Month: July 2021

East meets West in understanding Innovation Cultural Orientation

East and West- the different meeting points in understanding

I lived for about fifteen years in Asia and the before, and in the in-between period, I travelled around the region a fair amount.

Today less so, but ask me where I want to go, and it is back to my city for twelve plus of those years, Singapore.

Some events today set me thinking that resulted in re-issuing this post, shortening it down a bit. Often we do not stop and think of the real differences culturally in how we want to0 engage and build relationships between the East and the West

Participating in business and engaging socially with Asia, watching how Asia has evolved has been a real experience that stays with you as something hugely valuable. It partly shapes your thinking and how you look at things going on in the world. Continue reading “East meets West in understanding Innovation Cultural Orientation”

The Cascading Innovation Effect.

Visual source; http://www.adaptivecircularcities.com/

We need to think about a choice-cascade integrative model for innovation. Often we fail to understand our role in contributing to innovation; we need a cascading effect. Here I want to explain my thinking behind this and provide the visual cascading steps I feel help us succeed in innovation.

For me, the “cascading effect” for innovation is “a sequence of events in which each produces the circumstances necessary for the initiation of the next”.

It presents an idea, a concept, a prototype, a piece of knowledge that provides the catalyst to be exploited in a broader community as the next step and so on. It cascades. It is where we fit understanding and fresh knowledge within the innovation web.

Getting innovation through any process of understanding is hard. Knowing what is required to generate innovation throughout an entire organization is even more so.

We need to deploy the cascading effect on innovation to support this supporting “effect.” Continue reading “The Cascading Innovation Effect.”

Our innovation era: creative destruction or destructive creation- which?

I keep coming back to the dilemma often faced in innovation- do we practice “creative destruction” or “destructive creation?

We are entering some perilous times in climate change and what this will mean in destruction in what we know, what we value and what we are used to.

I can’t imagine when Joseph Schumpeter outlined his groundbreaking efforts for explaining “creative destruction” he or anyone else could imagine this being flipped around to what we are facing more of today, that of “destructive creation”. We live in a throwaway society, and simply this is not sustainable.

Schumpeter saw “creative destruction” as the renewing, through innovation, society’s dynamics that would lead to higher economic development and welfare levels. At the same time, recognizing that this destroyed a few of the incumbents to benefit many more newcomers and increase value creation for broader society.

Today we are in a destructive creations world. Continue reading “Our innovation era: creative destruction or destructive creation- which?”