4 things developers need to know about innovation

Innovation is the word on the tip of everyone’s tongue — it’s unavoidable. But it’s also overused and often misunderstood. Not every project is innovative, nor is every Tom, Joe, or Sally an innovator. Here’s what authentic innovation looks like, and what developers need to know.

1. What is innovation and who are innovators?

Innovation is the modern response to entrepreneurial spirit — exploration that recognizes needs and constructively fulfills them.

Unlike traditional business models, innovation starts with the problem — what customers need and want, and works backward to create a product. At its best, innovation is scalable, with the capacity to meet people where they are and unveil new perspectives on tools and processes already at hand. And innovation is vibrantly and fiercely empirical — a canvas where inquiry, analysis, and design come together to paint the world anew.

2. What is an innovation center?

An innovation center is a hub for high-impact strategic exploration.

Despite the pervasiveness of technology, we are coming up with ideas more slowly than we used to. On the other side of the coin, the value of accelerating speed-to-market is sky-high. These conditions make places for innovation more important than ever before. The world, in today’s experience-driven, disruption economy, is experiencing monumental shifts — stimuli like increased global competition, ever-rising consumer expectations, and intensifying complexity are requiring companies and institutions to dedicate resources, tools, and delineated structures to driving innovation. Innovation centers have three core strategies:

3. What kind of culture differentiates an innovation center?

Innovation centers thrive on a community’s thirst for knowledge — they’re a place where natural curiosity is embedded with vital purpose.

Whether an innovation center is found in a co-working space, on a college campus, in the heart of a company’s headquarters, or as a startup partnership, its values-based culture of thirst for knowledge and natural curiosity imbue it with a sense of vital purpose. Molding the space to articulate and support that purpose hinges on creating a place where out of the chaos of sketches, stickies, and tangent-driven conversations comes logic, inspiration, and action. Here’s how:

4. What does this mean for developers?

Just as innovation thrives at the intersection of disciplines, innovation centers can thrive at the physical intersection of a community’s building typologies.

Innovation Centers naturally thrive at the edges of typologies — some of the most promising sites for innovation centers are the intersections where office districts meet education & research campuses meet flex/light industrial use.

Where we’ve seen innovation centers shine is at these edges, taking advantage of the infrastructure industrial sites provide like access to power, space for experimentation, and infrastructure that enable the ebb and flow of moving product.

The promise of innovation in cities also benefits from education & research sites — places great minds and leading-edge technology come together. Offices and workplaces offer an additional node for innovation — places where the great endeavor of commerce can respond to customers in fast iterations and with an eye to the future. In today’s knowledge economy, adjacency to innovative labor markets and an interdisciplinary ecosystem where colleagues can engage with each other’s work and ideas are critical for an innovation center that inspires.

Who’s at the forefront?

• The University of Pennsylvania’s Pennovation Center is a phenomenon of a building that’s a machine for sparking new growth, bringing together researchers, inventors, and students across Philadelphia.
• AeroFarms is a cutting-edge urban farm that grows produce for local food markets and restaurants across Newark. The Newark campus includes a suite of buildings that span processing, shipping and receiving, a growing/cooling space and laboratory, and event space and corporate offices.
• The design for the Linde Technology Center drives the speed of delivery by facilitating collaboration and innovation. With intentionally balanced laboratory spaces with workplaces and customer interaction spaces, the project arranges offices and co-working spaces adjacent to a resource-rich “collaboration spline”.

KSS Architects is a full-service architecture, planning, and interior design firm in Princeton, New Jersey and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since our founding in Princeton in 1983, KSS Architects has matured, growing in size, abilities, and ambitions. Our clients are leaders in the fields of business, industry, education, development, cultural and social impact.