Chief Innovation Officer, Issue 8

THE

LEADING

VOICE

IN

INNOVATION

CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER FEB 2016 | #8

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Why Are Israeli Tech Startups Thriving?

As a tech start-up hub, Israel is now second only to Silicon Valley.

We look at some of the factors behind its success in the field | 11

Science Fiction’s Strange Relationship With Reality We look at the appeal of science fictions ability to predict the future and some of the predictions and events it got right | 16

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Execution on Opportunity

R&D Management Innovation Summit

Chicago May 16 & 17, 2016

Speakers include:

+ 1 415 992 7589 adaud@theiegroup.com www.theinnovationenterprise.com chief innovation officer

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ISSUE 8

EDITOR’S LETTER Welcome to the 9th Edition of the Chief Innovation Officer Magazine

A company’s ability to innovate can make or break an organization, but success in the area can be somewhat intangible, particularly when it comes to attracting and recruiting people who can help them achieve it.

In this edition, Rebecca Thomson looks at the benefits of encouraging all employees to innovate, and this is undoubtedly important. Knowing what qualities are needed in potential recruits can, however, be difficult, and the onus for many firms has been on creating an atmosphere which encourages creativity and the free flow of ideas, and allows for a certain level of risk in trying them out. By way of creating such a culture, many companies are introducing what is known as an innovation lab.

An innovation lab is a place in the company to spearhead new ideas and new product development.

Large companies build innovation labs fundamentally to recreate the atmosphere of a startup, to appropriate that same energy in order to drive their business forward.

One example is Google’s Google[x] Lab. It is world renowned for being one of the driving forces behind Google’s attempt to stay at the cutting edge of innovation. The tech giant hires in engineers and scientists especially to take charge of their ‘moonshot’ efforts - creative and experimental projects that do not necessarily aim to lead to commercial products, but will certainly move the company forward through innovation. The company’s infamous self-driving car and Google Glass are just two of the ideas to have been born of the lab.

Israel has also proven itself as hub of the tech startup scene, and there is much we can learn from their attitude towards innovation. Richard Angus looks at what they are teaching us later in this issue.

We hope you enjoy CINO Magazine, it has been created to help negate the barriers to innovation which so often affect companies negatively, so if you have any feedback please get in touch with me at jovenden@theiegroup.com.

James Ovenden

Managing Editor

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Healthcare Innovation Summit May 11 & 12 | Philadelphia

Speakers include:

+ 1 415 992 7589 adaud@theiegroup.com www.theinnovationenterprise.com

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contents 6 | GENERATION Z: THE FIRST IMMORTAL GENERATION

16 | SCIENCE FICTION’S STRANGE RELATIONSHIP WITH REALITY

Advances in healthcare technology are seeing people live longer than ever before, but could Generation Z be the first generation to live forever?

Matthew Griffin investigates

One of the main appeals of science fiction is its ability to predict the technologies and events that will impact the world in the future. We look at some of those that have got it right

11 | WHY ARE ISRAELI TECH STARTUPS THRIVING?

As a tech start-up hub, Israel is now second only to Silicon Valley. We look at some of the factors behind its success in the field 13 | PEOPLE ARE THE FUTURE OF CLEAN ENERGY

When you think of clean energy sources, things like ‘wind’ and ’solar’ usually spring to mind.

But there’s a new source of clean energy being embraced people

18 | WAKE UP TO EMPLOYEE INNOVATION

With all of the privacy issues surrounding the use of medical data, we look at how much impact data could have on healthcare 21 | WHY BLACK CABS NEED TO INNOVATE, NOT FIGHT

Uber has seen huge success since its inception, in spite of resistance from industry stalwarts. We look at how taxi firms should be innovating, not protesting, if they want to stay relevant

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| creative director charlotte weyer | contributors matthew griffin,

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Generation Z: The First Immortal Generation Matthew Griffin Global Futurist and Industry Disruption Expert

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Today it’s a matter of when, not if, we solve death, and Generation Z could be the first generation to experience immortality in their lifetime. We have the technology to reverse paralysis, restore sight, print hearts, write disease out of existence and transfer memories. Age is a quirk of genetics, Nanotech is a game changer and only Darwinism is dead.

The year is 2090 and I sidle up to have a look at the clinic’s menu of services. Everything gets commercialized eventually - even immortality and this company’s no different. They’ve got the equipment, resources and IP to help people become Immortal and once the ethical and moral dilemmas were

resolved, they moved in and wrapped a business model around it. Now they’re the market leaders and everyone wants it.

Would you like to stay exclusively human? There’s a price for that.

Or perhaps you’d like to augment yourself with a range of genetic and technological enhancements?

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We have the technology to reverse paralysis, restore sight, print hearts, write disease out of existence and transfer memories

There’s a price for that. Or perhaps you just fancy downloading yourself and your consciousness into a digital avatar? There’s a price for that. Being able to see Infra red might be useful. There’s a price for that. There’s a price for everything you could imagine. Fed up of breathing air? There’s a price for that – it’s amazing what scientists have been able to do with Nanotech and artificial blood since they first appeared in the labs earlier in the century.

When people talk about immortality, most of us think of it as the ability to live forever in our current, human form. You’re born, you age and acquire knowledge and experiences but you never die.

On the surface, at least, it’s a simple definition, and the first three stages are our everyday. However, to accomplish the fourth, to ensure that both our physical and mental states remain intact across time, is another matter entirely. That being said though, we’ll see biology can be fixed, hacked and replaced and our cognitive capabilities can be augmented, imitated, replicated and transferred.

Immortality isn’t what it used to be In reality, immortality will take a number of forms. As our example showed, there will be those people who want to remain exclusively human and rely on natural life extension products and services.

Similarly at the other end of the spectrum there will be people who upload themselves into digital avatars and shed their physical bonds. Then, of course, there will be hybrids – genetically modified humans augmented with technology.

While technology however continues to advance exponentially, the ethical, moral and cultural implications will take longer to resolve.

Building the Bridges Today there are an increasing number of powerful individuals and organizations, such as Sergei Brin, Calico and the US Government, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into research to create life extension technologies and slowly but surely all of the pieces of the jigsaw that we need to defy death.

As we can see from the horizon chart below, they are appearing make no mistake though this is a marathon not a sprint.

In the mind of many of today’s life extension researchers, death is simply a problem to be solved one bridge at a time and biology is a series of interconnected, quantifiable processes. Now that more and more data, including global genomic data is going online, it’s getting easier for us to unravel these billions of processes and once you understand enough about each process and the implications they have on longevity, it’s possible to theorize and develop solutions.

Reaching the point where we can say we are Immortal, by any definition, will require the collaborative efforts and resources of both researchers and today and tomorrows Artificially Intelligent machine systems. In one way, it’s ironic that the very systems we designed and built could be the very same systems that help us live forever.

Many things contribute to death but accidents, disease and ageing top the list so let’s dive in.

Solving Injury Accidents, those things that as the Baz Lurman track goes ‘Blind side us on a Tuesday morning’ are as inevitable as they are unwelcome.

However, today we can replace over 70% of the human body with increasingly smart and sophisticated

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8 artificial body parts – whether those are 3D printed, biomechanical, enhanced, prosthetic, regenerated or simply synthetic.

70%

of the Human body can be replaced,with increasingly smart and sophisticated artificial body parts

Why send a bleeding edge RNA coded drug delivery virus to the site of an infection when you can send in thousands of connected, self replicating miniature nanomachines armed with drugs and gene editing tools?

Advanced, mind controlled robotic prosthetics complete with bio neural feedback and carbon nanotube based artificial skin that allows the user to regain their sense of touch are already here. At the other end of the spectrum we are growing and printing livers, muscle tissue, bones and hearts that are coded to an individual’s DNA to eliminate the risk of rejection using 3D printing and stem cells, while manufacturing universal artificial blood will be trialled this year.

Boundaries are being pushed everywhere. Regenerative Medicine, where researchers can recode an individuals gene expression profile to force a damaged or missing body part to regrow itself in the same way we see starfish regrow a severed arm has taken giant strides in recent years. The field’s accelerating, and as we move away to the edge, artificially intelligent diagnostics, monitoring, surgery and post op care systems are in some cases, outperforming human consultants.

Solving Disease Disease is a harder problem to bridge if for no other reason that the bacteria, viruses and the cocktail of toxins we share this planet with, are resilient and omnipresent.

Despite the fact that antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective, we’re entering not one but three new eras of medicine. Each of these can target diseases like cancer and myocardial infarctions before they take hold and treat conditions from arthritis to fibromyalgia faster and more effectively than ever before.

Bioelectronic medicine is replacing whole categories of molecular medicines, personalized medicine is ushering in a new era of tailored and highly specific treatments and medicines and then finally, and

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perhaps the greatest of them all, there’s nanotechnology.

Described as an ‘electrical off switch for disease’ bioelectronic medicines, pills and implants, decipher and modulate electrical signalling patterns within the cells and chemical pathways of the body. These work by suppressing disease progression and providing revolutionary treatments for hitherto untreatable chronic diseases such rheumatoid arthritis, crohn’s disease, diabetes, paralysis, bleeding and even cancer.

Personalized medicine, the creation and delivery of highly personalized and specific drugs and treatments tailored to a persons specific microbiome – the billions of bacteria we have living inside of us and genetic make up was given a boost last year when the cost of sequencing a persons genome fell below $1,000 for the first time and by the advent of a ‘God Like’ technology called CRISP-R. This lets researchers edit and re-write genes on the fly, turn individual genes with different characteristics and properties ‘on and off’ as easily as flicking a light switch and write - genetically at least, almost every known and unknown inherited condition, syndrome and malignant disease into the history books.

Why send a bleeding edge RNA coded drug delivery virus to the site of an infection when you can send in thousands of connected, self replicating miniature nanomachines armed with drugs and gene editing tools? Why stop there when these miniature killers can turn into miniature handymen and sentries, unclogging arteries, repairing damaged muscles, broken bones, synapses and erroneous genetic codes? They can heal wounds and cure diseases the very second they appear. There’s not much that these little handy helpers won’t be able to fix.

As we move even further down the rabbit hole, these nanomachines

9 could reprogram your genome, target and destroy fat and build new muscle leading to a new era of personalization where you could change your physical appearance, eye colour and other biological characteristics on demand with just a thought – or a smart phone app if you’re still stuck in 2025.

Apps are so last decade.

Solving Age Ageing is cruel. As you build up a rich tapestry of relationships and experiences it keeps eating away at your physical and cognitive edges, dulling each and every one of them until one day you’re not the person you were. Increasingly your physical body can be repaired, augmented and even improved, but what if you never aged in the first place, or better yet could get younger?

There are many reasons why we age. Our environment, our habits and behaviours all contribute to ageing but genetics plays a large role too. You might say that we’re soft coded to die but while mutations in our mitochondrial DNA are one of the culprits, the biggest culprit is our epigenetic regulatory system that turns our ‘youth’ genes on and off. So again, by using technologies like CRISP-R to genetically reprogram cells back to their stem cell like, embryonic state we can turn back the clock on ageing.

I may look forty but I’m actually ninety three.

Don’t Forget If you get hit by a bus or age, you can be enhanced, rebuilt, regenerated and reprinted, but what about your mind? An able body is no good if there’s no one home.

Human to machine memory transfer, memory modification and memory augmentation used to be the stuff of science fiction, but scientists have already performed successful demonstrations of all of them.

immortal, we have more bridges to cross but at the start of the 21st century we chimps have not just built some of those bridges, we’ve started crossing them. Technology is accelerating exponentially and in the next 100 years we’ll see over 20,000 years’ worth of technological progress. As ever more advanced emerging technologies combine, solving death will be a matter of ‘when’, not ‘If’.

Moving down the emerging technology stack, brain implants, brain computer interfaces, neuromodulation and sonogenetics are all helping scientists monitor, understand, treat, hold at bay and cure even the most chronic neurological and psychiatric diseases faster than ever before.

In some cases, for example sonogenetics – the use of sound to modify a persons brain patternscan treat anything from epilepsy to mental trauma and many of them are non-invasive.

Conclusion I’ve just touched the surface of a few of the life extension technologies that are appearing and for every one of them there are often more just as profound and impactful.

Before we can call ourselves truly long lived though, let alone

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Foster Ideation Structure Execution

Chief Innovation Officer Summit

San Francisco May 18 & 19, 2016

Speakers include:

+ 1 415 992 7589 adaud@theiegroup.com www.theinnovationenterprise.com

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Why Are Israeli Tech Startups Thriving?

Richard Angus Head of Innovation, The Innovation Enterprise

In 2006, ‘FreeMap Israel’ was founded by Uri Levine, software engineer Ehud Shabtai, and Amir Shinar. Its aim was to provide a platform on which community users could create a free digital database of the map of Israel.

The idea grew to cover other areas, and it began providing traffic updates and looking at user-provided information to find the best routes. In 2009, the company was renamed ‘Waze’, and by June of 2013 it had 50 million users. The same month, it was acquired by Google for $1 billion. The sale was a milestone for Israel’s fledgling startup scene. Waze co-founder Uri Levine explained to Business Insider, ‘This was the first time there was a billion-dollar consumer app out of Israel. We thought we were setting a new beacon for the industry.’

Levine’s instincts proved to be correct. The sale kickstarted a national obsession for creating unicorns that continues to this day,

with startup founders competing with each other to see how far they can get their valuation past the $1 billion mark. While tensions

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It is the world’s second biggest producer of startups, behind only Silicon Valley, and has approximately 4,800 tech companies

flared up again between Israeli and Palestinian Territories towards the end of 2015, technology companies in the region continued to flourish, spurred on by eye-popping levels of venture capital investment.

Despite a population of only 8 million, Israel has made a real name for itself as a hotbed for startup success and innovative technology on the global stage. It is the world’s second biggest producer of startups, behind only Silicon Valley, and has approximately 4,800 tech companies. Startup Genome ranked Tel Aviv second in the world for startups. Startups are a major part of the reason for Israel’s all-round thriving business environment.

Forbes, the World Economic Forum and the Heritage Foundation all rank Israel among the 30 best economies in the world in which to do business.

There are a number of reasons for the success of Israeli startups.

Access to venture capital is a major one. Gal Kalkshtein, an active investor and entrepreneur who runs the Startup Lobby in Israel’s parliament, noted that: ‘Israel is an island of stability. The political/ security issues we face do not affect the type or size of investments in the Israeli market. On the contrary, Israel has been globally leading the cyber and IT fields for a few decades due to the middle east conflicts and the need for powerful intelligence forces.’ Today, there are well over 50 VCs funding Israeli tech, with private-equity bankers such as Blackstone, SilverLake, KKR, Apax Partners, TPG, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley, entering the country in their droves, and writing some huge cheques. In 2015, more than $5 billion was invested in Israeli tech in total - up from $2.2 billion in 2013. Israel boasts $170 in venture capital per person, the most in the world. Co-operation between US and Israel in tech is one of the key drivers behind the countries’ success in this sense. The bond between the two countries is well known, and has raised controversy,

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but its benefits for the tech scene are tremendous. In many instances, investors in all their forms open up their first office outside of the US in Israel. The country has also proven a big hit with China, with Alibaba and Chinese search giant Baidu also both investing heavily.

Cultural reasons also play their part.

In Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, they argued that one of the major factor for Israel’s economic growth was the culture of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It is mandatory for most young Israelis to serve in the IDF, and the authors believe that this gives potential entrepreneurs the chance to develop a wide array of skills and contacts. It also provides experience exerting responsibility in a relatively un-hierarchical environment, in which creativity and intelligence are highly valued. This was a reason also cited by Gil Galanos, Founder of the US Israel Business Counci (USI), in an interview with Bloomberg.

Senor and Singer also credited immigration as a central cause.

Immigrants are, by definition, risktakers, and 9 out of 10 Jewish Israelis today are immigrants or descendants of immigrants in the first or second generation.

Immigrants are used to starting from scratch and facing adversity, and this kind of mentality translates well into building innovative startups.

So what are we likely to see moving forward? SimilarWeb is nearing unicorn status, and looks set to complete its mission to overtake Alexa as the most popular service for analyzing web traffic. Companies like Zutalabs, a mobile printer, have also had great success, raising $500,000 on Kickstarter and an undisclosed investment from VCs. The influx of capital from Asia should see even further investment in companies like these, and this year should see no let up in the pace of growth for Israel’s tech startup scene.

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People Are The Future Of Clean Energy Euan Hunter Sustainability Expert

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he search for a new clean, renewable energy source is gathering pace. Last year saw evidence of an increased acceptance of the realities of global warming among governments, and an apparent willingness to do something about it. This culminated in the Paris agreement in December of 2015, a pledge signed by representatives from 195 nations. The agreement set a new target of reaching net zero emissions by the second half of the century, and it importantly holds governments accountable for making sure these targets are hit.

Renewable energy is central to meeting these new energy demands, and while the Paris agreement has huge implications for growth in the sector, they have already grown faster than many anticipated.

The IEA world energy outlook at the beginning of the millennium forecasted that the share of renewables would be just 3% by 2020, and from then only 2%. However, according to 2015 analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil

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combined, and has been doing since 2013.

Clean and renewable energy is not simply limited to solar and wind. Companies are developing innovative ways to draw every drop of energy from every facet of the world around us. One of these is harnessing the energy which we as people create in our every day life.

Converting the energy created by people seems an obvious way to turn our tendency towards consumption into something useful - to make our daily activities in some way self sustaining. Scientists have been looking at a number of ways of doing this. At MIT, for one, researchers have announced the development of a bendy battery that uses small human motions, such as bending or walking to generate power. They claim to have made a significant breakthrough by figuring out how to do it electrochemically as opposed to mechanically, and while there is already technology out there that utilizes energy from faster motion, this is one of the first to work at humans’ average speed.

Pavegen, a UK company, has also been making strides with kinetic energy. The company has created flooring that captures and recycles the kinetic energy of footsteps that walk on it. It has already proven a huge hit with investors, raising 253% of its £75,000 target on Crowdcube in July. One of its most recent projects is a football pitch in Nigeria that uses the energy to power floodlights. The pitch uses 90 different underground tiles to harvest kinetic energy produced by players during the game, and is then supplemented with solar energy from panels surrounding the pitch to operate the floodlights.

Harvesting body heat is another way that people are being used to generate energy. Several major

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cities have begun harvesting the heat that’s trapped in their vast underground train networks.

For example, 500 homes in the London borough of Islington are already being powered by the heat produced by millions of commuters sealed in the insulated tube system.

The project diverts heat from the tube using a large ventilation shaft, leading into a thermal network that connects to the hundreds of homes above. Similar schemes in Sweden and Paris have also seen success, and not only do they reduce carbon emissions significantly, they also help fund the train networks themselves.

Every day, we create millions of tons of waste, and biofuel is another way that governments can look to reach their carbon emission targets. Coffee is often seen as symbolic of the level of human consumption, with people paying through the nose for their morning caffeine. In 2009, University of Nevada-Reno engineering professor and coffee addict, Mano Misra, noticed the sheen of oil floating on top of a cup of brew that had cooled, and developed a way that this could be used for energy. Researchers estimate that if all the waste grounds generated by the world’s coffee drinkers were gathered and reprocessed, it would amount to 2.9 million gallons of diesel fuel every year.

London Mayor Boris Johnson has also looked at the idea, and has invested heavily in projects which use coffee grounds to power buses. This is further evidence that investment in such projects is already occurring, but governments will have to greatly expand it if they are going to take off to the sort of levels that will be required to cut emissions to zero.

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Chief Innovation

Officer Summit JUNE 29 & 30 | SINGAPORE

Speakers include:

+ 852 8199 0121 ryuan@theiegroup.com www.theinnovationenterprise.com chief innovation officer

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Science Fiction’s Strange Relationship with Reality William Tubbs Innovation Expert

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In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, he portrayed a society descending into hedonistic nihilism, with people popping antidepressants like M&Ms - a prediction which many would argue has come true. Friedrich Nietzche similarly wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, back in 1883, of a population that had been consumed by the desire for pleasure and comfort at the expense of all else.

Authors have also managed to predict world events with terrifying accuracy. Frank Herbert’s Dune famously predicted the battle for the planet’s resources, as well as the environmental disasters that most scientists believe to be a case of not ‘if’ but ‘when’.

Science fiction has, however, arguably been at its most accurate when looking forward at the evolution of technology. Jules Verne’s Paris in the Twentieth Century, for example, infamously predicted the electric submarine 90 years before its invention, while H. G. Wells predicted the atomic bomb in The World Set Free.

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Looking forward, we are seeing a number of technologies once believed to be pie in the sky becoming reality

The relationship between science fiction and reality is a curious one.

In many ways, the predictions made in science fiction become selffulfilling. People see a product in a movie or a book, they like it, and demand grows among enthusiastic technologists, leading someone to invent it. There is an almost reciprocal relationship, with fantasy and reality feeding off one another.

Author Jack Womack even went as far as to suggest that William Gibson’s vision of cyberspace in Necromancer may have steered the Internet in the direction that it has gone, while many believe that Wells’ prediction of the atomic bomb actually inspired Dr. Leo Szilard, the man who split the atom, to use nuclear technology for destructive purposes.

Technology in science fiction is created primarily for two reasons - to serve a function in the new world that the author has created, or because the author sees current technology evolving in that fashion, often with society evolving too to suit this technology. So it is logical in some ways that those science fiction works that most accurately predicted how the society we live in functions are going to be the most accurate when it comes to predicting the technology that we have.

Steven Spielberg’s 2002 movie Minority Report, based on the Phillip K Dick short story, has proven to be among the most prescient in predicting technology that is now in the early stages of development.

Its central concept of predictive law enforcement is already proving correct, as police departments turn to data analytics to find patterns in criminal activity that could help them foresee crimes before they occur. Minority Report also included adverts that would appear for different individuals based on information about them, something that is already commonplace online, and which is now making its way

into shops. Tesco is one of a number of retailers to have installed scanners in its stores that read customer’s faces to determine their gender, and target adverts at them accordingly.

Looking forward, we are seeing a number of technologies once believed to be pie in the sky becoming reality. One of the hoary cliches of the science fiction genre is that of the robot gone mad and destroying the earth. Hal 9000, the robot in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a robotic system that people live inside. According to Ronald Arkin, director of the Mobile Robotics Lab, Georgia Tech: ‘Current research agendas, in human-robot interaction, task planning, command and control, etc., could conceivably lead to such an intelligent system.’ Another common element of the genre is telepathy, which many are starting to envisage coming to pass in the form of an internet built into the brain. According to Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York and author of The Future of the Mind:’ ‘In the next 10 years, we will see the gradual transition from an Internet to a brain-net, in which thoughts, emotions, feelings, and memories might be transmitted instantly across the planet.’

As with everything in science fiction, the consequences of these technologies tends to be negative.

This probably shouldn’t serve as too much of a warning, as films and books would likely be quite boring if everything worked out for the best, but their predictions should never be discounted.

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wake up to employee innovation

Rebecca Thomson Director, Innovation Summit

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Before you expect employees to innovate, you must lead by example, and be new and fresh in your working practices

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nnovation is key to the survival of organizations in every walk of life.

In order to fully exploit it though, it should not be restricted to one department, or only come from people in the top tier positions. Ideas and creative thinking need to be encouraged throughout entire companies, from top to bottom. While many companies have already realized this and are encouraging ideas, however, many are failing in a very basic way.

There are a number of benefits to fostering employee innovation. The view from the bottom is obviously different from the view at the top, and those who work from such a position are able to see the gaps in an organization’s processes - the hold-ups and the unnecessary costs, anything that may be preventing a firm from reaching its full potential - in a way that others can’t. It also has the added benefit of boosting morale. People want to have their ideas listened to, they want to be a valued cog in the organization. Employees who feel like their ideas are valued feel like they have more responsibility, and they invest themselves more in the business, working harder and staying longer as a result.

There are many simple ways of encouraging employee innovation.

Before you expect employees to innovate, you must lead by example, and be new and fresh in your working practices. Getting rid of inflexible 9-5 working hours is an easy way of doing this, and allowing staff to work when they feel they work best will not only show you trust them, it should greatly optimize their output.

Key to innovation is having a number of different perspectives in a team.

While it’s important that you employ people who understand your vision and align with your culture, this does not mean exclusively hiring people exactly like you. You need to have a diverse team, with diverse ideas, diverse backgrounds, and diverse experience.

These are all things that many companies are already doing and if you’re not, you should be.

However, the EveryDay Innovation report, published by Wazoku last October, found that while the average UK business receives 31,200 ideas a year, just 43% of these ideas are acknowledged, and only 39% are implemented. It seems like a significant number of companies are capable of promoting ideas, but they are falling down where it actually matter, effectively rendering all these sorts of initiatives completely redundant. The really troubling statistic here is the lack of acknowledgement of ideas.

The implementation numbers are, if anything, fairly good, as there are always going to be bad ideas, or ideas that companies are unable to put in place for practical reasons. Failing to acknowledge ideas, however, is a sin against innovation, and will fast make employees wonder what the point of it all is. Companies should be creating a relaxed and flexible work environment that encourages ideas without ridicule and negativity. If you fail to acknowledge an idea, you may as well be ridiculing it. Give all ideas the chance to be aired, no matter how ridiculous they may sound initially. It’s also important to encourage a culture where it’s clear you are willing to take a certain, sensible, level of risk on a proposal, and allow staff not only to present their ideas, but give them the chance to trial them and prove what a success they can be.

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Inform. Inspire. Innovate Looking to find new ideas or share your own?

channels.theinnovationenterprise.com chief innovation officer

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Why Black Cabs Need To Innovate, Not Fight George Hill Innovation Commentator

W

hen we look at some of the most successful companies and industries of the last decade, there is always one aspect that appears: creating or reacting to disruption.

We have seen how companies like Airbnb have totally changed the way that people book holiday accommodation, how Amazon have allowed people to buy almost anything they want without needing to search through shops, and how Spotify have made the idea of going to a shop or even buying music online a thing of the past. There are other companies who have adapted to this model, with banks offering financial services on the fly through new applications, hotels who use data to target people with the best deals for them or even DVD rental companies becoming film streaming behemoths.

However, there are industries who are not keeping up with the times. Industries who are fighting back and trying to maintain the status quo, claiming that other companies having an unfair advantage or acting deceitfully is the key reason why they are losing market share.

Chief amongst these are black cabs in London.

Black cabs are undoubtedly one of London’s most recognizable symbols, unique throughout the world and famous for their relatively bulbous shapes and large windows. However, they are also antiquated in their approach to business.

Since Uber was launched in London in mid 2012, the app has had unprecedented success, creating a new economy of flexibility for everybody from the drivers looking to earn some extra money and users, who want to pay less and have a far more convenient service.

Because of this the black cabs in London have chief innovation officer

22 been declining, with the number of people taking ‘The Knowledge’ test (required for all new black cab drivers) falling from 3,326 per annum before Uber to 2,159 in 2014. The Knowledge requires drivers to learn 320 routes, 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks around London, meaning that they can quickly and easily take people from one place to another.

To become an Uber driver, on the other hand, requires a fairly decent car, a driving license, a phone and a sat nav. From there, drivers can drive flexible hours, with many using it as a bit of extra money on top of a regular job. One driver I spoke to said that he worked with Uber because he spent most of the time caring for his sick brother and Uber gave him the flexibility to earn on the side.

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From a customer perspective, using an Uber is also considerably easier than a black cab. For instance, until November 2015, you needed to either find a cab with a card reader (surprisingly rare in London) or make sure you had cash to pay for a black cab. With Uber, all you needed was your phone and a bank account.

The costs of an Uber are also considerably less than traditional black cabs, which is the primary reason why companies like Hailo (who tried to create an Uber-like app for black cabs) have fallen behind the market leaders.

All of these elements considered, it is no surprise that Uber has begun to dominate the London transport landscape. However, whereas a smart move would be to emulate and improve on the Uber model, the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) is alienating people from their cause by lobbying for a return to the status quo. This has included potentially making Uber drivers wait for five minutes after picking up a passenger, protests to block streets and most recently trying to get them shut down for tax reasons.

The main problem with this is simply that people like using Uber, so even if the LTDA does succeed in stopping Uber operating in the English capital, going back to a more expensive, less practical option will annoy customers. Essentially, the only win that the LTDA could get from this situation is to learn from, and expand the Uber model, because fighting it is now not an option. It is a lesson that many companies should learn: don’t fight change, embrace and improve it.

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UPCOMING EVENTS 2016 Chief Innovation APRIL 27 & 28 | LONDON Officer Summit

JUNE 29 & 30 | SINGAPORE

Chief Innovation Officer Summit Speakers include:

Open Innovation Summit ie.

Speakers include: theinnovationenterprise.com

Speakers include:

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aduad@theiegroup.com theinnovationenterprise.com

+44 207 193 1512

chief innovation officer adaud@theiegroup.com

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