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.

Pushing the boundaries – Prologue

There are two distinct boundaries in the innovation landscape. One boundary separates the known ideas from novel ideas. The other boundary divides the landscape into the areas of known problems on one side and unknown or unacknowledged problems on the other. Both are boundaries between the unknown and the unknown, hence these boundaries will be pushed forward everytime of novel idea is developed or a new problem is encountered.

Rules and tools

So far I've charted the innovation landscape along two axes: the demand for problem solutions and the supply of ideas for potential solutions. Today, I'll explore this concept further, focusing on rules and tools: to what extent do we have rules in place and tools available to facilitate and promote the innovation we need?

On international collaboration

Globalisation is the evolving background and increasingly becomes the driving factor for many of our considerations and actions; and science, technology, and innovation are no exceptions to this trend. Today, I'll focus on how globalisation provides entirely new means and opportunities to solve problems. How does globalisation help us so that 1 + 1 > 2 ? That's neither black magic nor strange mathematics ...