National Innovation Agenda's - Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence

Living in a globally connected world of Innovation

@paul4innovating — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 12:41:24 +0000

As we think through innovation, do we every consider the broader global effects and what is helping us to accelerate or seemingly holding us back in our innovating impact?

For policy makers around the global all working to design the most optimum innovation conditions, they might not be considering enough about the true effects their individual policy-decisions mean, they might actually be undermining the very thing they are attempting to achieve for themselves

One report I have attempted to absorb is the one released in January 2016 by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). “Contributors and Detractors: Ranking Countries’ Impact on Global Innovation”.

This report offers a number of alternatives to give fresh perspective, a new slant to thinking through innovation and sometimes the “knock-on effect” of isolated thinking can have about innovation in a globally connected world. The search for an “altruistic effect” in our global world offers some interesting fresh perspective for appreciating innovation policy design.

This report assesses 56 countries on how their economic and trade policies contribute to and detract from innovation globally. It can alter thinking in my opinion in a globally connected world where innovation can have such impact if coordinated well.

The report is found here:

https://itif.org/publications/2016/01/20/contributors-and-detractors-ranking-countries%E2%80%99-impact-global-innovation

What is new here is how the report is attempting to quantify what does build a global robust innovation framework and what can hold it back or detract or even harm innovation. The ITIF quite rightly states “Robust innovation is essential for economic growth and social progress around the world”.

ITIF states “Until now, most studies of innovation policy looked at how nations’ policies affect innovation in their own country. This report assesses 56 countries—which comprise almost 90 percent of the global economy—on 27 factors reflecting the extent to which their economic and trade policies contribute to and detract from innovation globally”.

So they are classifying “positive-sum” and “negative-sum” policies that might be pushing different nations to mercantilism in policies, trying to benefit themselves at the expense of others or the global innovation system. The ITIF has been consistently publishing on mercantilist issues for some time.

In the 27 indicators they examined the contributors to global innovation were grouped into three categories of taxes, human capital, and R&D and technology. The detractors were grouped into balkanized production markets, IP protection and balkanized consumer markets.

There are (logically) four distinct qualitative perspectives, in ways that either: 1) benefit the country and the world simultaneously (“good”), 2) benefit the country at the expense of other nations (“ugly”), 3) fail to benefit either the country or the world (“bad”), or 4) actually fail to benefit the country but benefit the rest of the world (“self-destructive”).

The report finds that on a per-capita basis, the top nations doing the most for global innovation (a combination of more effort on policies that support innovation and less on policies that harm it) are Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the Netherlands. In contrast, the least constructive impact by putting in place policies that do the most to harm global innovation are Argentine, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Ukraine, Kenya and Mexico- some here rather surprised me. The US sits at 10th position and China at 44th.India,

The United States with its ranking of 10th overall, seems to have policies that do little to detract from global innovation yet fall short of those of other nations when it comes to contributing to global innovation. China ranks 44th overall, principally because it fields so many policies that actively detract from the global innovation system. The report also finds a strong correlation between countries’ contributions to global innovation and their levels of innovation success, meaning that doing well domestically on innovation policy can also mean doing well for the world.

Conclusions

The report concludes that for the world to maximize global innovation capacity, it will need to develop stronger mechanisms to urge nations to do more contributing and less detracting.

The report has some valuable messages to consider in any ‘reflective processes being undertaken within the EU and innovation.

The impact globally from policy decisions does have a significant “spill-over” effect. Innovation has been argued as the “last great frontier”, even if we buy into this or not what happens is the vying for leadership in innovation can be very nationalist and actually hurts the longer-term prospects, also certain innovation policies seem to generate this positive spillover that contributes into the entire global innovation system

Policies can be global contributors (as well as national accelerators) but can also detract or balkanize. The ITIF has attempted to examine 27 indicators that can give global innovation impact.

Worth not just a considered read but the report warrants some inclusion in any future thinking that the EU, the US or any nation undertaking a review of their Innovation policies – Australia and Canada come to mind here, due to change in Governments who are both undertaking reviews of their innovation activities that have seemed in recent years to lag behind and become less attractive to stimulating innovation.

Knowing policies that have potentially a very disappointing “impact” from the investments being made, even though they seem to be initially in that individual countries interest has huge value.

Also knowing the risk and possible effects of their individual policies might actually be stopping the global innovation flows entering or leaving. Policies that might be denying the potential for greater collaborations by cutting across national borders that is specifically be sought out by global corporations to capitalize on global opportunities might alter some narrow thinking that currently occurs in and around innovation policy.

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Should any innovation be nationally structured?

@paul4innovating — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:14:03 +0000

In a recent article I submitted to Social Innovation Europe, they are building and streamlining the social innovation field in Europe, I made some arguments against national borders for social innovation, actually, I’d say any innovation, even in its organizing values.

We simply miss to much in today’s globally connected world.

Let me explain that part here on ‘the why’ that I believe in this:

Innovation is simply not containable within borders
Firstly innovation is not containable within borders; not ideas, not practices, not final concepts.

If we try to simply constrain it, it will never get the traction and momentum often needed from those ‘great ideas’ born locally, to ever grow and scale and achieve their true success.

Nationalized innovations are never seen or valued by others, and even more importantly, they aren’t seen and adopted as ‘our own’ solutions.
Innovation simply goes where it is needed or felt
Innovation should simply go where it is needed and felt. The closer you are to the final consumer, the greater chance you have of solving their needs or even unmet needs. It is often policy, constrained funding and human interference that intervenes to stop that natural open flow.

Thankfully that is changing: as we recognise within our shrinking world, movement is completed now in milliseconds. We inform others, and transfer knowledge and ideas fast.

National borders are powerless to stop this knowledge flow and that is good for innovation. Where these innovations are seen as valuable, the ‘smart money’ follows to build.

Social issues are incredibly fluid and can’t be contained
Social issues are even more fluid; boundaries can be even more permeable.

The Arab Spring is testimony to that; social and economic crisis facing Europe at present is yet another one where social unrest is driving change. Social issues are forcing change that simply flows across borders.

We might still believe one country and its social problems are different from another but they often have the same core issue, concerns, pressures and conflicts behind them.

Often because we don’t work on this similarity in early identification we leave ourselves short on insight, as we dismiss “their problems are simply different from ours”- are they really?

National Innovation has significant blind spots
Also have you noticed how often National organizing activities seem to have a number of inherent blind spots. In this case of Social Innovation, will the filtration system be useful and to whom, the whole social community or narrow groups? Will it be discerning enough?

Will it truly represent the broad spectrum of social ills and challenges that are around? Will it simply be a needless obstacle, another filter in the chain? Will anything national represent your views and issues appropriately with a clear enough understanding to add value?

My final thought here.
Why do we still compare and contrast innovation on a National basis- innovation is global, most global innovation moves where it is best managed or delivered?

All national measurements do is simply capture a given part of the activities going on within a geographical area, it completely misses the across-border flows that make up the higher value points within innovation.

Also any reports you read on the national comparison, never, I repeat NEVER, can really compare fully each country. Each has different ways it approaches innovation that reflect their context, objectives and conditions.

The extended articles

If you are interested the extended article for Social Innovation Europe was in two parts:
Here: http://socialinnovationeurope.eu/node/2280
And here: http://socialinnovationeurope.eu/node/2281
About SIE: http://socialinnovationeurope.eu/about

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The National Innovation Institute argument

@paul4innovating — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 02:16:39 +0000

Further to my last blog post on the need for a National Innovation Institute, I’d like to expand on this further as I’m presently here in Singapore and feel this is even more topical.

Always Singapore provides you with a positive impression when it comes to development. It is a country that consistently experiments and explores its options to grow its economy. Innovation is within this mix but I still think it should be more central, visible and coordinated to extract that little ‘extra juice’ often needed today.

Visiting Singapore on this trip I’ve been examining where innovation ‘fits’, and there are plenty of examples of experimentation backed up by investment seed money, but for me, innovation still lacks a certain coherency and consistency of purpose within policy.

I feel with the changing nature of innovation and its increasing value creation aspect it does need to be given a greater sense of attention, so further investments can build innovation deeper into the fabric of society.

A national innovation body can bring this coherency of purpose that Singapore strives for.
I have championed for a number of years this need for a clearer National Innovation Strategy to deepen and support all the different activities needed to be ‘housed’ within Singapore.

It is at this national level you achieve a greater match between supply-side inputs and the demand side by understanding the roles played by all the parties.

You can’t afford any form of hands-off approach today; you need a strong strategic focus on the roles and policies for the delivery of that innovative society that is needed to compete effectively in today’s world.

A national innovation policy structure can go well beyond a conventional set of prescriptions. Where? It can provide for greater intensity in:

Channelling R&D into specific technology and industry challenges.
Clarifying what is around the world that is missing that needs to be brought into Singapore in nascent technologies etc, so as to support what has already been drawn in, thus anchoring the value of what is produced in Singapore.
A national policy allows for more comprehensive ‘roadmaps’ in key industries and research to be understood and the gaps narrowed.
The more focused funding of sector-based industry-university-government research partnerships that met this National innovation policy.
You achieve a more robust approach to clustering that has a broader regional need.
You create deeper knowledge of the methods, processes, approaches and techniques needed for innovation.
You add further impetus to where private sectors needs to adopt and where public sector needs to support.
You speed up the rate of knowledge transfer between the players with a more coordinated agenda.
A national policy gives fresh emphasis on the tax code to spur innovation and where to invest and can help to shape future trade policy in its championing.
Lastly, you develop clearer ways to measure often those elusive innovation metrics that provide the justification on return on investments by the parties involved.

For me, a National Innovation agenda, driven by a clearly identified body, helps in driving national and global solutions through coordinating innovation.

It builds up the ongoing knowledge of innovation in its evolving process and allows for greater monitoring, peer review and the build-up of good policy practices that stimulate the growth of the economy.

I’d just like to see innovation having this greater recognition of its role for society within Singapore.

Having innovation more central in policy decisions, recognised and seen would add further momentum to all the present good work invested in innovation activity. It connects and strengthens the dots that are already established.

I still think it’s the way forward for providing Singapore with an even more competitive edge.

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