Innovation Networks improve new product flow
Stumble It!If you want to innovate you must first learn to collaborate
A couple of years ago I co-authored a major report for Forfas (the Irish national policy advisory board for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation) on Innovation Networks under the overall editorship of Tom Martin.
The report was published in June 2004 and it encouraging to see some of the major research houses such as Forrester echoing the same theme of networks as the new hotspots of innovation.
Forrester research is expensive (and concise) but I thought I would highlight three of their titles as it reinforces the message that we are moving rapidly beyond an economy based on companies and supply chains to one based on networks:
- Innovation Networks
A New Market Structure Will Revitalize Invention-To-Innovation Cycles
- US Innovation Agenda Must Focus On Networks
The US Must Restructure Investments To Win In Global Innovation Networks
- Software Innovation Networks Go Vertical
A New Market Structure Will Help Vendors Deliver Vertical Software Innovations
I include links and an executive summary paragraph for each report ....
Innovation Networks - A New Market Structure Will Revitalize Invention-To-Innovation Cycles
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Length: 21 pages
Finicky customers, ruthless competition, and stringent regulations are accelerating demand for technology-enabled innovation. But supply-side deficiency and ineffectiveness hamper firms' ability to convert inventions into profitable innovations. The result? A new market ecosystem -- called Innovation Networks -- will emerge to match global demand for innovation with worldwide supply. Innovation Networks will let firms fluidly weave internally and externally available invention and innovation services to optimize the profitability of their products, services, and business models. Innovation Networks will deconstruct vertically integrated invention-to-innovation cycles in software, finance, and CPG industries -- and reinvent the formula for success in regional, national, and global markets.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Length: 9 pages
On December 15, the US Council on Competitiveness hosted the National Innovation Initiative (NII) Summit. The NII recommended creating a US innovation agenda to reverse the decline in America's ability to compete globally based on innovation. The NII Summit's focus on talent, investment, and infrastructure are solid. But the US can't win in this global competition merely by more invention. It must also internalize a new game -- which Forrester calls Innovation Networks -- in which US players must engage rival firms from around the world in a co-opetitive game that combines transformation, brokering, and financing, as well as invention.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Length: 11 pages
Vertical-specific Software Innovation Networks will become the hotbeds for technology advances, with multiple networks battling it out in each vertical. These networks -- made up of ISVs, service providers, and forward-thinking users -- will collaboratively develop and market industry-specific solutions built on top of software platforms from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. These networks will allow smart CIOs to consolidate their platform investments and only consider vendors with strong commitments to the platform of their choice. Forward-thinking ISVs will ditch their "not-invented-here" mindset in favor of "best-from-anywhere" to exploit economies of scale offered by vertical Software Innovation Networks.
Tags: innovation networks
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Business networks are biological
Networks competing with networks is the future for supply chains. Harvard Professor Marco Iansiti in his book "The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation and Sustainability" predicts that the future business competition will not be between companies or even supply chains but between networks.
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