Category Archives: Government

Rethinking Urban Development

Smart Cities and Sustainable Infrastructure

Rethinking Urban Development: Smart Cities and Sustainable Infrastructure

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

As the world population continues to urbanize at an unprecedented rate, cities are faced with the pressing need to redefine urban development strategies. To meet the demands of growing populations, smart cities and sustainable infrastructure offer innovative solutions that can optimize resources, enhance livability, and mitigate environmental impacts. This article explores the paradigm shift towards smart cities and highlights two impactful case studies that showcase the successful implementation of sustainable infrastructure practices.

Case Study 1: Singapore’s Smart Nation Initiative:

Singapore, a leading global city, has embraced smart city technologies and sustainable infrastructure to address its unique challenges. The city-state’s Smart Nation Initiative leverages advanced technologies and strong governance to enhance urban livability and efficiency. Key projects, such as the Smart Traffic Lights system and Smart Nation Sensor Platform, demonstrate the integration of data and technology to optimize urban mobility and resource utilization.

One notable achievement is the “Smart Traffic Lights” project, where data analytics and real-time sensors have been deployed to dynamically control traffic lights based on traffic patterns. This has resulted in significant reductions in congestion, travel times, and carbon emissions. Singapore’s holistic approach to urban development combines smart mobility, low-energy buildings, and eco-friendly infrastructure, making it a remarkable case study.

Case Study 2: Barcelona’s Superblocks:

Barcelona, Spain, has pioneered the concept of “superblocks” to transform the urban landscape and prioritize sustainable modes of transportation. Superblocks involve transforming selected neighborhoods by restricting vehicle movement and creating pedestrianized areas, green spaces, and cycle lanes. This approach aims to reduce air pollution, noise levels, and traffic congestion while encouraging active mobility.

The Poblenou Superblock project demonstrates the transformative impact of this approach. By re-imagining the city grid, reclaiming street spaces for pedestrians and cyclists, and promoting mixed land-use development, Poblenou has become a thriving, sustainable neighborhood. The project showcases how urban redevelopment can create vibrant communities that prioritize public spaces, active transport, and social interaction.

The Benefits of Smart Cities and Sustainable Infrastructure:

1. Enhanced Quality of Life: Smart cities provide residents with improved access to essential services, efficient transportation systems, and connected infrastructure, resulting in enhanced quality of life.
2. Efficient Resource Utilization: Sustainable infrastructure optimizes energy consumption, reduces waste, and promotes the use of renewable energy sources, leading to greater resource efficiency and resilience.
3. Environmental Sustainability: By leveraging data analytics and internet of things (IoT) technologies, smart cities generate actionable insights to tackle environmental challenges, promoting sustainable practices and reducing carbon footprints.

Conclusion

The implementation of smart city technologies and sustainable infrastructure is revolutionizing urban development around the globe. The case studies of Singapore’s Smart Nation Initiative and Barcelona’s Superblocks exemplify the successful integration of technology, data, and sustainable principles to create livable and prosperous cities. As urbanization continues to accelerate, it is imperative that cities rethink their development strategies to build smart, sustainable, and inclusive future communities. Through concerted efforts and innovative approaches, cities can ensure a high quality of life for their inhabitants while preserving resources for generations to come.

Bottom line: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pexels

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America Drops Out of the Ten Most Innovative Countries

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America Drops Out of Top 10 Most Innovative Countries

The latest Bloomberg Innovation Index is out (2021 edition), and South Korea has risen to first place, taking the title back from Germany, while the U.S. fell out of the Top 10 completely.

Seven of the top 10 places went to European countries while the USA and China slipped.

“Intensifying competition between the U.S. and China is reshaping the innovation landscape. For the U.S., fears about losing intellectual property to a geopolitical rival are undermining support for the open innovation system. For China, fear of being cut off from foreign technology is accelerating investment in R&D capacity at home.” — Bloomberg Chief Economist Tom Orlik

The rankings are based on dozens of criteria centered around seven metrics:

For patent activity
For research personnel concentration
For tertiary education
For technology company density
For productivity
For manufacturing value added
For research and development expenditures

Bloomberg Innovation Index 2021 Chart Part 1

The Bloomberg Innovation Index tries to measure and rank countries on the ability of their economies to innovate, which will be a key theme at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland taking place Jan. 26-29.

While spending on research and development continues to be important, shifts in productivity and education effectiveness (among other factors) will continue to encourage significant changes in the index from year to year.

“In the year of Covid and facing the urgency of climate change, the importance of innovation fundamentals only increases. Innovation is often measured by new ideas, new products and new services, but its their diffusion and adoption that is the real metric of success.” — Catherine Mann, Global Chief Economist at Citigroup Inc.

What do you think?

Does Bloomberg get it right or are there other innovation rankings or indexes that do a better job?

Which is more important to the relative innovativeness of a country, efforts by the government or by industry?

Which countries do the best job of achieving successful public/private partnerships to encourage innovation?

Click here to see the full 2021 Bloomberg Innovation Index rankings

Image credits: Bloomberg

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The Power of Design Thinking in Government

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Transforming Public Services

The Power of Design Thinking in Government: Transforming Public Services

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving approach that empowers organizations to create innovative solutions. While traditionally associated with the private sector, design thinking has found a significant role in government organizations to transform public services. This article will explore two case studies that highlight the power of design thinking in improving government services and its potential to drive positive societal change.

Case Study 1: Redesigning the User Experience of a Government Website

In 2017, the Australian government embarked on a project to redesign their official immigration website, aiming to provide a more user-friendly experience. The initial website was complex, cluttered with excessive information, and used technical language that confused and overwhelmed users. Consequently, people struggled to find relevant information and complete application processes efficiently.

Applying design thinking principles, a multidisciplinary team comprising government officials, designers, and user experience experts collaborated to re-imagine the website. They conducted extensive user research, including interviews, focus groups, and user testing, to gain insights into the pain points and frustrations of website users.

Based on these insights, the team simplified the navigation structure, reorganized information, and revamped the language to be more accessible and user-friendly. They implemented a streamlined application process that focused on user needs, reducing redundancies and unnecessary steps. Additionally, they incorporated interactive elements and improved search functionality to enhance the overall user experience.

The redesigned website was rolled out, and its impact on user satisfaction and efficiency was immediately evident. User feedback indicated higher levels of understanding, reduced confusion, and a significant decrease in time required to complete tasks. This case study demonstrates how design thinking can drive the transformation of government services by prioritizing the needs and experiences of citizens.

Case Study 2: Improving Public Transportation Systems

Public transportation plays a crucial role in the daily lives of millions of citizens. Recognizing the need for an improved public transportation system, the Singapore government utilized design thinking principles to initiate a holistic transformation. They aimed to create a seamless and user-centric experience for commuters, thereby increasing overall public transportation usage.

The government engaged with citizens and stakeholders through surveys, interviews, and immersive empathy exercises to understand their pain points, desires, and aspirations related to public transportation. This comprehensive research informed the creation of personas representing different commuter profiles, which became the focal point for designing solutions.

Design thinking techniques were applied to various aspects, including bus stop design, route planning, mobile applications, and fare collection systems. Bus stops were redesigned to provide shelter, seating, and real-time information, catering to the needs of different user groups. Route planning was optimized based on commuter data, and mobile applications were developed to provide live updates on bus timings, route changes, and fare information.

The result was a remarkable enhancement in the overall public transportation experience. Commuters reported reduced wait times, improved convenience, and increased ridership. The government’s successful implementation of design thinking principles demonstrates its potential to transform public services by incorporating user needs into the core of service delivery.

Conclusion

Design thinking has an unrivaled power to transform public services by prioritizing citizen needs and experiences. The case studies discussed above exemplify how governments can leverage this approach to drive positive change. By emphasizing empathy, collaboration, and iterative problem-solving, design thinking can revolutionize the way governments design and deliver public services. It is time for governments worldwide to embrace design thinking as a catalyst for innovation and citizen-centric transformations.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Braden Kelley’s Problem Finding Canvas can be a super useful starting point for doing design thinking or human-centered design.

“The Problem Finding Canvas should help you investigate a handful of areas to explore, choose the one most important to you, extract all of the potential challenges and opportunities and choose one to prioritize.”

Image credit: Pixabay

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The Leading Country for Innovation for 2020 is…

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The Leading Country for Innovation for 2020 is...

The latest Bloomberg Innovation Index is out (2020 edition), and Germany has risen to first place, breaking South Korea’s six-year winning streak, while the U.S. fell one notch to No. 9.

“Innovation is a critical driver of growth and prosperity. China’s move up the rankings, and the U.S. drop, is a reminder that without investment in education and research, trade tariffs aren’t going to maintain America’s economic edge.” –Tom Orlik, Bloomberg Economics chief economist

The rankings are based on dozens of criteria centered around seven metrics:

For patent activity
For research personnel concentration
For tertiary education
For technology company density
For productivity
For manufacturing value added
For research and development expenditures

2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index

What do you think?

Does Bloomberg get it right or are there other innovation rankings or indexes that do a better job?

Which is more important to the relative innovativeness of a country, efforts by the government or by industry?

Which countries do the best job of achieving successful public/private partnerships to encourage innovation?

Click here to see the full 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index rankings

Image credits: Bloomberg

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Empowering Every Resident with Tools for Change and Innovation

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Empowering Every Resident with Tools for Change What if you could empower every citizen with tools that will help your city, state or country innovate and change faster than the competition for a penny a person?

Well, now it’s possible…

A revolution is beginning, and the smart cities, states, countries, and even organizations, are arming themselves with the tools they need to win…

The Change Planning Toolkit™ has been designed to create a more visual, collaborative and agile method for getting everyone literally all on the same page for change. The Change Planning Toolkit™’s collection of tools, frameworks, and worksheets and the approach outlined in the book Charting Change operate together in a spirit built upon the standards created by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) and the interactive approaches that the Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas have made comfortable for people.

ACMP Standard Visualization

The Change Planning Toolkit™ is anchored in the best practices of organizational change and project management. At its center is the Change Planning Canvas™, a powerful tool that will help you beat the 70% change failure rate by enabling you to quickly visualize, plan, and execute projects and change initiatives alike. The more than fifty (50) tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you deliver projects and change efforts on time, while simultaneously accelerating implementation and adoption.

Change Planning Wall

If the benefits are not clear, be sure and get your 10 Free Change Planning Tools and you’ll get a better sense of the power of the Change Planning Toolkit™ (it is visual after all) and check out the additional benefits in the image below:

Change Planning Toolkit Benefits

The Change Planning Toolkit™ is breaking away from the business model where people traditionally license intellectual property in the innovation and management information space by the named user, where fees for example are:

1. Gartner — $20,000-30,000 per year for a single user
2. Forrester — ~$20,000 per year for a single user
3. BeingFirst — $975 per year for a single user
4. ProSci — $350-400 per download (for a single user) or $4,000+ per user for training
5. MarketingProfs.com — $279 per year for a single user
6. Skillsoft — $150 per year for business skills training for a single user

… or you can hire a top consultant to do some knowledge transfer to your organization for $400-$1,000 per hour (or more).

Change Planning Toolkit Valuable Tools

Now, what is Change Planning Toolkit™ offering that is different?

First, the Change Planning Toolkit™ provides an integrated system of tools far more powerful and far more capable of increasing organizational agility than any other.

Second, the Change Planning Toolkit™ is now available using two business model variations not usually offered in the intellectual property space, which include:

1. Access for Every Employee (aka the Site License option)

Access for EVERY employee in your organization, priced at a very affordable $2/yr per employee plus a $299.99 annual fee
Includes access to a QuickStart Guide to get you up and running quickly
Includes access to POSTER SIZE versions of key tools, including the Change Planning Canvas™ and Visual Project Charter™
SPECIAL OFFER – The next three (3) firms to purchase a full-day training session (which includes train-the-trainer) will receive a free* Change Planning Toolkit™ site license

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Book a Training Session and get a free* site license
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2. Access for Every Resident (aka the City/State/Country License option)

Access for EVERY resident of your city, state, or country. Priced at a very affordable $0.01/yr per resident ($1,000/yr minimum)
Yes, that is right. Cities, states and countries are all eligible for a license that makes these tools available to all residents for just a PENNY per year per resident!
SPECIAL OFFER #1 – Purchase a city, state, or country license worth more than $25,000 and get up to 50 people trained to use the toolkit and how to train others to use it (training fees waived for one session, expenses still to be reimbursed)
SPECIAL OFFER #2 – Purchase a city, state, or country license worth more than $100,000 and get up to 200 people trained to use the toolkit and how to train others to use it (training fees waived for four (4) sessions in up to two (2) locations with two adjacent days per location, expenses still to be reimbursed)
SPECIAL OFFER #3 – Purchase a city, state, or country license worth more than $1,000,000 and get up to 1,000 people trained to use the toolkit and how to train others to use it (training fees waived for twenty (20) sessions in up to ten (10) locations with two adjacent days per location, expenses still to be reimbursed)

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CONTACT ME to get access for all of your residents
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Some educational institutions may be able to apply for grants from the government to cover the cost of the license and training as part of their efforts to raise the skills of their local residents. Central Wyoming College is an example of an educational institution that won a Federal grant to do just that. It’s possible.

And these licenses are available for both the:

Change Planning Toolkit™
Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ (coming soon)

Become a Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ Patron

The Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ will be coming soon, and you can become a Patron by helping to fund its completion through a site license or a city/state/country license and as a reward get instant access to the POSTER SIZE version of The Experiment Canvas™ and the many other tools I’ve already completed. You’ll then of course get access to the rest of the toolkit as I complete it. You’ll get this instant access at a permanent 50% discount off the normal $2/yr per employee or $0.01/yr per resident, meaning your cost will be a paltry $1/yr per employee or $0.005/yr per resident for the lifetime of the license.

SPECIAL BUNDLE DISCOUNT:

— Get instant access for both the Change Planning Toolkit™ and the Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ (coming soon) for all of your residents for a low bundle price of $0.014/yr per resident ($1,000/yr minimum) – that’s less than a penny-and-a-half per resident (a full 60% discount off the second license).

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CONTACT ME to get a jump on the competition
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Empower Your Residents and Employees to Cope with the Accelerating Pace of Change

So don’t wait, act today and get access for all of your employees or all of your residents to these powerful, intuitive and beautifully visual and collaborative tools that will help increase the speed of innovation and change in your organizations to cope with the accelerating pace of change in the world all around us. Countries all around the world are fighting to be the destination of choice of aspiring entrepreneurs and bold innovators and to rise in comparative rankings like the:

World’s 50 Most Innovative Countries (license cost based on population)

Switzerland ($84,541)
Sweden ($99,206)
Netherlands ($170,328)
United States ($3,264,740)
United Kingdom ($655,111)
Denmark ($57,118)
Singapore ($57,845)
Finland ($55,413)
Germany ($806,361)
Ireland ($47,492)

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State of California ($392,500)
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South Korea ($507,050)
Luxembourg ($5,841)
Iceland ($3,343)
Japan ($1,260,452)
France ($649,387)
Hong Kong ($74,019)
Israel ($83,232)
Canada ($366,261)
Norway ($53,308)
Austria ($85,924)

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State of Texas ($278,625)
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New Zealand ($46,049)
China ($13,882,327)
Australia ($246,417)
Czech Republic ($105,551)
Estonia ($13,058)
Malta ($4,205)
Belgium ($114,438)
Spain ($460,701)
Italy ($597,980)
Cyprus ($11,876)

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New York City ($85,504)
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Portugal ($102,648)
Slovenia ($20,713)
Latvia ($19,446)
Slovakia ($54,322)
UAE ($93,976)
Bulgaria ($70,453)
Malaysia ($311,642)
Poland ($385,636)
Hungary ($97,879)
Lithuania ($28,306)

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Chicago ($27,205)
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Croatia ($42,098)
Romania ($192,375)
Turkey ($804,175)
Greece ($108,929)
Russia ($1,433,750)
Chile ($183,135)
Vietnam ($954,146)
Montenegro ($6,263)
Qatar ($23,381)
Ukraine ($444,051)

Are you happy with your country’s position on the World’s 50 Most Innovative Countries list?

Are you happy with your company’s level of organizational agility or level of innovation success?

Is your organization or country keeping up with the accelerating pace of change?

If not, then you need these tools. And if you are satisfied with your competitive position, then you need these tools to maintain your current position…

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CONTACT ME to get access for all of your residents or employees
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Confessions of a Business Artist

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Confessions of a Business Artist

I am an artist.

There, I’ve said it. This statement may confuse some people who know me, and come as a shock to others.

Braden, what do you mean you’re an artist? You’ve got an MBA from London Business School, you’ve led change programs for global organizations, helped companies build their innovation capabilities and cultures, are an expert in digital transformation, and you can’t even draw a straight line without a ruler. What makes you think you’re an artist?

Well, okay, that may all be true, but there are lots of different kinds of artists. I may not be a painter, a sculptor, a musician, an illustrator, or even a singer, but I am an artist, a business artist.

What is a business artist you ask?

A business artist sees through complexity to what matters most. A business artist loves working with PowerPoint and telling stories, often through keynote speeches and training facilitation, or through writing. A business artist loves to share, often doing so for the greater good, sometimes to their own financial detriment, in an effort to accelerate the knowledge, learning, and creating new capabilities in others. A business artist is a builder, often creating new businesses, new web sites, and new thinking. A business artist is comfortable stepping into a number of different business contexts and bringing a different energy and a different approach to creating solutions to complex requirements. Part of the reason a business artist can do this is because a business artist values their intuitive skills just as much as they value their intellectual skills, and may also consciously invest in getting in touch with higher levels of intuitive capabilities, enabling them to excel in roles that involve a great deal of what might be termed ‘organizational psychology’.

A business artist often appears to be a jack of all trades, sometimes bordering on what was portrayed in the television show The Pretender, and can be an incredibly powerful addition to any team tackling a big challenge, but a business artist’s incredible ability to contribute to the success of an organization is often discounted by the traditional recruiting processes of most human resource organizations because of its emphasis on skill matching and experience, skewing hiring in favor of someone with a lot of experience at being mediocre at a certain skillset over someone with limited experience but greater capability. A business artist often appears to be ahead of the curve, often to their own detriment, arriving too early to the party by grasping where organizations need to go before the rest of the organization is willing to accept the new reality. This is a real problem for business artists.

Now is the time for a change. Given human’s increasing access to knowledge, and the shorter time now required to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills required to perform a task, people who are comfortable with complexity, ambiguity, and capable of learning quickly are incredibly valuable to organizations as continual change becomes the new normal. Because experience is increasingly detrimental to success instead of a long-lived asset, given the accelerating pace of innovation and change, we need business artists now more than ever.

So how do we create more business artists?

Unfortunately our public schools are far too focused on indoctrination than education, on repetition over discovery. Our educational system specializes in creating trivia masters and kids that hate school, instead of building a new generation of creative problem solvers that love to learn and explore new approaches instead of defending status conferred based on mastery of current truths (which may be tomorrow’s fallacies). We are far too obsessed with STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) when we should be focused on STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Music). Music is creative math after all. My daughter’s school has a limited music program and NO ART. How is this possible?

To create more business artists we need to shift our focus towards art, creative problem solving and demonstrated learning, and away from memorization, metrics, and repetition. Can we do this?

Can we create an environment where the status quo is seen not as a source of power through current mastery and instead towards a system where improvements to the status quo are seen as the new source of power?

Organizations that want to survive will do so. Countries that want to stay at the top of the economic pyramid will do so. So what kind of country do you want to live in? What kind of company do you want to be part of?

Do you have the courage to join me as a business artist or to help create a new generation of them?

Image credit: blogs.nd.edu

This article originally appeared on Linkedin

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Whither Innovation in Indiana?

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Whither Innovation in Indiana? Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about homosexuality and whether it has any impact on innovation. There probably are two no more polarizing topics in the United States than homosexuality and abortion. But the truth is that if both sides of the political and religious spectrum focused on the golden rule, there would be less corruption, we’d all be a lot happier, probably have more innovation, and our politics would be more productive.

Today we have another great case study for how short people’s attention spans have gotten, how the government can help or hinder innovation, how little investigative journalism still remains in the United States, and how easily people are swayed by a soundbite that runs contrary to (or in support of) their own personal religious or political beliefs.

But this article isn’t going to be some diatribe in support or opposition to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) legislation (referred to by the media as an anti-gay law) because I freely admit I don’t fully understand all of the implications of a similar federal law and whether federal protections for gays apply to the state law.

Instead I’d like to focus briefly on what this controversy brings to mind for me in regards to the efforts of hard-working folks attempting to stimulate innovation in Indiana (and elsewhere).

Point #1: People Must Feel Safe to Innovate

If we take Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs as gospel (okay, maybe that’s dangerous word choice), then safety is one of the most important needs for people, and in order to innovate people must feel safe. True innovation usually requires taking risks and doing things in a new way, and if people feel that trying something new or even just being different has a high price, then people won’t step out of their comfort zone and push the boundaries of conventional wisdom. So if we are truly trying to do everything we can to inspire innovation in our region, shouldn’t we also try to do everything we can to make it feel like a place where it is safe to be different and where that difference is potentially even celebrated?

Point #2: Diversity is Important (to a point)

We all look at the same situation through different eyes and a different history of experiences, values and beliefs. This diversity can help create different idea fragments that can be connected together to create revolutionary new ideas with the potential to become innovations. But at the same time, having some shared experiences helps to make it easier to communicate and to have a higher level of trust (assuming those experiences were good ones). So if we are truly trying to do everything we can to inspire innovation in our region, shouldn’t we also do everything we can to make different groups of people look to our region as a good place to move to so we have a diverse talent pool?

Conclusion: If Culture Trumps Strategy, Environment Trumps Startups

The world is changing. It used to be that companies started and grew in the community where they were founded, hiring increasing numbers of people from the surrounding areas and attracting others from elsewhere. Now, an increasing number of companies (especially digital ones) are moving to more distributed models where they create satellite offices where the talent is rather than trying to attract all of the talent to a single location.

Economically this is meaning that it is becoming less important that the next Facebook starts in your town than it is for the next Facebook to want to have an office in your town. This means that for cities, counties, states and countries, the greater economic impact is likely to be made not from trying to encourage lots of startups, but instead from trying to create an environment that young, talented people choose to live in.

And when you create a place that is attractive for smart, creative people to move to, you know what, you’re likely to end up not just with more growing digital companies seeking a presence, but also a larger number of startups than if you started with the goal of specifically trying to encourage startups.

Does your region focus on creating startups as the primary goal or on making itself an attractive place for a young, diverse and talented population to live?

Does this uproar help Indiana establish its as an attractive place to be, or work against that perception?

I’ll let you decide!

P.S. If you’re curious, here are The Metro Areas With the Largest, and Smallest, Gay Populations (for what it’s worth, Indianapolis isn’t on either list)

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Powering Monday Night Football with Feet?

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Electricity.

It’s not exactly cheap, and in rapidly modernizing countries (or even U.S. municipalities with budget woes) the idea of illuminating a neighborhood soccer field so kids and adults can play at night (especially in a poorer neighborhood), might seem like an impossibility.

But a couple of weeks ago Pelé (the Brazilian soccer player) and Shell (the global oil – ahem energy company) this week showed off a soccer revolution, a field located in the heart of Morro da Mineira, a Rio de Janeiro favela, capable of capturing the kinetic energy created by the movement of players around the field and combining it with nearby solar power to provide a source of renewable electricity for lighting the field.

The field uses two hundred high-tech, underground tiles to capture the energy created by players running around the field, along with energy created by solar panels next to the field and stores it in batteries next to the field. These new floodlights provides the players with a lit field and everyone else in the favela a safe and secure community area at night.

Until it was redeveloped by Shell, the soccer field was largely unusable and many young people were forced to play in the streets. The Morro da Mineira project shows how creative ideas delivered through committed partnerships can shape neighborhoods and transform communities.

The effort is a component of the Shell #makethefuture program, which endeavors to inspire entrepreneurs and young people to see science and engineering as potential career choices, and hopes to inspire both to use their minds to develop energy solutions for our planet’s future. The kinetic technology used at the soccer field was developed by a UK Shell LiveWIRE grant, which is designed to be a catalyst for young students and entrepreneurs seeking to grow promising ideas into viable and sustainable businesses.

Could we someday see a World Cup match lit by the players or maybe even a Monday Night Football game?

Only time, and a continued commitment to advancements in renewable energy generation and storage, will tell.

For other interesting kinetic energy inventions (and potential innovations), continue reading here (link broken).

Image Source: Treehugger

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Should the Government Encourage Innovation?

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Should the Government Encourage Innovation? “We need to out-innovate, outeducate, and outbuild the rest of the world”

– United States President Barack Obama

In the quote above the American President implies that it is somehow the role of the government to drive innovation? But can they? And should they?

Governments and leaders around the world spend a great deal of time talking about innovation and its importance to their economies, but nearly all political leaders and governments have no idea about how to actually foster innovation.

There is a model for how governments can encourage innovation, and boost the performance of their economy as a result, and it is really quite simple. I call it the ICE Model of Innovation, and it’s focused on three key areas where the government can focus its investments of time and money, and both facilitate and fund efforts to advance the public involvement and education deeper into these three areas of ICE:

Invention
Collaboration
Entrepreneurship

1. Invention

Innovation is Invention Collaboration Entrepreneurship Innovation in any country, especially in the short term, is not achieved by pumping huge sums of money into government-sponsored research and development efforts. Yes, many successful innovations have resulted from government research investments, but we need to take a more strategic approach to these efforts.

The Internet itself may be one of the most successful government research and development efforts, and it has served as a platform for an enormous amount of other innovations to build upon. This type of platform innovation is where governments should target their investment dollars. We need more of these types of platform innovation investments, not just spending on basic research. Governments need to think strategically and fund those research efforts that could serve as platform innovations to power a whole new wave of innovative business ideas and job-creating companies in their country.

At the same time governments need to take another look at what they are teaching the children in their country. Let’s face facts. Today’s schools are designed to mass-produce trivia experts and basic competency in reading, writing, and arithmetic (and maybe some history, science, and other important subjects).

But, to succeed in the innovation economy, the next generation is going to need to be proficient in at least these ten things:

Creativity
Lateral Thinking
Problem Solving
Innovation (of course!)
Interpersonal Skills
Collaboration
Negotiation
Partnerships
Entrepreneurship
And much, much more…

And parents can either pray that the government will revise the curriculum and start focusing more energy on teaching some of these things, or band together and create supplemental learning opportunities for their kids. Seth Godin and I spoke about education and other topics in this interview from 2010:

Some of the work that Dean Kamen is doing with FIRST is a great example of how individuals and non-profits can supplement the educational work of the government to give kids the invention skills and inspiration that they’ll need to help invent a better future.

2. Collaboration

Another important component of innovation is collaboration. People learn more when they connect and share, idea fragments have the opportunity to collect and connect into potentially viable innovation ideas, and are made stronger from additional perspectives and new inputs. In every economy the government has a role to play in helping to encourage collaboration.

Every potential innovation always needs additional human and financial resources to thrive. When done well, the government can help to foster collaboration directly or indirectly. One of my favorite examples of this is the work that NESTA does in the United Kingdom (UK). If you’re not familiar with the organization, it is a charity that was funded by the UK government and NESTA stands for National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, and their mission is to help people and organizations bring great ideas to life.

What does Nesta do? Watch the video:

They host a series of innovation, entrepreneurship, science and technology events for citizens of the United Kingdom, produce a collection of complimentary research publications, and are quite active in the social sharing of information (including their own popular blog).

In the United States, the government encourages collaboration through events hosted by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and its public universities around the country to connect scientists, businesspeople and entrepreneurs for collaboration purposes.

And several countries’ efforts to encourage university-business research collaboration is referenced in this report.

3. Entrepreneurship

Everywhere you go cities, states, countries, universities, and private companies are setting up incubators or startup accelerators to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. This is important, but the importance of entrepreneurship is not limited only to the entrepreneur. At the same time, we must not forget the importance of intrapreneurship to the continuing health of our organizations.

In some ways, intrapreneurship is MORE important to the innovation success of a country than entrepreneurship because collaborative, creative intrapreneurship is the flavor of entrepreneurship that keeps a country’s great companies alive (through this innovation intersection of course).

Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs are both important and we must consciously try to grow both in a successful society, and while intrapreneurs may not have the same tolerance for risk as an entrepreneur, they also need to understand how to make a business case and other core tenets of entrepreneurship.

There are many government sponsored efforts all around the world to encourage entrepreneurship, including SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives), which while technically a charity and not a government entity, received a great deal of support from the SBA in getting started as a national organization and the two entities continue to partner together to encourage, guide, and help entrepreneurs in the United States.

But, the best government programs in the world will still fail to encourage entrepreneurship unless you work to remove the social stigma of failure and examine the penalties for bankruptcy in your country. In countries like the United States and the United Kingdom where bankruptcy penalties are much lower, the level of entrepreneurship is higher. Coincidence?

Conclusion

I hope by now you see that it is possible (but difficult) for governments to encourage innovation IF they focus on increasing the support and skill bases around – invention, collaboration and entrepreneurship. Which countries will have the courage to completely revamp their educational systems to focus on teaching the skills that drive these behaviors? Which countries will create the policies, organizations, events and connections that accelerate these ICE capabilities?

Sources:

Transcript and video of the 2011 State of the Union address

Wikipedia entry on SCORE

Happy innovating!

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Why the Maker Movement Matters

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Making Makers The Maker movement is steadily gaining steam and some cities are looking to help it grow and thrive, seeing it as an opportunity to inspire artists and entrepreneurs. One such city is Edmonton, which lies in the Alberta province of Canada, and its program in their public library system to provide maker spaces staffed with library employees and equipped with 3D printers, computers with Apple’s Garage Band and Adobe’s Creative Suite, and more.

Here is a video of Peter Schoenberg of the Edmonton Public Library introducing the EPL MakerSpace:

If you’re not familiar with the Maker movement, then check out these pages:

Maker Faire
Maker Culture – Wikipedia

Or check out these quotes from Time magazine’s article titled “Why the Maker Movement is Important to America’s Future“:

“According to Atmel, a major backer of the Maker movement, there are approximately 135 million U.S. adults who are makers, and the overall market for 3D printing products and various maker services hit $2.2 billion in 2012. That number is expected to reach $6 billion by 2017 and $8.41 billion by 2020. According to USA Today, makers fuel business with some $29 billion poured into the world economy each year.”

“As someone who has seen firsthand what can happen if the right tools, inspiration and opportunity are available to people, I see the Maker Movement and these types of Maker Faires as being important for fostering innovation. The result is that more and more people create products instead of only consuming them, and it’s my view that moving people from being only consumers to creators is critical to America’s future. At the very least, some of these folks will discover life long hobbies, but many of them could eventually use their tools and creativity to start businesses. And it would not surprise me if the next major inventor or tech leader was a product of the Maker Movement.”

So what do you think?

How much of a contribution to the future of innovation will the Maker Movement make?

How important is supporting the maker movement to the future of an economy?

Is this trend sustainable?

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Human-Centered Change and Innovation

Innovation, change and transformation thought leadership, lovingly curated by Braden Kelley

Category Archives: Government

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