Innovation is currently a buzzword in management field and has been considered one of the main alternatives to turn around the current economic scenario trend. A fact from the present, disclosed in a major consultancy’s survey, shows that 70% out of the executives consulted place innovation as one of the top three strategic priorities. However, less than half of these executives are happy with the initiatives they have been undertaking. What one may conclude here is that, despite their being reasonable consensus on the importance of innovation, the approaches to developing and managing it are still much beyond an acceptable level, an aspect which seems to me fundamental in shaping how the future of innovation will unfurl. In this sense, I shall herein approach certain forces, which I believe will shape the innovation agenda for the coming years.
The first refers to the new sources of energy and environmental sustainability. Social pressure for more environmentally-friendly products and the rising legal impositions to non-ecological products will unleash a wave of innovations at all stages of the production chain, with impacts from production of inputs, up to product reutilization and disposal. This, no doubt, will require radically new approaches. The new energies generate the same tide of effect, in which it is not enough to think of the same traditional systems being fed by different sources, but rather of new types of systems, new engines, new forms of production, supply and consumption. This potential cascade effect shall bring forth implications in countless components, products, processes, and sectors.
The second major force lies in the growing consumer participation in the creation and diffusion process. In an increasing pace, user communities engage themselves in development and sharing, reshaping the way innovation is done. Many have started to adopt strategies to involve consumer in the development of their products a phenomenon, which in its various guises, is being called by co-creation, crowdsourcing, etc. In the coming years, I believe that we shall witness the emergence of countless companies with new business models strongly oriented to provide an infrastructure to network participants perform their transactions.
The third force I would like to point out is related to management. In the coming years, we shall come to face a set of necessary advancements in order to incorporate innovation as a core business activity. This comprises a paradigmatic change, in which traditional models, focused on the improvement and optimization, in which innovation is dealt with as an activity apart, not natural to the daily routine, shall yield to management models in which innovation shall be intrinsic to daily routines. To such aim, radical changes shall take place in the way companies perform their process and, in special, in the resource allocation process, which shall become the core of a management model incorporating innovation. Certainly, the best indicator which we may have of this evolution is when innovation ceases to be so much enforced, and starts to occur naturally, without anyone needing to remember that it needs to be done.
Finally, it is important to point out that, from a global point of view, we shall witness the growing importance of emerging countries as central players in the definition of the innovation path. Natural wealth and biodiversity provide for an extremely rich basis for the development of new technologies and, the immense domestic markets comprise promising incubators for the development of technologies, products and business models with high disruption potential when redirected to developed countries.
The future is promising, it is now up to us to build it.
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