Innovation and the role government (4)
“Countries that regularly outperform others on innovation not only spend more on science and technology (as a proportion of GDP) but they also institute policies that drive innovation demand and supply. To be a leader requires public policy that systematically promotes national innovation and helps cutting-edge sectors achieve their global potential.”
“Innovation Overview” is part of “How Canada Performs” a report released by The Conference Board of Canada.
“The successful experience of the Nordic countries, Singapore, the United States or Korea shows that a coherent government vision on the importance of ICT, coupled with an early focus on education and innovation, are key not only for spurring networked readiness, but also to lay the foundations for sustainable growth (…) Many countries like, for example, Singapore, Estonia and Finland have very sophisticated national policies (…) countries need effective public/private partnerships because the government cannot do it alone, neither can the private sector.”
Irene Mia, Senior Economist of the Global Competitiveness Network at the World Economic Forum, as quoted by a Finfacts’ article.
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The two articles I referred above happen to discuss Canadian and Irish concerns about the fitness of those countries innovation policies. The Conference Board’s report gives Canada a ‘D’ noting that most of the country’s companies do not take chances with leading edge technologies, thus falling behind industry leaders. The same report refers to Ireland as the best improved country. However, Finfact’s article complains about Irish politicians’ lack of strategic vision and disjointed initiatives. Ireland has been downgraded in The Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008 released by the World Economic Forum.
The above table shows side by side the outcome of three different studies. In case you wonder if this is an apples to apples comparison, “The Networked Readiness Index” is part of a report under the title “Fostering Innovation Through Network Readiness”. The rollout of ICT, Information and Communication Technologies, being a leading indicator illustrating a ’cause and effect’ relationship as ICT happen to be key to a country’s competitiveness in the XXI century. When reading these rankings, whether a country ranks 1st or 2nd might be less relevant than being among the top, mid or lower tiers as far as policy making is concerned.
Related posts:
- Innovation and the role of government (1)
- Innovation and the role of government (2)
- Innovation and the role of government (3)
- The 2008 Global Venture Capital Survey
- The Top 10 Best R&D Companies in the World
| J. de Francisco |  |
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| Chicago, IL. 3 July 08 |  |
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Innovator’s dilemmas: are organizational antibodies good or bad?
“Why can’t companies kill projects that are clearly doomed? (…) the failures I’ve examined resulted, ironically, from a fervent and widespread belief among managers in the inevitability of their projects’ ultimate success. This sentiment typically originates, naturally enough, with a project’s champion; it then spreads throughout the organization, often to the highest levels, reinforcing itself each step of the way. The result is what I call collective belief, and it can lead an otherwise rational organization into some very irrational behavior.”
Read Isabelle Royer’s article, “When Bad Ideas Won’t Die“, on Harvard’s Working Knowledge.
“Exert strong leadership on the innovation strategy and portfolio decisions; integrate innovation into the company’s basic business mentality; align the amount and type of innovation to the company’s business; manage the natural tension between creativity and value capture; neutralize organizational “antibodies”; recognize that the basic unit of innovation is a network that includes people and knowledge both inside and outside the organization; and create the right metrics and rewards for innovation.”
Read Sean Silverthorne’s review of “Making Innovation Work.”
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I just finished reading a couple of articles talking about the negative impact of “organizational antibodies”. This term relates to people as well as corporate behaviors and policies hampering innovation. However, I’m not sure this medical metaphor works. Antibodies happen to be key to our immune system by helping us tackle bacteria and viruses. Based on that fact, metaphorically speaking, one would think that organizational antibodies might not be such a bad thing.
I would suggest reading the above two quotes one more time. It seems to me that the first one questions the role of yespeople and the lack of organizational antibodies. The second one makes a point about neutralizing naysayers to be able to make progress. This shows two extremes of a continuum. Innovators need to aware of the reality of their projects and organizations to drive a project to completion. The same applies to figuring out when to exit a project and to move to the next thing.
| J. de Francisco | |
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| Chicago, IL. 30 June 08 | |
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Innovator’s dilemmas: vaporware vs. innovation?
“After being in the mobile phone market for more than a decade, now we would like to divert our attention on innovation. In the near future, one can expect some innovative mobile phones from Samsung (…) “We would like to incorporate the word innovation in our brand value.”
Youngcho Chi, Senior VP, Strategic Planning Team, Samsung Electronics as quoted by Business Standard.
“It’s important to understand how innovation can effect the perceived value of your brand. Done right, innovations can keep your brand fresh and relevant to those people who already know and understand it. Innovation can also open your brand to new market opportunities.”
Mike Bawden’s post “A Little Innovation Goes A Long Way” on Brand Central Station.
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When a company shifts gears to use innovation to build brand value the first set of questions that come to mind happen to be about the specific things that are going to change. In the high-tech market, establishing the innovative quality of a given brand requires an unequivocal commitment to new product and market development leading to serial innovations (unless the company already had innovative products and just didn’t do a good job at marketing them.)
Often times, the word “innovation” is being purposely misused as part of vaporware. That eventually translates into unfulfilled promises and lack of brand credibility. Nonetheless, the fact is that vaporware continues to be leveraged as a short term tactic aimed to either prevent or delay customer decisions on competing products and vendors.
The above issue should not be confused with the kind of thought leadership driven by well intentioned visionaries and market creation efforts involving next generation technologies. In any case, most would agree that an innovation qualifies as such when the concept has been productized and user adoption validates it, thus effectively building brand value.
| J. de Francisco | |
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| Chicago, IL. 26 June 08 | |
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SAP’s Co-Innovation Lab
“The Co-Innovation Lab, located on SAP’s Palo Alto campus, is a hands-on working environment for SAP, its customers and integration partners to execute joint projects, and work on proof of concepts, enabling them to discover and promote new business applications and technology solutions. Customers also benefit from reduced integration costs and faster innovation cycles while gaining a new generation of highly agile and adaptable solutions.”
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/coil
“The collaboration workspace from SAP aims to provide Web 2.0 infrastructure such as blogs, wikis and online forums – with built-in governance for all companies to participate and collaborate in real time within a secure business network community.”
“SAP Co-Innovation Lab Offers Multiple Projects” on SDA.
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HP, Intel, Cisco and NetApp have donated products and systems to SAP’s COIL, which is celebrating its first anniversary. SAP’s Walldorf facility in Germany, where the company is headquartered, seems to be the reference model for this newer one in the Silicon Valley. The lab provides services such as: project portfolio management, onsite and remote access to live demos and a training theater.
COIL projects involve ISV, independent software vendors and developers, system integrators as well as equipment vendors. The focus is collaboration around SOA, service oriented architecture, SaaS, software as a service and, potentially, service semantics which happens to be the cornerstone of Web 3.0 concepts.
The following video showcases SAP’s developer challenge, which was held just this past week. Forty-five developers from SAP and customer and partner companies worked together in Palo Alto for five days on topics such as: “Green IT,” “Social Computing for the Enterprise” and “Mobilizing the Enterprise.”
| J. de Francisco | |
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| Naperville, IL. 20 June 08 | |
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Innovation and the role of government (2)
“Many ingredients go into creating a flourishing innovative ecosystem. Bright scientists and engineers are essential. A genuine need for technological solutions helps foster new ideas. Money to fund those projects. And perhaps the most underappreciated but essential ingredient is a marketplace. An innovative ecosystem needs enough consumers with cash to buy, use and critique the precious early gadgets, and to create a lush, deep market when the device becomes widely available.”
Read “Europe Innovates” on Forbes.
“In Europe, which has historically had tougher regulations and more onerous tax structures than in the U.S., entrepreneurs would like to see governments turn a more favorable eye and lighter tax treatment to fledgling private efforts. Governments could also loosen restrictions that make it difficult for universities to collaborate with corporations. Public funding, particularly in Switzerland, tends to favor basic academic research over applied research.”
Read Parmy Olson’s article, “Europe Most Innovative Countries” on Forbes.
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I’m following up on a previous post I wrote earlier in the week on innovation and public policy, which I suggest reading to make sense of the following. The Economist points to the benefits of a “venturesome economy” where innovators and consumers are willing to take risks by selling and buying products and services which involve new technologies. That is meant to be a virtuous circle which would not rely on direct public spending. The Economist’s rationale is that a bureaucracy spending tax payers money by investing in specific industries would not be a cost effective way of promoting innovation, competitiveness and jobs. BusinessWeek’s Bruce Nussbaum makes a case for public policy to address the country’s educational system and infrastructure as part of a national innovation policy.
Governments have traditionally play a role by deploying simultaneous supply-push and demand-pull policies. Public investment in science would be an example of the supply-push model. Demand-pull policies are about new market development enabled by favorable regulatory frameworks fostering entrepreneurship.
I have received some emails asking me to further address this topic. So, I will be sharing more insights in my next posts. In the meantime, I will continue to welcome your comments and feedback.
| J. de Francisco | |
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| Naperville, IL. 19 June 08 | |
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