Innovation in Government

Some people say that a government has to stay far away from innovation, since they don't understand it and should leave it up to business. But governments also have to look at processes, organisations, services to citizens (information, accountability, communication, and other public services) and find new ways to improve them, hence they need to innovate. On the other hand, a government has to be reliable and has limited space for failure. Therefore it is very risky to try something new. A solution can be the 'safe-fail' method of trying in a small area, where the costs and consequence of failing are limited.

An interesting example is the open data initiative. Although it is currently facing tough times because of budget cuts and the trouble is faces in really making a change, it is interesting to see it in a larger trend of increasing transparency and giving more power to the citizens.

A recent article (in Dutch) stresses the role of innovation for governments. Unfortunately the title is very hopeful, but the article is very weak without news, arguments or useful insights.

Fortune Conference: "Innovation transforms the enterprise"

Some interesting thoughts about innovation from the Future Conference on Innovation (see video down)

1) Innovation spurs during crises, not during 20 % free time (immune system of company is down, but don't let the people in the crisis solve the problem)

2) Ideas don't work, people do

3) Big ideas will fail, things always work out differently. Plan, go, adjust

4) The true asset of a company is not it's people. People come and go. It's the company culture. If a star does not fit with the culture, the star has to go

5) Large teams don't innovate --> too much compromise

6) 'Herding cow syndrome' - Large companies don't do small projects, there would be too many to manage. Since disruptive innovations start from small projects, large companies hardly develop disruptive innovations. Small projects that change focus & tactic through trial & error week to week have difficult getting support in large 'PowerPoint culture' companies

7) Some barriers inside the company for creativity is necessary to filter the persistent good ideas

8) In large firms people's behavior changes from 'an appetite for success' to 'afraid of failure'. How to reward failure? Allow failure?

9) Entrepreneurs that have failed learned more lessons than entrepreneurs that have never failed and think they can 'pitch a perfect game' (lucky or played safe)

10) PowerPoint makes it look like you know, while actually you don't know (about growth plans)

11) Keep the company mission interesting in order to sustain innovation.

12) Small firm -> constant feedback from customers to engineers: 'this product sucks'. In large firms the distance between customer and engineer is too large. Solution is to bring customer physically to large group of engineers (zoo-like), not to let sales people make a PowerPoint through a survey

13) Most innovative ideas come from people under 30 (23, 24 years old)

14) Apps & Cloud become tools, not the product/services (and will therefore be for free)

15) You go to the customer as anthropologist, not as sense-taker (don't ask what he wants, see what he needs)

16) Innovation is a team sport, and it's a full-contact sport

The linear model is dead, long live the linear model

How come that when talking about innovation, people sometimes just stick to the topic of science and technology? I thought this seems to be a 'framework' stuck from the linear model of innovation which has been declared dead for more than two decades now, but apparently still lives on in the minds of people researching the topic of innovation. Even for well-known researchers innovation=knowledge economy = scientific output. Apparently they have never even heard of services and their ability to innovate without science.

See for example this article (in Dutch) about 'innovation', which is limited to science and valorisation of science results.

Picture from ©Thinkstock

3 Types of Innovation

Mukund Mohan identifies in an article three different strategies of innovating amoung three well known innovators:

Apple - Structured
Amazon - Unstructured
Google - Open

For this he uses the three necessary steps to innovate: Vision, Strategy and execution and he analyses how these are different used in the three companies.

Read the whole article here

Create a new Silicon Valley

How to create a new Silicon Valley in your own backyard? Naeem Zafar answers: "Invite a bunch of entrepreneurs into a room. Then leave."

He introduces five secrets to Silicon Valley:

1) A culture of collaboration
2) Aligned incentives
3) Critical mass of talent
4) Respect of intellectual property
5) A capacity to celebrate failure


Click for the full article here

Picture from Flickr user alifaan