Background
Innovation for organizational value creation
Small “i”
Evolution of small “i”
Innovation for the greater good
Large “I”
Large “I” for the greater good
-
Grameen Bank, BangladeshFounded by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, it provided micro loans to people to improve their economic health.
-
The Institute for One World Health, USAEstablished by Dr. Victoria Hale, this first non-profit pharmaceutical company provides drugs to people in developing countries with infectious diseases.
-
Rid-All, USAEstablished by three childhood friends, it reclaimed 3 acres of abandoned land in Cleveland, Ohio, and transformed it into a thriving urban farm and learning center. It provides healthy food to companies, institutions, and community. The three young black friends truly optimize the power of shared vision in transforming dreams into reality for the greater good.
-
WakaWakaFounded in the Netherlands, it provides solar-powered LED light to some 1.2 billion people around the world. There are more than 200,000 WakaWakas in 43 underdeveloped countries.
-
EAT InitiativeFounded by Dr. Gunhild Stordalen, it strives to meet the global challenge of providing people with a healthy and nutritious diet within safe environments.
Large “I” for a smart future
-
Matching human talent and jobsWhile technological advances have greatly helped improve productivity, human resource remains the most important asset in organizations. Leadership, motivation, job satisfaction, enrichment, job design, communication, and team management are all important human resource management (HRM) practices. Strength-based HRM [20], positive psychology, and psychological capital (PsyCap) [21] advocate that people are most productive and engaged when their job and talents are matched well. Gallup suggests that matching human talents and jobs will greatly increase GDP (several trillion in the USA) while improving happiness of workers [22].
-
Creating new jobs with long life cyclesThe conventional belief was that technology creates more jobs than it destroys. However, recent studies have shown that around 47–50% of job activities can be replaced by technologies of today [23]. Furthermore, technologies are making many jobs’ life cycles increasingly short. Thus, we need innovations that create many knowledge-intensive or personal service jobs that have relatively long life cycles.
-
Leveraging senior citizensPopulation in almost every country is aging rapidly. This trend is the result of several factors including drastic decrease in birth rates, increasing longevity of people with the improved healthcare, improved quality of life and the like. Japan already has about 25% of its population with people over 65 years of age. The working population simply cannot generate sufficient amounts of income and taxes to support the population. We need smart innovations that can leverage the knowledge and experience of senior citizens who can produce value for many organizations [5].
-
Green and sustainability managementThere have been numerous major natural disasters lately, caused by global warming. The world needs smart innovations to clean up the damaged environment and make proactive actions to prevent further deterioration. Many organizations, including governments and NGOs, have initiated green and sustainability-related innovations for environmental protection as well as for financial gains.
-
Design thinkingThe traditional decision making process assumes that the problem under study is well defined and some of the associated variables and parameters are already known. Design thinking, on the other hand, takes into consideration that the decision environment, objectives, variables, and relationships are fluid and dynamic [24]. The main purpose of design thinking is not just for the better bottom line of organizational performance but rather for a much noble concept of what is “good” for society and humanity. Design thinking that can alleviate social ills and problems would help create a smart future.
-
Innovations in education and healthcareFor a smart future, transformative industries need to be reinvented continuously through innovation. Education and healthcare are two most important areas where continuous innovation S-curves need to be generated [2]. Already there are some fundamental changes occurring in education. For example, Computer Science for All (a US program initiated by President Obama in 2016), Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) for “new collar” workers of the future (developed by IBM CEO Ginni Rometty), Minerva School (a hands-on approach to college education), massive open online courses (MOOCS), and Singularity University are good examples. The healthcare industry is also transforming itself to become more accessible, economical, and technically advanced by adopting advanced AI (Watson), robotics (Da Vince surgical robot), smart sensors, and technology convergence.
-
Going from “the probable” to “what is imaginable”The global economy is dynamic with various forces interacting in an unpredictable fashion. The “butterfly effect” indicates that a seemingly insignificant small event in one part of the world may cause tsunami effects in other remote areas of the globe. Dynamic capabilities of the organization are essential to streamline strategic plans that are conducive to the fast changing environmental forces [25]. Thus, future smart is necessary to predict “the probable” of the future. But this approach is not sufficient for creating new products/services, ventures, new customer values, new markets, and new business models. Pursuing “what is imaginable” is especially imperative for creating a smart future for the greater good through innovation [8].