Einstein famously said that today’s problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them, and history suggests he was right. Solving societal challenges through the centuries has typically relied on break-through technologies and break-out thinking. It has relied on imagining, or re-imagining, the world and then making that re-imagined world real. On creativity and innovation.
It’s easy to forget that every large corporation was once a start-up. As they grew, so did the bureaucratic apparatus to manage their operations. Innovation thrives when the mission is inspiring, the business constraints are clear, and when curiosity, creativity and new thinking are encouraged across the organisation.
The successful achievement of any ‘transformation’ goal depends more on the engagement and enablement of people than the deployment of technology. And in an ever more deeply interconnected future, it is essential to develop a systems view, and an integrated approach to transforming business models to support 'transformation as usual'.
We're living in turbulent times. Prevailing business ideologies are being called into question; people are expecting more from organisations; and we're in the early stages of a fourth industrial revolution. Only organisations that develop a supportive culture and systemic approach to continuous innovation will survive.
Much has been written about the need to review the capitalist models and the need to shift to ‘profit with purpose’ models that create ‘shared value’. Yet the rationale for creating shared value (CSV) is sometimes poorly understood, and it's important to distinguish it from corporate social responsibility (CSR).
