Evolving innovation ecosystems the age of future tech-Auerbach Publications

Evolving innovation ecosystems  the age of future tech-Auerbach Publications

The word innovation has been so emptied of meaning that it now sits forlornly
in the same pile of once-rich terms such as paradigm, synergy leverage, disruptive,
and even agile. Once it becomes essential for everyone to at least pretend to
understand the concept behind such a word, it soon enters the lexicon as required
in every communiqué, memo, advertisement, corporate rah-rah speech, and
résumé. Within months, if not weeks, it becomes nothing but punctuation—
noticeable if it missing and essential to the organization of the words around it,
but carrying no meaning at all itself. When everything is awesome, then awesomeness
 is reduced to the required minimum utterance to signal nothing more
than a response. A grunt is just as useful. A new breakfast sandwich is declared
innovative, and I suppose if your team spent two years designing its marketing,
it is. But it’s still just a sandwich.
So, more’s the pity when an important discussion of innovation breaks the
surface of all the noise below, because how does one talk about it without having
to use the word? Indeed, put “innovate” in the title of a book or an article, and
it might as well carry the subtitle, TL;DR1—skim only. For an author writing
about innovation—and let me emphasize that it remains an essential concern
across our civilization—the evisceration of the word demands a compelling and
useful argument on how to innovate—not conceptually, but in concrete terms
and stepwise directions.
The many benefits of capitalism obscure the often-damaging hunger of
capitalism. To sustain the society that modern methods of production have
given us requires continuously more efficient use of resources, capital, means of
production, and, yes, innovation. And the continuing improvements in efficiencies
 of production perversely render the entire edifice of capitalism increasingly
more fragile, in turn demanding even more innovation for efficiency as well as
new products and services.
In the technical world—and it’s difficult to determine anything not affected
by technology these days—efficiencies can be very elusive because measurement
of innovation in thinking, in bringing new ideas and methods into utility for
companies, is notoriously hard. How do you capture the rate of an idea catching
fire? How do you quantify the effort of invention in virtual worlds? In future
tech, how does one tell a good egg from a bad egg, and how does one accelerate
incubation to get the thing hatched and into the pipeline of innovation?
Carol Stimmel and I have known each other a long time. Our experiences
together—and here comes one of those damned words—have a synergy that,
for my part at least, brings out the very best in my thinking. She is a challenger
to settled thought—not just as a disruptive force, but as one that is creative,
always planting seeds in what are often burned-over fields of old and accepted,
um, paradigms. There is an energy to her approach to discourse about technology
 that is infectious and inspiring, and it is grounded and presented with
sound and practical advice for application. She is not content with theoretical
detachment. If what we’re talking about can’t find its way into praxis, then it
won’t attract the attention of anyone who is actually making things happen.
So, here’s the book that makes things happen. In a lot of tech companies
in my experience, innovation was typically used as a cover term for the infinite
monkey cage trying to generate King Lear, rather than a directed activity
that continually pruned and shaped ideas into useful practices and products.
Evolving Innovative Ecosystems teaches innovators (and I am not using this term
ironically) how to map the process and also how to make the compass or GPS
or whatever is needed to navigate it—how to recognize waypoints, how to correct
errors, how to invest the landmarks, and how to harvest from the new lands
conquered. It’s based on hard experience, learned research, and expert sources,
well-seasoned with humor, anecdotes, and facts, and laid out as a linear path so
that complexity builds in a logical and learnable manner.
You probably want to survive the future tech unknown that marches always
slightly ahead, daring to starve out the laggards, dullards, and stragglers, not
by sheer effort or size or capital or luck, but by methodical application of sound
practices. That is precisely why you are reading this book.
But there are other reasons to be reading this book—moral reasons.
Innovation often springs from need, of course, but absent the necessity for
some improvement, it can also come about by accident, or unintentional results,
or serendipity. For example, the drug Prazosin, used to treat high blood pressure,
was found to also help curb the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in
combat veterans. Treated for hypertension with the drug, veterans soon
began to report in their therapy groups that nightmares occurred less frequently
and that they felt calmer than they had in a long time. And how often have you

or I repurposed some object in our household in a 

repair to save one more trip to the hardware store?

But for future tech, I think that perhaps too much motivation for innovation
is driven by fear—the propulsive fear that drives capitalism in general—missing the
market window. Sometimes this drive creates new products absent an
actual demand, and so demand must be created through marketing to convince
potential consumers that they need this new innovative thing. Certainly, our
lives are better for having yielded to effective marketing—light bulbs are better than
 whale-oil lamps both for us and for Moby Dick’s species—but often
they are diminished when our impulses can’t be curbed for things like UFO
detectors or self-adhesive emergency moustaches or—my all-time favorite—an
electrically controlled license plate that flips up to say “thank you” to automated
toll booths as you drive away.
Would I characterize such “innovation” as immoral? I suppose context matters,
and we all like to have a little frivolous fun now and then, but at some
point those who wish to thrive in future tech markets are obligated to have some
moral authority to not only do what they do, but in how they do it.
The best writing professor I ever had always posed this question about new
work: is what you write adding to the conversation? If it’s not, then what’s the
point? Implicit in this question is that whatever one produces, it should expand
the discourse in a way that is beneficial to the art and to the participants,
whether raising consciousness or adding knowledge or even just providing good
entertainment. I think Carol’s book asks and answers that question in terms
of the innovative urge: will this add to, and benefit, the discourse that we call
civilization?
Of course, business survival wraps all this artsy-fartsy notional discussion
in a more brutal context. If we don’t make money, then the “conversation” will
soon be over, no matter how high the moral ground on which we stand. But this
book at least adds morality to the conversation, whether we choose to examine
it or not, and that’s a rare, innovative, and, I hope, new direction for texts on
innovation to start heading. This book puts forth the dialectic:
Q: What is to be done?

A: Innovate!

Q: For whose benefit?
A: (Your answer here)
Q: To what purpose?
A: (Your answer here)
Q: At what expense and to whom?
A: (Your answer here)
Q: How?
A: (Your answer here)
This is a book that will confront and subvert your thinking simultaneously.
If you want to study it hard, you will learn and benefit. If you skim and dip,
you will learn and benefit. Either way, this text will add to the conversation,
your conversation.
So, get on with it. There is much to be done.

This work, focused on innovation and collaboration in the field of future

tech, began when I read Dr. Frances M. Magee’s dissertation, How Faculty at

Undergraduate Institutions Incorporate Undergraduate Research in Their Work

Lives (Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2014.) We hadn’t

seen each other for decades, and given my absolute ignorance and constant criticisms
of higher education, I asked to read it. Why she consented, I have no idea.

But I became hooked on the way she explored the topic because I could relate

my own professional experiences to the phenomena she was examining.

One of the intriguing issues in her study on the nature of innovative practice

in undergraduate institutions was that it focused not on the student beneficiaries, 

but instead on those faculty who facilitate it. While I confess I don’t appreciate

 the nuances of the academy, I do understand how brilliant and important

it is to turn entrenched ideas on their head, especially when it comes to the

question of why and how people collaborate, share, and enjoin others to succeed

even when they aren’t compelled to do so. Francy’s research gave me the inspiration 

to explore human-sense approaches to successful innovation in the sphere

of future tech, where the complex forces of market economics and the corporate

proprietary impulse too often frustrate the yearning of those who wish to create.

And Francy herself, now my wife, continues to encourage me every day with

her sweet nature, persistence, and dedication to her life’s work.

Finally, to this work itself, I owe a debt of gratitude to Don S. Olson. Don is

an indescribably fine friend, in myriad ways that I would largely be embarrassed

to fully portray. Suffice it to say, he has stress-tested my ideas over the years,

tolerates my indiscriminate flights of fantasy, and never wavers in his dedication

to me as a person and an author.