In the past few months, I have been writing consistently on the need to change our innovating process, thinking and designs into Innovation Ecosystem ones.
In October, for example, I wrote, “Why do we need to change our thinking about innovation“. I continue here with some more arguments of “why” we need to move towards an innovation ecosystem in design and thinking.
I continue to gather, reflect and construct the “how and what” structure of this redesigned innovation (ecosystem) process/system. This will be my initial view of how this needs to be shaped as the overriding architecture of an Innovation Ecosystem. I’m coming closer to the point of sharing this in the coming weeks.
I am focusing here on arguing for changing our innovation process on the Business-to-Business or Industry-to-industry, not the retail or consumer ecosystems and their designs.
Let us first provide the top view of the difference in need and the offer of new values.
Where there is a complex challenge that one business cannot provide a solution to, innovating through ecosystems makes absolute sense. These are complex challenges where high levels of collaboration, knowledge exchange and discovery are essential. The understanding leading to new innovative solutions needs to be connected up, more transparent and collaborative.
For instance, many of the Energy transformation solutions we are undertaking would highly benefit from a sharing and exchange environment due to the complexity, high research costs and islands of knowledge existing today that all are moving at a low pace- the low-risk rate in research, discovery and piloting as they are still these islands of restricted knowledge and limited resources.
New solutions, being often highly experimental, come at significant investment costs. Today we wait for Government to kick start these investments, but they still stay locked far too often into single providers and grants. We have such urgency with the energy transformation we MUST change the model; it needs to be highly collaborative, learning and sharing.
Narrow focuses, singular approaches and resources or a better way to broaden and accelerate innovative solutions. This can apply to Energy, Health, Environment, Water, Reinsurance and Industry-related areas, for example.
Take a practical example; Hydrogen is the solution carrier for clean energy. Electrolyzers and the broader Hydrogen debate do provide the means to produce the product that is this clean energy carrier to replace fossil fuels. EACH hydrogen solution is currently being pursued in individual companies or limited geographical or technology areas.
We can’t afford to keep waiting; we need to find the best solution and invest in massive scaling. We talk of this, but innovation has still not completed the investigation or solution design job. We have far too many options that stop the market from wanting to invest; they do not want experimental solutions; they want the finished one that is proven.
This sort of debate, in finding innovative solutions that transform what we have in place for so many current inhibitors in agriculture production, in critical supplies of heat, water and industrial applications that replace existing energy-intensive and natural resource dependency, needs breakthrough innovations, not incremental solutions that maintain the existing depleting position. We need to be radical in design and thinking
Ecosystems accelerate learning, sharing and knowledge.
Coming back to the argument for innovation ecosystems. The dynamics (within) innovation discovery and implementation are changing; the global scale is transforming much. For us to react with a more robust end-to-end innovation system, we need a better conceptual framework to be understood and built.
This designed innovation ecosystem needs to be knowledge-based and grounded in AI and Human intelligence sharing; it needs to have as part of it the dynamics for constant and continuous interactions, it requires knowledge-driven events and a process that triggers and prompts as central to it.
We are in the age of moving from simplistic stand-alone solutions to complicated and complex ones; technology and knowledge sharing are the enablers, and global scale and driving down costs are the drivers to perform differently.
What do we gain if we connect up our innovation activity in an ecosystem-designed way?
We harness creativity and intelligence in broader networks. We learn to share and seek mutual value openly.
Let me list what I see as the benefits.
- Organisations influence each other; they build out the knowledge terrain.
- We further the ability to compete, collaborate, share, co-create, and co-evolve in new ways.
- We can evolve more rapidly and effectively together
- Ecosystems can attract more significant resources and exchange potential in their diverse attraction
- We focus on the need to build by evolving and catalysing
- We move quicker to scale, in knowledge, research, experimentation and piloting, more simultaneous
- We can service, source and secure markets differently
- We rapidly move beyond the (limited) capacities of single organizations
- We achieve a collective ability to learn, adapt and evolve together from knowledge and understanding to create better opportunities for the new value that connects more of what we need.
- We can adapt to a rapidly changing world, being within a constantly adaptive ecosystem environment
- We liberate more potential by discovering new sources of insights and expertise.
- We can evolve enterprise capabilities and competencies more dynamically
- We can achieve a high level of utilization and build out critical capabilities.
- Ecosystems can be visualized and modelled to re-imagine different solutions, using the digital twin, for example, for capturing, sharing and building through different expertise lenses.
- We build a complex network of interdependencies increasingly, gaining collective intelligence.
- Ecosystems can add diverse connections unable to be achieved without this open thinking,
- We can gain a real sense of gravity, of attention and flow from levels of transparency.
- We can move towards scale, scope and speed at higher rates.
How can we drive the necessary changes towards innovation ecosystems? They can deliver such a rich potential of new economic and social value. Present innovation designs are holding us back, now is the time to embrace end-to-end Innovation Ecosystems where technology enables.
Do you agree?
