My appreciation for Ian Morris and his big thinking has been woven into this blog already at a very early stage. He has his finger on the pulse of society's fundamental challenges; his "paradox of development" eloquently paraphrases society's eternal quest for innovation, while pointing out that any solution can only be temporary.
Tag: institutions
How innovation policy can embrace novelty …
Innovation policy is a complex composition of tools that influence the innovation capacity and success of a society. This set of policies usually does not cover the entire innovation landscape, but leaves the fringes of the landscape unattended. Today, I'll first focus on innovation policy that embraces novelty, i.e., policy objectives especially tailored to novel supply and novel demand. I consider this a forward looking innovation policy.
Pushing the boundaries – Epilogue
Over the past few weeks I've visited the four quadrants of the innovation landscape (the short series of posts started here) to get a better idea of the boundaries between the quadrants and how they are pushed. Now it's time to zoom out again to take a look at the landscape as a whole, with two questions to consider: Is the landscape as symmetric as it seems? And how fast do the boundaries move?
The bounds of the wicked quadrant …
The wicked quadrant of the innovation landscape is characterised by deep uncertainty: nothing is known, nothing is established, neither rules nor tools are defined or available. That makes this fourth quadrant the antithesis of the certainty that shapes business as usual; but what does that mean for innovation in the fourth quadrant? Let's step a little closer.
Why business as usual stays within the boundaries …
The boundaries in the innovation landscape separate the known from the unknown, they divide the landscape into quadrants of different levels of certainty. Unlike the research quadrant and the disruptive quadrant, the first quadrant (business as usual) is framed by known problems and known ideas. With rules and tools defined and available, this is the realm of comforting certainty, of predictable circumstances.
understanding innovation 