Innovation: The Quiet Achiever

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Innovation The Quiet Achiever

• Implications for Development

Frank Wyatt Enterprising Partnerships Pty Ltd
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Scope of Paper

• Mythology of Innovation
• The Market Place, its pervasiveness incremental
  nature
• Networking to Collaboration
• Hidden and wicked innovation
• Some reflections on policy implications

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Mythology of Innovation

• Innovation occurs not when an idea is born but
  when someone in the market places a value on that
  idea
• Market facing businesses are the point where new
  value is created from innovative activities
• Discovery is a bit like child birth, you still
  invest for another 18 years before others see the
  business value

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The Market Place the crucible of Innovation

• People in markets make innovation happen when
  they rearrange and recombine knowledge, people,
  processes and technologies
• Universities teach, research, engage and
  preserve knowledge
• Firms close to customers innovate
• Governments lead, facilitate and resource
• Invariably there will be debate about these
  interfaces whilst Universities rely upon
  commercialisation to pay the bills

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The Pervasive Nature of Innovation

• Innovation is all-pervasive, frequently found in
  unlikely places and is rarely based on
  traditional understandings of linear pipeline
  research and development
• Going beyond the obvious to discover the
  intersections where value is created

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Incremental Innovation

• Most innovation occurs in established firms in
  existing industries through incremental
  improvements, involving non-scientific and
  non-RD based knowledge such as creative design,
  marketing, organisational improvement and tooling
  up

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Example 1 Combining technologies

• Irrigation and soil sensors systems are
  established technologies
• Combining these with global-positioning systems
  and plant hydrology created irrigation management
  efficiencies in agri-businesses
• Innovation by recombination and connection

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Example 2 Adapting to customers

• Push bikes, Lego, House estates are all
  conventional products
• Intelligently adapting products to how customers,
  suppliers and distributors use them produced next
  generation solutions
• e.g. Mountain Bike Intelligent Lego Delphin
  Lend Lease Innovation Fund

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Networking to Collaboration

• Few organisations can go it alone - collaboration
  is the new driver of innovation
• Innovation is always a collaboration, yet we know
  little about how to collaborate effectively
• If we debate what is Innovation we distort what
  is collaboration networking to collaboration

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Collaboration
Co-operation
Co-ordination
Transactional
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Collaborations

• Innovations come about by shared learning and
  problem solving with users, manufacturers,
  distributors and others
• Collaboration accelerates our respective ROI
• The greater your competency in collaboration, the
  higher your ROI Wyatts Law

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Innovations are often hidden

• Much is excluded from measurement
• Innovations without a major scientific /
  technological basis e.g.
• Innovation in organizational forms, social
  innovations or business models (where the
  greatest growth in ROI has occurred of late)
• Those created from the novel combination of
  existing technologies and processes.

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Australian Innovation Indices

• Lets measure the full range of Australia's
  innovation performance and capability
• Not just counting patents and licenses
• GDP grows faster if we release Intellectual
  Property rather than license it

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Wicked Problems the great challenges thwart
tidy research

• Climate change, water, sustainable land and ocean
  management, liveable cities, population health,
  or food security
• Require trans-disciplinary collaborations,
  creative imagination and open-ended information
  exchanges and dialogues
• Innovation in places and forums that facilitate
  these processes real collaborative precincts
• Unlocking innovation from the nation state

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Governance of the System

• Our aim should be managing abundance not scarcity
• Fostering an environment which encourages,
  facilitates, generates and supports new business
  ventures and entrepreneurial effort
• Let a thousand flowers bloom
• This means the suite of policies on tax,
  education, immigration, ST, strategic industry
  policy, venture capital, economic and labour
  market reform

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Enterprising Partnerships

• PO Box 5127, South Melbourne, Vic 3205
• T 0414 39 2323
• E frank_at_enterprisingpartnerships.com.au
• W www.enterprisingpartnerships.com.au
• "Industry and Business Strategists"