Innovation Beyond Fiction

This book is about mathematics in the management of innovation, showing how recent advances in mathematics help us grasp and support innovation as a social activity of thinking and imagining together. It will make the reader rethink both innovation and mathematics by having them interplay in practical organizational settings. Told as fiction to make its argument more accessible, the book is nonetheless grounded in theoretical reflections and recent mathematical advances. In recounting the adventures of a committed and enthusiastic inventor-designer hampered by the increasing industrial bureaucratization of his world, it accounts for the fate of many innovation processes in large companies and administrations. Successful innovation hinges on having everyone involved in the process share a space of conceptual exploration. This philosophical aspect of the innovation process is about collective imagination, a notion that customary styles of thought have great difficulty dealing with. This is where mathematics, of a new kind, might prove to be a new platform for better management of innovation.

Large, mature companies often struggle when it comes to the uncertain process of breakthrough innovation. But innovation is an imperative in today's cutthroat business environment. To fulfill its potential, there has to be a better way--and there is. Beyond the Champion argues that innovation is a talent all its own that requires distinct skills and expertise, just like finance or marketing. Viewing innovation as a discipline in its own right, it is easy to see that breakthrough wins require an organizational design with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities, and career tracks for those who shoulder the responsibility for new products. Drawing on the results of a four-year study and two decades of related research, this book outlines three fundamental competencies necessary for innovation: discovery, incubation, and acceleration. Mapping these skills onto roles and opportunities for advancement, the authors deliver a pioneering blueprint for sustainable innovation.

Science fiction is often presented as a source of utopia, or even of prophecies, used in capitalism to promote social, political and technoscientific innovations. Science Fiction and Innovation Design assesses the validity of this approach by exploring the impact this imaginary world has on the creativity of engineers and researchers. Companies seek to anticipate and predict the future through approaches such as design fiction: mobilizing representations of science fiction to create prototypes and develop scenarios relevant to organizational strategy. The conquest of Mars or the weapons of the future are examples developed by authors to demonstrate how design innovation involves continuous dialogue between multiple players, from the scientist to the manager, through to the designers and the science fiction writers.

This collection, which centres on the academic as teacher, grew out of the moment of unprecedented change that COVID-19 brought to the world in 2020, when our daily routine of teaching and learning was disrupted. Many of the chapters have a strongly narrative core, recounting the iterative, emergent and imperfect process of designing online courses for Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). Told to and for other teachers, these stories matter because they transform experience – through reflection – into learning. This work thus contributes to emerging scholarship on pedagogy and disruption in higher education, with a specific focus on the Global South and the ongoing need for contextually relevant, transformative teaching at universities. Animating the collection is the question that preoccupied us during the pandemic: When all this is over, how do you want your teaching to be different? The authors take stock of what, as lecturers, we want to take with us from ERT and what we might want to leave behind – and work to collectively imagine new possibilities for teaching and learning along the continuum from face-to-face to blended, to fully online. This volume is an opportunity for us to keep sharing our innovations and reflecting on the shifts in teaching, learning, course design and assessment practices that occurred during COVID-19 and continue to reverberate beyond. Read together, the studies collected in this volume shed light on the broad and complex ecologies of pedagogic agency, frailty and resilience within which lecturers function as teachers in higher education in the South African context. They offer ideas born out of disruption that aim to support lecturers in similar contexts in developing a more just and equitable higher education. “Of the hundreds of new publications on pedagogy, politics and pandemics, this is easily one of the best available on innovation in higher education inside and since the disruption of those times. The power of reflection and the wisdom of practice combine to ensure the longevity of this remarkable text for university students, teachers and researchers alike. Simply outstanding work!” - Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor, Stellenbosch University “Pedagogic Innovation Beyond Disruption provides a fascinating reflective perspective by educators in higher education on adapting their practices to manage teaching and learning online during the pandemic. The chapters in the book offer a rich tapestry of strategies and approaches that showcase how educators moved beyond a mere transfer of traditional teaching methods to an online format to ensure that their students remained engaged in their learning and felt cared for and supported online. As such, this book provides a thought-provoking and comprehensive exploration of innovative teaching and learning possibilities in higher education during the unprecedented disruption of the pandemic conditions.” - Dr Jennifer Feldman, Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University

The Killer Questions Your Company Should Be Asking Generating and executing great ideas is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses--or none at all. There has to be a better way. In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions--the ones all companies must ask to survive. Full of real-world examples, this book will change the way you operate, innovate, and create, and it all begins with battle-tested questions Phil has gathered on note cards throughout his career. Shared for the first time here, these "Killer Questions" include: What are the rules and assumptions my industry operates under? What if the opposite were true? What will be the buying criteria used by my customer in 5 years? What are my unshakable beliefs about what my customers want? Who uses my product in ways I never anticipated? These questions will reframe the way you see your products, your customers, and the way the two interact. Whether you're a company of thousands or a lean startup, Beyond the Obvious will give you the skills and easy-to-follow plan you need to make both the revolutionary changes and nuanced tweaks required for success. Praise for Beyond the Obvious "Human beings are creatures of habit, so getting ourselves and our teams to think beyond the obvious is a challenge we face all the time. Phil McKinney is an innovation expert, and his killer questions and hit-the-spot anecdotes provide a great way to get out in front of opportunities we otherwise won't see." -- Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Escape Velocity "I've always believed that asking the right questions is the essence of design. Phil McKinney proves that point with this wonderful set of killer questions that will jumpstart-or greatly enhance- your innovation efforts." -- B. Joseph Pine II, co-author, The Experience Economy & Infinite Possibility. "Product Innovation is a prerequisite to building great brands. Phil's questions are a prerequisite to building innovative products." -- Satjiv S. Chahil, former global marketing chief, Apple"

The biomedical industry, which includes biopharmaceuticals, genomics and stem cell therapies, and medical devices, is among the fastest growing worldwide. While it has been an economic development target of many national governments, Asia is currently on track to reach the epicenter of this growth. What accounts for the rapid and sustained economic growth of biomedicals in Asia? To answer this question, Kathryn Ibata-Arens integrates global and national data with original fieldwork to present a conceptual framework that considers how national governments have managed key factors, like innovative capacity, government policy, and firm-level strategies. Taking China, India, Japan, and Singapore in turn, she compares each country's underlying competitive advantages. What emerges is an argument that countries pursuing networked technonationalism (NTN) effectively upgrade their capacity for innovation and encourage entrepreneurial activity in targeted industries. In contrast to countries that engage in classic technonationalism—like Japan's developmental state approach—networked technonationalists are global minded to outside markets, while remaining nationalistic within the domestic economy. By bringing together aggregate data at the global and national level with original fieldwork and drawing on rich cases, Ibata-Arens telegraphs implications for innovation policy and entrepreneurship strategy in Asia—and beyond.

Fantasy and science fiction are both involved in the process of innovation in techno-scientific societies. Long regarded as a hindrance to rationality, and to science, science fiction has become the object of praise in recent decades. Innovative organizations use science fiction to stimulate the creativity of their teams, and more and more entrepreneurs are using its influence to develop innovation. Scientific practice relies in part on an imaginary dimension. The mapping of the technical imagination of science fiction has become an important strategic issue, as has its patentability. The conquest of space, the construction of cyberspace and virtual reality, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies are all at the center of futuristic fictions that participate in scientific speeches and discoveries.