A Holistic Approach To Democratising Innovation
Innovation today is not as far from us as we might think. The divides between producers and consumers, the innovators and beneficiaries, are no longer stable, and now is the time to realize that these constructs do not work on multiple levels. Vern Burkhardt, writing for a noted publication, states how while the term “consumer” implies that users are just that—"consumers," there is strong evidence that 10 to 40 per cent of individual and corporate consumers engage in product development and modification of standard products offered by manufacturers. At the same time, technology has made tools for innovation increasingly accessible, opening the domain up for more interventions where individuals can innovate at extremely affordable costs. How do these realities reconcile themselves with the regimen of traditional producers and with conventions of working? Also, if innovation is indeed to a certain degree, democratized today, how do we aid this democratization to benefit all stakeholders? An answer to this question requires a holistic approach.
The definitions of democratizing innovation vary from Eric von Hippel’s emphasis on technology being an enabler for individuals in their innovation endeavours to Philippe Davidson’s stress on collaboration being the way to democratize innovation in organizations. These technology and organization privileging approaches can be juxtaposed to consider all aspects of the situation. Eric von Hippel notes in an interview with Burkhardt,
“The tools for designing high-quality innovations are getting so cheap and so ubiquitous that individuals can innovate for themselves at a steadily higher quality and at a steadily decreasing cost. These sophisticated modern tools are computer-based and require relatively little training and practice. As a result, even hobbyist users find they can use them to design new products and services.”
On the other hand, Davidson in his book Democratizing Innovation in Organizations remarks,
“Collaboration in innovation necessarily means that several people have a say in the innovation endeavor that is under development. […] These stakeholders could include customers or the people defending their interests in their name, managers at all levels, team members, suppliers and partners in the value chain, government regulatory agency officials, and often several more. […] Optimizing the value generated by innovation means finding a happy balance between all these interests. Therefore, innovation carried out by groups of people involves two key considerations: (i) that the ideas be devel-oped and refined through thought-provoking discussions, and (ii) that group deci-sions be made through discerning deliberations which may involve negotiations.Hence, to carry out these activities effectively and efficiently, innovators must be-come skilled deliberators and negotiators.”
Considering both these scholarly observations, in short, technology can be a tool to democratize innovation and at the same time, workers and stakeholders must be able to have meaningful conversation to make an innovative collaboration unfold democratically. Workers and individuals must be adept practitioners of technology to innovate and at the same time must be reasonable and pragmatic negotiators to let the innovation project, which in one way or the other involves other actors, realize a favourable impact. For enabling both these things, training, structural changes and infrastructural support is key.
For instance, Zia Qureshi, writing for Brookings notes how to enable workers to update skills, one approach is through Lifelong Learning Accounts, introduced in countries like France and Singapore, in which workers accumulate rights to training that are portable across jobs. More flexibility can be built into government student aid programs including grants, loans and tax incentives so that they benefit not just first-time college entrants but also returning older adults. Furthermore, the potential of technology-enabled solutions must be harnessed. Qureshi uses the example of how the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the scope for scaling up the use of online learning tools to assert that broader access to these tools will require a stronger foundation of digital infrastructure and digital literacy.
In a nutshell, the foundational and collaborative aspects of democratizing innovation can both be strengthened through a judicious combination of training and infrastructural development. To truly let the world of innovating open its doors to as many people as possible, we need to build a reliable foundation and equip people to negotiate with stakeholders and actors as the project takes off and realizes itself. With collaboration and learning at the core of such efforts, innovation can certainly be democratised.
