The World is a Lab for Innovation

 

Many organisations invest in innovation labs, centres and similar facilities to support innovation. This is often a sensible investment because innovation can require specialised equipment, technologies, expertise and infrastructure.

However, every innovation lab is designed around today's understanding of tomorrow.

The technologies selected, the equipment installed and the expertise assembled are all based on assumptions regarding what future innovations might require.

Yet truly innovative concepts often challenge those assumptions.

A breakthrough idea may depend on technologies that did not exist when the lab was designed. It may require expertise that sits outside the organisation. 

It may involve capabilities that have never previously been combined. It may even demand an entirely new ecosystem of partners, suppliers and technologies.

As a result, the infrastructure created to enable innovation can sometimes become a limitation to innovation.

The challenge is not only physical.

Innovation opportunities rarely emerge only inside innovation labs. They emerge through customer interactions, operational challenges, changing market behaviours, technological developments and countless observations that occur during everyday work.

This is why the most successful innovators often behave as if the world itself is a lab for innovation.

They understand that opportunities can emerge anywhere. Equally, they recognise that the capabilities required to realise those opportunities may also exist anywhere.

Innovation labs and innovation centres can be valuable components of an innovation ecosystem. However, they should be viewed as enablers that rapidly adapt to the changing times – their RoI (return on investment) should also be designed for a shorter duration.

Advanced testing facilities for regular offerings can always be invested in from the business-as-usual perspectives and not necessarily, the innovation perspective.

No innovation lab can contain all future possibilities and what is foreseen today can become obsolete soon – maybe tomorrow!

The most successful innovators understand this and treat the world itself as their go-to lab for innovation.

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