How to buy innovation
Quantity (how many times, for how many years) matters in mechanical activities, where routine is not so dangerous.
In areas that are fundamentally qualitative, including strategy and leadership, routine is dangerous and the significance of quantity is minimal.
It’s non-sense to assume that leadership qualities, synthetic (strategic) thinking, creativity emerge from years of practice.
These qualities bestow very particular style elements on the person and yes, these maybe somewhat refined with years of practice in some cases.
In the perception of the person who performs true qualitative activities each every occasion is completely unique and each and every approach is experienced as if it was done for the first time, in a high intensity creative tension.
This is where creativity and leadership come from and this is what ensures integration throughout the organization…
… and this is what gets killed when quality gets subordinated to quantity and the context for action becomes mechanical planning, talent management, resource management, marketing, branding and communications best practices, etc.
In such mechanical context all efforts geared towards creativity (e.g. off site strategy planning exercises, hiring guys who sell creativity, team building exercises, etc.) fail – either completely or partially.
Creativity, innovation and other qualitative factors must come from inside the organization; they can’t be enforced on it; it can’t be bought!
To put it differently: creativity and innovation is an organizational question and it by no means belongs to HR…or marketing or branding!!!
And now the tricky question:
Who handles innovation in your organization?
7 new profit opportunities in mobile retail
Without further ado:
New conversation – starter report from friends at futurelab.
India and the CEE: potential polarization between quantity and quality?
Laszlo Kövari
An article caught my attention a while ago on cnet, that turns attention to India as an emerging innovation hub and a potential competitor to the Silicon Valley.
The article supports the message that I’ve been also promulgating for the last couple of years, i.e. that India will become a threat to the USA and that the CEE MAYBE turned into a counterweight for balance.
The cnet article in a nutshell:
- 250,000 engineers work in R&D in India
- the tendency is that expats are returning home, and new grads are staying home
- R&D outsourcing (as opposed to call centre and coding) to India is on the rise: currently it’s $9.35 B and it’s expected to reach $ 21.4 B in the next 4 years
- R&D spending in India is fueled not so much by cost savings, but by India as an emerging market: local development can more successfully target the local industry
- India will however not surpass the Valley anytime soon, since there is still more VC money invested in the Valley than in India
Up to a certain point the numbers speak for themselves. In addition to the numbers, and the obvious conclusions we may draw from them, the following should be noted:
- Engineering/ coding / etc. is becoming a way out of poverty for people there. Also, it is as “fashionable” as law is in the States. These drivers hardly correspond to an “inner vocation” that is the prerequisite for leadership in any domain, including the technical one. This is obvious to anybody who has already dealt with a lawyer in the States
- Innovation in particular, quality in general does not come from numbers. Quantity delude quality! Even though execution capacity may increase, the quality of execution will inevitably decrease. This is painfully clear to everybody who managed IT outsourcing projects with Indian companies. The reasons for early stage outsourcing were purely quantitative: cost and lack of people back home. The expectations for quality were unfounded and naïve from the start.
- True: returning expats may help India become more competitive on the innovation front; as long as they bring perspective that’s necessary for integration. Question is, if they do have any perspective.
- Speaking about perspective: the amount of investments provide quality returns (e.g. innovation) only, if they fit into a well founded perspective. Breeding more engineers is not a well founded perspective (India). The Valley is a different question. I believe that at the time true innovation is stagnating at best.
The CEE situation
- Historically, the CEE is an innovation hotbed.
- The numbers are decreasing on all fronts: population, expertise, etc. This creates a very particular situation: the CEE can’t play numbers’ games
- The CEE perception about quality differs greatly from the USA’s and India’s perception about quality…for now.
- Money alone does not breed innovation. But in the CEE, where it already exists on the level of potentialities, smart money (money plus required commercialization expertise) does play a significant role.
- Current systems that are meant to foster innovation, don’t work. They are based on flawed principles. New systems, new initiatives are needed.
a case for angel networks
laszlo kovari
being a full time VC is a bad compromise; the very reason why the hit rate is so low.
the number of initiatives that are really driven by a certain degree of perception of the truth are very low.
in such cases the drive is strong, there is nobody around to argue, the path is clear and success is established.
the VCs are rarely (not never though) present at the birth of such initiatives, they get involved later.
elite investors should not be full time investors; the people with access to money should focus on what they do and stay close to the periphery, instead of trying to get closer to the mainstream.
innovation happens on the periphery.
invest only in hits. truth is: a hit is a hit. once you start analysing the components of a hit, you should join a big bank and focus on analysis. a hit is a hit as a whole. and you see it as a hit holistically. together with the concept, the potentials, the “virtuals”, the team, the path of unfolding: as an organic whole.