Seven compelling reasons why you should innovate now

Written April 2017

by Neville Christie, CoFounder of Fast Track Assets, and its 12 tribes - that form an innovation ecology for SMEs.

For innovators and would-be innovators these are exciting, dynamic, vital times. With the better and best yet to be... for at least seven big reasons…

Reason One – new platforms for innovating: As innovators – unlike any other time in history - we now have cheap and ready access to a whole raft of innovating platforms, systems, tools and processes.

We all know the list: the Internet. The World Wide Web. Search engines. The cloud. Big data. Knowledge systems. Smart phones. On-line payment systems. Open source software. Crowd funding. Social media. Apps. The whole digital world. And all the new technologies flowing from the Fourth Industrial Revolution,

In previous times, the magnitude and scope of these resources would have been the envy of the largest corporates and well-funded institutions. Now they are ‘freely’ available to every individual and to organisations of every size, type, assets and capital base. 

By using these platforms and tools we daily access a steady stream of radical thinking, scientific breakthroughs, knowledge and know-how in multiple forms, research reports, and disruptive technologies...

Opportunities, opportunities, opportunities, everywhere. 

Now, every individual, team, and organisation can innovate! And increasing numbers are. For not only do these wondrous platforms and tools provide easy access to global talent, knowledge, know-how… they also provide interconnections, networks, bridges, roads like we have never known before - with the potential to connect all people in all nations, and innovators everywhere, with innovators anywhere… No problems about access to markets anymore. And markets can be markets of one.

New possibilities, new problems

So… collectively, these amazing innovations make more and more innovating both possible and essential.  

Possible and essential

Possible, because breakthrough builds on breakthrough, builds on breakthrough. And innovation builds on innovation, builds on innovation… making it feasible for all citizens of all nations to live better and longer, and have richer and more fulfilled lives.

Essential, because many of the new innovations and technologies have created massive disruptions to established industries and organizations, to existing jobs, to our traditional patterns of ‘being, doing and having,’ to existing vested interests and power groups, to the ‘market shares’ of the East and West...

This means for the promises of these fantastic technologies to be fulfilled, more and more changes, disruptions, innovating lie ahead of us…  Vive innovators!

Reason Two – new concepts, new needs, new markets, new users:

In the past, many of us, saw innovating as limited to Business and to the creating of new inventions, products, services, technologies… Wrong! Wrong!  Oh, so wrong!

We all know an idea gestates in the mind, and may or may not ever escape.  An invention is a gadget is an idea that’s escaped the mind, but may or may not ever be used. An innovation is anything new that escapes, is ‘used’ and has impact – hopefully a beneficial impact.

The new bursting out all over

Today new ideas, new ways of seeing and imagining, new ways to invent and produce, new ‘things’ with impact are bursting out all over... 

The internet of things. Mind science.  Micro-finance.  Crowd-sourcing. Crowd-funding… New forms of intellectual property. New concept about assets, equity and equity-sharing... Caring Capitalism. Resurgence of craft factories.  Slow food. The Maker Movement of Maker Faires and Networks.  Hacker Spaces… 

New business models. Global businesses without assets.  Interactive learning. Artificial Intelligence. Robots. 3D printing. Holograms. Renewable energy. Automation of services. For-profits, and not-for-profits, with soul. The different mindsets and talents of the Millennial generation… 

It’s almost like the re-invention civilisation and even of the human race.    Wow!  Double wow! Triple wow!  [Oops, sorry, got carried away a bit there!].

Reason Three - innovating for everyone: Click, click, click!  Recalibrate our mindsets away from just business, products, services and technologies… And we get it - EVERY single field or domain where we live, love and have our being is wide open to further innovating: 

Family. Homes. Education.  Sport. The Arts. Hospitality. Games and hobbies. Travel. Science. Medicine. Health. Well-Being. Learning. Leisure. Welfare.  Government. Media. Work ecologies. Work itself. International trade and relationships. Food production and packaging.  Innovation ecologies. Green technologies.  Our planet. Our total cosmos…  

So every single one of us, no exceptions, can select a domain where - wide-eyed, and with our minds open to possibilities - we can innovate!  Doesn’t that grab your imagination and give it a shake! And remember Einstein’s famous saying, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

Reason Four – new ‘products’: Traditionally we defined a product in two ways: 

·     An article or substance manufactured or refined for sale - e.g. ‘health products’.  

·     Or a thing or person that results from an action or process - e.g ‘her brown tan was the product of her weekly sun-bathing’.

Wider definition

See what happens when we define a product as:  any ‘good’, idea, object, information, insight, know-how, wisdom, system, process, method, tool, technology, intellectual property, service, or ‘gold’ – that’s created by a process … has intangible and tangible benefits … solves a ‘problem’… and serves a human need, or satisfies a human want?

Ah, now we are open to creating lots more different forms of innovating ‘products’.   

And what happens, for example, when we see the poor and impoverished as our biggest and most needy market?   When we get it that most of our established organisations and institutions need a major revamp?   When we accept energy can be renewable and waste made usable. When we grasp the world produces, and wastes more than enough food to feed all our billions really well – once we learn how to distribute it more equitably? When we see that deserts – including physical deserts - can be made to thrive again? 

[Ah, naughty, naughty us, see how we changed our cosmos just then, by extending the meaning of the terms ‘product’ and ‘desert’ !!!]

Cosmos:

the world, or universe, regarded as an orderly, harmonious system;

any complete, orderly, harmonious system; order; harmony

Reason Five – new problems. The key role of us innovators is to take humankind’s problems – whatever they are, and now matter how big, small or tiny they are – and not ‘solve’ them, but rather to use them as seed beds to create new opportunities, new possibilities, new ways that improve humankind’s lot. 

In addition to the changes, opportunities, challenges, stimulated by the ongoing creation of new platforms, scientific breakthroughs and new disruptive technologies, our world is facing a tsunami of other BIG challenges:  

Climate change and the massive issues involved in doing anything constructive about it. Water.  Global terrorism. Intertribal wars. Huge migrations of people. Global debt. Rising unemployment.   Uneven and inequitable distribution globally of the new wealth and well-being…  

Food production and distribution.  Mother Nature unleashing her power. Intergenerational power shifts. The rising tide of mental depression. Increasing dysfunction of two party liberal democratic governments.  The future of world trade.  Predatory capitalism. The breakdown of trust…

You can name at least 10 of your pet peeves.

Big issues, mean big opportunities for innovating!  Provided, that is, we change our mind sets.  And provided we innovate collaboratively. Click! Click! Click!

Reason Six - breaking institutions:  Under the onslaught of new technologies and the tsunamis of multiple global changes, many of our organizations and institutions – local national and global are bent, ‘broken’, or not coping all that well.  The case is strong for not just urban and planetary renewal. But for personal, organizational and institutional transformation as well.

Please get this!  Whether or not our most favourite, or least favourite, organization or institution produces innovations for its stakeholders our not, nearly every one of our social, political, cultural and economic organizations themselves now need to be innovated, transformed, taken by the bootstraps and given a good shake.   

And here’s a new way forward for consultants, advisors, change agents who have previously sold their time, and given away their best ‘goods’ for nothing. Now they can develop transferable and scalable intellectual properties which orient organizations towards the future, and they can receive equity or entrepreneurial fees based on results, unrelated to selling their time!  Just one example:  Not software as a product owned by the client. But software as a service, owned by the developer, generating annual fees.   Click! Click!  Click!

Reason Seven – collaborating as a new way of innovating:  Of course, this is not entirely true: But often in the past the early stages of innovating were conducted initially as a solo activity of individuals, organisations and corporations:

• individual inventors and entrepreneurs set up their own businesses 
• corporations, like Apple act highly secretly behind closed doors
• non-innovative firms buy up innovative companies and scale them. 
• proprietary research labs like Edisons produce multiple inventions and innovations
• organisations build competing proprietary platforms…

Three symbols of this ‘old’ way of innovating are the hierarchical mainframe computer, proprietary platforms and software, and the start-up firm.

 And again, while this is also not entirely true, the trend more and more is for innovating to be collaborative, partnering and joint venturing:

Three symbols for this 'new' trend are the personal computer networked through the Cloud, the ubiquitous smart phone, and open system software and hardware.

For example: 

In the USA, 56% of basic research is done in over 50 top universities – who partner with businesses, other organizations, funding foundations and government.   Some of the world’s most famous discoveries have been made through university research. These include the invention of the telegraph, flu shots, ultrasound, the discovery of AIDS, solar power, the origination of the internet, and current advances in stem cell research.

Around the world, we’ve seen the emergence of entrepreneurial and innovating eco-systems characterized by cross-fertilization of ideas, co-operative research, access to funding and collaboration at many levels. We find such eco-systems in Silicon Valley, Route 128, Massachusetts, Israel, London, New York, Austin, Iceland – and less impactfully – in cities like Melbourne, Sydney , Brisbane, Vancouver. Among many activities these centres have incubators, co-working spaces, courses in entrepreneuring and the like, to foster collaborative innovation – though practical output may be quite low.

Ask any Millennial who is entrepreneurial to take you to a hacker space in your city.  There you will find their peers, networked around the world, accessing crowd-funding, collaborating, using open source software and hardware, and producing a wide range of gizmos sold around the world.

Ask the same Millenials who are their core team members and how many ventures they have on the go. You may soon find that each of the core team has two or more ventures, and each of the team supports each other and the growth of each venture.  Significant collaboration.

Look at the do-it- yourself, and do-it-with others Maker Movement. And the allied Maker Faires – with their different value base around recycling, bespoke and small batch production, consumption, and skill acquisition.

 So, why Innovating Cosmos?

Optimistic and committed innovators and change agents have important roles in making these changes happen.  

And, it’s time we banded together as a global community of innovators to address the BIG, small and medium issues facing us as individuals, teams, organisations and nations. Our task as innovators is to transform problems into opportunities.  And make them happen!

Put these seven reasons for ongoing innovation together, and we have strong motivation why, with a Founding Team, we are currently creating Innovating Cosmos as a global community of innovators and would-be innovators. With 9 different ‘outlets’ for involvement and interaction.  Your assistance required!

Vision

Our vision as a community is “to positively transform the world: one idea, one person, one innovation, one opportunity, one organisation, one nation at a time.”

Your open invitation

Right now you are warmly invited to become a Foundation Member of Innovating Cosmos – and assist us in the thinking and building proceses.

Membership is free, but not obligation free… You are required to innovate! Click!  Click!  Click!

Make contact

Your contact for more details, and how to get involved now is…

Neville Christie [email protected]

Mobile: +61 420 978 932