Innovation Brokering

“Innovation is often given a complex definition. We prefer the simple one: ‘new ideas that work’.”
- Geoff Mulgan

Innovation is everywhere. From the advertisement on TV to the design of mobile phone in your pocket to the services delivered on the streets of your city. The old usage”Necessity is the mother of invention” drives many from NGO’s, Social Entrepreneurs to the big organizations worldwide to bring creativity in providing solutions for the local or global problems.

Have you ever seen any analogy between Thomas Edison, the famous inventor of the electric bulb and IDEO, a design and innovation based consultancy based in USA? Both have implemented “Innovation or Technology brokering” into their practices to bring innovation into their products. The beauty of Innovation Brokering is not inventing something new to the world but it is the ability to reimage and recreate a product while using old ones. Edison didn’t invent the electric light but he leveraged the different existing technologies to make a better light bulb. On the same concept, IDEO has developed over 3000 new products in over 40 different industries since it was founded in 1978. Their designers work with companies from different industries, to get broad view of the latest technologies available worldwide and thus develop innovative and efficient products. IDEO has developed slit valve for specialized bicycle water bottle after getting an idea from similar valves being used in shampoo bottles. The improvement phases in telephone also illustrate the technology brokering. As the first generation phones were moved to cordless and now to mobile phones.

Innovation Brokering shifts the focus from R&D teams sitting in closed labs and inventing something new to making R&D scientists interact directly with customers and bring about innovations by combining earlier existing inventions. R&D teams now work in collaboration with marketing and manufacturing people. Innovation Brokering link with the concept of empathetic design (user friendly design) and provide solutions to particular problems of customers. Thus it paves the way for not only “Thinking out of the box” but also “Thinking into other boxes”.

Innovation Brokers exploit past to create future. They perform a four-step process to bring about innovation. First, they capture good ideas from both within and outside the organization. They closely analyze the environment to get the pulse of the unfilled needs and desires. Secondly, they try to keep the ideas alive. Generally a company loses ideas when employees walk away. So there should be a proper mechanism to have a record of all ideas. Then in the next step they imagine new uses of these ideas. How can they draw meaning out of these ideas through innovations? Finally they put the promising ideas to test.

Often the closed innovation syndrome support NIH (Not Invented Here) behavior. It means the corporate intentionally or unintentionally avoids certain knowledge because it was not invented within the organization. On the other hand open innovation systems support “Wisdom of Crowds” i.e. the ideas coming from different directions and even reaching out to broader public for contribution. The Googling Innovation (Google- search engine) also promotes creative ideas from everywhere. The employees are given 20% time to do the pet projects, which are unrelated to their core work. Wal-Mart also continues to grow through innovations in the inventory management. Sampling foundation also follows this democratization of innovation. The focus of foundation is TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). TED website presents video and audio downloads of the conference speakers to the public and thus promoting ideas at large. Serving the social cause is considered above all. Even innovation can do miracles in this. Hopelab created by Pam (wife of ebay cofounder, Pierre) develop a video game that motivates young cancer patients to comply with the requirements of the treatment.

Conclusion:
In the business world, the innovation is a binding concern. If a company doesn’t adapt to changing realities, it risks losing its position in the market. It can be difficult to find time from our busy schedules and think about doing thins in a different way. Too often we operate on autopilot. But if we make it a habit of thinking differently it would bring a sea change in our lives and many useful innovative solutions can be generated in the process.