The Future of Innovation

Fnac Shaper Talk

In July, the Lisbon Global Shapers discussed, at Chiado FNAC, “The Future of Innovation”. The debate was moderated by the Global Shaper Lisbon Curator Inês Santos Silva and Raquel Félix, Researcher and Project Manager at SensesLab.

Much is said about innovation, but the truth is that there is no consensus on what innovation is and how it is done. The first point of the discussion was thus centered on the definition of innovation. We talked about incremental innovation vs disruptive innovation, we also talked about process innovation vs product innovation vs. business model innovation. Raquel Félix also presented the concept of “adhesive innovation” when companies try to be innovative, not for innovation purposes, but for marketing. Finally, we also talked about experimental innovation done by companies like Google (Google X as a prime example).

We also touch upon the impact of leaders innovation. Cases such as Steve Jobs at Apple, Jeff Bezos at Amazon and Reed Hastings at Netflix are prime examples of disruptive leaders who have no qualms about changing the status quo and launching products that compete with other star products. What Netflix has done with moving from DVD rentasl to a digital media subscription platform is probably one of the most successful cases of in-house disruption, unlike Kodak who invented the digital camera, but failed because it did not know how to take advantage of it.

Finally, some myths about how innovation is done were also discussed. We talked about how many companies try to copy more innovative ones by providing pouffs, post-its and almond milk to their employees, but forgetting that innovation comes from strong cultures with a clear mandate for innovation and with risk tolerance. We talked also about the “Young Genius / Inventor” myth and that in an increasingly complex society, really disruptive innovation is slow to develop. An example of this is the age of the Nobel Prize winners who is increasingly advanced.

The conversation ended with an incentive to innovation and with the certainty that there is still much to innovate, both in business and in the public sectors.

You can review the Facebook Live streaming of this Shaper Talk here:

‘FNAC Shaper Talks’ are monthly debates organized by the Lisbon Hub of Global Shapers in partnership with FNAC to discuss relevant topics in our society such as education, politics or privacy.