Ted Zoller makes the first point eloquently in Paper 12 in which he looks at reasons Silicon Valley culture is so receptive to innovative ideas. One reason, he says, is that leaders are connected not just to their company but to others through corporate board membership. That means, among other things that they hear about cool ideas other people are working on and have the opportunity to invest in or connect to early stage ideas (sometimes from other fields) with ideas they have. And it means other people can hear their ideas and make connections or offer advice or invest or collaborate.

Another key role real leaders can play is creating conditions in their workplace where innovation can happen. This is a point Jeffrey Phillips has frequently made in comments on this site and through his consulting work. Innovation leaders, be they in business, nonprofits, academics or government, figure out a way to make it legal, expected, and in the culture to innovate (and as Lou Masi and Mark Rostick recently noted, in certain situations to allow others to look in on their innovation).

Some good work on creating that environment has been done in the business world inside companies, by Jeffrey and others, and even in cutting edge companies that specialize in bringing together people from across disciplines to create new ideas and innovations (see Paper 02 and this recent article about Nathan Mhyrvold’s Intellectual Ventures).

But the intentional creation of innovation environments is not happening nearly as much in the worlds of government, nonprofits and education.

As we’ve talked about in past posts, UNC campus-based teams are at work now on (among other things) how to create more fertile climates for innovation, responding to a report from the system. And it makes sense. As you look at where breakthrough academic discoveries are being made, more and more often they are happening in the interstitial tissue between disciplines — between chemistry and technology, between design and math, between anthropology and life sciences. Meanwhile, outside of university “centers” our academic departments are ensconsed in enclaves and it is hard for people from different disciplines to find spaces to share ideas and discover synergies (more on this later).

Similarly, as Todd Cohen noted in Paper 11, nonprofits are finding synergies that make them more effective. The breakthrough ideas in nonprofits tend to come when someone from another discipline or expertise background applies that knowledge to thorny problems. Former bankers find a way to enable forprofit companies to support part of the work of their nonprofits; attorneys help struggling upside down homeowners refinance their homes; logistics experts bring science to food bank distribution strategies.

Government is wide open to new approaches. As we discussed in Papers 8-10, early efforts to become relentlessly innovative in efficiency are only a start.

Your idea about the telecenters as government-sponsored free innovation zones is intriguing. Are these turning out mostly to be places where technological barriers to innovation or spacial barriers to innovation are overcome, or where cross-pollenization is happening or where legal and permitting issues have been addressed?

1. I think the funding gap is related to the leadership gap. Funders invest in management teams and proven leaders – we need more leaders living and leading in NC.

2. Very much agree that we need to think more about what we can do in terms of services to help incubate emerging companies and ideas. Our “incubation places” seem to be more about real estate and less about innovation and partnering.

3. The e-NC authority is the founder of 7 regional telecenters that are at least pseudo-free-innovation-zones.

4. The innovation council should certainly at the least identify the 2 or 3 focus areas and recommend people and organizations to tote the water.

Phil Emer

We need innovation in all facets of life – academic, governmental and business, and at all levels. Small business and local government to Fortune 500 firms and State Government and major universities. This will call for new policies not just for tech transfer and new funds for start ups, but should also call for new tax policies to encourage risk taking and growth for larger firms. We should also push our universities and secondary educational systems to innovate – both what they teach and how they teach. We should demand more innovation from our governments at all levels – not just rhetoric but specific, measurable goals. If North Carolina wants to be the “State of Innovation”, then all facets of the state need to be involved. While a focus on start-up firms is great, it would be nice to see the government and the academic institutions place significant emphasis on innovation as well.