Is the era of innovation over? Or is the war for innovation just beginning?
I came across an article in one of Canada’s main newspapers — The Globe and Mail — by Barrie McKenna titled ominously, ‘Has Innovation Hit a Brick Wall?’
The article speaks to how the Canadian government sinks billions of dollars into research and development every year, yet the country remains an innovation laggard compared with most of its trading partners. The author refers to this as Canada’s “innovation deficit.” The article then goes on to examine some research from University of British Columbia economics professor James Brander that examines whether Canada’s problem is part of a much broader global phenomenon.
The conclusions that Dr. Brander comes to are less than comforting (if you agree with his view of innovation); his research found the pace of innovation to be slowing dramatically in four key areas: agriculture, energy, transportation, and health care.
As someone who works with companies to help foster innovation and whom frequently writes and speaks on the topic, I have a problem with Dr. Brander’s conclusions about Canada and the world in the same way that I have issues with the way that the U.S. Congress and President Obama approach innovation in the United States. In fact the American government’s approach to innovation prompted me to write the controversial ‘An Open Letter on Innovation to President Obama.’
Continue reading this article on the American Express OPEN Forum.
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I’m working on a white paper for a client, and as part of my research, I’m looking for a few people who are willing to share what the innovation imperative was for their organization to start innovating (or to increase their effort spent on innovation).
Ideas are easy; innovation is hard. Ideas are exciting, but innovation is scary because it is all about change. The changes required by minor innovations are easier for customers and organizations to absorb. But the large changes generated by major innovations often disrupt not only the market, but the internal workings of the organization as well. This requires organizations to become increasingly flexible and adaptable. And companies that successfully innovate in a repeatable fashion have one thing in common: they are good at managing and adapting to change and complexity.
A few years ago I looked around the corporate and consulting landscapes and I noticed that there was a talent gap in both places. There are many occasions when consulting firms look to their bench and don’t have the talent they need there to fulfill a client need right away and so sometimes they lose business to their competition. And on the corporate side, there are many occasions when a manager or director has more work than they can possibly do themselves and what they really need is not a consultant but a smart, flexible resource that can parachute in and get up to speed helping them very fast. Having been called in to fill both of these kinds of gaps from time to time alerted me to the existence of these two market needs, and so I started to create extendedbench.com.
How should firms develop the organizational structure, culture, and incentives (e.g., for teams) to encourage successful innovation?
