Well, it has been quite a hectic few weeks. My company, Invention Machine, just held its annual global user conference. It’s always exciting to get that many world class innovation practitioners together in one place. Now that the conference is done, I can finally catch up here. Today, I’d like to review the results of the most recent innovation poll that you participated in. The pool question was “Given global economic concerns, what is your organization doing about innovation?” Here are the results.
As we see, some companies are pulling back on innovation investing, while others are not sure what course of action to take. Certainly, it is not surprising. Whenever times are dominated by uncertainty, it is natural to feel the urge to retreat and wait for things to sort themselves out. But following that instinct may be a very bad move.
“The only way you emerge stronger from a recessionary period is by having new products, new technologies, and new capabilities. It's an absolute must to continue to invest in good times and in bad.” - Craig Barrett, Chairman of the Board, Intel
This statement by Mr. Barrett, is echoed by the responses seen our survey. Almost half (47.4%) of you indicate that your companies are increasing investment in innovation. This is good news for those companies, and for innovation. Add to this figure the 21.1% who state their companies are maintaining their current levels of innovation investment, and we can see strong indications that innovation is alive and well in this difficult climate.
Once again, your participation in the innovation poll has provided an interesting picture of the state of innovation. Please remember to vote in the latest poll on biomimicry.
The current financial system has reached the limits of its effectiveness. Interest on debt has exceeded the system’s ability to pay it off. But debt is simply a promissory note on future productivity - any caveman can tell us that the only way to increase productivity today is to innovate yesterday, not tomorrow.
In modern times, this means that the only way to sustainably create more money tomorrow is to innovate today. This is the tiny little flaw of Wall Street that Innovation Economics will correct.
There are a few simple web applications discussed at http://www.ingenesist.com which will allow human knowledge to become tangible outside of the organizational construct of a corporation, and therefore out from under the thumb of Wall Street.
These applications are as follows:
1. The knowledge Inventory
2. The Percentile Search Engine
3. The Innovation Bank
Believe it or not, human knowledge would make a wonderfully tangible asset upon which to peg a currency - better than Gold, Silver, Oil, or Debt. This can be done today with today’s social networking technologies.
Many people have a deep sense that something very new, something very exciting, and something hugely lucrative is coming down the road as Web 2.0 converges to Web 3.0. Our hope is that we can capture it in our communities before it passes us by and becomes “Incorporated” in the old business model.
If we work together, Innovation Economics can be the best way to capture the engine of wealth creation and distribution for ourselves and our communities. Now is the time to build the Innovation Economy. Our research is open to you.
Posted by: Ingenesist | November 11, 2008 at 07:37 PM