The innovation path must run away from the old before heading towards the new

In these times of financial crunch and flat growth, there will inevitably be advocates of a return to old Keynesian economics. However successful Keynes’ ideas may have been in their time, I somehow doubt that the same recipes that brought the world back from the Great Depression would work just the same. And it may well be that Keynes himself would also be looking for new ideas if he, rather than his economics, were to return:

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

John Maynard Keynes

“The world is moving from car ownership to car usership”

A BBC News article provides a great insight into the revolution in the making that the car industry is about to go through. KPMG sums it up in their annual survey of the auomotive industry: “The world is moving from car ownership to car usership.” Arguably it will take longer than headline-grabbing statements suggest, not least because a large section of the consumer base still feels a strong emotional connection to the car they own or that they wish to own, but it is undeniably underway.

InnovToday 2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Thanks to all visitors from around the world who read this blog in 2011. See you in 2012.

Here are some excerpts:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,900 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

The most read post in 2011 was ‘The Bread Collector – When Tradition Meets Social Innovation’.

Click here to see the complete report.

Accelerating the diffusion of innovation – Autolib’s BlueCars now roam the streets of Paris

A year ago, I was drawing innovation lessons from Bollore’s BlueCar winning the contract to run the Autolib’ scheme of the city of Paris. In 2011, the scheme was implemented: pick-up/drop-off stations were created throughout the city with their visible electric car chargers, vehicles were delivered. Autolib’ has now been live for a couple of months, and yesterday, at the very last moment of 2011, I gave it a try. It worked brilliantly. That prompted a few more thoughts, if not lessons, on how to accelerate the transformation of a good idea into a commercial success.

A first question is: why didn’t I do it earlier?

Transformers are no decliners

Italy has been at the forefront of the doom-and-gloom world news of late. And with it, the whole of Europe. And generally speaking, the West. And also, manufacturing output is slowing down in China. And reform bills fail one after the other in India. And then there is global warming. And all the rest. Even those who don’t believe in 2012 end-of-the-world prophecies can’t help prophecize the end of civilisation as we know it. Look at the Roman Empire, they say, once the beacon of the world, now swept away!

Success Factors for the Innovation Team

If  we accept that the innovation race will be won by a team rather than a lone individual, the next question is: how does that team need to operate? In We-Think, Charles Leadbeater provides insights into the framework that an innovation team must set up and share. Although Leadbeater focuses on online communities, the success factors he highlights apply whether the community meets online or in a more old-fashion way. As a matter of fact, Leadbeater got numerous insights from researching communities that were definitely not online, such as the Levellers, a political movement in 17th Century England and the mining industry in the 19th Century.

The success factors are:

• People – Core team & Contributors,
• Processes – Connect & Collaborate,
• Purpose – Co-Creation.

The innovation race will be won by a team of all talents

At the Beijing Olympics, the 4 x 100m relay was won by the Russian team in 42 seconds – apologies for not being much interested in the tenths and hundredths – while the 400m was won by Christine Ohuruogu in a time of 49 seconds. At the risk of stating the obvious, the same distance is covered a lot faster by a relay team than by a single individual, however talented.

Between wanderers and tourists, travelers walk the innovation path

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

G. K. Chesterton

The traveler strikes the right balance between the wanderer’s open-minded absence of direction, and the tourist single-minded destination focus.