Digging deep: Mining, minerals and innovation


- Cara Bouwer Dr Deonie Botha “


We continue our series of articles featuring the speakers from the recent 2011 SA Innovation Summit in Johannesburg.


T


he biggest oxymoron is innovation in mining,” joked Dr Deonie Botha, Anglo


America’s KM & Technology Intelligence Manager, about the topic up for discussion at the 2011 SA Innovation Summit in Johannesburg. Certainly the monolithic structures which drive mining around the world are not renowned for change, but small, incremental innovations can and do impact on the modern-day industry.


The first thing to remember, says Botha, is that the global mining industry today is driven by intense competition and scientific processes. Gone are the old days on the Witwatersrand Reef where mining was the preserve of mavericks and cowboys. Today, explained Botha, mining is about being quick off the mark, open to change and collective thinking. “The rules of the game are different,” she says. “Traditionally, innovation was internally driven and companies didn’t look outwards. Of course, there are some exceptions, like the chemicals industry – where companies have learnt to look into the external environment.”


Mining remains a great example of where small innovations can have a significant and far-reaching impact, safety being a prime


80 Management Today | April 2012


example. She believes ‘open innovation’ holds the key for the mining industry as a whole, as no longer does the silo approach work. But what is ‘open innovation’ and how do you manage the process?


There are a number of definitions of open innovation, but in his book Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, Henry Chesbrough – the man who first coined the term ‘open innovation’ – puts it this way: “Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. It assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology.”


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