World Challenges
That Need Solutions
So I have presented many problems—why not solutions? Well, if I had some, I would be wealthy and retired rather than a college professor writing books. But let’s look at some of these problems through innovative lenses.
Sources of Innovation
1. Unexpected Occurrences
2. Incongruities
3. Process Needs
4. Industry and Market Changes
5. Changes in Perception
6. New Knowledge
Peter Drucker, Harvard Business School Journal, 1985, “The Discipline of Innovation”
Global Warming. Combating global warming is going to spawn a wide range of new industries. In fact, I bet there will be a Marshall Plan developed against global warming. Grants, funds and market initiatives will flood the western world. There will be children’s books, energy saving gadgets, better clothes lines (dryers consume way too much energy), warmer sweaters, more efficient modes of transportation, seminars, clubs, self-warming food, and many other products, services and initiatives.
Obesity. Type II diabetes is on the rise and threatening to bankrupt our entire health care system in years to come. New foods, new lifestyles, new diets, new exercise programs, new pills, new classes, new seminars, and new clubs will flood the landscape. Being Americans, we will look for easy solutions, silver bullets to solve this problem quickly, efficiently, with no sacrifices on our part. Innovation is necessary.
Addictions. Our addictions are killing us: alcohol, drugs, video games, Ben and Jerry’s. Most treatment programs are terribly expensive and very inefficient. Many of them are ineffective as evidenced by recidivism rates. Are there new processes, systems, or high-leverage points that will help bring this problem under control?
Shifts in Resources. Oil is running low, and there are fewer large discoveries. Currently, copper is in short supply in the United States, driving thieves to rip copper tubing out of abandoned houses and homes being built. Drinkable water has become a scarce commodity in many parts of the world, as has clean air. As some resources shrink, innovative thinking is necessary in order to find substitutes.
Environmental Pollution. The World Health Organization has decreed that 16 of the most 20 polluted cities in the world are in China. Eastern Europe, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was declared an environmental cesspool. Closer to home, all the manufacturing plants across the Rio Grande in Mexico are creating an environmental nightmare with higher rates of cancer and other diseases. What innovations—air and water purification systems, or pollution abatement systems and processes—will save us from this?
Trash to Cash
Mike Biddies’ plant in Richmond, California is overflowing with ground up old computers. Thousands of obsolete machines are piled up in towering stacks waiting to be recycled.
The mission: keep those PCs (and the lead, mercury, cadmium, and other toxic substances they contain) out of local landfills. It’s a job that used to be considered undoable because the recycling technology just wasn’t there. So Biddle, a chemical engineer who co-founded MBA Polymers Inc. eight years ago, invented it. Specifically, he figured out how to repurpose the plastics into durable good computers, appliances, even automobiles. Now this company has won a reputation as the most versatile plastics repurposer around.
“They’re unique in their ability to take a very broad mix of recyclable materials, a mishmash of things, and turn it into a high value product,” says Tony Kingsbury, an industry-affairs manager at Dow Chemical Company.
Inc. Magazine, p. 84
Advances in Technology. Each advance in technology—iPod, Internet, cell phones—opens up markets for a variety of other peripheral innovations. For instance, the ring tone industry, non-existent a decade ago, is now a billion-dollar business. The Internet has spawned a plethora of online businesses. Any new hardware creates a market for new software applications.
Demographic Shifts. The millennial generation thinks, acts and consumes differently from Generation X or the Baby Boomers. What new products or services do they want and need? Due to improved health care in developing countries, this newest generation is coming into the world with higher material expectations. The industrialization of India and China has created large new middle classes with higher standards of living. Meanwhile, as the Baby Boomer generation ages without dying, it will need new kinds of health care services.
Failing Educational System. Should learning be such a difficult, inefficient, and laborious process? Why do so many children fall through the cracks? Yet learning works in certain places. What processes and systems can work for children of many learning styles, backgrounds and abilities? What products, services and processes can speed the learning process while enriching it and making it more fun?
Your Life. Why shouldn’t your life be more innovative? You could be healthier, wealthier, and wiser if you put some of these innovation principles to work for you. We all need to find new ways to improve living conditions and our own lives.
We must innovate! We must incorporate innovation into our organizational practices. We must maintain an innovative edge to stay competitive as individuals, as organizations, as a country. We must innovate to solve the myriad of societal problems that we face.
Try This! Low-Tech Innovations
Name three major innovations in the past 20 years. I suspect that you are like 90% of the people I ask this question to. You thought of the internet, cell phones, Blackberries, GPS positioning, iPod, and other high tech innovations. Let me suggest three low-tech innovations:
• Starbucks. Starbucks has created a third space, neither home nor work. It is not about the coffee. It is a sanctuary, a refuse away from the world. Meanwhile, other companies still ask: “Do they consume it at home or at work?”
• Harry Potter. If you or I went to a major publisher and said that we had a 742 page book for 12-year-old boys, the publisher would laugh us out of the building. But J.K. Rowlands carved out new market space in a struggling industry. Millions of boys and girls quit swimming, quit playing video games, and quit playing baseball to dive fully into this seven-book series. These kids, whom experts say cannot focus, clearly focused on these books.
• Bagged lettuce. When I was growing up, there was only leaf lettuce or head lettuce. But now. . .chop, chop, chop. Throw in some croutons and a packet of Caesar dressing, and for three dollars (same as a small mocha), you can have a ready-made salad. And millions are sold.
• You fill in this bullet point: What low-tech innovation has impacted you favorably?
Here’s my point: by maintaining the mental model that innovations are high tech, you are letting yourself off the hook. After all, few of us will invent a Blackberry or an iPod. But we can still be innovators.