innovation
Combining old and new Innovation in all its forms will be key to any comeback for a country like Ireland, says Leadbeater. “I think innovation is often about combining old and new things together; it’s often about doing new things but combin- ing them with things that you are known for, or know about, or that consumers are familiar with. “It’s very rarely just about reinventing entirely. I think
it’s very important to go back to the good things. Not everything is crap, not everything doesn’t work, not everything is overpriced and saddled with debt. So, there are things that work that you need to go back to, but you need to combine them with things that are new and par- ticularly with things that people really want. It’s about capturing growth. “So anyone who says ‘Oh, the future of Ireland is to cut
costs, cut wages, do what we do now but just do it more competitively’, well of course you need to go back to a core but that’s not a strategy for the future.”
Collaborative innovation Leadbeater has long been an advocate of open innova- tion, a subject with which he deals eloquently in his book We-Think: The Power of Mass Creativity. The book explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate ideas and information. Major organisations like Procter & Gamble and Dell are already harnessing this kind of energy on the web, but Leadbeater says it will be key for companies of all sizes.
“It’s more key than ever I think,” he says. “I think
what you see is more and more companies realising that innovation has to be about collaboration, and that you have to encourage more people to contribute ideas, but also that you will really only generate ideas if you con- nect with other people who have things to add to your idea. “More and more innovation is not about stand-
alone products. I mean Dyson has created a stand- alone product which is a fantastic thing, so it can hap- pen in those areas, but more products – cars, even household products – will become wrapped into infor- mation products, and the more they do the more they’ll be about knitting things together. “Most big innovation is about knitting things
together now and that’s why it has to be collaborative and open. Ideas take life when they are shared. That is why the web is such a potent platform for creativity and innovation.” Leadbeater is closely watching the battle for suprema-
cy on the web between the major players like Google and Facebook. “The fight for territory might be perfectly sensible and good, because the winners might provide us with great products and services for which we’re pre- pared to pay, but it may also create monopolies and con- trol which we find inhibiting. “Certainly were all that to somehow end the open web,
then that would be a really significant downside because it’s the openness of the web that’s allowed lots of inno- vation to come about and new people to come in.”
‘Most big innovation is about knitting things together now and that’s why it
has to be collaborative and open. Ideas take life when they are shared’
44 Irish Director Winter 2010
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