THE LEAST SECRET INGREDIENT OF INNOVATION - CALL FOR PAPERS

It is a cliché that people are the most valuable assets of any enterprise in a business environment where successful firms compete through knowledge and innovation.  But if the human factor is the least secret ingredient in successful innovation, it is also the least well understood.  Innovation itself is often mistakenly seen as limited to new technologies, discoveries or inventions, or else simply equated with individual or organisational creativity.

The Australian Business Foundation has a long term interest in the role that innovation plays in sustaining prosperity.  The Foundation’s decade of research points to a more complex and nuanced understanding of innovation.

Innovation cannot be equated just with science, technology or new inventions. It is the application of knowledge that creates value.  The greatest value from innovation most often comes from knowledge applied imaginatively to solving real problems for customers and communities. 

The Foundation’s research suggests that it is the way that knowledge flows and is used that is at the heart of innovation. Distinctive knowledge, skills and capabilities are decisive factors in successful business performance in an increasingly globalised economy, where businesses are no longer competing just on price or quality.  Knowledge, particularly know-how and know-who, gives businesses a competitive edge.

The critical dynamic here is the connections between people, and the role their interactions play in transferring and embedding innovation capabilities in enterprises and in the wider community.  This is the human dimension of innovation on which the Australian Business Foundation is seeking expert papers.

This human dimension of innovation can only be understood against the backdrop of a wider ‘innovation ecosystem’, including elements as diverse as the financial and legal systems, universities and research institutions, government regulations and standards, and professional and industry norms and practices.  People are the ‘carriers of innovation’ in this wider ecosystem. It is their interactions and interdependencies that are crucial, not the personal attributes of individual innovators nor their roles as entrepreneurs or business leaders.

The Australian Business Foundation is seeking authoritative papers that explore the diverse aspects of how people create and use knowledge to build enduring business innovation capabilities.

Call for Papers

Rather than commissioning a single line of research in this area, the Australian Business Foundation wishes to publish a compendium of papers on the dynamics of, and the roles people play in, the ‘innovation ecosystem’, especially the knowledge flows inherent in innovation, and their relevance to building the innovation capabilities that can sustain economic growth and prosperity over the longer term.

Therefore, the Foundation is calling for papers exploring the human dimension of business innovation – the various ways that people, individually or collectively, act to transform businesses and enhance innovation capabilities, thus bolstering productivity and prosperity in organisations, industries and nations. 

You are invited to respond to this open call for papers to be included in a book to be published in early 2008.