The palmery of Zagora in Morocco
I was reading the “Making innovation work” book from Davila – Epstein – Shelton and I thought it would be interesting to apply its business innovation observations to broader fields such as the fight against global warming. Here is a quick introduction to the innovation basics using environmental examples.
Environmental challenges require surely radical innovation: radical in terms of the technologies used but also radical on how societies can change the way they generate value, without degrading their natural resources. In that respect, institutions have to adopt a Play-to-Win strategy, one in which innovation is central for survival. A Play-Not-to-Loose strategy is not the solution even though it looks simpler to implement: incremental changes in our behaviors and technologies will not suffice alone. The planet is acting like a market dictating our little human start-up (compare to the Earth history) its conditions of survival, and times are not in status quo.
The next step once you defined your innovation strategy is to design a balanced innovation portfolio: a selection of innovative projects that are relevant for the organization’s objectives, that distribute the risks in terms of size, time to market, potential return on investment. We have many options on the table: solar technologies, nuclear technologies, energy saving tactics for example. They each have their own risks, challenges, state of maturity. Some will fail, some will perform better than expected, and some will provide little improvements. Proper environmental management is not to bet on the right technologies but to distribute wisely risks and investments. Solar panels are at a very different stage of maturity than nuclear fusion power for example. One requires incremental innovations and should be ready in few years; the other still requires radical innovation for long term benefits.
An important principle of innovation is to accept failures. Innovation is by nature risky and not all your projects will succeed. Furthermore, successful innovation might be achieved at the cost of the experience gained on failed ones. As a citizen, I should thus not look for the cleanest energy. I should instead be willing to fund experimental new sources of energies. Some of them will not be viable and it is fine. The mission of the institutions shouldn’t be to predict the successful ones but to create the networks which will encourage new initiatives. I’m not sure this is the way we think today, the public wants certitudes. This has to change if we want innovation to happen.
Now, how green innovation should be organized? The book proposes several tactics. One is to create innovation platforms: organizational units covering one or several business units. In the example of environmental governance, they can be platforms having ramifications in local governments, departments of trade, industry and environment. They should have their own innovation boards, budgets and resources. Another organizational option is to create a kind of venture capital within the institutions which could sponsor innovation using the resources made available. In both cases, the key is to promote innovation and prevent departments to develop ‘antibodies’ which naturally attack any risky initiatives. Who are the leaders of those platforms in your local institutions? If you don’t know, that maybe means there is a problem in the strategy to address global warming.
How to make sure your institutions follow a Play-to-Win strategy? The book describes a lot of metrics that can be applied. Here are few examples:
- number of strategic commercial alliances
- number of new patents granted each year by universities in sustainable energies
- motivation of institution and government staffs for innovation
- innovation credentials of the new recruits
- …
Maybe all those methods are already in place in your institutions, maybe not. If you don’t know, maybe it is because the media don’t pay much attention to the innovative framework in place to tackle the challenges our planet is facing. I think the public should be educated not only to look at the results of institutional actions, like if they were only consumers, but should also be treated as shareholders interested in knowing what structure is in place. How your institutions perform in terms of green innovation, how well their innovation portfolio is balanced, how do they make sure innovation is a priority? After all, the central question is to know if our institutions embrace the culture and values of our societies.
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