Thoughts

The Future Of Innovation Is Our Creation: Dancing With Dilemmas

If innovation is creating value from new ideas, then the future of innovation largely depends on the type of world we want to create. The future of innovation is in the future of how we think.  For good or bad, our thinking patterns to date have brought us to where we are now but are vastly inadequate, and insufficient for the challenges that this century, and beyond will pose.

As human beings we constantly face choices, dilemmas about how we choose to live and act. These dilemmas are going to become more intense as our simplistic right and wrong view of the world continues to crumble around and within us. This will have a profound affect on individuals, on organisations and fundamentally in our concept and practice of leadership.

The future of innovation will require us, as individuals, to learn and think in the spaces between short term commercial results and compassion for people, for robust internal processes and the need for pioneering and change.  This will require us to know deeply, who we are, to become self-observers, skilful in the dance of holding often conflicting dilemmas and to know how to act for the greater good.

The future of innovation is going to require different forms of organisation where information can flow freely, where new connections can form and change shape, and where trust is central to the success and utilisation of our networks.  In these porous and increasingly self-organising systems, fuelled by new ways of working, we will need to think beyond the boundaries of closed or open innovation, as information and learning flows and groups of people form and disband depending on the nature of their work.

The future of innovation will require new leadership skills; those who can facilitate creativity and insight in others, those who can respond and adapt to an ever changing business environment and those who use a wide spectrum of intelligence; understanding the power of vision, intuition, attention, clarity and focus. Leaders must become meaning makers, connectors, skilful at conscious, intentional thinking; these are the individuals that will have the courage to create the future and lead others through this increasingly ambiguous and uncertain world.

If this is the requirement for the future of innovation, what should we be doing now to prepare for it?  What are the implications for how we educate our children, for how we prepare young people for work, for the design of our organisational structures and communities? What are the implications for how we develop the skills and competences of our current and future leaders?

As the drivers for globalisation continue unabated the complexities facing us are becoming ever more symbiotic and multi-faceted.  There is an imperative for us to question our underlying beliefs and assumptions about who we are, what we are doing, and why we think the way we do. This will enable us to facilitate a paradigm shift, one that is conscious of the type of value that innovation will produce. It is not so much what is the future of innovation, but what is the future we want to create?

This article was recently published in the book The Future of Innovation, published by Gower  http://thefutureofinnovation.org/

Article © 2009 Ms Natalie Turner. All rights reserved.