Innovation can improve through education

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"While our capacity for innovation has improved from 4.1 to 4.3 on a seven-point scale, our companies' spending on research and development has dropped from 3.5 to 3.4. For 96% of our executives, innovation is increasingly becoming a global game, in which merging and combining talents, ideas, insights and resources across the world is the only way to be successfully innovative," says Awie Vlok, lecturer in innovation management at the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB).

"These ratings show that 91% of South African business executives see innovation as a strategic priority for their businesses and 81% would use innovation to improve their existing products and services. A stronger entrepreneurial culture in education systems (58%) and better alignment of student curricula with the needs of business (56%) are needed in the South African context. Collaborative innovation is a priority for 94% of South African executives, while 93% believe SMEs and individuals can be as innovative as large companies."

New perspective

Vlok says thinking about thinking is vital for innovation. "We differ in terms of our functional orientations - our financial managers think like financial managers, our engineers think like engineers. Innovation starts when our particular mould is no longer adequate for a given situation and we realise that a new perspective is needed. The innovation orientations of people also play a role. Some like to come up with ideas while others would rather build on someone else's ideas; some like risk-taking while others would rather avoid risk, some like to initiate innovation while others would rather follow someone else's process."

"Most managers today experience innovation drivers. These include the speed and magnitude of a changing business landscape, lower entry barriers allowing more competition, the availability of more offerings giving customers greater choice, customers becoming increasingly sophisticated and demanding, growing competition for scarce, value-creating resources, climate change, growing populations, socio-economic challenges and geo-economic power shifts," Vlok explains.

Rules are changing

"The innovation economy is introducing a new game. The rules of the game are changing and the players require new skills to feature in the new game. Innovation benchmarking reports suggest that our region has much to celebrate but we need to improve our innovation through education, a stronger science base and collaboration."

However, there is one major barrier hampering innovation. "Ego is the biggest killer of innovation and sometimes the 'innovation ego-system' disempowers the 'innovation ecosystem'.

"In the knowledge economy it is important to know your strengths but also to always be open to new input. This becomes much easier when leaders accept that they do not have all the answers. We can learn so much from each other and from countries like Finland and Singapore which have results to show and practices to support their intent. We can also establish learning platforms for leaders, expose them to new methods and thinking, solicit greater scholarly involvement in innovation value chains and deliberately bring science and business graduates together," he concludes.