We first need to recognize that there are twin forces at work, feeding off each other. We are facing greater disruption and an increasing innovation pace.
These twin forces are constantly seeking out for combining, relentlessly adding the new shape to our future. We are caught up in a very revolutionary period. The prospect of new innovation potential will eventually work through into the world of Industry 4.0 as a major game-changer “.
Innovation is ready for those accelerating and being fully committed to their 4IR journey. Then innovation can finally play its true part in discovering, leveraging and delivering new value and impact.
We have to recognize the days of simple product innovation are dwindling. where technology, digital solutions, greater customer insights, where a new breed of designers, engineers, scientists, and software talent are combining built through a platform and new innovation ecosystems thinking, are all emerging.
Seeking out a highly collaborative approach
This highly collaborative approach is building greater complexity into our final innovation offerings, yet it is providing increased customer value that is incr4easingly expected and needed, it is combining up separate aspects of a customer journey or societal needs, providing solutions to problems that require this combined thinking as consumers expect a complete buying experience.
We need to recognize that we are increasingly becoming reliant on platforms, networks, greater connected relationships that are working collaboratively in ecosystems. The collaborators are seeing the combined value and individual gain in this more open approach.
One very positive result: one of the more radical aspects of open innovations, the final product or service design is capable of winning the hearts and minds of many consumers, who value this combined solution and often are prepared to pay a premium for this connected experience/solution.
Solutions that are increasingly more adaptable, adjustable to personalization, positioned to readily respond to rapid shifts in trends or new technology or improved solutions.
Solutions that are focused on solving a customer’s complex problems with imaginative solutions, some of them totally unseen at the time, in ways not possible without embracing and connecting in the digital world.
There is a certain realization, a sort of reality dawns
The customer is increasingly at the epicenter of the economy. The products and services are enhanced through the digital capabilities that boost their value and worth. Innovation is the unlocking mechanism
New materials are making our assets more durable and resilient, and data and analytics provide the valuable feedback needed to build even better services and performance in the future. All this connecting and reacting is requiring new forms of collaboration, and we are seeing new types of organizations emerging. They are far more dependent on platforms and ecosystems and looking to leverage a broader collaborative environment to provide this level of innovation design
Innovation is benefitting from the 4th Industrial Revolution
There is a real value in recognizing and delivering on the fourth industrial revolution, we can start to think outside our classic product innovation boxes. We can shift our often-linear thinking as Industry 4.0 is the revolution that connects all the parts. We can loop, explore, connect, build scenarios, test assumptions, build digital twins to just the product and manufacturing impact. Recognizing the transforming potential of having fully connected digital factories will revolutionize how we manage innovation going forward. It shifts our thinking and the management of innovation dramatically.
The ability to have a more “rapid response, adaptive designs and flexible manufacturing” can align more to market shifts earlier. We can begin to design products that are more “digitally connected” that can be updated in the consumer’s premise or hand. We can enhance “their” innovation by shortening the time-to-execution and extending the product life cycle, we can build new potential through greater innovation design, based on increasing insight and collaboration.
As we break down the organizational inertia that has been stopping innovation it is through the Industry 4.0 approaches that will realize radically different benefits and imaginative solutions.
There are so many opportunities for innovation well beyond products and services. We can open up so many new possibilities.
We can deploy new approaches, seek out new skills, engage different talent, and utilize design and digital capability to realize and leverage the power of connecting all those involved. coming from industry 4.0 deployments.
Having an integrated, connected ecosystem thiscan offer us, for the first time continuous learning, deploying AI and Human ingenuity , we can tap into a network of talent through ecosystems and platforms designed for greater collaboration and exchange. We can reach far more into underserved markets through greater customer connections and engagement, we can co-design with them.
We can, by embracing 4IR, have available far more predictive and evaluation tools to help improve processes, to reduce or test risk, to prototype and experiment, partly engaged with customers in learning and adjusting design and value. We can build and connect different supply chains that read and react, we can create new ecosystems where we share a common goal and value, we can enable more agile systems that can adapt and respond to changes in real-time to reconfigure the ‘connected factory’.
Innovation emerges out of the Industrial 4.0 initiative in radically different ways to explore and exploit.
We are waiting for the fully connected factory and process so we can apply a very different digital set of innovation tools. Until then we have innovation being managed the current linear, disconnected way.
We fail to have a seamless set of connections into our industrial process world, into our designers, engineers, research scientists and more importantly our customers. It only arrives when we have digital connecting. Until we all get the same “line of sight” innovation stumbles along its familiar “guessing game” derived of insight and underlying knowledge.
The quicker we can connect and build the fourth industrial revolution we can explore, build, and redesign our whole innovation process in end-to-end ways, fully connected up, transparent and highly responsive.
We can look towards managing more radical innovation design in ecosystems and networks, seeking to push existing boundaries. We can envisage, and explore new technologies and materials, that all can combine into the Innovation Revolution that follows the Industrial Revolution.
We need to transform the relationships between people, objects, technology, exchange, and space and through deploying the industrial revolution solutions we enter the real age of innovation.
We can begin to move to more infinite possibilities and solutions through marrying and connecting data and design and employing our collective imaginations.