I recently finished several books promoting innovation in many ways (some of my favorites are Driving Growth Through Innovation by Robert B. Tucker http://www.innovationresource.com/ and The Innovator’s Dilemna by Clayton M. Christensen http://www.claytonchristensen.com/news/).
I am always surprised when I read these great innovation’s supporters and finally ”discover” how this is all about common sense. I mean creating an environment encouraging innovation instead of separating activities, managing innovation not just trying to invent, creating an innovation culture instead of an innovation pressure, being patient at innovation not saying non-profit oriented, being skeptical while always positive about innovation.
What is fascinating in these books is being exposed to the true story of what happened instead of turning blind and ”just” trying to repeat the output of the success. This reminds me the post-it story from 3M http://www.mmm.com/us/office/postit/pastpresent/history_ws.html for which everyone has its own version from pure luck to fully predictible success. At the end, it’s a question of promoters (believers -see below some thoughts about it-) and an environment ready for it.
In Quebec and particularly in technology transfer, my current activity, we have our Alexendria Lighthouse in that perspective. It’s called ACELP or VoiceAge http://www.voiceage.com/index.php. You may not know them, but chances you are currently using one their technologies is pretty high, for instance in your cellular phone as an audio compression algorithm. Everyone involved in technology transfer here, and I am pretty sure everyone has its one ACELP syndrom locally, would like to repeat the story and the worldwide success of this originally Sherbrooke based company (if you like these kind of story, ask Sylvain Desjardins about what being located in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada means when you are dealing with the biggest companies in this world!).
While many would focus on the output, few will be interested to invest time in understanding or just acknowledging the path to success and the real story; the one of risk, of defending any dollar invested with no revenues, the exponential expenses on IP, and so on. The point is less repeating the story (do you agree innovators are looking for unexpected results so output can be unlimited as well ?) but what makes it happening. So while reading books on innovation and learning about it may sounds like common sense reading it after the fact, it is good to be inspired by such real stories, by authors having the right-to-the-point abilities in describing it and finally experience it by your own.
So now, let’s continue experiencing and innovate, and that’s my day-to-day work not only managing technologies for which some could revolutionize the future (I’m thinking for instance about the Fanstatic Voyage revisited from Sylvain Martel and his colleagues http://www.polymtl.ca/carrefour/en/article.php?no=2502, for which I use to say if you recall the wellknown movie of the 70s “They did it! Not thrinking people but the submarine!”) but also managing new ways of marketing innovation.
