Friday, March 02, 2012

Innovation Clusters - Why they don't work

Innovation ClustersHere is an interesting article about "How to make a region innovative"  by Strategy+Business portal of Booz & Company. Why am I writing about this? well, because there is all this talk about Innovation Clusters in Iceland around Geothermal Energy, Seafood etc In My Humble Opinion (IMHO), it is a waste of time! this is old school thinking that never works. Don't take my word for it go and read the article. I am not the only one who thinks this way, there is a need for new thinking on innovation and entrepreneurship all around the world so how does not go about creating this new value i.e new equity. We are here because over indulgence in Debt has basically eaten away all the equity in the world. I am sure we all can agree that is the case in Iceland, but more and more countries are starting to feel the pain of this... hello! have you seen the news about Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal... and the USA? So, here is a thought start hyper growth companies that can innovate at the speed of the internet and it can be done only by small teams because of chemistry, mechanics, change management etc. There is enough evidence to support Bigger a company gets the smaller is their rate of innovation, I am sure there are exceptions to this, but the majority of large companies fall into What Clay Christensen calls the Innovators Dilemma. If you have not read the book I highly recommend it. The only way to innovate out of crisis is to start small, start at the grass root and change the entire paradigm of thinking and radically make traditional businesses obsolete. There is only one sector that is good at this at the the Startup Nation! Actually I would go one step further and say... you better be thinking about a Startup Of You, no wait Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn just wrote a book with that title. People these days, always stealing ideas :) just kidding. Go and read that book it is fascinating to think about the fundamental changes that are happening right in front of our eyes, but you need to be aware to see or suddenly you become obsolete. Are you getting obsolete?
Enhanced by Zemanta

No comments: