21st October 2015

Consciousness and innovation; Time to rethink the source of innovation

I started writing this blog with an anticipated enthusiasm of a freshly minted currency which, after its creation has one single purpose, to be a medium of exchange. I am not so sure that my ideas are a currency to be exchanged as freely as the currency we all create. The challenge is of my own making, how can I expect exchange to occur when there is no creation of ideas. It is time to change this intellectual slumber and share the evolution of my thoughts as I move forward in my research.

Over the past two years I have been asking a simple question, what is the source of our innovation? Now there are many thoughts on this point and as a currency I would like to start a journey hoping to answer this question someday, innovation to me is a deeper, more experiential, practice based endeavor that is aimed at improving the purpose of life and not the objective of living. Meaning innovators innovate because they believe in their purpose of what they endeavor and not on the consequence of what they think they will achieve or the objective of their endeavor. The fun in the innovation process is the journey of innovation itself and not so much the objective of the goal of innovation, although that might drive the innovator at times.  

So what is my purpose, After having red, internalized, reflected on several researchers accounts of innovation, why it takes place, how it takes place and for what it occurs I am becoming more concerned about the intellectual nature of the debate around innovation. I believe we are missing a key part of the innovation story which I call the practice of innovation. Practice in my sense of the term means a balance between the intellectual reflection and the insight created by application and use of ideas.

With this realization in view i have started out on a journey seeking the source of innovation in practice with a project I call as “consciousness and innovation”. 

From the 28^th of October to the 7^th of November a 20 member team from all over the world will take part in the first pilot project trying to explore the nature of this idea. The purpose of this co-created endeavor, the purpose of this project is to establish a link between consciousness and innovation, specifically trying to understand the linkages if they exist. This pilot project is a fore runner to a larger project which will take 4 years to complete. With this pilot project we start with the basics, asking relevant questions that would help us formulate the problems of this project and thus create a researchable boundries within which research can commence. I sincerely hope this long journey to explore and discover the hidden insights relating to the course of innovaiton can be revealed to us all over the duration of this project.

To those of you who want to follow this project look out for the weekly updates that will be posted on this site

Moving from Collaboration to Co-creation of Innovation

I am rather sorry to have left you all without a blog for a long time, My last post was a year ago and I was kind of stuck between two new ideas emerging not knowing which is which, which one to follow and which to leave by the side. I found this rather consuming and thus it has taken almost two years to resolve. This does not imply I have resolved it, only to say I have chosen which idea to pursue further and which to leave by the side for the moment.

I am about to share with you now. The question is; does the confusion warrant such an absence. Well I leave it up to you to determine.

The two competing ideas revolved around the notion of IT driven innovation through collaboration and emerging phenomena which I now call co-creation for innovation. These two ideas are interconnected no doubt but I reckon that since collaboration is a well understood phenomenon why don't I spend time understanding co-creation of IT Innovation. How did I come up with the idea of co-creation, is of course an important question, which I narrate below

Not so long ago I was making a journey from Copenhagen to Bangalore, in India. I boarded a fully booked flight which I promised myself never to take again. No sooner I had landed in Delhi, and preceded to immigration control I noticed that I had started up a conversation while in line with a gentleman who was an electric technician from Europe. He told me that he was here in India to work with some software engineers on a product that they were developing for internet subscription via the power grid for Europe. I was fasonated on two accounts, first, I wondered what on earth is an electrical engineer working with software developers; the second reason was more bizarre as far as I was concerned. He indicated that the project he was working on was being designed aimed at delivering medical services through electrical power grid to rural communities. He indicated that it was an experimental project. He further launched into a detailed explanation, which I pretended to listen, for the fear of being branded rood, but after a ten hour journey I was in no position to exercise my faculties in comprehending his chatter…

 

One Year later…

 

No, I am from Brazil and I am in India for a project said a Mr, Zulcar after introducing himself during a flight from Delhi to Bangalore, a year after the first encounter. He told me that he was a doctor and was going to meet a software developer engaged in logistics. I was puzzled and recalled my experience from a year ago and asked myself to what was going on? There is something interesting taking place which I am yet to understand, I figured. During this period I was deeply engaged in a EU funded project of which I was a project manager and lead scientist.

when I started looking at the data I had collected over two and a half years in India, it soon donned on me to why I did not see what was obvious to the business men I met during my travels. They were all here to work with Indian companies who did not work in the domain they had special knowledge, why should they travel half the world across to work with firms that are in different domains? Why can't they work across domains in the country of their origin? An answer to this question I am yet to discover. But I am rather confident of the answer to the first question, What was different in what they were doing now as opposed to earlier?

In my opinion the representatives are front runners of what I call the co-creation of innovation, which has not yet caught on in Northern Europe. I call this the fourth wave of interactive globalization, The first phase was the Y2K, where the interaction was specific and problems narrowly defined. The second, the body shopping phase, where the Indian companies sent out software engineers at a very low cost. The third phase was the outsourcing, instead of the bodies travelling, the contracts travelled to India instead. And now we are in the fourth phase, This phase is the co-creation phase, characterized as a process of interaction between ideas, opportunities and aspirations of market actors in an interactive re-invention mode, where the technology is reshaped, applications re-contextualised, services re-formulated and business model redesigned to ensure local uptake of the enterprise, leading to sustainable business venture.

 

The most interesting outcome of co-creation is that there appears to be a gain for all players because they end up creating either a new product or a new market. The new market or product consists of

parts of all partners' domains but is not dominated by one single domain knowledge. This is what the two people i met in my flights in India were up to, they were engaging in the process of co-creation with a host of Indian and western partners to develop something different that would create a new market place.

While this reflection is interesting, it brings into focus many more question than answers, for instance how is co-creation different from collaboration and outsourcing? What are the dynamics that enables co-creation and what are the best practices that firms can identify for working with co-creation, on the research angle what specific features and business models can co-creation bring to the table that has not yet been identified before during interactive globalisation. Currently these are the questions i am puzzling over and am trying to answer. If any of you have any ideas that could aid a better understanding of what you think co-creation is in practical terms and in research terms you all are welcome to join me in a research scholarship designed to discover, expand and explore the dynamics of co-creation of innovation. Particularly we need to be explaining why co-creation brings benefits to all firms that take part in it. Conceptually in a co-creation there should not be total winners and total losers. The results are more equitable and the drive more engaging. These ideas continue to consume me these days, In my next blog i will share with you one reflection I have been having on one aspect of co-creation which I call the notion of "generation".

 

 

An inconclusive discussion, but a fruitful insight

Hey there, thanks for reading this blog, you know what!
Reflecting about a recent trip to India, I was reminded about two encounters I have had with two different people, both academics belonging to two different traditions. Engaging them on the subject matter of innovation, I got two very interesting insights, one an engineer and a mathematician by training referred to innovation as a purposeful, single minded pursuit of a solution of a problem blighting the fulfillment of one’s goals, while the other with a sociological background referred to innovation as a systematic and methodological approach to problem solving. Now isn’t that funny, the engineer/mathematician refers to innovation in need-problem solving causality while the social scientist refers to innovation in terms of system. How come?
A few days later, in a different city in a different region of India, I was having a conversation with another academic, and the subject matter for our discussion was Indian IT companies and how they grow. The discussion turned to the topic of firms going bust, I heard the person say something rather startling, claiming that Indian IT firms do not go bust. This was indeed a remarkable claim for a student of economics, considering the notion of markets and its importance on firm behavior. But upon further reflection, I saw some wisdom in his claim. I pressed him to explain why I should take his conjecture seriously, but before he began his rebottle, I quickly realized where he was coming from and the meaning behind this conjecture. For I figured the following
Indian firms do not go bust because they are constantly looking to improvise. They improvise their business strategy, their employment strategies and their domain in which they operate. The improvising is more a consequence to survive than to make it big immediately, for they figure; I rationalized if they can survive in the Indian market for two years they have the potential to service the world market for IT services.
The challenge dear friends here is not to say that improvising is better than innovation, but to try and reflect what is going on from the two sets of different stories. True my discussions were with academics, so I was engaging with individuals whose perceptive skills are relevant to the issue. But they are not part of the real world we are trying to understand. That being a weakness it is but one among many weaknesses that academics generally suffer from, nevertheless the point here is not about their observations but how you and me understand their utterances.
Well this is how I understand it, Firms in India do improvise thus they do not go bust, this is the second story. The first story is about innovation is it systematic or step gap need based solution to a problem. To my mind, the need based solution to a problem can fall into the realm of improvising while the systematic approach to problem solving could fall into the realm of innovation. Do you agree? If not, what is your take on the two stories above and how would you interpret it? Do you see the emergence of some kind of definition here?

If there is a beginning, it is here

Gosh! You have finally made it here, isn’t that amazing; for all the millions of blogs that could have stopped you in your tracks. It is here you choose to spend some of your valuable time, for which I much appreciate, thanks.
Let this be a Journey for me, as much as it is for you. In the coming days, months, and perhaps years I will want to engage on a simple task. To explore the difference between improvising and innovation, are they different ideas, if so what is the difference in real terms, in practice for everyone. Are we all avid improvisers or amateur innovators, which is which? These are the issues that I would want to explore in my journeys in India and Denmark, with my friends, colleagues and among my students.
The pest few weeks has seen me trying to write a paper on Innovation, I often wondered why is innovation so special and what makes it interesting, why don’t firms and us, talk of improvising, as we engage with it at every stage in our lives, in our struggles, aspirations and our ambition. Why don’t we talk of improvising as a real skill rather than celebrate innovation that can change our lives?
Well, the story of this poor sole begins with a project called Knowledge Mapping of Indian ICT competencies. Yes, Yes, I am an academic, and my business is research and teaching. You see then, my interest in the notion of improvising and innovation. I improvise every day in the class room, but I am not sure if I really innovate, depends how we define innovation.

Coming back to the project; It is to map in real terms what is going on in India, in terms of ICT research and development. By mapping, yes I mean scientifically mapping. To do this we will engage with all those companies in India who have in the past innovated. Look here, I have not deliberately defined innovation, this is because I want you to carry your own ideas. This is not a class but a dialogue between you and me. So tell me what you think of innovation? Anyway the mapping of Indian ICT R&D potential will take two years to complete starting 2008.
O’ God, sorry to bore you, I will not tell you more stuff about this project, from now on it will be just me and the journey of confusion and question I have embarked upon. You know what, the ideas to blog was growing in my mind for some time now, until I red two of my students blogs. What a nice way to communicate and hey presto; here I am.

Coming back to the idea of improvise and innovation, which is which?
On the fun side of things, I travelled to India in April this year; see some photos below and a video. The fun part was that I saw people improvising at every stage, there is so much struggle and adversity in simply living and surviving that improvising becomes second nature, like breathing or feeling. It is so automatic, kind of second nature, that one does not think much about it, but innovation, yes innovation. Now that is a big deal. Why? Is it because we seldom innovate but often improvise, Or is it many series of improvising leads to an innovation or the other way round, which comes first. I wonder.
In the many posts to come I will share my experiences with you on this and hope we can reflect on the nature of innovation, how do we understand it, when we see it.
In the mean time here are some pictures from India for your viewing