Perpetual Innovation

Category: business development

  • Innovative Countries — Global Innovation Index

    Innovative Countries — Global Innovation Index

    This is a great summary of innovation by country from Visual Capitalist. See the Global Innovation Index (GII) map here:https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-innovative-countries-2022/

    First Published on IntellZine.com. Note the sustainability implications from innovation, and the lack of innovation.

    We,
    at Strategic Business Planning Company, www.SBP.com, are always
    interesting in all aspects of innovation. Sometimes we hear from a
    layperson or an executive that the most innovative country in the work
    is …  

    Israel and Ireland were
    mentioned in recent years.  One executive said that “all innovation
    comes from Israel”. All right, admittedly, Israel is a great source of
    innovation and invention, but it is a very small country (population,
    GDP). In absolute terms, Israel is not even close, but in relative terms
    (adjusted for size of country), Israel is a very respectable #16 in the
    world (GII score of 50.2).

    So,
    a quick search came up with this great source at Visual Capitalist
    shows that the top 6 countries are: Switzerland, USA, Sweden, and the UK
    all with innovation scores above 60. The rest of the top 10 had
    innovation scores over 56.

    Rank

      Country / Region

    Score

    1

    Switzerland

    64.6

    2

    U.S.

    61.8

    3

    Sweden

    61.6

    4

    United Kingdom

    59.7

    5

    Netherlands

    58.0

    6

    South Korea

    57.8

    7

    Singapore

    57.3

    8

    Germany

    57.2

    9

    Finland

    56.9

    10

    Denmark

    55.9

    Here is the summary of how the Global Innovation Index is developed/designed. (quote)

    Innovation is inherently challenging
    to quantify, but the Global Innovation Index is a longstanding attempt to do
    just that. The framework used for the index was
    designed to create a more complete analysis, comprising of 81 indicators
    across seven categories to calculate a country’s score:

    7 Categories

    Example Indicators

    🧳 Business Sophistication

    Business R&D spend, net inflows of foreign direct
    investment

    📈 Market Sophistication

    Size of economy’s GDP, intensity of local market
    competition

    🛣️ Infrastructure

    Road, hospital, school construction, energy efficiency

    👩‍🏫 Human Capital & Research

    Government funding per pupil, quality of scientific and
    research institutions

    🏛️ Institutions

    Political stability and safety, ease of starting a
    business

    💡 Creative Outputs

    Most valuable brands, industrial design applications,
    trademark applications

    👨‍💻 Knowledge and Technology Outputs

    Patent applications,
    increase in labor productivity, spending on software

    As the above table shows, the
    framework aims to identify indicators that foster an innovative environment and
    breakthrough technologies.

    Other Countries

     The article talks about regions, like North America (namely, US and Canada) and the EU with some 15 very innovative countries. 

    China came in 11th
    (GII score of 55.3). China sucks up technology from around the world —
    legally, unethically, and illegally. And then China shamelessly deploys
    and commercializes technology. In terms of patents, China is by far the
    busiest patent office in the world. World Intellectual Property Organization shows
    that China continues to be the busiest patent office in the world. The
    patent protection in china is not because it is the 2nd largest economy
    in the world behind the USA, it is because patent protection in the
    other big economies is also protected by reducing the knock-offs and
    piracy from China (India and other countries).

    South Africa is generally low on the GII innovation index with South Africa rated 61st country (GII of 29), then Morocco and Tunisia. The nexus of innovation (regions or pockets of innovation) seems to explain much of the GII innovation.

    Summary

    Innovation is complex with may areas that enable economic growth and development. A well rounded environment for invention and innovation is best. There are several ways to get to an economic environment that is innovation enabled and invention friendly.

  • Nation’s Startup Activity Reverses Five-Year Downward Trend, Annual Kauffman Index Reports | Kauffman.org

    Nation’s Startup Activity Reverses Five-Year Downward Trend, Annual Kauffman Index Reports | Kauffman.org:

    Business Startups are up.

    That’s great. Entrepreneurship and new business formation is a great advantage to the economy.

    The olde adage:  the worst time to start a business is at the onset of a recession. The correlate to that is: the best time to start a business is at the end of a recession. Well, it has taken 6 years but the end of the Great Recession has finally past. Those people who had jobs didn’t want to give them up. Now maybe they are willing to step out on their own. Those people who didn’t have jobs, may have formed companies out of necessity, not out of strength.

    It is interesting that 63% of the new startups were by men. Part of that would be because of the rebound in construction and factories where men dominate. But also, women are generally more risk averse than men. Maybe they will just take another year of healthy economy before they take the plunge.

    Minorities, especially Hispanics were up. Blacks and whites, not so much so.

    They are saying that 3 out of every 1,000 adults started a business in 2014. That must be annually. (Something said monthly which seems very high; that would be 3.6 out of 100.)

    No matter the number, better and more quality businesses that survive and thrive is always better than a large number of startups when most of them fail.

    It is always good to see strong healthy signs of progress in an economy that is sputtering a bit.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Rise of the Rest – Entrepreneur Tour. 5 Cities at a time.

    World Stock Markets:

    Steve Case from AOL fame is one of the judges going round hitting up start-up business ideas, 5 cities at a time. The south of USA is next.

    Revolution, Google for Entrepreneurs, and UP Global

    This UP Global initiative is an interesting approach by Google ventures and others to identify and fund new venture ideas.

    A very cool approach to jump starting innovation anywhere and everywhere around the world. That the winner gets a boat-load of money and and a blast of publicity is a rather nice perk to the whole process.

    See Google Ventures here: http://www.gv.com/about

    See Case Foundation here: http://casefoundation.org

    I Like the title of an article on the Case Foundation web site: “Running business as if the future matters.”

    Steve’s come some distance since the time when the guppy-eat-the-whale daze of the DotCom error when AOL bought out TimeWarner. This buy-out-merger resulted in one of the greatest indigestion from over-eating of all time.

    Read about this Maalox moment in a 2005 book: “The failure of the AOL-Time Warner merger is the subject of a book by Nina Munk entitled Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner(2005).” (Steve Case, 2015, Life and Career, para. 10).

    Steve has had a very impressive log of ventures and philanthropic organizations since the AOL days.

    Reference

    Steve Case. (2015, March 12). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:34, March 16, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steve_Case&oldid=651091501

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Control of IP on Business Side of Corporation

    There’s a key point in this IAM magazine article by Joff Wild in the July 9, 2014, issue.  Note that the Chief IP Officer is not an attorney- he a business professional.  This is a significant change, a recognition that commercialization of Intellectual Property in a marketed product, a Patent Licensing Agreement with Royalties, a technology transfer or an outright patent sale is a business decision, not a legal one.  In some companies going back nearly 50 years, (AT&T, IBM, DuPont, Xerox to name a few) the decisions on IP were made by the business side.  But, for most, it has only been since the late 1980s that brought the marked change from predominantly physical assets in a corporation to intellectual assets that has prompted more and more corporations to view IP as a key revenue generator that has a place in the strategic plan.  The business development organization would be an appropriate place for decisions on IP revenue generation.