People-centric Innovation

In the rapidly evolving business and economic systems, innovation management is very complex but critical for the firm’s survival and thriving.

Nowadays the business ecosystem is so hyper-connected and interdependent, people all over the world can share information, co-develop new knowledge and co-create fresh ideas. Innovation management today is interdisciplinary, people-centric, and involves applied science (engineering), art (design), cognition (psychology), social norms (culture) and group behavior (sociology), etc. Being people-centric is a transcendent digital trait and the core of innovation.

Take multi-industrial collaboration to spark breakthrough innovation: Digital blurs the functional border, organizational border, industry vertical border and knowledge domain border. The digital boundaries are not sharp lines, they are fluid to streamline information flow and adapt to changes. Many companies have never been better positioned to break out of static industry box and engage in mass collaborations to spark creativity and enforce innovation, Instead of being rigidly grouped around a specific business, digital ecosystem is dynamic, expansive, interdependent, and hyperconnected. The enterprise collaboration platforms and emerging digital technologies enable companies leveraging various environments or ecosystems to take multi-industrial collaboration and spark breakthrough innovation. The ecosystems draw together mutually supportive companies from multiple industries that collectively seek to create differentiated value that could not create alone, especially breakthrough innovation. When continuing innovation take place for the community to thrive, the ecosystem is dynamic and healthy, keep a balanced cycle and reach the renewal stage.

Information systems play a fundamental role in deploying and operating open ecosystems to enable mass innovation: Due to the exponential growth of information and complexity of digital organization, digital innovation is intensive with lots of confusions and many missing pieces. An open information system enables companies to integrate the critical components of a smart platform, which is “open” to allow information exchange and participant involvement. In fact, information is the most time-intensive piece of innovation puzzles. Information System ensures that information is being refined into business foresight and customer insight, and available to allow the right people making the right decisions at the right time. It also ensures that interdependencies and loyalties between partners are taken into account and build up a strong innovation engine. By leveraging digital platforms and technologies, businesses can become highly effective in executing innovative ideas, relying less on silo functions, and more on cross-boundary communication and mass collaboration.

People-centric innovation: The digital era upon us is about people. Fundamentally, creativity is about generating novel ideas to solve human-related problems. Focusing on people's needs should be the right path to grow innovation fruits. Therefore, it’s important to bring up outside-in view for gaining an in-depth understanding of people. Organizations need to get deeply immersed in designing, developing, and delivering innovative products, services or solutions to make their customers happier and people smarter. At the heart of innovation is a life cycle of idea generation, interaction, learning and selection, The point of mass innovation is to bring in new ideas from outside, the lead users or from the wider user community to drive innovation development. The goal isn’t just to be democratized or be cost-efficient, but to ensure people must be the center of innovation.

Innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. In the rapidly evolving business and economic systems, innovation management is very complex but critical for the firm’s survival and thriving. Keep in mind, innovation often happens at the intersection of people and business. Whenever people feel respected and needed in an organization, they are highly engaged in their work, encouraged to participate in creative activities, motivated to innovate, contribute to solve problems in a better way, and catalyze people-centric innovation.

Posted in: Innovation