Innovation Ecosystems
A look into an exemplar micro-ecosystem of innovation in Guinea, West Africa — to learn how we might foster greater global innovation ecosystems.
The world is full of micro-ecosystems of innovation. Hotbeds of positive deviants abound, springing up in every corner of the world. From co-creation spaces and hubs in the Silicon Valley, to the remote villages of Guinea, I have seen these actors in play first hand.
These micro-ecosystems are limited in size and defined by their characteristically unique environmental factors. Take for example, the Dare to Innovate movement that emerged in Guinea, West Africa. Dare to Innovate challenges youth across West Africa to design and jump-start their own social enterprises, turning social issues into revenue-generating solutions. Dare to Innovate truly took hold during it’s first Conference for Social Entrepreneurship in the fall of 2013. There some of the most dynamic youth of the country came together with western design thinkers and successful business mentors to catalyze the big bang that formed the movement. The energy, reflection, community building, and creativity that buzzed throughout the conference was due to the unique confluence of both human and environmental factors that allowed for the innovation micro-ecosystem to flourish and give life to the Dare to Innovate movement.
The 21 youth that participated in that conference did not come for the “certificate” or for a daily stipend, as typical of most training in the country, but rather they came to learn. Some of them traveled by bush taxi for days to arrive at the training center located not in a glamorous hotel in the capital but at the Dare to Innovate training center located on an agricultural social enterprise in the village of Kondeya. With little to no electricity, limited water, and the nearest main road miles and miles away, this was the perfect setting — the participants were able to fully emerge themselves and devote themselves to understanding, learning, and innovating. Whether it was staying up late to work on their business pitches, having clandestine meetings to discuss how they must hold each other accountable for bringing these lessons of social innovation to their communities, or when they recognized the finite supply of clean water and elected to walk to bathe in the river instead. The micro-ecosystem that was created during the conference birthed the foundations for the Dare to Innovate movement, as these youths became frugal, adaptable, social-minded innovators.
Whereas energy, water, nitrogen, and soil are the essential abiotic components for any ecosystem in the natural world, innovation ecosystems have basic elemental nutrients as well. And, just as in our evolution and ability to inhabit even the most remote areas of the world, adaptability is the secret to our success.
Micro-ecosystems come together to create large ecosystems — communities defined by the network of interactions among and between organisms and their environment. In the natural world, an ecosystem is categorized by both its biotic and abiotic components. In an innovation ecosystem, this make-up and their relationships are equally important and characteristic.
These days, the actors and artifacts that make-up a micro-ecosystem can even be detached from one another — a virtual micro-ecosystem of innovation that spans the globe, with the help of digital communication and tools for collaboration.
An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with nonliving components. When looking across micro-ecosystems to understand how we can foster greater, national and even global innovation ecosystems, I believe there are several unifying components critical to the foundation of each. Throughout these ponderings and through this medium I hope to explore and uncover what these elemental components are and just what might be the critical nutrients that help innovation ecosystems thrive.
