed today, in silos and within national boundaries.

With intervention constantly taking place at central levels is to influence, yet it regretfully constrains much about innovation today. It is not intended but clearly happening. We need to unblock these constraints and take innovation to the next level.

Innovation thrives by allowing the energy to flow in as close a natural state as it can, fewer rules, fewer boundaries, and higher uncertainty but contained within a given universe. It cannot be tied to increasing complexity, rules and guidelines, even ‘unnatural’ innovation country borders.

The policymaker should play their new part to help to lay out the vision, the mission and provide the enabling resources to best achieve improvement for society and economic wealth, and then get out of the way of the actual process as much as possible, unless it has a clear role to provide part of the core enabling factors.

The main EU/ government role is simply to ‘fuel’ the ecosystem where it can, both in the challenges that need resolution and in providing the backbone of the system to facilitate it, not as many feel today, to direct and police it.

Be bolder EU please, our innovative future depends on it.

Maybe wishful thinking but fiddling with those innovation policy deck chairs knowing what is coming towards me is far scarier. We need to be bolder in our innovative thinking not simply rearrange and streamline the existing activities.

Innovation dynamics have simply changed. Innovation Platform Ecosystems need serious consideration to change the innovation dynamics within Europe.

The post Transform European activities around innovation ecosystems first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.