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27.03.07

Hotbeds of Innovation

In their book Payback the authors James Andrew and Harold Sirkin describe conducive conditions in the context of innovative environments:

One of our clients, for example, has seen that certain geographic organizations (such as Australia and South Africa) have become hotbeds of innovation. He believes this is because the talented senior managers in those geographies, who operate outside of the control of the corporate center, have the space they need to generate lots of good ideas. They also have the full set of functions and capabilities required to realize and commercialize the ideas, which would not be the case if innovation were more centralized.

I often thought about this when I spent a year in South Africa, since I had been much more creative at that time. Being in South Africa, what surprised me was that many of the students I met, just followed their creativity and lived as an artist. The environment was quite supportive of that (for instance, it was much easier for an artist to exhibit his/her work than it is in Austria) and cost of living is rather low (renting, fixed running costs etc). I believe that the main reason for my own creativity at that time came from the vast amount of space available, which made it possible to focus on the horizon. With this along came a disregard of details which had an influence of my thinking (long-term, overview).

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