How often do you pause for thought, testing yourself, questioning even simply for ‘just those few minutes,’  to allow yourself to openly challenge where you are and what you are attempting to do?

We keep relentlessly moving on, like a wandering herd of buffalo, always looking for fresh pasture, those new feeding grounds. It’s not good.

Of course, I often get caught up in this restless pursuit of gathering more, when I spend a growing amount of my time researching innovation. I keep coming across so many things that ‘trigger’ the thinking, pushing me on.

Do you let them go, ignore them, quickly pass over them, or attempt to capture the issue as something well worth investigating further at a later stage, or just get them simply behind you in the here and now.

I think I must be reverting back more into a hunter-gatherer, in my case upon innovation insights; collecting the raw material that I am looking to eventually translate and distribute as this growing knowledge stock.

The outcome  I trust is moving me slowly towards becoming an innovation curator, hopefully, valued by others. Well, it’s a goal.

I also regularly need what I call my ‘walkabout’ moments to chill out and regroup.

Walkabout is best known when an Australian Aborigine undergoes a journey, wandering in the wilderness for periods as long as six or so months.

This wandering mostly becomes a rite of passage, in my case my walkabout’s are aimed to move my innovation understanding from one state to another, hopefully improving by what I have learnt and gathered.

I have so often to force myself to stop being a collector of ‘all things new’ that is written about innovation. I keep attempting to put as many of the existing pieces together, searching for the patterns and insights, trying to make a different sense to them, with the aim to add further to the innovation stock and innovation capital.

Presently I am in the middle of a digital and paper clear-up ready for another walkabout

Either the mass of papers that I confess I’ve printed out so I can highlight, scribble over and allow these to ‘fester’ a little longer, so the ideas permeate through my thick skull or my digital collection all need shaping differently. I’m been busy working through my digital library, whipping this back into a decent shape after a heavy collecting period of interesting articles that all need to be referenced for future use.

There is so much to explore, it does get overwhelming and this is why these ‘walkabout’s help clear my brain (and my desk). I also use mind mapping software to capture much so the different patterns and connections can become a little more coherent, well for me at least.

Craving for the innovative open road

I do like the idea of an open road on where we can go and what we might explore but we actually do need to take some time to choose the routes, even when much of it can be serendipitous, as it has to contribute ‘just’ beyond knowledge into something valuable.

In our investigations we need to watch out for all the signs (not necessarily signposts)  along the way, those signals, patterns and emerging trends as we both search the horizon but equally in fully appreciating what is all around us, as we travel building our understanding on that journey.

I often feel I am a journey man and I’m certainly comfortable with that.
I have to admit, I am a happy man playing in my innovation sandpit, linking these thoughts into emerging solutions to tackle some client problems, move innovation along or answer some questions posed.

I work on these for others on given value propositions around the following: “you need someone who can put clear coordinates into the innovation world“.

I keep moving towards this concept of being a curator of innovation, collecting and distributing it, interpreting it, re-ordering it to meet specific needs. To do this I need to keep up a given rhythm, filtering and funneling, dampening or magnifying this growing knowledge around innovation.

I enjoy this but it does take up more time than I can sometimes really afford. I think I need an investor who see’s value in structuring this into an innovation knowledge platform, until then, if ever, I travel my path.

 “Time starved, knowledge poor,” so when do we gain the luxury to think

When do we find the time to really delve into the necessary understanding for innovation in deeper and valuable ways. We are often just ‘reacting to daily issues’ and constant crisis as we are so focused on the delivery of short-term results.

We lack a space where we can explore thoughtful analysis, deepen our personal knowledge and make all the right connections we would ideally like. We lack time and insights that can give greater direction or answers.

We are needing those personal ‘curated’ spaces where our particular interest builds up in the required knowledge (collect, manage and apply) to then be able to build from this and move onto the next knowledge stream of value to you. We never find the ongoing opportunity to alter our innovation understanding and influence our future delivery.

What would help here? Is it innovation coaching, mentoring, providing an innovation knowledge platform, a place to go and find content-rich insights that yield impact and give a renewed intensity? What would be attractive? What would give to your understanding of innovation and its management?

How does one offer such a personal space where you can draw in the knowledge and interpret it in your way, appropriate to meet your innovation goals?

Also I’m enjoying some sparring, exchanging, and developing as ongoing.

I’m also caught up in a great discussion with my occasional sparring partner Jeffrey Phillips of Ovo, this time around in change, culture and innovation and I think this will eventually emerge as a further piece of collaborative work between us.

This will follow on from our collaborations around the Innovation Executive Work Mat , where we have been seeking out common cause and building strategic and innovation alignment, along with our earlier attempts to describe a “Collaborative innovation reference model“, published under “reducing innovation mysteries” and on its homepage.

I’ve written before about “finding our true purpose” and working the innovation space is mine to explore and think through. As I stated in that post, mine is increasingly focused upon:

“Establishing the ‘new’ often means moving beyond the already ‘known’, it is to experiment with sometimes the untried, to learn, to achieve faster and improved results, to evolve and push boundaries. This needs fresh perspectives and dedicated innovation knowledge. I attempt to offer those insights and guidance in the emerging areas of innovation”

Off on another innovation walkabout, it is about time, hopefully, the answers will keep coming from the time hopefully well spent.

*Amended on 16.04.2015

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The ability to ‘evolve’ is very determinant on the knowledge base, either within a given economy or within a ‘federation’ to bring together as something new, offering more value than what is on offer today.

The combining of the dynamics within innovations parts

Innovation is highly dynamic in its constant change but also in its need of constant co-ordination of its parts.

I’ve been writing a lot recently on different issues that need thinking through for regaining a more sustaining innovation growth engine. Here I wanted to think out loud, about National issues that become more drags and not accelerators to innovation.

I then have tried to identify some of the reasons, and then finish with a personal reflection on the US versus European and some suggested actions needed for improving their innovation activity.

Often we forget to put our own innovation efforts into context, so I’d like to go up to the helicopter view here, maybe it helps us to relate better to some of the external barriers that need equal resolution, as we do often come up against these as we try to innovate within borders. Innovation cannot be contained, it needs harnessing but allowed to ‘move’ where it needs to go.
Nations are Very Different and should simply resist copying.

No one nation can just copy another, the same as one business entity cannot simply copy another, each has distinct characteristics, a history and a certain set of ‘physical’ boundaries on where it is located. Different cultures, different histories set each Nation and Business entity apart.

The main differences of Nations required to innovate for jobs, for wealth creation is they simply can’t migrate to another country, or spread themselves around the globe to tap into the activities in these different places. Some try to though, with imaginative joint collaborative investments.

Each Nation have to think differently, they are all firmly anchored in their settings, in their history, their investments already made and their own unique needs.

The job of nations is to attract as broad a set of innovation activities and set about to create the ‘right’ conditions and facilitate these as best they can, and always forced to work within the economic circumstances they find themselves within. They can’t escape but they can create the ‘right’ conditions.

The Value of the Innovation System needs well constructed.

The innovation system operating within each country is made up of a set of resources, capabilities, technologies and institutions, all broadly conceived, that need to systematically contribute to the process of innovation. It is the way this is constructed in scope, scale and efficacy will largely determine the innovation prospects.

Some countries have a well-evolved (national) innovation system that devotes significant resources and knowledge to the system (such as the EU), others allow the market conditions to attract and generate innovation (perhaps the USA).

The argument is if you have a good innovation system you get good innovation policies from this. I often wonder if this is really the case as policies, the world over, are governed not so much by common sense or allowing for market demands to dictate but are ‘interfered with’ by politics, by an intervention that often distorts and puts markets out of good order.

Decisions often made have the knock-on effects that was not fully considered or simply ignored. So each nation makes its innovation system choices.

Capturing and Measuring the Innovation Activities

Innovation operates at the level of people, by firms and networks of firms learning to do new things in collaborative ventures. For them, the mechanisms are the important enablers, not the macroeconomic structures politicians often get caught up in.

What allows competition to thrive, what needs to be in place to be within a cooperative system, and where are the resources needed and the knowledge required to be accessed?

It is the ability to create ‘value’ that will determine if one location over another is the appropriate place. Many nations focus hard on these factors, to ensure the set of activities needed to be undertaken by the firm can be achieved.

If Nations are not focusing on this point they simply will lose the enterprise and all its surrounding knowledge to somewhere else.

Also sometimes Nations get lost in their fasciniation with statistics and measurements, with comparision. How can you really compare and contrast Nations for innovation, they are simply different?

Nations often forget what is needed is to provide a ‘track record’ and environment so as to allow breakthrough innovation to happen within their borders.

This requires providing a friendly set of conditions and encouragement to simply pursue around given ideas or thoughts and find every means possible to facilitate this, look at Singapore and its government as an excellent example, of providing this committed support.

Nations’ best roles are providing the right climate and nurturing the culture to accommodate it through education, infrastructure and constantly encouraging outward-looking thinking and clear the path to make it happen and then anchor the business entity, not only with incentives but in this commitment to fully support it for mutual ‘win-win’. They grow, we grow.

Often Innovation National Structures Get Caught Up in Other People’s Business

Enterprises claim they ‘welcome’ government involvement, but often they don’t, especially when they see what comes with it in ‘red tape, bureaucracy, countless meetings and committees.

Enterprises clearly differ in their innovation capabilities, some are minimally resourced, some are haphazard, highly entrepreneurial and opportunistic while others are highly organized and considerable resourced.

How the innovation systems that are put in place to help in all the myriad variations can work is both a demanding and difficult one to balance that is for sure.

Getting Out of the Way, or Placing Yourself in the Middle

The difficulty is where does a Nation wanting to promote, develop and protect its innovation base stand? Does it stay on the sidelines allowing the ‘dynamics’ of the market decide or does it wade right into the middle and swim alongside all the parties, accepting the rough and the smooth?

It comes back to the same problem “it all depends”. Today I think if Nations want to achieve superior innovation outcomes they need to ensure particular skills and practices are present, on their soil, to manage and navigate today’s world of highly uncertain, complex and highly distributed environments by crafting, and crafting really well, the mechanisms that enable this.

I do not feel allowing innovation to simply flow is the right way, it needs deep understanding of all elements of innovation effect and often within National policies this is not the case.

Where government and its agencies can dramatically help is in providing instruments and ‘healthy’ funding options to promote and accelerate innovation and hopefully anchor it deeper into its society.

Often the Choice is Hard to Let Go Of

For me, the EU is not the ideal benchmark on how to set about innovation. It is overly structured, complicated and layered. In the EU, the 7th Innovation Research Framework attempts to put this all into place. Alongside its Competitiveness and Innovation Framework program these provide the overarching themes and objectives of where innovation will contribute in society.

The EU funnels its considerable funds through either these programs or derivatives of these or bodies set up to focus and promote ‘given’ activity. It invests in partnership with regional development parties and offers structural funds yet still with all the hard work of streamlining its disbursement into ‘promising’ innovations it struggles to get that innovation momentum required.

The structure itself has a maze that thousands are engaged in, to just pilot their projects through or offer their services to manage this activity to obtain funds or train you in its understanding. This set of activities, born out of necessity, offers no real added value and continues to ‘depress’ and not ‘progress’ innovation as the EU would like.

Taking this ‘highly structured’ route to innovation is not the right way. Innovation needs to be devolved as far down as it can go. The closer it gets to the actual needs of innovation, the better the delivery of resources, funds, structures etc.

When the innovation is full of unknowns, completely new technology for instance, then the resource can be effectively channelled to the organizing structure to dispense more in the “R” of research than dispersing for the “D” in development.

The EU simply has not got its balance right on the disbursement of innovation, both in funds and knowledge, it is to much top-down.

Certainly, Nations Need a Center of Innovation Knowledge and Expertise
In many countries, this is ‘outsourced’ to think tanks, institutions, universities or simply review committees set up to advise the government on policy.

Often that advice is highly skewed to where the information is coming from. The value of innovation experts residing within a centre of excellence can make a difference, it can reduce the risk of failure, and improve the chances of pushing the emerging winners.

This centre can balance out much of the external, often highly biased thinking. This centre can constantly raise the awareness for innovation and highlight the drivers, capabilities and resources needed for growth and wealth.

These centres need to translate the needs of “the know-how and why” out into the market as opportunities to pursue. The market needs to determine, detect and explore these.

Proactive Innovation Needs to be Channelled Through Entrepreneurs.

Innovation is considered one of the few proactive strategies available to promote wealth and growth. It does need organizing; it cannot be left to chance.

It is working on the connectivity points; to reduce often abstract agendas and turn them into tangible opportunities. We need to make the approaches and thinking around innovation as coherent, accessible and open as possible.

At the heart of any future within innovation is the entrepreneur and the ability of nations to succeed in today’s environment of ‘stagnation’ is to provide the environment for these new entities and smaller ideas -rich ones to grow. Joseph Schumpeter talked about ‘creative destruction’ many years ago, back in 1942, that applies even more in today’s world.

Creative destruction resulting from innovation and entrepreneurship is the force that creates sustainable long-term economic growth.

Schumpeter concluded that radical innovation can lead to a better society but it is the way you interpret this that will determine the winners from the losers. In Europe, the entrepreneur exploits existing structures whereas that shining beacon of entrepreneur activity lying in Silicon Valley and in a number of other innovation hot spots of the USA seem to have a greater appetite for radical change.

This has its consequences and its attractions. Venture capital has its concentration in the US; failure is not only tolerated but talked about as a learning point, a certain badge of honour even. In much of the rest of the world failure is a heavy stigma that constrains and is often judged harshly by society.

The USA Has the Inbuilt Structure and Capabilities, Only if it simply would realize it and execute on a given (and agreed) plan but will they ‘grasp’ it?

If the US was to really study its emerging innovation activity, the value of entrepreneurs and small business holders to the economy and job creation (yes, really), and bring together that ‘collective learning curve’ of all the positive forces to facilitate entrepreneurs and SME growth it would have such an economically powerful lift to its current malaise.

The difficulty is the activity undertaken in the Entrepreneur sector is often not captured, so it is never really methodically enhanced, support only is provided in a piecemeal fashion, not in a comprehensive roadmap.

If only policymakers could realize the potential of supporting entrepreneurs fully, it has its new launching point to the future. Equally it can quickly position itself as the vibrant ecosystem ‘core’ for innovation start up and acceleration.

The US has most, if not all of the factors needed in place, it just needs a collective recognition of what it has, what it can provide and that is simply, going back to what America use to do best; to provide the best possible conditions to pioneer, to explore, to extract, to venture forth and simply innovate.

It is through the recognition that the small business is the economic generator of jobs and through recognizing and then intensifying the factors needed that would then allow entrepreneurship to flourish there would be a real path to growth and fresh economic activity.

Reigniting that American dream

The American dream is still around, it is still part of the make up and often the American gets highly caught up in the adventure, that pioneering need; innovation can certainly feed that ‘desire’. This is a great trait to have, willingness to have a go.

This time to reignite this desire it has to recognise that it (the US) needs to move across a new innovation landscape or prairie, a global one, where entrepreneurs are free and able to roam where they want to, for those best ‘feeding grounds.

This is where the US can grasp and firmly anchor entrepreneurs in their backyard as it has nearly all of the enablers and through this ‘anchoring’ it might help transform its economy back to an engine of value and real worth built back on that currently lost entrepreneur ‘spirit’ it has been in the past famous for.

To do this policy needs to ‘anchor’ everything that entrepreneurs require and seek to protect this by all the means possible, not in protective practices but in proactive practices and stimulus.

Clear the current innovation ‘wood for the trees’ so it can then allow the emerging best to grow tall and give the new growth needed for the ‘ecosystem’ it will attract around it.

This was originally submitted and published in www.innovationexcellence.com for their topic of the month. Some modifications have been made for this separate post.

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