Within our communities the role of business is often seen in purely rational terms. Everyone is looking for business to provide jobs and prosperity.
But it can provide much more than that. It can create a whole new feel for communities, cities and regions.
David Goldman himself passionately believed that education and business, working together, should be catalysts for healthy economic growth and community well-being. His family have had the great vision to create the Goldman endowment to provide a wonderful platform for the development of this powerful relationship.
I am hoping that my year as David Goldman Visiting Professor of Innovation and Enterprise at Newcastle University Business School can catalyse new approaches for regional benefit through open approaches to innovative thinking and action across several domains, relating to business directly and more broadly through its value in the community. The concept here is that for the 21st century we have moved from strategic competitive advantage (fuelled by carefully guarded internal organisational work) to strategic collaborative advantage (where enthusiasm for “common cause” shared goals drives open idea development and problem solving). Let me show you how this might work for business itself and for business engagement with the community.
Open for Business
We have great commercial strengths here, a deeply held work ethic, a pride in the region, and I’m always thrilled by the creativity in businesses of all shapes and sizes. But we need to be more dynamic in this fast-changing 21st century. Let’s not just focus on the other British regions : Barcelona, Shanghai, the Bangalore region and the emerging African and South American city-regions aren’t standing still !
In this context, there is great scope to use open innovation practices to build business momentum in the North East.
What do I mean ? Well, several approaches fit under this open innovation banner.
First, we need to build a more connected innovation eco-system. In simple terms, we need to link “what’s possible” with “what’s needed”. There are many businesses that can problem solve for others if only they were aware of the problem in the first place ! Open innovation approaches can short-cut product development times and reduce costs throughout the business model. One specific benefit of this kind of open eco-system (but not the only one) is that SMEs can gain from clear awareness of the needs of bigger corporations. SMEs can establish novel product opportunities and revenue streams. Bigger businesses get solutions. Why wouldn’t we want that ?
Second, we need an open system to harvest wealth-creating ideas, share them and build them quickly…..this might be through “crowd-sourcing” or “incentivised competitions”, well tried open . We can even “crowd-fund” the best ideas more quickly. It would be of particular value to create this kind of system in those North East industry sectors which we want to drive to a global leadership position.
Clearly, we need the platforms to do this with all the “shared risk and shared reward” that is implicit in open partnerships. Not easy, but there are examples of this practice across
the world, with diverse organisations like Procter & Gamble, GE and Lego at the forefront. In every case, there is a need to establish two things up-front . First, a shared enthusiasm for a common business goal and, second, exactly what needs to be achieved for the business or the sector. There is no one-size-fits-all solution and buy-in depends on that common interest and value.
Open for Community
Turning to the broader question of business engagement in the community.
There is no doubt that everyone feels the pressure of an economic climate that saps energy and vibrancy. But I’m convinced that we might use some open innovation practices to build creative momentum…..not just for businesses but for the North East community as a whole and potentially across the country.
Let me take, as an example, the absolutely critical link between business and education.
Many businesses have wonderful links with educationalists in every age range, from primary through to higher education. I, myself, alway enjoy presenting experimental science in schools, especially at Seaton Burn, and speaking to students at our universities!
My personal view, however, is that these interactions can be siloed, dependent on single person-to-person communications and have limited scope. Best practice in education/ business engagement is not always (I could say, not often) shared broadly and many of our schools and students miss out on scaled initiatives. This is not right.
In addition, as business people it is easy for us to criticise “the system” for a “skills gap”. What we need to do is to use our skills to sort this out. So, let’s imagine for a moment the creation of a “cradle to career” open innovation platform for the regions learners.
Practically, an open web platform could be populated with bundles of business engagement opportunities (visits, talks, blogs, practical experiences etc,etc), could be used to co-ordinate activities for groups of children with specific interests (and who might not have access to these in their own school), could provide a route for governor placements from business (which would be a win-win on both sides) and could even provide a link for school students to access “micro-learning” opportunities in businesses. No invention is required as these platforms already exist for other target uses. All we need is shared enthusiasm, an open innovation approach and re-application of best practice. Beyond this basic idea, an open platform could potentially be used for “crowd-sourced” ideas for improving teaching and learning across the region.
In this community context, our universities can play a leading role. They have expertise in all of the areas that would be needed for this platform work and can provide some of the micro- learning opportunities themselves.It is in their interest too. Great Universities thrive in hot-beds of inspiration and aspiration.
This is just one example of how open “common cause” innovation systems can benefit communities….in this case through business and education engagement. Note that we wouldn’t be alone in doing this, there are initiatives of this kind in the US, in Canada and, naturally, in the Far East…..but I see relatively little of this open, scaled thinking here in the UK.
So, that’s it. I hope that I’ve convinced you that there is value in examining how we can apply globally tried-and-tested open innovation approaches, not only to business opportunities but also in the context of community well-being here in the North East. I believe that we might have the chance to grasp this right now, as the North East Independent Economic Review panel will be sharing its conclusions soon. Let’s hope that it recognises the scope for open innovation as a brilliant route to catalyse and drive regional prosperity in the context of shared goals.
In addition, wouldn’t it be tremendous if the North East’s brand equity (for potential investors) was simply that it was the most open strategic and practical environment to do and build business.
I will certainly be playing my part to build this thinking, using my time as Goldman visiting Professor to educate and, hopefully, inspire key players to grasp this chance for change. I’m not saying that any of this is easy. Innovation never is. But this is a chance for positive change.
If you would like to work with me on this open innovation journey, please get in touch via Dr. Joanna Berry, Director of Engagement at Newcastle University Business School, joanna.berry@newcastle.ac.uk. I am sure that many of you will have great insights to share.