AI Workgroup, General, Innovation, Leadership

Innovation Transformation Automation: Navigating the Corporate Landscape

In a world that’s rapidly advancing, where the intersection of technology and business continuously redefines industries, it’s imperative for corporate leaders to stay informed and adept. For those at the helm of management in large companies and for AI technologists, understanding the nuances of Innovation, Transformation, and Automation is not just a luxury—it’s a necessity.

1) The Core Differences: Innovation, Transformation, and Automation

Innovation can be visualized as the heartbeat of any forward-thinking organization. It’s the act of introducing something novel—be it a groundbreaking product, an ingenious process, or a revolutionary idea. The essence of innovation lies not just in conception but in execution. It’s about fresh thinking that manifests tangible value. But innovation isn’t a mere sporadic burst of creativity; it’s a continual commitment to pushing boundaries.
Transformation, on the other hand, is the phoenix of the corporate world. It signifies a metamorphic shift in how a company operates. This could encompass a change in its foundational business model, core operations, or even its cultural ethos. Unlike mere change, which is incremental, transformation is holistic, giving birth to an entirely renewed entity.
Automation is the application of technology designed to perform tasks with minimal human touchpoints. If innovation is the heart and transformation the soul, automation is the muscle of modern businesses. It’s about leveraging technology to its full potential, ensuring efficiency, consistency, and often, accuracy that the human hand might falter in.

2) Living Examples: Demonstrating the Power of Three

When we recall Innovation, Apple’s introduction of the iPhone is a luminary. Not just a new product, the iPhone changed how consumers thought about phones. It wasn’t just a device for calls—it became an integral part of our daily lives, blending communication, entertainment, and work.
Transformation has its cautionary tales, with Blockbuster being a prominent one. As streaming platforms rose to dominance, Blockbuster, once a giant in its realm, attempted to transition from physical stores to online content. Their journey underscores that transformation, while crucial, isn’t a guaranteed success but a strategic necessity.
And for Automation, car manufacturing offers a crisp illustration. The adoption of robotic arms in assembly lines has not only sped up production but also introduced a level of precision previously unattainable. Similarly, in the digital space, chatbots attending to customer queries at all hours exemplify automation’s prowess.

3) The Art of Choosing: When to Innovate, Transform, or Automate

Innovation is the tool of choice when exploring uncharted territories. Companies aiming to capture a new market segment, address a previously unidentified need, or offer a unique solution often lean on innovation. It’s about building a bridge where there’s been no path before.
Transformation is the answer when there’s a seismic shift in the industry landscape. When external factors—technological disruptions, changing consumer behaviors, or geopolitical shifts—demand that companies reinvent themselves, transformation becomes inevitable. It’s about ensuring the ship not only stays afloat but can navigate the new waters adeptly.
Automation becomes the focus when efficiency is the goal. Whether it’s to reduce overhead costs, eliminate repetitive tasks, or ensure a consistent quality of output, automation streamlines processes, making them more predictable and scalable.

4) Weighing the Economics and Strategy

Investing in Innovation can be a gamble. The R&D costs, market research, and prototype testing demand substantial financial commitments. However, successful innovations often yield exponential returns, granting companies not just revenue but a competitive edge.
Transformation is both a financial and cultural investment. Beyond capital allocation for new tools or business models, it demands a shift in mindset across the organization. The payoff, though, is longevity and continued relevance in an evolving marketplace.
Automation, while demanding initial technological investments, promises long-term savings. Reducing manual labor, minimizing errors, and accelerating processes, it ensures companies can deliver more for less.

5) Crafting and Executing: From Ideas to Reality

Innovation thrives in environments that nurture creativity. Beyond financial backing, it requires a cultural acceptance of risk, iterative testing, and a feedback-rich ecosystem. It’s a balance of brainstorming sessions, prototyping labs, and market tests.
Transformation is a marathon. It necessitates buy-in from all organizational levels, from the C-suite to the front-line employees. Often, external consultants, familiar with the transformation journey, can offer valuable insights. It’s a mix of strategy meetings, training sessions, and constant communication.
For Automation, technical prowess is paramount. Integrating new systems with legacy ones, ensuring staff training for automated tools, and maintaining these systems are integral. It’s about tech assessments, integration blueprints, and regular software updates.

Conclusion

As we stand at the cusp of a future molded by AI, understanding the trinity of Innovation, Transformation, and Automation becomes crucial. For management and AI technologists, it’s not about choosing one over the other but discerning which to leverage when, ensuring that companies are not just surviving but thriving in the corporate landscape of tomorrow.

October 19, 2023/by Axel Schultze

AI Workgroup, Announcement, Innovation, Technology

AI and Neuroscience changing Innovation

March 31, 2023/by xwpadmn

Innovation

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement

Terms like incremental innovation, gradual innovation, or architectural innovation have been coined and used to look like being innovative. Turns out, using those terms is the worst decision one can make. Companies need to be actively improving their existing products and services. AND in today’s time and age, companies need to decide if they want to engage in innovation. But one is as different from the other as apples and oranges (Äpfel und Birnen).

Let me explain the most significant differences between genuine innovation (real innovation) and improvements:

How genuine innovation began

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement - the beginning Around 12,000 years ago, we not only improved how we sharpened and used stones or threw wood formed into a spear but also made a breakthrough in survival techniques. Homo Sapiens began to farm. For 300,000 years, we were hunters and gatherers. But the food was almost abandoned once we understood how corn grows and how we could seed and water the seeds. Thanks to the innovation of farming, there was more corn and wheat than the people who planted it could consume. At that time, some people invented plows to farm better. Others focused on building more robust tents and huts to store the harvest. They traded their work for the corn others grew. The invention of farming allowed us to specialize. The most massive elevation in how humans did things.

Still, today, a genuine innovation elevates how people do things to a degree far above and beyond general improvement. Every innovation sparks new opportunities, jobs, and on top new innovations. It allowed us to overcome limitations like lifting more than our body could stem. Dive longer than any human could before – even reach out into the Universe. Every genuine innovation is a solution or product created from scratch in all its aspects. A new product with new and never seen before functionality and today, most likely a new business model will quickly accelerate the company to a market leader. Bringing such a product to market, teams usually also use new ways to sell it, new ways to market it and create a new customer experience. With such a new solution, customers experience a new, easier, faster, or safer way to do things.

After a few years, genuine innovation is typically far more profitable than any comparable solution. It has a significant competitive advantage and attracts top talents, new customers, and even the corresponding capital market. Apple, Google, Samsung, and countless other disruptors are part of the most profitable company list. At Apple, developing a new computer, then iTunes, then the iPhone means heavy lifting. But profitability leads to new and equally profitable products and so forth. We see a similar pattern at “Musk Enterprises,” where it’s less prominent but equally diverse with Tesla, SpaceX, StarLink, etc. It isn’t just the product genius – but also the business genius to innovate continuously.

Examples of Genuine Innovation

* A rocket may be considered as just another aircraft. But a rocket like a Saturn V can go far higher and faster than any other air vehicle.

* Uber may be seen as just another Taxi. But with an Uber, you know the cost of the ride before you get in, and the driver cannot cheat. You don’t need to pay cash, and the driver does not have the theft risk.

* A Tesla can be seen as just another automobile. But the electric motor combined with high-performance batteries is more environmentally friendly, uses renewable energy, and can be charged wherever an electric power grid is, not restricted to old town centers. It has an entirely new digital experience and can be purchased online without an overly complicated selection of option packages.

* A fully digital bank like N26 is built from the ground up for the best digital experience. Users can make all transactions themselves, anytime, anywhere, and in any transaction. Transparent costs and easy to track. It elevates the user experience by order of magnitude.

Improvement Comparison

* A faster, more comfortable airplane may be a nice improvement, but it cannot reach other planets.

* A better Taxi system would still have the massive overhead of a local taxi organization, still dependent on the drivers’ orientation skills. It must still be paid with standard payment systems, different in most countries. And altogether is still not as easy and trustworthy.

* The next car model may look nicer, is more comfortable, and may have more power. But it still has a combustion engine and a proprietary car computer system. The complex way of selecting and buying a new car also needs to be considered. Selecting the features from conflicting packages impedes the process.

* E-Banking in a conventional bank is still just a conversion of their complex standard processes. The old processes requiring manual reviews have usually not been optimized and are not even part of their e-banking.

In all the examples, improvement is necessary – or complete disruption.

Those examples give only a rather superficial insight into those differences. Under the hood, it is even worse. Mergers with brute force IT integration have made the product in financial services companies far more complicated than easier. Those companies often still today think it’s their human experts that make the difference. Of course, those experts are also needed in the future. But the real difference is a hyper-fast and super-easy transaction system for billions of people. Similarly, in the energy sector. Most oil and gas companies need to change towards renewable energy. And most follow what already exists: Solar, Wind, and Water. Disruption would be focusing for instance on the earth’s core. Our planet’s geothermal energy reservoir is good for at least a billion years. It can constantly deliver millions of petawatt of energy. It is independent from day and night or cloudy or sunny. It is independent of wind and independent of the necessary gravitational force of water turbines. Of course, it is not easy, but innovation is never easy. That is the reason why genuine innovation is always profitable and pseudo innovation is always under high pressure from the competition, high pressure on profitability and there is always a country that can deliver cheaper.

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement

	Genuine Innovation	Pseudo Innovation or genuine improvement
Team qualification	Diverse backgrounds with specific cognitive abilities	Dedicated innovators Experts (Tech, Bio, Chem…)
Timeline	5+ years	Months/Years
Budget	Small but scaling	Higher budget, shorter terms
ROI	7+ years	1-2 Years
Impact	Market Leadership	Business as usual
Capital market	Increasing MarketCap	Declining MarketCap
Biz Transformation	High	None
Expanding markets	Possible and likely	Rather shrinking
Declining demand	Can be compensated	Accelerates the degradation

This tables tells a very important story: Engaging in innovation or remaining in improvement mode has significant financial and strategic implications. And the decision to go in one or the other direction, can only be made by CEOs and their board.

Making the distinction between genuine innovation and improvement is strategically important for the respective team that should either innovate or improve. A leadership position such as “we need to be more innovative and you, team, have to figure out how to do this”, cannot lead to success.

Goals, processes, team composition, financing ways to go to market, and production flow are all fundamentally different between the two types of product development. As long as a company mixes both terms interchangeably, the result is worse than focusing only on improvements. But to stay relevant modern businesses need to do both: Continue to improve the products and services they have and with a different team to develop the next breakthrough innovation.

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement

GENUINE INNOVATION
At least we at BlueCallom consider Breakthrough innovation, groundbreaking innovation, disruptive innovation or radical innovation all the same thing. All of that is genuine innovation. And everything we do as a business, is to empower people to make genuine innovation a reality in very timely order – six to 9 months.

PSEUDO INNOVATION
At the same time, we consider the terms incremental innovation, gradual innovation, architectural innovation as pseudo innovation. It is misleading for innovation teams when they are tasked to make incremental innovation. Moreover, it is dramatically harming their career because when hired at another company, they can present nothing but improvements – which is a given in companies since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

I’d love to hear your opinion or experiences.

October 6, 2022/by Axel Schultze

Ecosystem, Innovation, Leadership

How do companies remain innovative?

There was an interesting question on Quora: “How do companies remain innovative?” Maybe my answer sparks some more ideas and some more answers or even different questions.

Here is my response – rather than a real answer:

So far, there is no company known for being repeatedly innovative. Even the most innovative startups become a victim of what made them successful in the first place – a disruptive innovator. I’m not talking about all the old companies like ATT, Intel, Cisco, Ford, Boing. I’m talking about even today’s disrupter like Facebook, Google, Uber, AirBnB… and so forth. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, companies have been innovative at birth and that’s it. There are probably less than 10 companies ever built that may be an exception. The question should be: What can be done that companies create an innovation continuum? That is actually the work we do. Four years ago we went on a quest to find out how innovative ideas are created in the first place. Looking at the four innovative businesses we founded did not help. Looking talking to peers did not help. Wondering how we could help even our own businesses to become innovative “again” did not help. The defining answer came from neuroscience. From people who research the defects of our brain, how we actually think, and the discovery that thoughts and ideas are no different in structure. The outcome: innovation is a whole series of counterintuitive processes. Once we understand how our brain composes thoughts or ideas, it changes the whole and very wrong perception of how to innovate. Ideation is no serendipity any longer, brainstorming is a superficial feel well meeting, post-its and whiteboards are nice but don’t do it, random experimentation is a huge waste of time and money, pivoting is a big mistake, having a team of the best experts will never lead to innovation…..

Why is this even important? Isn’t disruption and being disrupted just a live cycle in the life of a business? Shouldn’t it be a natural cycle that we don’t interrupt?

I don’t think so

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have rapidly evolved as humans; as a society, we made huge mistakes, we worked hard to fix them, and still do. I think it is about time to not only improve and fix products by amazing innovation, but we also need to make “structural innovation” in our respective organizations. For instance: the discussion about silos is more than 50 years old. Silos came to existence when we were all asked to increase our focus, which increases our productivity and makes us more experiences, and gives us deeper insights. Yes, the price we pay is a more natural flow of information, knowledge, and collaboration. The silo exhausts all that into the ether. But breaking down the silos would potentially lose those advantages, and we don’t know of any alternative.

Analogous thinking: If we keep the analogy to a silo, how about turning it by 90°. The silo becomes a pipe. A pip still gives us a great focus – AND – it gives us flow. Connecting all the pipes on one end, information and experience can flow without distracting and defocusing the stream itself. To do that, it takes organizational ingenuity. And that we never unleashed. Change is bad because there is no winning. If you introduce a successful change, you would be considered lucky – if not, you get fired. Our resistance to change can be found in the culture of where we work, where we have been educated, and where we have been raised. So it’s our parents, teachers, and bosses’ fault – right? YES, RIGHT. If you teach your children the same values, ask your teammates for the same behavior and instruct others the same model to follow, which one of them is probably what you do, it becomes the fault of all of us.

Instead of pointing fingers, let’s agree that we simply learned from our past experiences. Innovation is no serendipity but a composition of past experiences. Now we can all work on a structural redesign of the businesses we work in. When PanAm, Compaq, Nixdorf, and so forth were shut down or acquired, thousands have been left unemployed. And instead of trying to stop innovation, we may be better off becoming innovators far beyond the product we design, produce, market, sell, or service. We may want to use our natural, born creativity, even though it may have been crippled over the years, to get crazy about meaningful ways to innovate our organizational structures.

QUESTION TO YOU

What would you change in your organization to get a better flow and less friction, more fun, and less pain?

November 20, 2020/0 Comments/by Axel Schultze

Funding, General, Innovation, Investor

Introducing Global Innovation Funding

From the first day of the World Innovations Forum’s inception, we were thinking about financing groundbreaking innovation. Today we are proud to introduce the Innovation Capital Network. It consists of roughly 900 investors, including individual Business Angels, Angel Networks, VCs, Private Equity investors/firms. The combined investment power is approximately $1 Billion.

Investors Interest

As we get ever more global and innovative pop up all over the globe, Investors not only see more innovation but also more attractive opportunities and markets. Capital available for innovative ideas is not only growing but is becoming a huge focus for many ideas. Investors in our network are interested in fast growing product companies with a potential to international growth. The ICN would not be a good partner for local focused businesses or service businesses. Investors want to see a deck, a one pager and when interested a video presentation. For international investors, we require the investees having already a local investor who is interested in further co-investments.

Innovators Interest

Innovators such as fast-growing innovative startups, Mid Market businesses, or global enterprises are all struggling with funding their projects. A startup typically needs growth-stage capital to get their innovation into the market. Mid Market companies have proven their ability to execute but not their ability to innovate. Global enterprises may have the money but many of the departments struggle to get an innovation approved to execute and try to spin-off with their idea that has been rejected. Some of the most successful innovations actually came out of enterprises but have been rejected to realize such as the Mouse, Graphical Use Interface (Windows), Software as a Service, Local Area Networks, the Jet engine, and countless other innovations.

Financial Structure of Investees

In order to attract investors, businesses must offer a highly robust legal and financial structure and jurisdiction. The ability to provide that has been by far the biggest hurdle for most smaller companies. To solve that problem, we help young businesses to create a legal and financial headquarter in Singapore where all the IP and ownership of the local company is hold. Investors then invest in the Singaporean company which is considered the legally and financially safest corporate infrastructures. Singapore is also one of the best gateways to the Asian market as a whole and provides an added advantage to having a safe Headquarters there.

Introducing top-notch Innovators to the network

The World Innovations Forum is neither a broker or recommending any investments. But we connect members with members. In other words Companies who are looking for capital and fulfill the requirements of being investable, will be shared with accredited investors for a possible investment. We are sharing such companies on bi-monthly base or when they approved immediately with our investor members. We are currently seeing investment opportunities from Cambodia, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Korea, Nepal, Nigeria, Rwanda, Singapore, Switzerland, UK, US, and Vietnam.

Investment Readiness

We consider companies investment ready when the have at least two founders, a registered company an innovative solution (see definition of innovative below) are eager to grow at maximum speed, have a prototype in the market and feedback from at least 42 potential customers as market validation. They are also required to have the due diligence information in accordance to our guide lines ready to share. For those companies who are not feeling investment ready, we are offering guidance in form of a respective guideline document or respective workshops.

Turning down other investment Barriers

Investing in foreign countries has been in most of the times an enormous.

No More Language Barriers
All our investees must speak, present and report everything in English. The HQ being in Singapore, having English as the official language makes contract work easier than most other jurisdictions.
Unified Contracts
Instead of negotiating contracts over and over again from scratch, we decided to offer a universally applicable investment contract on all deals. In particular if you are investing in multiple companies from multiple different countries, the unifies contracts reduce uncertainties, increase deal negotiation and make it easier to mange multiple investments.
Professional Exchange
We provide a platform where international investors can conduct an exchange in the same way like Silicon Valley investors used to learn from each other and thrive beyond most other investors in the world. We are igniting those exchanges by conducting quarterly investor meetings with the sole purpose of exchange.
Investor Trainings
Professional investors from around the world have a wide spread of experience from never invested in businesses before to having well over 100 investments. Sharing the collective knowledge helps companies to get better investors and investors to have a better ROI.

For more information, we are inviting you to join our Introductory ICN Online Seminar on Dec 10.

MORE DETAILS & REGISTRATION.

October 29, 2020/0 Comments/by Axel Schultze

General, Innovation, Innovation Exchange, Technology

Europe’s current inability to innovate

Two hundred years ago, Europe was the dominant innovation hotspot in the world. Machines, automobiles, trains, airplanes, architecture innovation… almost everything came from Europe. That changed about 60 years ago.

Innovation shift to the US, then China

John F. Kennedy gave the change signal. “We take a man to the moon and bring him safely back by the end of the decade.” The United States had a vision bigger than life. In the ’80s, the democratization of computing power was yet another significant shift. The Internet in the mid-’90s, Social Media around 2005, and everything digital in the early 2010s. Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Visa, MasterCard, Cisco, Oracle, Google, Netflix, Salesforce, Paypal, LinkedIn, Facebook, Uber, Tesla, YouTube, AirBnB, Space-X, Stripe, Y-Combinator, 23andMe, GenTech… The digital world – the technology for our future – is now driven by US firms. SAP, founded in April 1972, was the last European innovator that made it to a global leader.

In the early 2000s, another innovation driver was rising: Asia. Mainly China, Singapore, and South Korea became not just fast producers, efficient builders and inexpensive labor but full of innovative minds. While dealers and retailers in Europe had been arguing about Amazon’s disruptive power, there was nobody who tried to compete. Zalando in Germany stood up, but instead of triumph and support, they have been beaten down for all kinds of nitty-gritty details. Eventually, Alibaba of China attacked Amazon at their own game. Today super successful with a new and disruptive business model. Another notable Chinese company, Tencent, grew out of nothing as a rising star. A tech company that sees opportunities and fulfills them. TikTok, for instance, a Tencent company, is growing faster in the video space than any other company ever did. Megvii, a powerful AI company, Baidu, Ecovacs Robotics, Huawei, BOE, ByteDance, Byton (EVs), Geeli (EVs), Pony.AI, UCloud, Xiaomi, and so forth. Most of them have not been noticed in Europe. The market size, with a population of 3.8 Billion in Asian plus 1.4 Billion in Africa is so much more attractive and more open to innovation than the European market with a population of just 500 Million.

What’s the problem in Europe

Schools are great. People are smart, hard-working, intelligent, creative, innovative thinkers, good business people, good engineers and good scientists. Europeans practice a “problem solver” culture, can collaborate very well, have centuries of innovation history and build some of the finest products. They seem to be the top predator in the global economy. Yet zero notable innovation. Europeans can’t get traction, scale, growth and eventually get bypassed by foreign competition. What’s wrong with the old continent? Top people who would have left for Silicon Valley 10 years ago can now be found in Shenzhen, Singapore, Seoul, and many other cities. Byton, a fast-growing electric car company – a real competition to Tesla by the way – is not only one of many Chinese car manufacturers – its a German startup in China. Former BMW managers started Byton. Within three years, they designed, tested, produce a complete, fully electric car and built the manufacturing plant – all at the same time. Impossible to do that in Germany.

Regulated to death

Regulations, administration, bureaucracy and security thinking is one thing; labor costs another item, space yet another one. But all that is not the real bummer – and no – not even capital as most would immediately point out. It is a terrible cultural development from the past 50 years. Europeans have a protectionist and safety-oriented mindset like no other society on earth. Insurances, social security, data privacy and numerous other topics literally dominate European culture. Whether you look at Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Hungary, or any other country, companies who innovate and disrupt get banned – preservers are in power. Uber is banned in most Swiss cantons. Amazon can’t do business in Switzerland directly. AirBnB, Paypal, and many others have a hard time to get “approved”. And it’s not just US or Chinese companies. Even European innovators have the most challenging time in their home mainland. IKEA wanted to open a shop in Nice/France – it endures forever. And on and on it goes. The protection of the dying local shops is more important than innovation. Why? Because the local shop lobby is bigger and connection to community authority stronger than the interest in standing up and competing. And in Europe, protecting means avoidance of change. Autonomous cars can’t be tested because it is considered not safe enough. Well, then all European car maker march one more time to Silicon Valley, let their cars test there and – ooops also the entire experience moves there. Most car manufacturers hold a potent board – but no experience in the digital world. As a result: some 100 LEDs are the innovation of the day. Few have experience with modern business models. As a result: Accessory manufacturers dictate pricing structures that create a car’s configuration merely a joke – but nobody is noticing. Those add ons are as old as it can be. But European car manufacturers don’t even know what their customers want; “Vive la GDPR”

Privacy protection and innovation

What has one to do with the other? Again nobody notices. Every innovative idea ever created comes from the brain. Our neurons compose new ideas from past experiences. If you never had any experience with Lexicrypt, you won’t be able to innovate around Lexicrypt. And if you don’t know what your customers really want – you cannot innovate for them. The Vendor-Customer communication is so isolated from each other, it’s stronger than an iron curtain – more potent than the Berlin Wall – more protected than China from Facebook, harder to crack than any business secret from the closest competitor. Whoever suggested this massive data protection mechanism to the European Commission did the perfect job that even the best spy movie author could not come up No cyberwar author could have done a better job than that: Eliminate an entire continent by cutting their communication off and making them do it themselves. And the security play was so easy in the most fearful culture on earth.

Lack of courage

Moreover, in most European countries, top US consulting companies run governments, military, corporations, leading universities – everything. Why? because somebody needs to take the risk of making a mistake. “We spend billions in the best consulting firms; they confirmed that it’s a great job. I’m not guilty”. COURAGE has become an unknown word in Europe’s C-Level, University leaders, and military generals. If a nation is mostly busy protecting what they achieved and avoiding risks, they build a massive framework of rules and regulations. And if protection and regulation become the standard, courage is not a need. And even worse. Those who would have the courage get blocked by those who don’t and move on to nations where they can flourish. Europe’s brain drain is in full swing. And maybe the same is on the rise in the US. A problem that modern political systems have never faced and, therefore, no concept to even deal with it – let alone solve it. Even worse, it is not even seen as a challenge. What can be wrong with order? Order is good. Yes, and the requirement of order is no change, and that means banning innovation. There is no bad guy and nobody really guilty. We are living in a continuously evolving organism that simply could not see it coming. But today, we see that the tech world in Europe has nearly no way to catch up, the automobile world lost its edge and there is only a strategy to copy the new market leaders. Europe must crack this enormous nut. Innovate or get disrupted

Innovating the societal system

The list of nations that did not make it, is long: Egypt, the Roman Empire, British Empire and many in between. No society could ever escape that cycle. But no society has ever had such a deep understanding of human organization power, political systems, innovative behavior then we have today. Comparing it with a natural life and death cycle is not appropriate – no country actually died, the people stood alive, nothing broke – but the economy. And since we can fix smaller economic meltdowns, why not a big one? Maybe there is a chance to make a change; no society has ever been able to make “Disrupting itself”.

We are working with the BlueCallum team on structural innovation models that helps super enterprises, those with more than 25,000 employees, to change towards innovation. Maybe the collective intellect of the World Innovations Forum can help empowering nations. A good start could be working with jeopardized industries, like the Tourist industry hit hard by Covid19. Losing an old industry is not just making way for new industry players, it is also a loss of resources, experience, knowledge and more. I’m not talking about old and worthless knowledge but the ability to build knowledge, experience to find solutions and culture that cannot be transferred in another country but values that could help rebuild an innovative spirit that passed away.

September 22, 2020/0 Comments/by Axel Schultze

Announcement, Ecosystem, Funding, General, Innovation, Innovation Exchange

Moving innovation fast forward

Our world is shaping itself in an all new way.

Startups on Decline

We are seeing a general decline of “startups” mainly those who were just jumping on the bandwagon without any serious concept, more importantly without any real entrepreneurial DNA. It actually feels like a positive self cleanup across the globe. And the old saying “the best startups come out of a crisis” continues to be of value.

Economy Estimates

The world will experience another $5 Trillion or more in economic losses in the next 6-9 months. There is no change in sight right now. 2021/22 and maybe 23 will stay as is. Digital is the new social and endangered industries like Tourism, Hospitality, Air Travel, Trade, Shopping, Luxury Products and Automobile, have no where to go in the next three years. In particular democracies are hit hard and ultra easy to stimulate groups to protest and those minorities can bring an entire nation including their economy to a halt.

Innovation Financing

Innovation needs to be financed. No matter if it is a startup, a mid-market business, an enterprise, an educational institute or a government. Non profit businesses will be hit the hardest – by order of magnitude. NGOs cannot deliver a financial return on investment. But in times when cash is king, the ROI counts. On the other hand profitable businesses who deliver a value, people pay for have it rather easy. Innovative businesses will remain to be the focus point of investors around the world.

Innovation Acceleration

In order to make innovation fundable, the innovation must attract investors and must match the interests of investors. In a 10 month long “Innovation Acceleration Program” we are helping teams to fully understand modern innovation methods and processes, understand the full innovation life cycle from start to re-innovation.

Moving Fast Forward

In order to keep moving forward, we initiated the following activities simultaneously:

AUDIENCE: We expanded the audience we want to support to include SMEs.
CONTENT: We always combine events with “Knowledge Transfer”. Moving forward we are relaying on our partners to organize events and we simply support, provide content, speak, are available for chats and networking. That way we can support more and reduce the organization overhead.
INNOVATION: There is probably no business that has a fully functional innovation strategy. We put all our efforts into helping businesses become truly innovative – not just improve.

WIForum Business Model

As an organization we shifted to a new hybrid business model: Memberships and making services only available to memberships. Services income for resource intensive services and sponsorship for industry relevant activities.

Summary

We built up the 2021 strategy for World Innovations Forum very early this year and introduced it a few days ago to our Ambassadors in Europe, Asia, Africa and the US. The core aspects include:

“From donations to equity funding” for all emerging nations.
“Digital is the new social” for developed countries.

The overarching direction: Innovation is the single biggest driver for economic freedom and prosperity – which is relevant for all nations no matter where they are.

September 17, 2020/0 Comments/by Axel Schultze

Accelerator, Economic Development 4.0, Ecosystem, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Innovation Exchange, Mentor

Success Factor Innovation – In Any Nation

Since thousands of years, innovation has been the primary success factor for any business and for any economy. And the counter fact, a declining ability to innovate, results in declining successes and the business or nation eventually vanishes away from top of mind as one of the companies or nations people talk about.

Emerging country entrepreneurs have the best potential for innovation

When recognizing a big problem and working in a team to find a solution, emerging country entrepreneurs have a big advantage of the developed world: No limits from ideation to idea validation, to early production and entering into the mainstream market. In the developed world, even existing innovations like Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, Uber, AirBnB are attacked by pseudo legal conflicts all the way to banning those innovations. Mercedes can’t run autonomous driving test cars in Germany and need to do it in Silicon Valley, the arch rival of innovation. Amazon gets fought as the killer of the small businesses as customer prefer the much easier online offering. Facebook is a constant victim of attacks due to its sheer size and influence based on their innovation that attracts two billion users daily and represent essentially 90% of the digitized world. Like Amazon, AirBnB and uber are even banned in some countries because their innovation has put the lagard and conventional businesses in jeopardy. And instead of “counter innovating” the slow moving and far to letharging old world businesses fight with legal attacks however obscurely created. Whether one creates or tries to implement innovative and disruptive solutions in the developed world is doomed to fail. The good news. Europe and the US with its combined 1 billion population is only one 8th of the world population. The other close to 7 billion people, 1.4 billion in fast rising Africa, 4.5 in even faster growing Asia are more then enough to become a world leader in any solution of the millions of unsolved problems. The innovative minds in those developing and fast emerging nations are not just the only chance those countries have to get out of poverty – it is the only chance for all of us to get the much needed innovation to thrive as the human race.

Innovation is at the heart of the Word Innovations Forum

The World Innovations Forum Foundation was established as the “global exchange for innovative minds”. In the early days of our work we did that in 2014 under the Society3 brand as an accelerator in San Francisco, California. We expanded to Europa and began to work also in South east asia. Whatever country we visited, we saw the exact same pattern than in Silicon Valley, the rest of the US, Europe and the rest of the world: There are highly innovative, fearless, determined and intelligent entrepreneurs who want to change the world. Their gravitational force is almost magic and they attract hundreds of young people wanting to become an entrepreneur too. And even several of them make it as well. The rest is copying stuff that is already out there, hope they can make it cheaper and eventually fail and close their shop. With six years of experience what works and what not we are constantly improving our selection processes and with it making our acceleration and guidance as well as mentorship ever more demanding. One clear request we have not been stressing enough in the past is the WILLINGNESS TO INNOVATE. We have seen entrepreneurs who just did not have the right idea because they didn’t even know where to start to look for the right idea. We were able to help. But those who lack the mental bandwidth or interest to innovate we will no longer support. This has nothing to do with trying to be an elite club – we are the opposite. But without innovative the eagerness to create an mindset a team just can’t be successful. If one wants to become movie star because of the glamor but is not willing to work for the skills and develop the talent it’s a waste of time for all parties. Innovation is at the heart of or organization AND in its name from day one. Going forward we will exclusively work with innovative minds and let other organizations who work with any startup do their job as good as they can. With the limited resources we have, we must focus on the best talents out there, who can make a difference.

Where do those magical innovative ideas come from?

The founders of the World Innovations Forum are known for their innovation history, creating 5 innovative businesses, with disruptive business models. That experience led to building the San Francisco Accelerator within the Society3. Yet another creation is coming out of Society3: BlueCallum. After four years of research where innovative ideas are coming from and how they are created, the team got inspired by latest neuroscience discoveries and found the answer. BlueCallum is a wholly owned business of Society3 and now focusing entirely on innovation creation, called Neuro Ideation and innovation process management with a new “Deep Innovation Design” model. Unlike many innovation methods including the “Design Thinking” model, Deep innovation design start before ideas get created and only finishes once the innovative idea is successfully brought to global markets. BlueCallum effectively disrupts the act of innovation itself. The close relationship between WIForum and BlueCallum is a great advantage to all WIForum members.

Searching for 007 Entrepreneurs

In every country we find at least 0.007% of the population being top successful entrepreneurs and the number can grow up to 0.3%. A successful entrepreneur has three key attributes: 1) has an innovative vision and approach, solving a major problem. 2) builds a company with thousands of jobs. 3) Has the execution power to export their products and create a major contribution to the nations GDP. Getting out of university and building a billion $ company is sort of the mainstream view of the entrepreneurial super stars. Fact is that all today’s top entrepreneurs have been gaining business experience by working in a large company and understanding how such a business works. Another globally spread myth is that experimentation, pivoting and trying something new gets a startup to a great result. Fact is that none of those ever made it to the top – none means zero. Another myth is that the lean startup method is a great method to follow. Fact is that it is a method created by somebody who failed 3 times and the big win was explaining it with creating a method. Since it was the first methodical startup approach every business school and university jumped on it but it was never proven to be successful. We wee looking at success pattern and the skills that connect all of the top entrepreneurs. We could not find one skill that connected them but ten traits / talents that were found in each of the top entrepreneurs. I don’t want to repeat it hear so just a pointer to the corresponding blog post:

We need all our partners, supporters, friends, friends of friends and networks to identify those golden talents in each country. After explaining above in great detail the why, let us share the how: 10 most relevant founders traits

If you get across anybody, however crazy, with absurd ideas to make a difference, point them to the world innovations forum and in particular to the InnoPreneurs Program AKA “007 Program“.

By answering a few questions we get a first indication of the entrepreneurial mind.
We follow up with a casual conversation to better understand motive, objectives, desires and so forth
Maybe a follow on conversation exploring the idea and the vision
Thereafter we will consult with our country ambassador for more insights.

If we can find 2,000 of such entrepreneurial minds in a 30 Million population country, we are at 0.007% of the population and it would be an amazing start.

Entrepreneurial Spirit Development

The first thing we will do, is to help an develop an entrepreneurial mindset. There are a few biases with even the most potent entrepreneurial superstars may have, mostly due to misseducation and wrong guidance:
1) Believing that they need money to start a business
2) Believing they need a university degree to create a company
3) Believing that they cannot afford top notch co-founders
4) Believing they need to be an engineer to craft a solution for a problem
5) Believing that they need a big advertising budget to get into the market
6) Believing that after the first round of funding they are over the hump
And several other believes like that

We will help curent that as all of that is neither necessary nor correct.
And since we realized that we are continuously working with our portfolio companies, even after six years, we created a long term program of mentorship and guidance, accompanying the teams through all phases of a business from start to full maturity.

Global Mentorship & Support Network

Since long term support is not only a problem in emerging countries, we will support entrepreneurs from any nation by building up an digital network of mentors and other successful entrepreneurs to be helpful to the next generation. The unfortunate pandemic however also trained everybody to be digital, accept digital and use the digital engagement to their advantage. At the World Innovations Form we are building a online network of mentors and supporters. If you like to help entrepreneurs with your entrepreneurial experience join the global network and become a member.

July 30, 2020/0 Comments/by Axel Schultze

Co-founder, Entrepreneurship, Events, General, Innovation, Innovation Exchange, WIForum

Expanding Your Entrepreneurial Possibilities

Looking for more information on becoming an Entrepreneur or running a successful startup? Well we are hosting monthly webinars to answer your burning questions. Entrepreneurs talk about their experience and will answer often asked questions. This journey that you are on is not an easy one, with many ups and downs, but it does not mean you have to do it alone. Our webinar series starts from the very beginning and walks you through the innovation process, finding funding, building a team and customer acquisition. So what are the benefits for you?

Insights from Entrepreneurs who have been in your shoes before;
Formulas, checklists and tips on how to be a successful entrepreneur;
Opportunity to directly ask those burning questions.

Our knowledge transfer webinar series has already started but you can watch all previous episodes on our website or check out the summaries below. Also, mark your calendars for the upcoming webinars so you do not miss anything. More details below.

Summary of the Past Three Webinars

Entrepreneurs DNA

Our first webinar is a great starting point for anyone considering becoming an entrepreneur, as it walks you through what it really takes to be a successful entrepreneur. The main takeaways answer the question, what are traits of an entrepreneur? These are not skills, nothing inherited, no expertise, no training …

Fearless/ Risk Takers*
Independent*
Curious/ Open*
Creative/ Compositive*
Determined*
Intelligent*
Connected
Communicative
Confident
Involving

*Must have to be a founders. Cofounders can offset 40% of the missing traits.

Idea Seeker

You want to be an entrepreneur. You have the important traits addressed in our first webinar, Entrepreneurs DNA but you don’t have an idea? In our next webinar, Idea Seeker, we showed you where the best ideas in the world come from. You might be surprised; it is easier than you may think.

Where are great ideas coming from?

From your own experiences (problems)
From careful market observation & listening
From taking many perspectives (see opportunities)
Crafting a concept (initial value of an idea is zero)
Get ready to execute – the path to value and prosperity
Why even looking for an idea? It’s the ignition.

Idea Validation

Now you have your idea but how good is that idea really? Do you know? Our next webinar, Idea Validation, showed you how to get that answer and even how to make a so-so-idea into a really great idea. We cannot stress enough, build what customers want – not what you think they should get! Here is some top client feedback to consider:

What problem would you solve?
What value would it be? How much?
What happens if we take it away?

Where to Watch

You can watch all of our Knowledge Transfer webinars, including are SPECIAL EDITION sessions here: http://wiforum.org/webinar-recordings/ If you enjoyed the content please let us know by commenting, subscribing or liking our videos on YouTube. We are welcome to any feedback and are happy to answer any additional questions you might have. Please email us at contact@wiforum.org.

Join our Next Session

We are hosting our next session, Innovative Thinking on Monday, August 3 at 10:00 AM WAT | 12:00 PM EAT | 4:00 PM ICT. Want to become really innovative with ground breaking concepts? You can actually learn this. Don’t miss out on anymore of our webinars, find all upcoming events and registration links here: http://wiforum.org/online-events/.

July 24, 2020/0 Comments/by Alyssa King

Chairman's Desk, Ecosystem, Entrepreneurship, Events, General, Innovation, Pandemics, WIForum

World Innovations Forum Conference 2020 – Thank You

Yet another amazing World Innovations Forum Conference, all online. Attendees from 59 countries and speakers from 22 countries made it a great event.

The conference started with the 10-year agenda of the World Innovations Forum Foundation. Our Chairman talked about the time it takes to make startups into big companies and how many are needed to turn a developing country into a prosper economy. The aim of the forum and its members from over 20 countries is to double the number of developed countries by the end of this decade – 2030. Later on he spoke about the Innovations age where currently 30 patents are registered every minute. By inspiring more innovation this number will grow exponentially in the next ten years.

A WHOLE GROUP OF ORGANIZATIONS ALIGNED

The World Innovations Forum is not the only organization with big ambitions. Another organization in our ecosystem are helping entrepreneurs to thrive, create large number of jobs and get their country to prosperity is the Jacobs Foundation. Their contribution to 2030 is to help with education and embracing learning variability. From a one fits all education system to learner adjusted education.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT

In the following entrepreneurs round table, representatives from Tech in Africa, Axel Peyrier, the Happel foundation, Alexander Lanz and SwissContact, Teresa Widmer spoke about what it takes to actually inspire entrepreneurs, not telling them what to do. Great discussions and a variety of perspectives.

AMAZINGLY INNOVATIVE ENTREPRENEURS

We saw a total of 9 amazing startups and scaleups that only proves, that there are extraordinary and innovative startups in any country on Earth.

Owen Sakawa from RepairNet, Kenya, is building a platform for a roughly billion people market and their repair needs in Africa. And Eddy Richauvet from ShopRunBack in Cambodia is building possibly the most powerful addon to the e-commerce world, a complete “Return-Platform” including the logistics network for the 65% of the eCommerce market not covered by Amazon.

Lin Hwang from Damogo, Indonesia is fighting food waste and how they turned on the heat in just a few months. Tobias Gunzenhauser, from Yamo, another Accelerator graduate, shared how he and his co-founders built Yamo into a super fast growing baby-food powerhouse.

Agudor Agabas from AppCycle in Ghana presented their idea and how they transform waste to new products and use almost exclusively waste to produce everything from clothes to accessories in a very innovative way. A different innovator was Ibrahim Abdulmalik from Farmula in Kenya, he shared how they help revitalize the supply chain of farmers’ businesses, as it is to a large degree destroyed from western food business. Expired food from the developed nations are brought into Africa as “development aid” but ruins in some sections the entire local food chain. How can a chicken farmer compete with their free range chicken against chicken for free, even if it is already a bit rotten.

Moving virtually back to Asia, Phi Nguyen from sPhoton presented a new Artificial Intelligence based Corporate Communication System, taking modern voice interaction aka Alexa into the corporate world. It may not apply in the West, but the 6 billion Asian market with managers half the average age and hungry for digital experiences, is certainly a pristine market for it. Africa is seeking talents very much like Asia. Emmanuel Leslie, from TalentsInAfrica in Ghana presented another AI based solution for talent development and talent match. With a number of startups that exceed the number of Silicon Valley startups, Africa is moving extremely fast and talent acquisition is one of the limiting factors.

Two more innovators presented, Mutembei Kariuk from Fastagger in Kenya and Peter Muchemi from Megashift, also in Kenya. Last and definitely not least was a special highlight. Binay Raut, from Paaila in Nepal presented the first Artificial intelligence based Robot from Nepal. In less than a year, the team built a first greeting robot, then a more sophisticated robot for banks and was even able to export their robots to the US. During the pandemic, Paaila was the first to build a robot for hospitals, serving patience and reducing the risks for the care personnel. Just a few years ago, it was unthinkable to create AI based robots made in Nepal.

FINANCIAL COMPANY VALUATIONS

The most challenging finance question for startups is to create a meaningful and defensible company valuation. This challenge is the same, all over the planet. Karim Raffa, a finance expert, former entrepreneur and investor himself is educating startups to create valuations that attract investors but not ruining their capital. Karim is also helping investors to make meaningful offers, because asking for too much equity in the beginning may change the discussion quickly against both, investor and entrepreneur.

INVESTOR ROUND TABLE

With investors from Cambodia [Christophe Forsinetti], Switzerland [Thomas Kern], and Vietnam [Duc Viet Nguyen], we had a great mix of representation from developing, fast emerging and developed nations. Investors from around the world look for gold nuggets. Average quality startups are nearing a million and have the highest risk. Lack of well structured FDI policies for equity foreign direct investments however still prohibit deep pocket investors to invest in these new countries. In Asia most startups move their HQs to Singapore and African companies to the UK, Singapore or Switzerland.

INNOVATION OF NATIONS

We heard an intellectually demanding but to the point speech from Ndubuisi Ekekwe, about the importance of innovation for each nation as a key to competitiveness and prosperity. He talked about how good policies can unleash the power of innovation or limit them, and what economic frameworks can do to empower entrepreneurship to thrive and create jobs or disable their abilities and make them possibly leave their countries. He essentially delivered the recipe for politicians to make their countries thrive.

DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

Emmanuel Ndonga spoke about the unique opportunities for Africa. Almost 60% of the African population is under the age of 25 with untapped opportunities for growth and development. But Africa is not a country with a culture, it is continent 54 sovereign countries and a total population of 1.3 Billion with a fast growing number of university graduates. Emmanuel presented an amazing list of activities for governments and the population to get up and get autonomous, reducing external influence and becoming innovative – because they can. Similarly a great presentation from Ashwin Ravichandran who spent many years in Africa, and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs build their businesses and thrive. Africa has changed dramatically in the past 10 years and the biggest shift is yet to come.

THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION

Education, in particular education for innovative thinking, like it is practices in Switzerland, was addressed by Dr. Ram Shrestha Ph.D., Vice Chancellor of the Kathmandu University. He gave insights into how and why Nepal should accelerate their motivation to more entrepreneurship in Nepal. Later on Dr. Matthes Fleck, Ph.D. from the University for Science and Arts in Lucerne spoke about the talent development of entrepreneurs from western universities and the importance for startups to get access to those talents early on.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP GENDER NEUTRAL

WIForum Chair and co-founder Marita Schultze organized a round table where female entrepreneurs including Clarisse Iribagiza from Rwanda, Sophie Meas from Cambodia and Prativa Pandey, Ph.D. from Nepal had a partly controversial discussion about the role women in entrepreneurship. In some countries it is not even a discussion about the gender sensitivity, yet in others societies, women are still discriminated in so many ways, like in Nepal, so that the entrepreneurship aspect is just a side effect.

NEURO IDEATION

The most advanced technique to create innovative and disruptive ideas and turn them into reality is Neuro Ideation. Attendees learned how the brain actually composes ideas and how they are processed so that innovation can happen. The concept of Neuro Ideation is brand new and puts emerging countries and developed countries on a even playing level. Rapid idea development, accompanied by a disruptive business model can happen as quickly as 3 weeks but no longer than 6 months. The Deep Innovation Design method, with neuro ideation at its core fundamentally changes the act of innovation and disrupts innovation itself. The world Innovations Forum, together with the Society3 Group will be empowering entrepreneurs independent of which country they are from.

INNOVATION FIGHTING PANDEMICS

Another highly innovation related topic, that is very timely as well, was presented by Cafer Tosun, an SAP executive and Advisory Board Member to the WIForum. Innovation Fighting Pandemic, is an initiative, led by Cafer Tosun, leveraging the innovative spirit to fight covid-19. After a short but intense campaign to wear a mask, the campaign was reduced in intensity after 62 countries announced masks are mandatory or at least highly recommended. He shared some details about a new project where innovative thinking was applied in its truest sense. A concept to eradicate covid-19 neither by vaccines or treatment but by mass testing and stopping the transfer of the virus. The method and concept to do so came neither from the technology sector nor from the medical sector, but from the genetics space. There is a good chance to test millions of people per day and up to 5 billion in a week. We will be providing updates after the next tests in a few days.

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE VISION IN EACH COUNTRY

During the three days we also heard from our Country Ambassadors: Dung Trung Nguyen [Vietnam], Khem Lakai [Nepal], Christella Uwamahoro [Rwanda], Eunice Nyandat [Kenya] and MacCarthy Mac-Gbathy [Ghana]. With each of them we discussed what is attractive in their country for those seeking entrepreneurship opportunities, how fast they develop and what the possibilities are for foreigner who may help build their respecting nations. History has shown that there have been many “Lands of Opportunity” in the past: Egypt, Greece, Rome, the UK, the US to name just a few. All have been nearly world dominating – none have ever seen true world domination. Now, there are many different lands of opportunities popping up almost at the same time. Maybe it is the time humankind realizes that we can only reach our best potential when all other nations reach their best potential as well.

THE FUTURE OF NATIONS

It is no longer a futuristic vision, that emerging countries will become a significant contributor to our global economy. Well aware of what worked and what didn’t in the past, most entrepreneurs of the future are very well aware that companies with 100,000+ employees are most likely not the future of the global economy but highly agile specialists connecting and collaborating with each other. The makers movement in China has already proven that millions of people are producing a small number of unique components faster, better and less expensive than any other nation. The advantage is not the cheap labor as labor cost rises in Shenzhen very quickly as well – the advantage is an unparalleled agility. The other mega challenge is global energy consumption. As more and more emerging countries are rising, so is their energy hunger. Also here, ingenuity and unique entrepreneurs working on various energy related projects such as geothermal energy development in Kenya, where 40% of Kenya’s energy consumption is generated by that technology. Geothermal development in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda will provide much-needed environmentally sustainable energy, maybe one day for all of us. Similarly is the development in South East Asia rapidly moving towards better technology, far more automation than in any other area in the World. Singapore can be called the most advanced nation in the world with an unseen before balance between human development, nature protection, sustainable planning for the future and a nowhere else achieved lifestyle. The 4.4 Billion Asians plus 1.4 billion Africans represent not only by far the largest markets on earth but also the most agile development and most innovation hungry young generation. The biggest advantage of this 5.8 billion population (75% of all people) is their low level of protectionism, bureaucracy and innovation blocking interest groups.

By 2030 we can expect developed nations will be doubling and by 2040 doubling again, which means more than half of the nations are having a status of developed country.

Axel Schultze, the World Innovations Forum chairman closes by saying “Even the world’s strongest nation will unfold it’s biggest potential, at the day every other country has reached theirs”.

The next World Innovations Forum Global Conference is scheduled to be held in June 2022.

The whole WIForum Team in Switzerland as well as all our national teams in the respective countries like to thank everybody for their amazing contribution and participation in this years event.

June 29, 2020/0 Comments/by Axel Schultze