Institute For The Future

Making Lightweight Innovation Transparent, Literally

One of the focal areas for the Institute for the Future's Technology Horizons program this year is a theme we're calling "lightweight innovation".

 

We're in a strange point in the history of innovation. As governments start making the first big new investments in basic research and research infrastructure in a generation, companies are cutting R&D to the bone. A few years from now, if we can find a way to transfer the technology coming out of these new big scientific endeavors, there's likely to be a sustained period of great innovation.

 

But between now and then, there's going to be some very lean years for the innovation pipeline. And so, we're seeing a wholesale hunt for cheap, quick new ways of developing or improving products and services. These lightweight models, from ultralight startups to hackathons to idea management platforms like BrightIdea, are taking open innovation principles and strapping booster rockets to them. Even Google is trying to go lightweight, forming a venture fund that will tap the social network of its employees to find good investment opportunities.

 

In that spirit, as we ramp up our research on this topic over the next few months, and full blast during the summer, I'm going to try to open up the process as much as possible by using social media to broadcast bread crumbs of what we're doing and thinking. For now, I invite you to keep up on what we're reading and tagging on the topic using two tags on the delicious social bookmark service, "lightweight" and "innovation" (here). I'll also be keeping track of your thoughts on Twitter if you use the tag #lightweightinnovation.