driving innovation through communication

The greatest challenge to the success of any technology-based organisation is in maintaining the ability to innovate - to continually set the industry standard.

Competitive advantage has traditionally been based on lowering costs or gaining differentiation. But competitive advantage today depends more and more on the capacity to generate 'disruptive innovations' - market-challenging ideas and products based on radical new technologies and emerging markets. Such innovations allow organisations to leapfrog competitors and reap higher profits by being able to move faster than your competitors.

But where will these innovations come from?

Research shows that the knowledge needed to fuel innovation most often resides outside your organisation. Businesses and other organisations need new ways of engaging with fringe stakeholders to tap into pools of previously undiscovered knowledge.

This seminar explores a groundbreaking approach in which techniques and philosophies from the world of science communication are used to discover innovative ideas from unusual and novel sources. We examine organisations that have adopted this approach and discover how science communication can be a powerful weapon in the battle to stimulate innovation and gain competitive advantage. We look at 'radical transactiveness' - the ability to continually acquire and combine knowledge from fringe stakeholders, techniques for stakeholder dialogue and the open business architectures necessary to exploit newly gained knowledge for future business success.

Greens, Genes and Soyabeans! - Engagement and Communication Challenges in the Emerging Molecular Economy

We sit on the cusp of a new economic cycle in which the make-up of our GDP, which has in the past migrated from agriculture to manufactured goods, to services, and then to information, shifts again, this time to value created by molecular technologies. While it is difficult to predict the technologies of the future, recent controversies over emerging innovations such as genetic engineering, cloning and nanotechnology clearly illustrate a major threat to this new economy. 

Concerns and mistrust over scientific and technological developments have been deepened by serious policy errors and poor communications on the part of governments, innovation-based organisations and scientists. In the new molecular economy, failures to engage effectively with key stakeholders may not only damage individual technologies and businesses but could ruin entire economies. Most organisations still tend to focus management attention only on known and powerful stakeholders - those who seem to directly impact the organisation today. However, the ability to systematically identify, explore and integrate the views of those on the periphery - the 'fringe stakeholders' - can provide organisations with new capabilities, improved business models and competitive advantages for future success.

This seminar looks at the increasing importance of science and public engagement, examines past controversies and draws lessons for the future. We see how current science communication is typically didactic with one-way information flow and look at how this must change for the future. We examine issues of trust and dispel some of the common myths that those involved in science and technology can have about public responses to new technological developments. The importance of trust, upstream engagement and dialogue, and the way that these could be achieved to avoid conflict and controversy and achieve economic success are revealed.

Understanding the Public Understanding You

Though it's not always obvious, all organisations rely on interactions with the public. Whether you're talking to the 'man on the Clapham omnibus', users of your new product, a room full of venture capitalists or a committee of regulators, all are members of the public - and all stakeholders in your organisation. Yet these interactions are often fraught with difficulty. In order to prevent the surprise emergence of adversarial threats to their technologies, organisations need to manage radical uncertainty by acquiring knowledge from diverse and dispersed heterogeneous stakeholders - the 'fringe stakeholders'. Such knowledge can then be used to generate innovation, develop new business models and gain competitive advantage.

This seminar examines ways of identifying and understanding the different types of public that may interact with your organisation, looks at what your organisation needs to know about its different publics. We look at how you can develop communication and engagement strategies and policies to gain useful knowledge from fringe stakeholders and to achieve maximum benefit from these interactions.

From Genetically Modified to Genuinely Mortified -  Lessons from Science Controversies.

Controversies about new technologies have provided deep insights and useful lessons for all innovation-based organisations. Social scientists, media researchers, ethicists, philosophers and other academics have pinpointed the nature and causes of science-based controversies. Such developments enable us to more effectively avoid controversies in the future and mean that upstream engagement can be tailored to exact requirements, with unease about technological developments and the governance and regulation of a technology being addressed before technological developments are compromised. 

In an approach pioneered by Inform Consulting, the technologies developed by innovation-based organisations, and the organisation's performance, engagement and communication strategy, can be evaluated against key indicators. This makes it possible to generate informed forecasts of the likelihood of future conflict, controversy and business threats arising from what may currently seem like an innocuous and acceptable technology - this can provide critical information, not only to those involved in innovation, but also for those considering investing in particular technologies or innovation-based business.