UNDER THE PATRONAGE of

Innovation is perceived today as a major pre-requisite for any successful organization and a key driver for competitiveness. It is defined by Peter Drucker as “the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth". Innovations do not necessarily mean product or service innovation, it may include innovations in leadership, innovations in designing business processes and models, innovations in enabling technologies, innovation in partnering. Petteri Alinikula, Vice President and Head of Core Technology Centres, Nokia Research Center, quotes ―Innovation is diversifying. We now have business model innovation, product innovation and technology innovation.

To achieve success over a long period of time, all organizations need to embrace innovation. Porter (1) believes that it is at the Innovation Driven Stage in which competitive advantage is gained through “the ability to produce innovative products and services at the global technology frontier using the most advanced methods”. Research confirms that innovative organizations – those that are able to use innovation to improve their processes or to differentiate their products and services – outperform their competitors, measured in terms of market share, profitability, growth or market capitalization. This demonstrates that innovation can enhance competitiveness, but it requires a different set of management knowledge and skills (2).

Success in organization today demands constant innovation. Generating fresh solutions to problems and the ability to inherit new products or services for a changing market are part of the intellectual capital market that gives an enterprise its competitive edge. In a dynamic environment, success comes from looking for the next opportunity and having the ability to find hidden connections and insights into new products or services.

The government of Singapore elaborated five pivotal points about innovation to place emphasis on the effective implementation of innovation:

• Innovation takes many forms. Innovation can be a process, product, service, or anything that helps firms to perform better.
• Innovation can originate from anyone. Anyone can innovate, as innovation requires a mindset that probes perceived boundaries to bring new ideas to fruition.
• Innovation is not creativity alone. Innovation is more than creativity as it begins with an idea and subsequent implementation to produce new value.
• Innovation is more than improvement. Improvement is the refinement of existing methods to get more output from the same input while innovation breaks new ground, giving new outputs from less or different inputs.
• Innovation pays in quantum amounts. The impact of innovation results in quantum leaps in value creation that encompasses effective results5.

Implementing innovations however does not happen haphazardly or sporadically within organizations. Successful innovation is accomplished consistently and systematically, given the true voice of the customer and a process for delivering solutions. Organizations that innovate successfully do so using an efficient and repeatable methodology.

Drivers of Innovation

There are factors singly and in combination that drives successful innovation; these motivate and shape innovation efforts, and determine their success or failure. People or the educated society is one of the factors that drive innovation; the key to driving innovation is to help an organization foster a culture of innovation for its own employees. Other factors that drive innovation include but are not limited to competitive pressures and changes in technology. Results of this measure can help identify an organization’s vulnerability to new technologies that might be a threat to its competitive status.

Figure 1: Factors Driving Different Types of Innovations

The Importance of Innovations

Innovation is changing rapidly, in response to globalization, external pressures such as climate change, the increasing complexity of goods and services, and the recognition that new ideas are one of the best ways for organizations to create new value. What used to be a clearly defined process, in which companies developed knowledge and used it to create products to sell, is being replaced by a complex web of relationships that binds companies to competitors, commerce to academia, and disparate business and scientific disciplines to one another.

Matthias Kaiserswerth, Director of IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, explains ―The nature of innovation is changing, away from local R&D teams to global collaborative teams, away from central innovation to collaborative innovation, and away from single-discipline work to multidisciplinary work. ― We are moving from developing product functions to developing value for customers, and moving our business from information science to services science. This means moving from a proprietary intellectual property (IP) model to a well-balanced IP model, and from product-focused innovation to multifaceted innovation (3).

Innovation is essential to the future of economic prosperity and quality of life. It can be defined as the successful exploitation of new ideas, which can mean new to an organization industry or sector. It applies to products, services, business processes and models, marketing and enabling technologies. Science and technology are a vital source of innovation. Businesses are increasingly engaging in innovation, reaching outside their walls for ideas. Users are innovating independently and in partnership with organizations, creating the demand for new products and services.

Government procurement can drive innovation through creating ―lead markets‖ for innovative products and services. Regulation can drive or get in the way of innovation depending on conditions. And increasingly, innovation is global as the spread of new technologies and knowledge drives market integration and collaboration as well as competition across borders. This changing face of innovation is challenging organizations, Government and wider society to think and act differently if we are to have a successful economy and society over the next decades. Harnessing all the different types of innovation across all sectors is essential if we wish to create the conditions in which our economy can prosper.

Firmly believing in the importance of innovations in creating competitiveness for the region, HBMeU has chosen “ Innovation Based Competitiveness “ as its main 2012 Annual Congress’ theme. Since its inception the university has been driven by innovations in all of its practices including the design and development of its products and services.

This year, the congress will host three distinguished parallel conferences which will discuss and debate how innovations can become a key driver to competitiveness in multiple sectors including education, health, environment, business, etc:

• The 6th Quality Conference in the Middle East: Innovation Based Competitiveness and Business Excellence
• The 5th Conference on eLearning Excellence in the Middle East: Sustainable Innovation in Education [capacity-building, blended learning and beyond]
• The 4th e-Health and Environment Conference in the Middle East: Building an Innovative and Competitive Vision for e-Health and Environment in the 21st Century

The congress will also feature many other activities including policy and strategy round tables, the annual VEC event, hands-on workshops and many formal and informal networking opportunities including an exclusive gala dinner.