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April 17, 2007

A Call For Innovation: The Failure of Technology

Innovation carries many assumptions. All of us carry an underlying set of beliefs. For example: We often assume that because we can make it and it holds high potential for monetary profit that someonen will make it. Why is this usually the case? The idea of technical innovation being left unmonitored at the design stage can carry dangerous results without necessary check systems.

I propose that we use a cross-over model for creating and assessing innovation: 1-social innovation, 2-organizational innovation, and 3-technical innovation. Each carries their own weight in terms of being able to create cool stuff - to innovate. However, when actively used and considered together at the same time during an innovation process, the triad relationship can help to monitor each other's outcomes by helping the core stakeholders of the innovation to make better decisions. Otherwise, to release an innovative idea that has no interplay such as this, the outcome of an innovation may end up to be detrimental.

Here is an example:

The bees are dying ...
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.
Loss of brain cells in children ...
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

This situation is serious and points directly to the idea of "Sustainable Innovation" processes. Are cell phones the culprit? Don't know yet. But it sure seems to me that something was missing during the innovation stage of this product. What might it be?

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Here's an interesting update on this issue:

Organic Bees Are Thriving While commercial bee populations are plummeting. What's with that? Seems it may not be cell RF but pesicides. The same question arises: Something was missing during the innovation stage of pesticide products. What might it be?

April 5, 2007

Innovation Emerges as Global Transformation and Action

One of inKNOWvate's guiding frameworks is the triad model for innovation that seeks to balance the outcomes of innovation. This triad seeks to balance social, technical, & organizational forms of innovation. Using this 3-lens perspective, one can balance and monitor effectiveness with efficiency in solutions that emerge. Below is one of the most prevailing applications of this model: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, which is becoming a hot movement in world of innovation.

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Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems

A growing array of apparently insoluble socio-economic, environmental, and governance challenges presses in on decision-makers — including climate change, the risk of global pandemics, the growing threat to natural resources like water and fisheries, and the ever-present issues of poverty and hunger. Growing Opportunity — the first in an annual series of surveys conducted by SustainAbility in partnership with The Skoll Foundation — explores the potential for more entrepreneurial solutions to such challenges.

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