Innovation in the networked world


In the past industrial era, the rate of change was relatively slow and predictable, and seldom radical . Product life spans were much longer, the competitive environment was less intense and changed more slowly, and innovative ideas were developed at a much slower rate. In these circumstances, although innovation was desirable, competitive advantage came more from focusing resources on continuous improvement in quality and operational effectiveness and efficiency than from innovation. Innovation was often treated as a corporate convenience, and usually thought of as only being concerned with the development of new products.

By comparison, in the Cyber Age we need not only continuous improvement in quality, operational effectiveness and efficiency, but also the new dimension of continuous corporate innovation .

We now live and work in a world of radical change brought about by the innovation of those using the new information and communications potential of cyberspace . What was previously thought to be impossible is now not only possible but also practical, giving rise to a tidal wave of innovation generated by the networked imagination of millions of people all over the world. This surge of innovation creates even greater change and even newer opportunities, turning our competitive business world into a constantly enlarging whirlpool of new ideas. We are all caught in this whirlpool and, in order to survive, we too must compete in the networked world of continuous corporate innovation.

In the information economy we have access to unlimited amounts of information, and so our potential and opportunity for innovation is unlimited as well. Instead of a corporate convenience, innovation must now be developed as a necessary core competency and a major source of competitive advantage.

Although isolated instances of innovation can occur randomly , if we want to focus our resources effectively on the continuous development of new ideas, we need to develop a policy for strategic corporate innovation. Furthermore, this innovation must occur not only in products but also throughout our entire organisation, along the entire commercial pipeline and in every link of our supply chain. We must strive to be the first to develop new and useful ideas in marketing, promotion, logistics, finance, strategies, systems, organisational structures, customer services, education and training, relationships, alliances, and human resource development.

Most importantly, we must unlock the potential for innovation, creativity, imagination and vision that lies dormant in the minds of our people, and view our future not only as the Cyber Age but also as the Innovation Age. To unlock this potential requires new corporate mindsets , attributes and dimensions in thinking. We need to re-learn how to learn and re-think how to think.

New corporate mindsets

To increase our rate of effective innovation, we must think in a new way, in a new dimension, and create a culture within our organisations that encourages new types of thinking.

Many enterprises that still operate with the organisational structures, planning methods and budgetary controls of the past have a culture that discourages innovation. They still work in functional silos , place their people in individual cells , predetermine what they must do and adversely react to individual ideas and initiative. They see their executives as managers who ensure that everyone conforms to predetermined methods and plans, rather than as leaders who encourage enterprise and innovation. These companies have an aversion to change, and any new idea is met by a statement of ˜ Why it cant be done rather than with a question of ˜ Why cant it be done?

Instead of building bridges into the future, the old-style companies build walls to protect the present. They see the future as more of the present and an extension of the past. They go forward by looking backward, only to find that they have entered a new economic landscape and that the old road they have chosen to travel ends at the top of a cliff. They try to survive by doing old things better rather than by doing new things well. These companies become more and more overwhelmed by change. Instead of moving in a new direction, they become paralysed, spending more and more time putting out old fires.

Many of these enterprises will perish. Others, in order to survive, will have to slash and burn their way out of a deteriorating situation and engage in corporate amputation, much to the detriment of the people who work for them and the society in which they operate.

To be successful in the networked world, we need to develop a totally new set of corporate skills and management attributes. Our organisations need to be agile and flexible, give quick responses, provide superior service, operate in niche markets, develop one-to-one customer relationships, create alliances, develop cross- cultural networks and maintain a diversity of contacts. Furthermore, we need to strive continuously to be better than our competitors in all of these attributes.

To stay ahead we need people who are enterprising, resourceful, imaginative, creative, innovative and visionary ; who have hindsight, insight, foresight, wisdom and commonsense. Our capacity for corporate innovation is the aggregate of all of these attributes in all of the people in our organisation. Developing these attributes cannot be left to chance; we need to understand the organisational environment we need to create in order to release and nurture the innovative potential that lies hidden and unused within our organisations.

Foundations for innovation

Innovation is the practical application of imagination. During the innovation process, an enquiring, curious and imaginative mind gathers new information, creates new knowledge and develops new perspectives, perceptions and possibilities that lead to new ideas. These ideas, in turn , stimulate the need for more information, thereby creating more knowledge, developing more perspectives, generating more new ideas. Thus the cycle of innovation gathers momentum and continues.

In the networked world of cyberspace, information is increasing at an exponential rate and becoming obsolete more and more quickly. Gaining access to relevant and constantly updated information is therefore of prime importance for continuous innovation. Innovative enterprises will need to be certain that they can develop the following:

  • New and diverse sources of information . In the past our main sources of information came from our own particular area of interest or expertise. In the networked world, for the purposes of innovation we will need to spread our information net much further afield into many other areas of knowledge. Since the information economy provides us with access to unlimited amounts of continuously updated information, our opportunity for innovation is also limitless, provided we have the right sources of information.

  • New knowledge networks. If we try to increase the diversity of our knowledge by doing everything ourselves , we will suffer information overload.The only way to prevent this is to create our own network of associates who have expertise and experience in other relevant fields of knowledge.These people will understand the type of information we need, and act as our information filters in their areas of knowledge. In a time of rapidly changing information, what we know and when we know it will depend on whom we know. Our knowledge networks will play a vital part in developing our potential for innovation.

  • New mental perspectives .Developing new mental perspectives, by taking a diversity of new viewpoints and seeing things from different angles, is a major catalyst for innovation.To find new perspectives we must continuously engage in new experiences and meet different people in new situations, so that there is a continuous cross-fertilisation of ideas and diversity of opinion. Innovation requires the new perspectives that come from the formation of dynamic multidimensional clusters of people, coming together project by project, and working together with a common vision. In other words, we must fully exploit the advantages and opportunities offered through work in the cyber metropolis and life in the global village.

  • New futures mindset .The competitive value of any innovation depends on our ability to evaluate its future novelty, usefulness , risk and cost. Our ability to do this depends on our understanding of how it will be used in the future, and the expected consequences and results of this use.To do this we need to combine our hindsight, insight and foresight in order to develop the wisdom we need to decide not only if we are doing things right, but also on whether we are doing the right things. Most of our wisdom comes from past experience. However, during a period when the future will be so different from the past, we must rely a lot more on our ˜knowledge of the future.The further and clearer we can see into the future, the better we will be at anticipating what is to come.We must, therefore, develop a futures mindset and think in the future, so that we can create the depth of foresight we need, not only to develop innovation but also to lessen the risk of innovation.To do this we need to think in a new dimension, or even in multi- dimensions.

Multidimensional thinking

In the past, as we developed new manufacturing resources, we totally changed our methods of manufacture in order to produce better products, faster . In the future, as we develop new sources of information and knowledge, we will need to change our method of thinking in order to create better ideas, faster.

Our ability to develop new information, knowledge networks, new perspectives and a futures mindset will only create the foundations for innovation. To be highly productive in innovation, we need to think in a new multidimensional framework.

  • To information and knowledge we need to add wisdom .

  • To hindsight and insight we need to add foresight .

  • To plans and strategies we need to add vision .

  • To content and concepts we need to add context .

We also need to ask: What is our future? Where do we want to go? How can we get there? What information do we need? How can it be used? Why, when and where do we use it?

We need to think into the future, with imagination, about its possibilities. By evaluating these possibilities we can create a panoramic vision of the future and develop the foresight we need for corporate innovation. But how can we do this if we cannot predict the future?

As we enter the Information Age with its rapid and radical change, it is obvious that the future will not be a continuation of the past. The world is moving into uncharted waters and there is no way we can use past statistical trends to predict the future. Our only other alternative is to study the future, learn more about it, become knowledgeable about its trends, identify and evaluate its possibilities, visualise the future that we want, and then create the future through proactive strategic action and innovation. In other words, the best way to predict the future is to create it!

The more we know about the emerging possibilities for the future, the more likely we are to be able to create them. Just as it is possible to learn more about any subject through study, so it is possible to learn more about the future by studying it. We must have as much knowledge as possible of the future so that we can create the best panoramic perspectives of its possibilities.

Therefore, any organisation that wants to compete through innovation will need to develop strategies to learn about the future so that it can answer the following questions.

  • What are the latest developments, forecasts, trends and ideas about the future of society, economics, politics, demography, technology and the environment?

  • How will all of these interact with each other on a local, regional, national and global scale?

  • How will these affect you, your family and friends , your organisation, your community, your nation and the world?

For many years , lateral thinking (taking new perspectives on old or similar problems) has been the catalyst for creative thought. In the networked world, however, where problems are neither old nor similar, and where our access to constantly changing information is so much greater, it is obvious that we need to train our minds to think in the multidimensional mode as outlined above, and in a trans- temporal time span simultaneously adopting short-, medium-, and long- term perspectives. We need to be able to expand our minds and think with our imaginations about many possibilities, across many functions, much further into the future. Fortunately, unlike physical activity, our minds do not need to work in a serial manner, and can simultaneously think about many things across many time spans, at both a conscious and subconscious level.

We all possess a great deal of unused mental potential, and unlocking this potential in our organisations will greatly increase the annual return on our investment in intellectual capital. Just as we can greatly improve physically with exercise and practice, we can do the same mentally. To improve our capacity for foresight and innovation, we must constantly exercise our minds in futures studies and imagination. If we do not practise these, those areas of our minds that we use to develop these attributes will atrophy, and our capacity for innovation will diminish.

To think in a multidimensional mode we need to schedule regular times to learn and practise thinking in a world of future possibilities and imaginative ideas. If we want to develop our capacity for continuous corporate innovation, we cannot leave it to chance. We need to develop programs that allow us to study the future and innovation studies to exercise our minds and stretch our imaginations, and these should become a regular part of our corporate activities.




Innovation and Imagination at Work 2004
Innovation and Imagination at Work 2004
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 116

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