The EnvisionarySuccessful future innovation requires a drastic change in the way we are thinking about innovation today, and these 6 key principles may help.
Innovation is a buzzword that is used everywhere today (arguably overused), but just how innovative are we truly being?
During my role as an innovation consultant, I’ve researched just what it means to truly be innovative, both in today’s world, but also for tomorrow’s.
In the future innovation will become very different from what we consider it today, and it will be an imperative skill for many of us to hold.
This article highlights 6 key principles we will need to adopt in order to bring about successful future innovation.
The 6 Keys Of Future Innovation
1) Positive Change (Adaptability)
If this is not already imperative, then it certainly will be in our future. It’s already clear how innovation is focused on ‘green thinking’ principles. Companies sell positive impact already today. The global economy has to look at net-zero targets and on developing more efficient materials and solutions in order to make sure we can create an advanced world that considers how it sustains itself whilst progressing.
It’s arguably our biggest challenge. To ensure we can improve the quality of life for people around the world whilst also ensuring that goal doesn’t create such a strain on already limited resources.
It means we have to innovate smartly to ensure our future innovations are sustainable, valuable, and positive for our planet and its people.
A big part of this is feeding our ability to be adaptable thinkers. We are generally used to the same conventions and routines in life. Specialism runs business today where we built skills in narrow areas, but tomorrow we will need more people who can adapt to constantly changing needs.
Change often brings resistance at first, but we need to learn how to push through this to improve and learn from mistakes quickly. It won’t be immediate though and we may see a conflict of interests as we gradually adapt as societies.
Today, we have lots of friction amongst different groups, from the establishment, the elites, and the eco-warriors. This friction isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but possibly a sign of change to come, but it can also become resistance in seeing change actually happen, and the solution doesn’t come in more talking but in better and agreed innovation.
We still have a clash between capitalist needs and socialist goals, and these clashes may well influence the direction of the products and services of tomorrow. The result could be positive or negative, depending on how well we communicate together.
For example, futuristic VR concepts that aren’t about driving addiction further into technology but about ensuring we can be trained better to overcome fears or abuse etc. We will be creating more and more products and services that have real value for people to do good, rather than just creating something so it sells a manipulated want. For example, having food that is 3D printed isn’t about creating something fancy or gadgety, but which is driven by a real need, to ensure people are fed around the world, especially in remote places.
We just need to be very mindful about the potential dangers of what we create too as for every positive innovation that benefits humanity there can also be an element that harms it if not considered (luckily the green stage of human development makes us mindful, whereas the orange stage feeds ego without humanitarian concern).
2) Balance Of Pace
The fast-changing world is one of the issues we have to consider. Innovation is often thought of as a quick sprint towards change, but we really have to find the balance between innovating something that needs to be here now and other innovations that are best served ‘thinking on it’.
On the one hand, if we innovate too slowly we can end up running the risk of being left behind, and all the planning and work put into making a change happen can become undone as the technology or idea we were working on becomes quickly obsolete to new technology (like the walkman).
This could be the case with the HS2 high-speed rail plan in the UK. When other countries are already running highspeed rail (in 2021) and your plan is to get highspeed rail installed around the country by 2030, then who is to say that you won’t always be playing catchup, as other countries may have found groundbreaking technology well-beyond what the current tech plan may be, leaving the HS2 plan obsolete.
Spending too much time planning can, and likely will, leave you behind. However, there comes an advantage to slow innovation too at times.
When we innovate too fast we might not stop to consider whether innovation is even needed or not. Are we just innovating for innovation’s sake? Secondly, our minds tend not to adjust to change as quickly as we hope. It sometimes takes lots of repetition and iterations of ‘mini-changes’ in order to become satisfied with something.
You might come up with a great future innovation only for people to not really warm to the idea straight away, but years later it finally becomes commonplace.
Slow innovation also allows us to understand the pros and cons better, to gain more feedback, to research more thoroughly, and effectively fine-tune our ideas better. Fast execution is arguably needed, but slow innovation isn’t a bad thing at times.
Finding a balance of when to go fast and slow is key, and in each situation and project, it may differ.
3) Adding Value, Not Just Capital
Future innovation will focus more on the added value that is created by businesses, rather than on selling products and services solely to sell what people want and profit from it.
Of course, we will still be wanting services and products, but people are becoming more and more in tune with the value the products or services create, and thus value becomes the prime selling point.
By value we mean the positive impact the innovation will create.
A percentage of companies’ profits may even be pot-funded into ‘projects of needs’ rather than spent on frivolous luxury cars, villas, and yachts. Of course, people still like nice things and deserve rewards, but it may be the value created that promotes such rewards, rather than the ability to just capitalise.
Profits reinvested into the company’s innovations and research will be the kind of control governments end up enforcing. Will Bitcoin be around still? Who knows. Possibly yes and no. It could be that it delves underground more as it has too many red flags for countries to adopt it as legal tender, especially with the world’s environmental pledges.
However, there could be a change in the way currency derives value. Other forms of digital currencies will become important, as people back coins and tokens that are associated with value-creating projects and needs rather than simple capitalist gains.
To sell tomorrow may be less about barking on about revenues and sales targets, but more about focusing on human-centered value and adaptability. Less selling ice to Eskimoes. There could be no ice left. More providing solutions to help Eskimoes adapt and live well into the future.
4) Iterating On Solutions’ Problems
We often try to create solutions to a focused problem but may forget how we can create another problem as a result of that solution.
Future innovation (and future innovators) will need to be more apt at thinking ahead. Being able to envision the potential problems of new solutions, and even problems of the solution to that new problem (still with me?).
It’s the ability to think ahead like a chess player, but with innovative thinking rather than patterned logic, that will become a sought-after and crucial skill to hold.
Had we thought like that before social media was created, and with a more value-focused mindset rather than pure capital-focused one, then businesses wouldn’t have created social media platforms to be so addictive, or ordered designers to come up with tools like the ‘like’ button.
Of course, human progression only occurs through making mistakes and learning from them, and there will still be many businesses today who focus solely on the bottom line profits who would still think it’s a good idea to make social media platforms addictive.
That is the challenge for future innovators – to both point out the problems ahead and to develop the solutions that show businesses that there’s still a way to be just as profitable with value at the heart of their core business strategy.
Give a CEO this proposition and they won’t resist.
5) Holistic Connectivity
The way we work is changing. The freelancers of a decade ago are now in busy company. The Covid-19 pandemic has seen many more of us work from home or work remotely.
Some might say it’s just a temporary change that will revert itself once people get sick of it and want to conduct business face to face again. Some probably will, but then you have to point out that connectivity is only going to become faster, easier, and more widespread.
5G is only in its infancy (at the time of writing) and we will see many new future innovations come from the ability for us to connect wherever and whenever we like, but likely with an eye on ensuring there are ethical and sustainable considerations to whatever we innovate.
As the world becomes more and more flexible we will see the impact of this in how people will want to work within projects.
Today, there’s still the pull of full-time job perks and security that lead people to stick in jobs where their role is to fulfill a specialism, but over time the remote work option will mature into a much more productive and viable option for many.
As part of this, people will not want to be stuck in the same project forever and adaptable positions where we can find ‘projects’, rather than companies to work in, will be key.
We will see a shift in the whole idea of ‘company brands’ too. It may be less about which company or label created this, and more about which ‘group’ was involved. Consumers may care less and less about the company brand but care more about the product or service value and the nature of the group who came together to make it happen.
More projects will be a cross-divide of different companies working together to create a better solution, as the world adopts a (yellow stage) holistic way of working together.
Again, there will be a lot of resistance to this principle of working at first but younger generations will age and feel more comfortable in this flexible group way of working.
People will have portfolios of all different projects they are working on like freelancers do today, but with finger in pies of different group collaborations rather than working for client by client.
In a holistic world, profits come from the values that the group creates together which are then shared across the board. Capital is still important but it’s just created in a much more holistic way.
Today we see a lot of focus on raising awareness to change that is needed rather than change necessarily happening to the same degree. We hear a lot of emphasis on climate change and on sustainability, but we won’t solve issues such as the climate crisis unless we develop innovative solutions to help fix it.
The importance of innovation will only become greater. Part of this relies on governments ensuring they place a greater emphasis on the need for innovation on every level. When research and development funding is low then we tend to see countries fall behind in productivity, as their innovation just isn’t pushed enough.
Yet, the solution isn’t just about funding but in training and involvement.
We need innovation on not only a corporate scale, but innovations within small businesses and in individuals too.
Small businesses have to be increasingly innovative to be able to adapt to changing needs, and when individuals develop the skills to innovate then economies benefit from smart minds inspiring smart minds. Resourcefulness and visualisation blossom and people start seeing many ways to improve things all over the place.
However, in many societies around the world today there’s not a lot of self-innovators or forward-thinking disruptors, futurists, entrepreneurs etc.
Most people wait to be told how to think or they just create something as a business because it has a market (understandable, but not helpful towards developing innovation). We tend to think that must be a specialist job but an innovator is actually better at being a generalist.
Instead we need to be great self-innovators who inspire each other to develop solutions to problems, whether it be on a small scale or large one.
We have to help people think differently so they can take the initiative to self-innovate.
When you have enough self-innovating minds around each other then we find can create a lot of progress collectively together (co-creation).
One way to promote this kind of desire to be innovative thinkers is to make innovation appear more fun and less corporate or stuffy. This can be through making ‘funavations’ (feel free to adopt a better amalgamism) where we turn innovation into a fun social contest and so on.
So, there you go. 6 key principles to make successful future innovations, that anyone can adopt. Being able to adopt them though requires us to be able to challenge our often current specialist mindsets and to develop skills that allow us to implement these principles effectively.
Richly Wills helps people learn to develop their out-the-box thinking superpowers like adaptability, creativity, and forward-thinking. Register your interest in the course today.
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