Last century, the development of most products, services, business models, and cities was driven by innovative inventions and technologies, as well as by significant economic capital. They had a strong influence on the citizen’s daily life and on nations’ growth. Today, they are all being reevaluated and are measured by their social impact, the environmental damage caused by their manufacture, the origin of the raw material, and the energy consumed in their production as much as for the economic benefit they create for a few.
The idea is to transform traditional innovation into innovation of a capital system.
Let us consider some examples of the evolution of this concept:
- The 3D printer was developed in 1984 as a manufacturing process at exorbitant prices. Only in the last five years has a product with an affordable price been designed and made to work for millions of people. Personalization of manufacturing.
- The light bulb became an excellent invention when it was part of the urban lighting system for millions of people. From product to system.
- Bernoulli’s physics principle of flow—to maintain an airplane wing in flight—turned into an air transportation system that today is the basis for the movement of goods and people all over the world. From process to system.
- The computer monstrosity of the 1950s reached a personal size, thanks to advances in microelectronics. Personalization of computers.
Innovation’s Systemic Focus
Innovation has gone through huge transformations. It has gone from classic models of radical innovation to incremental innovation, until it came together into two seemingly polar concepts: disruptive innovation and the design of innovative systems.
The concept of disruptive innovation was created by C. Christensen in the 1980s to describe disruption applied by huge products in the industry. What do Uber, Amazon, printers, 3D, iTunes, or Ryanair have in common? That more than being novel products or services, they have broken with conventional business paradigms and have had an important impact on social systems.
The large economies are using their scientific, technological, and natural resources—often exploiting those of developing economies as well—to innovate and create systems that impact more people in a more efficient way. A system’s design forces us to break with classic principles of innovation, such as those from the last century.
For example, Apple iTunes broke industry standards; Amazon broke with conventional publishing house and bookstore practices; Uber broke with the traditional business practice of transportation services and Ryanair did the same with the conventional structures of the air transportation industry; and 3D printers will stunningly revolutionize design and manufacture over the next few years, giving the end user the ability to build three-dimensional models.
Each of these cases has had a much wider economic and social effect than just the innovation of a product or service. They have become high-value global innovation systems; allowing millions of people to benefit from them by making them affordable to more users has made them more democratic. They are cases of disruptive innovation. It is not that they invented something very new or important, but that they used the adequate technologies and the right moment to insert them and turn them into important social systems. That is why the impact of innovation must be measured by the influence it has on society, and by its evolution from a novel initiative to a democratic, open approach.
In this way, innovation with a systemic approach is integrated through the design of mechanisms that break paradigms and their insertion into more sophisticated capital systems. When the invention of a new product is transferred to a capital system we can talk about innovation with a systemic approach, which consists of designing an important disruption and planning a system with a huge impact around it.
Innovation for Sustainability and the Common Good
As Chef Gastón Acurio—an important person in the Peruvian food industry1 —said, “The difference in our success is that we did not open a restaurant, but rather generated a movement… In a movement, one is part of an activity that generates greater economic input,” in this case, for an entire country.
This is the vision of innovation that a politician or the government in turn should reach when it wants to inspire a city. Innovation must be used to generate sustainable wealth that improves its inhabitants’ quality of life, so that in the future it becomes attractive for outside capital, technological partners, and organizations and can reduce social injustice, environmental pollution, water use, and in general the levels of extreme poverty. It means designing a pleasant, viable future with great expectations.
This is the huge step forward we must push for in the education of those who will build the future of the planet. Leaders must be formed who know how to design and run systems. The new innovators will be those who bring together technological, social, cultural, and ecological innovation. They will have to break with the conventions of public administration and industrial development strategies. In 21st century innovation, creativity, technology, organization, entrepreneurship, and governance come together to form capital systems with a huge impact on the way of life of most of a city’s inhabitants and on their environment.
