at the intersection of technology, business, and society
Over the past few weeks, I’ve discussed how our innovation endeavour has become too focused on known problems. We have submersed ourselves in the bubble of the known problems to an extent that we are largely unprepared to deal with the unexpected. And that self-imposed myopia creates serious challenges. My argument essentially went through three steps: our established structures work very well for […]
You might picture our established structures as the hardware that we run our innovation supply chain on. They certainly direct the energy, the resources we invest in innovation. And they have significant implications for our “innovation software”, i.e., our understanding of innovation, our innovation mindset. That’s what I’ll discuss today along two main questions: the first deals with […]
We commit tremendous resources to innovation, no doubt. Just look at the sheer size of the Research & Development departments of the big players across many industry sectors, and consider the multi-billion budgets they invest. For example, consider Samsung’s R&D budget for 2016 (around 13 billion US$) and compare with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) achieved around […]
It’s no surprise: for problems that have been around for a while, we usually develop certain structures to deal with them efficiently. Think about structures as organisations like companies or research laboratories, or processes like quality assurance or even the scientific method. Each of these established organisations and ready-made processes are designed for a purpose: to solve a specific known problem. And that’s what […]
At first glance, there shouldn’t be anything wrong if a society focused its innovation effort on solving its known problems. However, if that focus becomes an obsession, this society will –over time– become increasingly vulnerable to the challenges presented by previously unknown problems. I believe that our structures, our resources, and even our mindset are so committed […]
