Daily Inspiration: Mastering Innovation – “World class innovators focus on pervasive connectivity”

“World class innovators focus on pervasive connectivity” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Futurist Jim Carroll is running his Daily Inspiration series for March 11/18 on the theme of “What is it that World Class Innovators Do That Others Don’t Do?” The leadership ideas are based on an original keynote he gave early in 2009 after a client asked him to identify these issues. He developed this carefully curated list based on 15 years of observations of how his global clients responded to fast-paced change. 

Connectivity changes everything!

When I was compiling my list of ‘what world-class innovators do that others don’t do,’ it was obvious that all of them were chasing the new pervasive connectivity that was emerging in our world.

Pervasive connectivity? It takes many shapes and forms, including:

• Social media: Sudden new connectivity to customers, constituents, and citizens provides new pathways for communication, collaboration, and continual critical fast action.
• The Internet of Things: The arrival of the smart home, smart factory, and smart device provides business model disruption, big idea innovation, and new forms of imaginative opportunity chasing.
• Fast teams: Knowledge collaboration tools for internal and external sharing become commonplace, and the ability to connect like-minds became critical!

All of these fast-emerging trends provided both big opportunities and massive new challenges.

Social media? Many of my keynotes for leadership teams and associations focused on the need to understand and align to the new form of social interaction that was emerging, and understand the opportunity that lay within. The CEO of Burger King especially wanted my message to several thousand franchise owners in Las Vegas to focus on the fact that customers were talking about them – good and bad – on weird new networks with the names of Twitter, Instagram, and more – and that this could work for them, or against them.

Smart devices? Many technology companies asked me for a keynote that specifically took a look at the new forms of hyperconnectivity emerging in the digital world, and how this could and would lead to new product innovation, the invention of completely new product ideas, and fundamental service reinvention. The opportunity was suddenly there in everything that had the potential to become smart, connected, aware, and shareable. We were on the doorstep of a sudden new opportunity, and it was important to define it, understand it, shape it, and chase it. Hyperconnectivity was even becoming a big opportunity in the world of golf.

Fast, connected teams? There was also a realization that suddenly, there were wonderfully sophisticated new internal and external information-sharing tools that allowed an organization to tap into, share, access, capture, and capitalize upon a new form of collaborative knowledge. The era of the networked organization was clearly upon us, and world-class innovators were eager to demand results from this new form of collaborative creativity to learn how to respond to new issues at speed. All of this was leading to a world of ‘fast ideas.’

Put all of these connectivity trends together – and add a few more – and suddenly the world of hyper-connectivity was providing a new form of product, a new style of organization, and a new means of communication. All the old rules, ideas, and thinking that applied to a previous world of separate, disparate, and unconnectedness no longer mattered, and indeed, were suddenly leadership ideas from the olden days.

And it became a reality as world-class innovators realized that it was within the reality of hyper-connectivity that their future opportunities could be found!

Today? These new forms of connectivity matter even more!