Investigating or even exuding new ideas is part of an Executive's responsibility. It may be deemed interesting by most activists, but the main raison d'etre is to determine and manage risk. Therefore, a conference about innovation is generally aimed at rationalizing innovation and in this instance, rationalizing the risk of innovation.

The recent Innovation Conference held by Knowledge Resources in association with Mindstir and the Da Vinci Institute in South Africa was an attempt to give visibility to innovation. It failed because the risk associated with innovation was never addressed. However, Prof Roy Marcus did address unintended consequences wrt innovation.

It can be compared by generating expectations about a Ferrari sports car, without carefully describing the cost and training required and also, the consequences for not having a Ferrari.

Innovation is clearly not a cool concept even though it may appear to be. It can't be made cool either because Innovation comes at a price. A very expensive price, because it is 90% personal. Becoming innovative is a bit of a trek through the desert, one need to go from personal to the environment and back, acknowledging all your insecurities such as lack of knowledge and all environmental shortcomings until you find that balance of giving and taking, i.e. existing. Only once you have reached that place, can you then survive by being innovative.

An example is the Mercedes F-Cell concept car.

Please note the terminology used (necessity is the mother of invention) followed by the rationalization of risk (eco-pressure). Daimler-Benz is in exact balance, it knows exactly what is required to survive and has therefore demonstrated survivability with this concept car. That is brilliantly innovative but it came at the price of years of slogging design, production exposures and market failures such as Chrysler.

There is no prize for innovation, it is a constant search for survival - for example, the USA is going through a severe recession, but their productivity is already up by 6%, they only dropped to the nr 2 competitive position in the world and their listed companies are sitting on mountains of cash ready for the next boom cycle.

The Global Competitiveness Report rated South Africa at nr 45 i.e. not innovative. It’s worse than our North African counterparts which probably explain why Southern Africa is not really performing well regarding yearly economic growth rates.   Government knows this (for a long time already) and has in true Welfare State regime initiated (another) functionality such as the Technology Innovation Agency without changing anything else.

Apart from not being “rated” innovative, a Government that cannot manage poverty and instability while discriminating against minorities is clearly not innovative. In fact, the first requirement for innovation is honesty. Observing a BEE delegate openly commenting that Government is to be ignored as far as developing new ideas, is quite illuminating. The innovative risk in that case must have been simply too high i.e. the cost of involving Government in Innovation is too high.

My conclusion of the Innovation Conference is that the efforts expended by the organizers should be commended. Then in true innovative fashion, maturity growth of the “discipline” should be undertaken. However, I see the biggest contribution of an Innovation Center in building “bridges” in the field of design.

For example, the SA Construction Industry (SAFCEC) is the most competitive in the world and has successfully facilitated the recent 2010 Soccer World Cup, but their share prices have dropped. How can designers help to innovate a strategic solution?