Boom! Did that get your attention?
Trend spotting Innovation
It’s time for a bit of a ramble. A trend I keep noticing. The fortune 1000 are up to some interesting tricks of as late- staged innovation acquisition is one of them thats becoming more and more prevalent. What’s that mean exactly? First I love the phrase, to me it conveys this pipeline like process to acquire innovation.
It used to be that we’d think X company hangs out and notices Y company and says lets buy that company. Classic merger acquisition material.
But now we see something else. X company creates a program to encourage, influence, occupy and or attain the would be forces of innovation change and pull that into the fold of the company, possibly before Y company takes root and takes off.
Exposed corporate R&D to the average citizen is doubling every quarter it seems. It used to be a few companies, a few huge outliers and now its going corporate mainstream.
What are the benefits?
One curious effect is the benefits- are they netting the benefits – and what are the benefits? Importing innovation culture? Influencing their own people to think more creatively or is it purely lets inspire and watch and acquire. Is it the API like model developers understand all too well- ie build with me and show me what’s next? Or is the game rigged at the start, welcome aboard, all your dreaming are belongs to us. 😛
Of course because of this trend, its own ecosystem has sprung up around it. There are countless corporate R&D instigator like firms, some just a twist on typical consulting firms who now specialize in this participatory R&D process. Along side that there are a few platforms, and then yep apps and other things that all cater to this overall trend. Soon we’ll have slogans, or cool words or phrases like mine here “staged innovation acquisition” sweet.
It’s about ecosystems.
Its fun to watch ecosystems grow. Its like a virus, it spreads and mutates across the population and you never really know what takes hold until it does in spades and then before ya know it, a new arc of something is coming.
The bigger question is why this, why now? I think part of the answer is where innovation going today and how fast innovation can occur and how participatory innovation is really beneficial across the board in many ways. It also speaks to a kind of innovation where you’re getting more than the raw idea, tech or concept, you’re acquiring the minds that manifested it, and you’re acquiring the momentum of that notion and that all together can leap frog things if properly lured in and or acquired and sprung from.
Don’t worry- traditional R&D isn’t going away, this is just R&D’s hey there moment.
