Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Innovation, Fundamental Research and Universities

The October 13 issue of The Economist included a special report on innovation.  The lead article set the stage when it said, "Rapid and disruptive change is now happening across new and old businesses.  Innovation, as this report will show, is becoming both more accessible and more global.  This is good news because its democratization releases the untapped ingenuity of people everywhere and that could help solve some of the world's weightiest problems."

"What is innovation?," the article later asks and proceeds to provide its own answers.  "Although the term is often used to refer to new technology, many innovations are neither new nor involve new technology."  It further adds "One way to arrive at a useful definition is to rule out what innovation is not.  It is not invention.  New products might be an important part of the process, but they are not the essence of it.  These days much innovation happens in processes and services.  Novelty of some sort does matter, although it might involve an existing idea from another industry or country."

I very much agree with The Economist's broad view of innovation, expressed in the various excellent articles in this issue, as well as in similar articles in the past.  I strongly believe that increasingly, the toughest problems, requiring the kinds of breakthrough thinking you get from the very best technologists and scientists, are out there in the real world - in the marketplace and in society at large.  So, if that is where the problems that inspire breakthroughs are, then it makes sense that the top researchers and innovators should step out of their ivory towers - whether in academia, corporations or government - and personally learn about them.  If they do, they can, one hopes, come up not only with elegant, innovative solutions to the problems, but also with new ideas that might lead to fundamental advances in science and technology.

Becoming an Innovation Leader – Is There More than One Style?

How can you make your city or region a major innovation center, and in particular, a major center for technology-based innovation?  This is a question that cities and regions around the world have been asking themselves for the past few decades, ever since Silicon Valley emerged as the premier center for technology-based innovation sometime in the 1970s, a position it has continued to hold ever since.

A number of places have embraced Silicon in their name - Silicon Alley and Silicon Glen for example.  Others have used the words as their nickname in their respective countries, e.g., Campinas as the Brazilian Silicon Valley and Bangalore as the Silicon Valley of India.  What they all hope, with very mixed results, is that somehow the innovation pixie dust will follow their use of the term. 

One of the things that impressed me about the Design-London initiative when I first learned about it last summer, is that even though its goals are very much to make London a global center for creativity and technology-based innovation, it did not feel the need to copy the Silicon Valley model and name. 

Design-London is a joint effort of the engineering and business schools at Imperial College and the Royal College of Art to bring together the disciplines of design, engineering, technology and business to address jointly the challenges of innovation in an increasingly global, competitive economy.

Some Thoughts on Multidisciplinary Innovation

The 2004 US National Innovation Initiative succinctly pointed out that "[Innovation] is multidisciplinary and technologically complex.  It arises from the intersections of different fields or spheres of activity."  Similarly, a report issued last April by the Council of Graduate Schools argued, "Interdisciplinary research preparation and education are central to future competitiveness, because knowledge creation and innovation frequently occur at the interface of disciplines."  Just about every such study has reached a similar conclusion regarding the multidisciplinary nature of innovation in the 21st Century.

This is not surprising.  It is also much more difficult than it may appear at first glance.  Creating effective multidisciplinary groups poses serious organizational challenges for companies, universities and just about any institution that is struggling with how best to embrace new, disruptive innovation ideas. 

Why is it so difficult?  Beyond a certain size, institutions generally organize their activities into departments, divisions, lines of businesses and similar hierarchic units.  The more operational the unit - e.g., manufacturing, finance, customer support - the more hierarchic its organization, since it is imperative that everyone understands his or her specific job and the unit's lines of responsibility. 

But many, perhaps most, of the exciting opportunities for innovation are increasingly found out there, in the real world, helping business and societal institutions take advantage of the advances in technology to address problems that are significantly broader, more diverse and more complex than ever before.  Solutions to these new problems, arising in the marketplace as opposed to the lab, do not typically lend themselves to any kind of structured organization, at least initially.  They cut across divisions and lines of business, requiring talent, products and services from different parts of the company.  In particular, the ability to analyze problems quickly, especially ones you have never seen before, and to bring to market new kinds of products, services and integrated solutions to address these new problems is crucial in today’s fast-changing, globally integrated world. You need to do this to stay competitive, regardless of how well this work may fit your company’s structure.

Business Innovation and Storytelling

Last week I wrote about my participation in the BIF-3 Collaborative Innovation Summit, an event sponsored by the Business Innovation Factory in Providence.  The BIF innovation summits make use of a unique storytelling format.  Their goal is "to let great people tell great stories,"  which are later available to all in their Innovation Story Studio. 

Why employ a storytelling format at a business innovation event?  Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal columnist who was one of the Summit’s hosts offered a succinct explanation.  "I love the Summit.  It's an intimate setting with a lot of smart people who are talking about something that is often overlooked.  Applying creativity and out-of-the-box thinking is critical to running a business . . . I think we live in a culture where people think business is about the P&L.  But it's really about people and ideas.  I learned a lot by listening to the storytellers."

A few weeks after my participation in the BIF Summit, Chris Wall was guest lecturer in the MIT seminar I am teaching this semester.  Chris is Vice Chairman, Creative Ogilvy at Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), one of the top brand marketing and advertising agencies in the world, where he is responsible for overseeing creative efforts in advertising, direct and interactive marketing.  He gave an inspiring talk focusing on what it takes to build the value and power of a brand – perhaps the single most important asset any company has.  A major theme in his lecture was the importance of storytelling as a key way to develop the image of your brand with your intended audience.   

O&M has been IBM's ad agency for a while now.  Through the years, I have worked closely with Chris and his colleagues, including the periods when they created the very successful e-business campaign in 1997, and then some wonderful Linux ads a few years later.  I have learned from Chris and others at O&M the incredible power of brands in the marketplace and the importance of having clear, simple messages to communicate what your brand is all about.  Above all, I have learned that if you want your major initiatives to be successful in the marketplace, - e.g.,  the Internet, Linux, On Demand  Business, - you have to work really hard to associate your brand with these new innovations, and infuse the brand with their key qualities in a way that differentiates you from what everyone else is doing.  I wanted the class to hear directly from Chris what such work is all about.