Innovation And Governance
What does innovation and governance mean?
How is positive value being delivered by tech and tech firms?
- Feeding the innovation flywheel
This covers leading-edge technological developments, not least the SMAIC of social, mobile, analytics/AI, IoT, Cloud. But without going in-depth on any, I see these as manifestations of where we are right now. More interesting is what they make possible in terms of (say) algorithmic retail, better online customer experiences etc. Still to come are VR/AR, NFV, 5G etc which will keep the flywheel of innovation spinning — but it is the flywheel that matters most.
- How innovation happens (and how it doesn’t)
This covers startups and enterprises alike, and how opportunities for growth can be achieved. I’ve been doing some really interesting work on business model evolution for enterprises, the platform and network economy and so on, as well as work across verticals (banking, government, retail), all of which feeds this. This incorporates management theory and economics, as well as ecosystems and collaborative models.
- Innovation in practice
Building on the collaborative theme, this covers agility and open approaches, including DevOps and other methodologies. Having worked as an agile development consultant and an operations manager I’m no stranger to any of this, it’s fascinating still how it tries but doesn’t quite succeed in balancing the principles with the practicalities. This also covers manifestations such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), reflecting the analyst and consulting need to bottle and sell best practice and software.
- Governance by design
Technology is a two-edged sword — by accident or aforethought, it can undermine its own value. Cybersecurity, GDPR and so on are a reflection of the need to manage risk, direct and indirect, of the technological age. It’s worth being quite forthright on the weaknesses of GDPR. Equally, areas like data aggregation and ‘toxic’ combinations can be covered — it is up to every organisation to take responsibility for their actions, and no doubt some interesting tech solutions will emerge to help.
In terms of research programmes and so on, I think some areas drop out of this quite naturally. It might be worth doing something on cybersecurity — e.g. SecOps and/or applying machine learning to threat detection — some interesting vendors in those spaces. I can/should also pick up on the DevOps theme and build on the report. I’m also curious about CSR, green IT etc and latest efforts there — the overall take should be,