8 January 2010
In this week’s What Matters podcast, we hear from Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation—a nonprofit group focused on driving innovation through large, incentive competitions. In 2004, the foundation awarded the Ansari X PRIZE, a $10 million award for the first private group to build and launch a reusable, manned spacecraft. Diamandis recently spoke with Paul Jansen, a principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office, about how prizes can spur innovation, create new markets, and address some of the world’s thorniest socioeconomic problems.
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By Mario Morino
4 September 2009
In the early 1990s, a seasoned executive shared a metaphor that has stayed with me ever since: he said that innovation is like a coral reef. Marine biologists don’t fully understand what causes reefs to form, he said, but we do know that human actions can nurture or harm the process. The same is true for innovation—a natural, chaotic, unpredictable process that is hard, perhaps even impossible, for well-meaning outsiders to foster.
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4 September 2009
Can companies measure the impact of their innovation activities? Can they benchmark their performance on innovation against that of their peers? Can the long-term effects of innovation strategies be tracked systematically? Yes, yes, and yes. In fact, not only can companies objectively assess innovation; we believe they must.
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3 September 2009
The economic crisis has changed the competitive landscape dramatically for companies around the globe. Cost cutting is in vogue but expense control alone will not suffice. Innovation is the surest way to not only survive the downturn but to come out stronger.
6 August 2009
Amidst the pain of an economic downturn, comes an overlooked competitive opportunity for companies: during recessions, only major innovations pass the test of success. These are the kinds of innovations that can sweep away older business models, creating a foundation for major growth that will endure long after the downturn has passed and a New Normal has taken hold .
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By Eric Drexler
6 August 2009
Asia has strengths that promise to make it a leading center of technological innovation in the 21st century. These strengths are substantial, fundamental, and durable. At their base lie aspects of culture, on both a civilizational and generational time scale.
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7 July 2009
Back in the 18th century, the inability to accurately measure the longitude of a ship’s position made transoceanic voyages high-risk ventures—for investors as well as sailors. The answer? In 1714, the British government offered a cash award of £20,000 to anyone who could develop a way of precisely determining a ship’s longitude. Nearly 300 years later, prizes meant to spark solutions to complex problems are experiencing a renaissance.
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By Luiz Pires
5 March 2009
Analyses and comparisons between innovation environments never fail to generate quite a bit of both interest and controversy. The interest must be in large part because we all understand how critical innovative capacity is to economic competitiveness and sustainable growth. The controversy, however, often seems to be due to the somewhat imprecise definition of the concept.
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4 March 2009
Even—perhaps especially—in times of economic turbulence, innovation remains the most important differentiator separating economic winners from also-rans.
Update: Interactive heat map now available (19 March, 2009).
Update: Interactive heat map now available (19 March, 2009).
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26 February 2009
The most innovative countries—which will also be the highest earning in the future—will be those that embrace a model of “innovation economics,” which places technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship at the center of economic policymaking.
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By Gordon Orr
26 February 2009
China and India will be important centers of innovation in the coming decades. Not only are both nations producing a rising share of key technological innovations, but they are also pioneering innovations in business models that allow their companies to prosper in low-income markets.
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26 February 2009
A 2004 IBM study on innovation, called the Global Innovation Outlook (GIO), suggested that there are three key factors for innovation: common technical standards, collaboration, and customization.
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26 February 2009
Can humankind find its way to a world that is cleaner, safer, and fairer than the one we inhabit today—and can we do it with 50 percent more people? The answer is, possibly. It will require a complex interaction of vision, innovation, and policy all coming together at precisely the right moment.
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26 February 2009
The biggest opportunities for innovation, productivity, job creation, and economic growth can now be found as we apply the huge advances in IT, the Internet, and related technologies to address problems in the marketplace and society at large.
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26 February 2009
If you want to find solutions that make a difference, the best place to look may be the community center down the street.
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26 February 2009
“The destiny of a company like Alessi, an Italian design firm, is to work and to live as close as possible to the borderline. The borderline divides the area of the possible and the area of the not possible.”
By Hal Varian
26 February 2009
“The question is no longer what do you own or not own; it’s how can you leverage your assets to realize the most value.”
By Judy Estrin
26 February 2009
“While we are still reaping the benefits of seeds we planted 10, 20, and 30 years ago, we’re not planting new seeds at the rate we once did.”
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