Agile collaboration when contracting for innovation
Is ‘innovation’ just the current buzzword across all industries including ICT? If my recent experiences can be my yardstick, the answer is a resounding ‘no’.
With the pace of change we’re experiencing, there is a genuine global acknowledgement of the absolute urgency to innovate. In fact, whether it’s a country, an industry sector or a company, the importance of innovation is gaining momentum with the aim of maintaining competitive advantage.
In ICT, it is clearly recognized that we’re on the cusp of a new era with innovation occurring at increasing speed across society, with the power of the possible underpinned by the global Networked Society. Increasing connectivity is engendering greater creativity, more openness and sharing. We are already seeing how innovation in devices and internet applications is creating new value, causing changes in human behavior, leading to an explosion in network traffic and fostering even greater innovation. We see other industry sectors leveraging the Networked Society and collaborating to create new and enhanced goods and services. New winners and multiple new business models are emerging. We’re learning to govern differently and for sustainability.
Innovation is moving from a vertical development approach, where one company develops everything in-house to a more horizontal approach. Rapidly innovating industries and companies recognize that they need to partner to innovate at the speeds required to remain in the game. The traditional rules of engagement no longer work as organizations respond to what feels like constantly shifting sands beneath their feet. There is a need to work with an evolving and agile ecosystem as well as to structure new ways of collaborating and new structures, processes and tools for those collaborations that reflect the level of engagement and stage of innovation. It is about allowing sustainable business for all involved in the innovation engagement for the benefit of the industry and society as a whole.
Networked innovators, geographically and organizationally dispersed can address the big global challenges we and our children face: urbanization, climate, environment, aging, scare resources, education, and efficiency in our public sectors. With agile collaboration in contracting for innovation, the ICT industry can leverage the best of others to create the best solutions for the greater good of the Networked Society and naturally foster the growth of ideas for using the technology in ways we haven’t yet imagined possible.
Written by Rima Qureshi
Senior Vice President and Head of CDMA, Ericsson. Qureshi joined Ericsson in 1993 and her experience has spanned leadership roles in research and development, customer support as well as heading up improvement programs for a major customer in North America and managing Global Delivery Centers across the world. Since 1996, Qureshi has also been head of the non-profit Ericsson Response and was appointed to the Board of Directors of MasterCard Worldwide in 2011. She holds a Bachelor’s degree of Management Information Systems and a Master’s degree of Business Administration, both from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
