It’s obvious that the financial downturn has negatively impacted innovation. Lack of investment has meant fewer startups, and lack of capital for liquidity events and exits has pushed a listless market into even greater torpor. Overall, the downward pressure is preventing a lot of great new ideas and technological advances from getting off the ground.
But is there a positive side effect of the recession? What if the legacy of the most acute economic distress since the 1930s is that, rather than simply returning to our old pace and methods, we shift to a studied, more sustainable form of innovation and growth? What if we’re entering an era of “refined” innovation that will change the way ideas move from concept to market for years to come?
Stop adopting, start assessing
We’re coming off a ten-year run of hyper-innovation that has revolutionized our daily lives. From consumer electronics to energy efficiency to alternative materials to data interchange to entertainment, virtually every aspect of our lives has been impacted. The past decade has essentially been a large global whiteboard on which visionaries have jotted down earth-shattering new concepts that ultimately formed and transformed big and bold markets.
But the new truth is that we can absorb only so much innovation—and so much change—in a given period. That’s why, at some point, consumers, commercial markets, investors, and strategic partners need to stop adopting and start assessing and refining.
This means we’ll begin to embrace new technology on a more selective basis. It means we’ll begin to incorporate and absorb the long-term impact of innovation and transform past fads or previous follies into sustainable evolutions. And it means we’ll begin to look for synergies across various breakthrough ideas that have survived the vetting process and extract their most positive and efficient attributes.
Call it innovation refinement or innovation consolidation, this is where we need to go. It’s about catching our breath and extracting maximum value from the super-spasm of innovation that has just taken place.
Low-risk funding
What does this mean for financing? Everything.
There are vast opportunities for low-risk innovation investment today. And the foundation has already been laid for this approach. A vast array of science projects has been hatched and funded, and now we need to focus on which of these innovations can be improved on with additional