Move Forward With Innovations or Fall Back
Since New Year’s Day, 2013, I have committed myself to creating Innovations as a consultant. I have been excited each day for the challenges that come with the Innovation work I have done. Personally, I choose to support in helping shape the creation of Innovations and how they will proceed, instead of taking the educational approach. I work periods of six to fourteen days to generate original ideas and business models for young businesses in Japan. There also needs to be focus on whether original ideas can continue to be created in successful companies that are well established, especially if they have developed within one industry. Even the most productive idea creator can find themselves devoid of new ideas after originating a few. That idea creator may well hit an “idea block”.
A Research Publication's View
A research report published in March of 2013 at the University of California, Berkeley, described the situation as thus:
"Japanese enterprise came to lead the world in innovation in various industries during the 1980s and 1990s. Companies like Matsushita Electric Industrial, Toyota Motor, Mitsubishi, and Sony were the objects of a sense of reverence held around the world for their work in fields such as electronic appliances, bicycles, shipbuilding, and consumer goods. Though Toyota Motor and some of the others are still bound for the forefront of their industries today, it is beginning to become clear that, while on the one hand many Japanese businesses are preserving their extremely strong technological prowess, they are at the same time beginning to fall behind in innovation, particularly in the home appliance industry. Could the cause of this not be that while the world has grown over the past ten to twenty years to advance the flow of open innovation, many Japanese businesses have been unable to respond quickly?"
To breakthrough this state, I have undertaken the following in my training programs:
A) The establishment of training programs for talented individuals to create innovative ideas that do not follow too closely to Innovations of the past, and how to bring those new Innovations to life.
B) Teaching how to acquire numerous techniques to continuously plant new business seeds by coming up with new ideas that aren't extensions of prior developments
C) Showing how to screen many ideas, specifying the particulars of those chosen, and being precise as to how development will be executed.
D) The structuring of ideas from inception to the time that they are in their final stages of development into Innovations.
E) Plotting the paradigm shift in intellectual property.
Japanese businesses cannot rest on their laurels at this stage and at this juncture of Japanese businesses in the global market. We must originate new developments and demonstrate innovative prototypes if we are to keep the influence we now exert in the global marketplace. It should be even more significant to the Japanese business industry now that there are competitors closing in on our markets. If we are not ready to out-perform them in the near future, we could lose our valuable world standing. If we do not move forward, we are destined to fall back.
Summary
Japan is enjoying its recent economic recovery, but it is diverting Japanese business owners to direct focus on shoring up existing industries, instead of focusing on innovations to help move forward into the future. It is necessary to promote the realization that even though today is profitable, we must prepare for the future. We must deal quickly and efficiently with each development, and determine our exact key to growth. My personal commitment is to work toward the vital development of Innovations in Japan’s business world, both for today and for tomorrow.
Reference:
Henry Chesbrough, Principal Investigator Meyer Family Fellow, Haas School of Business UC Berkeley. March 10, 2013. “Open Innovation: Implications for Japanese Innovation”
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