Innovative Green Technology for Global Sustainability

 

 

Let us consider our world as a system over space. We will understand that air pollution in one part of the globe affects the air quality, and the pesticides sprayed in one geographical location could impact fish stocks and coral reefs on the Australian coast. On the other hand, if we think of our world as a system over time, then we can realize that the decisions made by our ancestors on our land have an impact on our current agricultural practices (Frick, 2016). Succinctly put, what we decide to do about our economic, climate, and sustainable policies today will have a more substantial effect on our future generations. Designing greener and innovative technological products and services require society to understand their role better to accomplish global sustainability. The following video link is a snapshot attempt to provide a glimpse of innovative greener technologies that will likely transform society to adapt and sustain an eco-friendly globe.

Innovative Green Technology for Global Sustainability

References

Frick, T. (2016). Designing for sustainability. O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Innovation - Blackberry Story

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We have seen the best-run and unanimously admired companies are more often unable to sustain their market share on performance over an extended period. In many instances, the very same strategies that once propelled the organizations to remain competitive ends up leading to their decline due to a slow start to the adoption of emerging technology, organizational inertia, and adherence to a set of principles that are way beyond its relevance. Simply put, failure to be different is one of the primary sources for the downfall of once-successful organizations. To remain competitive and be successful today and tomorrow, organizations should continually improve in the short term and develop strategies that include increasing variation, innovation, adapting to consumers' social behavior, and being open to embracing disruptive technologies for the long term.

Blackberry is a classic example that once appeared to have an unassailable market share in smartphones (my first smartphone was a blackberry), especially among business customers. It failed to acknowledge the launch and adoption of the touchscreen-based technology of its competitor Apple’s iPhone. It ignored the data as it once described iPhone as just a unique product targeted at consumers without paying attention to the vast inroads Apple was making into its core business customers. Blackberry was overconfident of its market share with its enterprise customers without realizing that Apple’s touch screen and universal internet access were becoming hugely popular with its customers and regular consumers. It eventually got steamrolled by Apple and Google’s Android, leaving it far behind with a market share of just over 0.2% in 2016 (Pugh, 2021). While Apple relied on data gathered from its proprietary retail stores that consumers were willing to pay for its iPhone due to its innovative touch screen interface and seamless internet connectivity, Blackberry failed to leverage the consumer data about the marketplace (Glass & Callahan, 2014). Unlike its competitors, it could not invest in opportunities to innovate and introduce newer, faster, and cheaper product lines and services.

The forces that influenced the demise of Blackberry included its failure to adapt strategies to become different by thinking differently and recognizing that new innovative technologies offer tremendous opportunities to tackle the most critical societal challenges characterized by a generational, cultural shift in the marketplace. Companies that are ready to create a culture with a) an ultimate focus on leveraging data to understand consumer behavior, b) being flexible to adapt to emerging innovative technologies, and c) recognizing that anything and everything they have developed today might become obsolete by changing markets and destructive competition are the ones that will eventually sustain and survive for the long haul. In conclusion, organizations should be open to change and iterate on their ideas quickly before someone else introduces a competitive product in the market. 

 

References

Glass, R., & Callahan, S. (2014). The Big Data-Driven Business: How to Use Big Data to Win Customers, Beat Competitors, and Boost Profits (1st ed.). Wiley.

Pugh, A. (2021, May 28). 10 businesses that failed to adapt. E-Careers. https://www.e-careers.com/connected/10-businesses-that-failed-to-adapt

 

Serendipity, Error & Exaptation - A Synopsis

 

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Serendipity, in many instances, is typically associated with “happy accidents.” In contrast, organizations consider the concepts of innovation and serendipity as siblings, where the latter is the raw material that is instrumental for successful innovation. Organizations like Apple and Tesla have invested tremendously in serendipitous approaches over the years, as seen by their products that have reached the consumer market in the past two decades. Alternatively, in the world of science, even though drug discoveries like penicillin, heparin, X-rays, etc., are considered to have serendipitous origins; their published write-ups seldom tell the story of ‘chance’ factors that led to such discoveries (Fink, Reeves, Palma, & Farr, 2017). The concept of Serendipity originated a thousand years ago when three princes of Serendip (Currently known as Sri Lanka) were sent on a journey by their father to evaluate their suitability to reign his kingdom. The three clever princes were so observant during their travels they described the camel’s physical attributes to its owner, who had lost the animal. They had not seen the animal before but could accurately describe the camel, including it being blind in one eye, missing a tooth, and carrying butter and honey on its back. The seemingly casual observations that humans generally miss turned into something more meaningful when the clever princes could combine their reflections and reasoning to discover new things by sagacity. The Princes of Serendip became the reason for the term ‘Serendipity’ to originate and was used by Horace Walpole in 1754 (Kingdon, 2012).

One of the serendipity innovations are the story of David Green. He co-founded Harvard Bioscience developed and manufactured the world’s first regenerated trachea implant helping a 36-year-old man with inoperable terminal tracheal cancer. The founder David Green in 2004, got interested in the power of stem cells. He had no background in medicine but took the initiative to pour through every scientific journal article, attending conferences related to stem cells and got connected with many experts in the field, and decided to create the machinery to build highly fibrous body parts like the trachea, which saved the 36-year-old patient. He credits his life-saving innovation as a collaborative effort amongst a team of professionals.

Innovation born out of errors or failures or mistakes is more common and is considered good mistakes that are original and yielding products of great value. John Hopps’s life-saving innovation pacemaker is an excellent example. While he was researching hypothermia and being an electrical engineer, he was trying to leverage radio frequency to restore the body temperature and realize that if a heart can stop beating while cooling, it can be restarted again with artificial stimulation leading to the discovery of a pacemaker.

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Exaptation is a concept where previously envisioned design functions are repurposed or re-functionalized for a new design function.  This concept is predominantly encountered in diverse domain areas of science, economics, and architecture. One such innovation that resulted from leveraging the concept of exaptation is the “Millennium Park,” an innovative urban park located in Chicago, and it was completed in 2004. The park's innovative design was said to have emerged unexpectedly from a traditionally envisioned design based on a classic beaux-arts garden. Eventually, it has evolved into an outdoor art museum reflecting the global avant-garde architecture with interactive and contemporary monumental sculptures and landscape designs (Kingdon, 2012).

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Serendipity, happy accidents and exaptation are all concepts that spur innovator’s journey to make a change by never giving up and creating value through hard work, creativity, and perseverance.

References

Fink, T. M. A., Reeves, M., Palma, R., & Farr, R. S. (2017). Serendipity and strategy in rapid innovation. Nature Communications, 8(1), 2002. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02042-w

 

Kingdon, M. (2012). The Science of Serendipity: How to Unlock the Promise of Innovation (1st ed.). Wiley.

 

 

 

Forecasting & Prediictions - From a Business or Innovation Context

 

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              The terms forecasting and predictions in business resonate with me personally and professionally. Analytics has been around as long as data has been around. With the rapid technological evolution, the predictive and forecasting capability has added tremendous value to organizations with evidence-based facts to make better decisions. Forecasting is not art, but it all about leveraging the right domain expertise in combination with the right statistical and advanced analytical tools to provide an insightful solution for actionable decision-making by the business stakeholders. Many forecasters rely on a “point” forecast for the best estimate of the prediction without considering uncertainties in the recent past (Gilliland, 2015). Highlighting uncertainties with appropriate prediction intervals is critical for reliable estimates. History has some great lessons to offer when forecasts have gone amiss, and the one worth mentioning is about the founder of IBM, who in 1947 predicted that there was a world market only for about five computers. So technically, basing the prediction on just past data can lead to misleading conclusions. An insightful predictive modeler is aware that the future may never mimic the past, and the more prolonged the forecasting timeline more significant the ambiguity.

           There has been an explosion of forecasting methods from structural modeling or state-space models to Bayesian forecasting to Exponential smooth to Neural Nets to multivariate models to dynamic artificial neural networks. The forecasters have a healthy debate about the best method, and the universal fact is the choice of the method would always depend on the type of problem encountered, period of prediction, quality of data, availability of subject matter expertise in the domain area of interest and other causal factors.

           Nikola Tesla happens to be one of my favorite inventors not because he was touted as a rival to the great scientist Thomas Edison but has made remarkable predictions in his lifetime. He is also known as the tech superstar from Serbia who had close to 300 patents. His famous predictions included the smartphone and wireless technology, which he believed would take the world by storm. And my favorite prediction of Tesla is autopilot and self-driving cars, and in just 118 years, the 21st-century innovator Elon Musk made it a reality, and Tesla has been immortalized (Ratner, 2019). 

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          The forces that influenced Tesla to be one of the radical predictors is his ability to think outside the box and happened to be a nonconformist. He had the background to pursue scientific opportunities because of his education and experience working with someone like Thomas Edison, who was equally inspiring and accomplished. When you have the freedom to tinker, innovators can predict a future that is achievable and inspire future innovators to make their predictions a reality.

 

References

Gilliland, M. (2015). Business forecasting (1st ed.). Wiley.

Ratner, P. (2019). 10 of Nikola Tesla’s most amazing predictions. Big Think. https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/10-nikola-teslas-most-amazing-predictions

 

Scenario Planning vs Traditional Forecasting

 

We live in a world of change, and most of the organizations traditionally leaned on strategic planning. However, the rapid rate of change in the business environment due to operational, social, economic, technology, political, and leadership factors influenced organizations to shift to a simplified planning approach. The famous strategy consulting groups McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group was quick to adapt to the scenario planning approach, which is more of a participative process to the strategy with core features of diverse thinking and dialogue, enabling organizations to identify disruptive signals and address them proactively (Chermack, 2011). RAND Corporation was instrumental in pioneering the technique called “future-now thinking” in the late 1960s. Scenario planning has many definitions over the years with a common theme – it is a robust tool to plan potential future possibilities or a ‘range of alternative futures or scenarios’ (Wade, 2012), taking into consideration the environmental factors that might impact the decision-making process over a period of time. In other words, scenario planning is considered a tool that can reveal opportunities that might develop in the future and how the organizations can leverage that knowledge to adapt and make better decisions in the present.

The scenario planning follows a process that includes identifying the exemplary scenario to focus on and then how it would impact the future and early factors that are likely to lead to an overall strategy for the organization to deal with the scenario that is likely to be encountered. And the plans should be customized to a given situation or business context, and the strategy can either be developed based on a given set of scenarios or scenarios can be constructed after a strategy has been agreed upon.

Advantages of scenario planning include a) both qualitative and quantitative aspects are taken into consideration, b) allows the stakeholders across the board to validate their assumptions, c) fosters an environment of strategic thinking and allows to reevaluate current decisions based on the new information gathered d) enables to identify ‘weak signals’ including technological gaps and creates space to include them in long-range planning for the organization, e) promotes coordination and collaboration across teams facilitating cohesive decision-making process ((Mietzner & Reger, 2005).

Dis-advantages of scenario planning consists of a) the process is time-consuming, b) requires subject matter expertise to be involved in the scenario planning exercise and choosing the right personnel to contribute might become challenging for organizations, c) at times it becomes cumbersome to take into account multiple scenarios while the planning sessions (Mietzner & Reger, 2005).

Traditional forecasting is based on the quantitative exploration of historical data to predict the future. It relies on the ability to recognize data patterns with a logical and analytical approach. Many quantitative techniques enable organizations and practitioners to predict the future based on facts observed in quantitative information. Temporal data is vital to predicting the future by monitoring trends and patterns observed in the historical data, which can be anything from sales, performance, stock market, rainfall, etc. One should take into account key principles of forecasting, which includes a) acknowledging forecasts are not perfect and susceptible to the margin of error, b) forecasts tend to be more reliable for groups than individual items, c) short term forecasts are better than long term forecasts, d) data quality should be robust, e) beware of outliers, f) forecast accuracy needs to be monitored to evaluate performance.

The advantages of traditional forecasting methodologies are it is simple to construct and interpret the results based on quantitative facts. The disadvantages are a) most organizations do not have the right technology or expertise to leverage the tools and methodologies b) forecasting processes also rely on qualitative aspects along with the quantitative facts and need human intervention to interpret the quantitative findings taking into account causal business scenarios that might have impacted specific predictions, c) forecasting errors can be detrimental to organizations.

 

References

Chermack, T. J. (2011). Scenario Planning in Organizations: How to Create, Use, and Assess Scenarios (Illustrated ed.). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Mietzner, D., & Reger, G. (2005). Advantages and disadvantages of scenario approach for strategic foresight. International Journal of Technology Intelligence and Planning, 1(2), 220. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijtip.2005.006516

Wade, W. (2012). Scenario planning: A field guide to the future (1st ed.). Wiley.

Think Tanks Role in Innovation - Overview

 

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In the current era of technological, scientific & social evolution, Think Tanks have a unique place of transforming innovative ideas into practice with a purpose to serve humanity. The first Think Tank originated at the beginning of the 20th century in the USA, and currently, we have close to 2000 Think Tanks and research centers in the US. As per Britannica, the term ‘think tank’ was referenced in World War II to identify a safe place to discuss plans and strategies, which later in the 1960s became the source of private non-profit policy organizations. The best way to check the credibility of Think Tanks is by focusing on the institution’s mission, vision, and the scholars that contribute towards diverse topics, including public, political, economics, strategy, and policy issues. Most of the think tanks are non-profit organizations whose primary goal is to promote significant public, political and economic decisions that are likely to impact global impact. Think Tanks are considered an intellectual resource for solving complex problems at both strategic and tactical levels. Bedford & Hadar (2014) succinctly summarize think tanks not only “think” for other organizations but also connect us globally with innovative, actionable ideas.

Inayatullah (1990) aptly proposes that the leading role of a futurist is to step outside the box and view the world in a way that is different from the norm so that the present appears remarkable and provides opportunities to explore the future creations that are purposeful alternatives. Inayatullah has been instrumental in proposing two methodologies, namely causal layered methodology and push-pull-weight futures triangle (Inayatullah, 2008), to facilitate exploration of issues, scan factors, and trends at a deeper level.  The causal layered analysis includes four descriptive levels, namely quantitative trends (litany), economic, political, historical factors (systemic), worldviews, and metaphor (Palmer & Ellis, 2009). Think Tanks thus provide an avenue to think about the desired future that we would like to be part of proactively. It enables us to anticipate issues and consequences accounting for sensitivity, change patterns, worldviews, myths, and metaphors, and invest in the innovative process, emphasizing idea generation and idea evaluation.

The two think Tanks that I follow diligently are Earth Institute (Est. 1995) and Kaiser Family Foundation (Est. 1948) (TBS, 2020). Sustainability is a topic that I am very passionate about and the Earth Institute has phenomenal researchers, economists, business and policy experts, teachers, students, and scientists who contribute holistically to diverse topics that impact our global ecosystem, including climate, water, energy, global health, agriculture, hazards, and risk reduction, urbanization, peace, and justice (The Earth Institute, 2021). The team focuses on engaging directly with multiple responsible stakeholders to improve the environment with practical strategies universally adopted and genuinely learn from their successes and failures.

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Kaiser Family Foundation's (KFF) mission is all about addressing the need "for trusted information on national health issues" and has been a leader in health policy and journalism. Recently they have done a stellar job to bring visibility into highlighting the impact of the recent pandemic and its implications on humanity across our nation. I can completely relate to the core values of the KFF as they rely on evidence and facts. They play a critical role with their contributions to influence changes in health policies and a neutral organization that hold the government and our health care system accountable for their contributions towards people's wellness.

                                                        Image Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

Regardless of the vision and mission, for-profit or non-profit, think tanks must be a center for knowledge products focused on research with evidence-based facts and not overly based on opinions. Think tanks should promote knowledge creation in collaboration with experts in the respective domain areas to influence policies and future innovations that benefit humans worldwide.

References

Bedford, D., & Hadar, G. (2014). Do think tanks think? Academic Conferences International Limited.

Inayatullah, S. (1990). Deconstructing and reconstructing the future: predictive, cultural, and critical epistemologies.  Futures, March, pp. 115-41.

 

Inayatullah, S. (2008). Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming. Foresight, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 4-21.  https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680810855991

 

Palmer, J., & Ellis, N. (2009). Methodology for a think tank: the future of military and veterans' health. Foresight: The Journal of Futures Studies, Strategic Thinking, and Policy, 11(3), 14-27. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14636680910963918

TBS. (2020). The 50 most influential think tanks in the United States. TheBestSchools.Org. https://thebestschools.org/features/most-influential-think-tanks/

The Earth Institute - Columbia University. (2021). Columbia.Edu. https://www.earth.columbia.edu/