Aligning Innovation: A Practical Guide
Ariel Beery
Board Chair @ CoVelocity. Advisor & board member for purpose-driven ventures. Engaged in innovation systems, policy development, & implementation.
Innovation can be guided by adjusting the ecosystem by which it is supported. The US government did just that following World War II through its Endless Frontier strategy, and many countries have followed by investing in a business environment that enabled the emergence, and current dominance, of Venture Capital (VC) as it is currently structured. We are experiencing the outcome of that innovation ecosystem: on one hand, extreme abundance for some, on the other hand, environmental catastrophe for all. Addressing the existential challenges will require aligning our innovation ecosystem towards outcomes that reflect our need for a stable climate by mitigating our current industrial impact and adapting our infrastructure to the uncertainty ahead.
Each of the key sectors — Government, Academic, Private — have a role to play if we are to overcome these challenges. The practical steps each can take to align innovation towards publicly desired outcomes to adapt and mitigate focus on helping innovators avoid the timebound liquidity demands of VC funding. In brief, innovation can be aligned to the public interest by increasing support for objective validation, facilitating greater transfer of knowhow through standardization and transparency, enabling increased experimentation by subject matter experts through venture builders, and investing in outcomes as opposed to equities. By aligning innovation towards publicly needed ends, we can properly structure incentives to ensure our best and brightest work for the betterment of humanity as a whole.
This is a long read, excerpted from a book I’m writing. The full text is on Medium, here. To make it easier, you can download it at these links as a?PDF?or?ePub. There are slight changes between the versions.
Director Systematic Inventive Thinking ANZ | Facilitation | Training | Coaching | Strategic Advice | Talks about #systematicinventivethinking #winningtenderswithinnovation #engineeringcreativity
2 年This is a great topic to explore. You ask for thoughts on how innovation can help humanity. Just a few: - I am struck by how often innovations have prioritised convenience over human connection. Can't we challenge this? - Let's make a habit of adding to the typical trio of filters:Desirability-Feasibility-Viability, that of Ethics: Just because we can, does it mean we should? - I am schooled by Systematic Inventive Thinking (S.I.T.) and passionately believe in the power of constraints which I think not only makes ideas more resourceful and potentially sustainable but often more doable. We need ideas to translate into impact. - I like to add another filter to ideas: we ask who an idea benefits but in the spirit of universal design, shouldn't we also ask: Who does this exclude?
Founder, CMO MediOrbis; Medical Technology Advisor; Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
2 年Ariel, thanks for your thoughtful piece. I think about this all the time when I (pseudo-shamefully) recommend against an investment in a medical technology because it's a great product but not necessarily a great business. To my very simple non-business savvy mind it hinges on a clear distinction that most companies maintain, namely business vs. charity. Anything that will advance your capital standing falls into the former category. Anything else that is valuable but not profitable is the latter. I don't think that we have a good solution for how to streamline innovation and advancement of technologies that fall into the latter group....