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The global innovation community, at least that chunk represented by professional innovation managers, begins its annual get together today in Hamburg, Germany. One of the first presentations that passed my desk (courtesy of Chris Skinner in my LinkedIn network) was Tim Jones' Top 10 Innovation Challenges for 2020. Tim runs Future Agenda (as I write the link to Tim's site seems to have been hijacked - so here is his company link). So what are the top 10 innovation challenges? Naturally I disagree with Tim's choices so let's open a debate about a few of them.
As insight becomes commoditized how do we generate differentiated knowledge without IP protection?
That's a complex set of ideas. Let's see if we can unpick them. IP protection is becoming less effective but we need more IP as the power of ideas to differentiate products and services over time, fades.
In fact I don't believe insight can be commoditized. There is a challenge for western countries because of the rise of smart people everywhere, so yes IP is hard to differentiate. But more significantly markets are fragmenting and the real challenge will be producing for or servicing a much large number of micro-segments. The Long tail is becoming the market. That does means more challenges for IP management systems. I wonder whether projects like Creative Barcode provide an answer to the management side. The big question however is how we manage mass differentiation, not just how we manage IP protection. How do we create many more versions of a product to satisfy a fragmenting market, what processes allow us to do that within consumers' price bands? What is a sustainable micro-market for a large company?
What business models will help us to manage an 'access' economy as opposed to an ownership one?
We're already seeing them - and seeing people find ways round the cash economy (e.g. couchsurfing) which is another part of the access economy, and the rapid rise of peer to peer commerce.
How can we be twice as productive in order to support a larger dependent population?
We have to be more than twice as productive but not because of dependency. We'll move (though not quickly enough) to a 70+ retirement age once we understand how to reconfigure entrepreneurism and tax regimes for older workers. In this area politicians have to tackle behavioural change and human preference - they used to specialise in just that. The cultural challenge is to awaken the old fire in politics and politicians, to direct their attention at society's new needs.
The real market challenge though is the competitiveness of the Asian economies. Our own economies have cost structures that are wholly uncompetitive because we have protected 'essential' industries like autos for too long. Geely's $2,000 car, undercutting the better known Tata Nano, should shock us out of this misplaced protectionism. The big issue is how we reduce cost structure by very radical amounts - 50% plus, within three to five years in many areas of manufacturing.
The future is one of more restricted choices so how do we gain trust in choice curators?
Fascinating. Commodity prices seem to peak a month or so back but they will rise again. Even if the rises are slow they will be relentless as we add a further 750 million people to the plant this decade. So physical world materials will be constrained by higher populations and by the inaccessibility of natural resources as we go extracting at the margins of capability and safety. Choice curation in this context is a wonderful concept. It used to be called politics and/or fashion but great to see selection brought into the debate on the future. How do you frame choice in the new type of vocal, communications-rich, highly networked society we are becoming?
Mesh networks will deliver automated highways so how do we manage the data sharing that goes with it?
This dream has been on the drawing board for nearly thirty years now. It won't happen - some hybrid of social and sensor data will allow us to use highways more effectively - of course the question still remains how do we manage that data but that is less important than how we make a different set of choices. We have to get cars off the road not manage them in convoy. But yes, the behavioural challenge is always the greater of the two and one we shun. I believe large companies are gearing up though to take on behavior change as a commercial opportunity.
Cities not countries will be center stage so what products and services will address specific urban/suburban challenges?
This is such an overlooked area. For thirty years national Governments have been delegating employment creation responsibilities further and further down the chain without thinking through how to educate, train, inspire and resource cities and towns properly in this vital area. City and town economics, local economic innovation, challenging citizenry obligations, spurring people to new forms of economic activity in their neighborhood are vital for the future but who trained your local council workers to do that? I expect new forms of local organization to emerge to fill this gap - a new entrepreneurism based on what's going on around your block.
Those then are my brief thoughts on the Top 10 Innovation Challenges that Tim Jones outlined- be interested to hear a few of yours. I happen to disagree that these are the most important choices we face but more of that again.
