The Future of Innovation

Anna Trifilova, Bettina von Stamm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780566092138
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351889186
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Three unassailable facts will strike you as soon as you start to read The Future of Innovation: ¢ One: innovation is the new mantra; whether you're involved in teaching art and design, new product development for a blue chip consumer brand or responsible for providing public services to citizens; ¢ Two: understanding innovation requires multiple perspectives; from culture and mindset, social and commercial context, new ways of working as much as new products or services; ¢ Three: innovation is a journey; drawing on insights from around the globe is essential to accelerate our progress. Bettina von Stamm and Anna Trifilova have gathered together the thoughts and ideas of over 200 of the most creative innovators from business, professional practice and academia from nearly 60 countries. The contributors look at innovation from almost every angle. Their statements offer an unparalleled view of innovation and provide a depth of insight that is extraordinary. The editors' reflection on each statement and on the sections within the book, provide useful links between themes and reinforce the relationships between many of the ideas. Anyone interested in innovation (student, researcher or practitioner) will benefit from this global thought collection. The contributors' multiple perspectives, models, practical examples and stories provide a sense of innovation that no single writer could ever capture. The Future of Innovation is supported by the website www.thefutureofinnovation.org, where you can find even more contributions and tools that enable you to exchange, expand, elaborate and develop your perspectives on the future of innovation.

PART I
The Need for Innovation:
Painting the Canvas

Innovation has increasingly moved out of the obscurity of R&D (research and development) departments into boardrooms, politics and social sciences, and the mainstream press. Here are a few quotations from:

• Business: ‘We want to be Number One or Two in our chosen market segments but we need more innovation.’ – Beresford-Wylie, Executive Vice President, Nokia Networks.
• Politics: ‘We need even more innovation.’ – German Minister for Education and Research BMBF Frieder Meyer-Krahmer on the role of research and technology transfer in the modern economy.
• Trade associations: ‘We need more innovation, research and education. Because innovation is about ideas we must ensure that intellectual property is protected efficiently.’ – Jürgen R. Thumann, President of the Federation of German Industries.
• The regional level: ‘We need more innovation, more investment, and growth-oriented politics. … The future of Baden-Württemberg depends on its ability to innovate.’ – A regional politician at a press conference in 2005 in Stuttgart.
• The European level: The EU has declared 2009 the Year of Creativity and Innovation¹ with the aim ‘to raise awareness of the importance of creativity and innovation for personal, social and economic development; to disseminate good practices; to stimulate education and research, and to promote policy debate on related issues.’
• The US: ‘If America recommits itself to science and innovation, then we can lead the world to a new future of productivity and prosperity,’ said Barack Obama in a speech in November 2008.
• China: ‘If you wish to remain or become New Champions, you must be innovative and take the lead in doing so. Otherwise, you won’t be successful.’ – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in his opening remarks at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions, 2008.
• Korea: ‘Korea must encourage entrepreneurial innovation through the creation of more competitive private investment funds and industrial incentives, including both venture capital and private equity investment funds,’ – Derek Lidow, President and CEO, iSuppli Corp.
• The chemical industry: ‘It’s innovation that will drive that production curve to try and keep up with demand.’ – Monsanto’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant in his letter to shareholders of 23 October 2008.
• Telecoms: France Telecom CEO declared in January 2009 that France Telecom will focus on investment and innovation to help it survive the economic downturn.
• Insurance: ‘We will continue to deliver even more innovation performances grounded upon infrastructures developed during the first-stage management innovation process.’ – Kim Soon-Hwan, President and CEO, Dongbu Insurance, Korea, in the 2008 annual report.

On 27 February 2009 a search on google.com revealed 113,000,000 hits for innovation – in 0.13 seconds. There is no denying it, innovation is on the agenda. So, what is the outlook for innovation? … Why do we need it? … Do we need more innovation? … Less? … What is the purpose of innovation? … Where is it needed most? The following voices paint the canvas of innovation in very bright colours.

We would like to start the contributions with Stefan Kohn as we very much like his title: ‘The future of innovation is in our hands.’ That’s our firm belief too. The future is not something that just happens to us; it is not inevitable or imposed on us, and we are not simply puppets in someone else’s play.

We all make decisions, grasp or ignore opportunities, reject options. We can participate or avert our eyes. The future is our decision. If we choose to experiment and it fails, we can brush that failure under the carpet or we can seek to learn from it.

The future is in our hands. We need to take responsibility for it – and accept that our decisions come with risks.

The Future of Innovation is in Our Hands

Name	Stefan Kohn
Affiliation	Fujifilm Europe GmbH
Position	Head of Innovation Management
Country	Germany
Area	Innovation management, fuzzy front end, culture
Email	[email protected]

culture responsibility risk globalization mistakes

Before looking at the future of innovation it seems worth looking at its past. The term ‘innovation’ was created and introduced to economic science by Schumpeter in 1939. For a long time innovation just happened. It actually was a while before researchers started to analyse the innovation phenomenon and investigate how to improve it – how to manage innovation. This research stream started in the 1970s with studies like the famous SAPPHO study.

In the past 40 years innovation research has focused on trying to explain how innovations can be more successful. In the 1970s and 1980s we learned a lot about innovation processes and portfolio management. In the 1990s we learned about interdisciplinary collaboration and involving the customer and in the past 10 years we have been talking about – besides many other interesting and important issues – the importance of culture and its influence on innovation.

As a result of this research we see that the flop rates of new products and services dropped significantly till the middle of the 1990s, but since then they have remained on a quite high level. At the same time product lifecycles become shorter and shorter and thus innovation becomes more costly.

What can we learn from that? In my opinion the crucial learning is that innovation means, has always meant and will always mean taking risks. Neither the corporate planning staff nor the research community will ever – despite some interesting attempts in the ‘computer-aided innovation’ community – be able to find tools and methodologies to correctly predict which products will be successful and which not. In the end innovation becomes a matter of attitude and by that a matter of corporate culture and leadership. This is where we stand today. Companies need to accept that innovation has the risk of failure and the chance of success.

For the future of innovation this raises several challenging questions:

• In a world where we are more and more trying to avoid mistakes and errors – how will we be able to muster the courage to take the risk of innovation?
• In a world where culture is a local phenomenon but corporations are becoming more and more global – how will we be able to manage a diverse set of individual cultures of employees in different countries and markets and maintain an innovation-friendly culture that allows for mistakes and taking risks?
• In a world where responsibility is more and more placed in the hands of committees and consultants – how will we be able to identify and motivate the individuals who can be the innovation heroes with the spirit and the courage to fight for their ideas?

To answer these questions is the task of everyone working in the innovation field. And answering these questions will show the future of innovation.

Stefan raises several important and interesting challenges and you may want to ponder how you are dealing with them. Are you aware of them? Have you embraced them and are you working to start addressing them, taking others along with you? You may think, ‘What can I do, as an individual? I cannot change the course of the world.’ We do not agree. We may not be able to change the world immediately, but the choices we make may influence others. If enough of us embrace the change it gains acceptance, and at a certain level of acceptance it becomes the new norm. Think of Mahatma Gandhi. Think about something more abstract such as environmental awareness. Twenty years ago when Bettina started recycling, her parents’ generation looked on in amusement and wonder, arguing that it was ridiculous to have a number of different rubbish bins. Now recycling has become the norm, and her parents are certainly doing it too.

Any change requires an awareness of the status quo. What is good about the change? What is less good about it and how can you evaluate these aspects from different viewpoints and through different lenses? Once you have done that you can decide what to do and how to approach the change. Unless we are aware of the challenges, and unless we are willing to start addressing them, the future – let alone the future of innovation – may be a little tricky. But then, as Eduardo Sicilia Cavanillas suggests in the opening to his contribution, unless there is innovation there is no future!

The Future of Innovation is the Only Possible Future

Name	Eduardo Sicilia Cavanillas
Affiliation	Consultancy
Position	Owner
Country	Spain
Area	Innovation and strategy
Email	[email protected]

innovation future change different management

It is rather bold to talk about The Future of Innovation. I would change the book’s title to Innovation is the Future, the only possible future.

I do not think we can picture a future without innovation. We can see saturated markets, whe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Future of Innovation
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword Our Debt to Innovation: Past, Present and Future by Gary Hemel
• Editor’s Foreword The Story Behind the Story of the Future of Innovation
• Part I The Need for Innovation: Painting the Canvas
• Part II The Winds of Change: What Drives Innovation
• Part III Innovation: But Not as We Know it
• Part IV The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Part V The 11th Hour
• Part VI The Roles of ‘Big Brother’ and Education
• Part VII It’s About People, Stupid!
• Part VIII A Question of Mindset
• Part IX General Conditions in Which Innovation Thrives
• Part X Let’s Get Together
• Part XI Innovation From Everyone, Everywhere
• Part XII This is All You Ever Wanted ...
• Part XIII Innovation Through a Particular Set of Lenses
• Part XIV Famous Last Words
• Postscript Sixth Stage: And in Every Ending There is a New Beginning
• Index