How can business foster innovation?

How can business foster innovation?

Last year, the FLI Conference welcomed the Editor-in-Chief of Wired UK, David Rowan as one of its key speakers. In his current position, he travels around the world visiting hundreds of interesting companies each year.  At the conference, David had all participants engaged when he told stories of purpose driven businesses and their innovative approaches. He also shared a simple, easy to implement, formula which aids innovation and problem solving. 

As you may be aware, the environment in which people work is getting more and more attention. More businesses wanting to add agility and innovation to their activities create a space where people collide, co-learn and collaborate. The 3Cs is a results driven approach adopted by start-ups as well as big businesses wanting to create a powerful atmosphere of co-creation and innovation. That interaction between different individuals, different background and views is the formula which leads us to create and innovate.

• Collide: Bump into each other and share opinions 
• Co-learn: Learning from each other 
• Collaborate: Cooperating

There are many examples of how the 3Cs can be achieved in different ways, from having brainstorming weeks in the desert to setting-up an entire organisation to stimulate such interactions.

The Francis Crick Institute has achieved the 3Cs with great success. The institute works in the medical field and aims to cure cancer and other genetic illnesses using innovative new technologies and ways of thinking. It is funded by a partnership between a UK government funding agency, two charities and three leading universities and was built with no internal walls. Different departments with experts are connected via bridges and platforms where teams with diverse professional backgrounds can meet to combine their knowledge and find solutions that break through former silos. 

This simple adjustment has allowed people from different backgrounds, with different skillsets to confront big problems in fresh ways. The staff simply run into each other prompting interaction – the biochemist runs into the data scientist who runs into the visual expert and so on. This interaction creates a unique opportunity to find new solutions. To further this approach, they also built a restaurant where people come together and to eat and to share their thoughts and ideas.

How can you create a space in which the 3Cs are met?

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About the FLI Thought Leader David Rowan

David Rowan is Editor-in-Chief of the renowned science and technology magazine WIRED UK, which was awarded ‘Launch of the Year’ by the British Society of Magazine Editors in 2009.

David Rowan unites business and technology and investigates how tech megatrends will change the entire business sector, from the individual workplace to overarching objectives. David Rowan published the WIRED UK June 2016 issue on the topic of “Build something meaningful – The rise of the MISSION-DRIVEN business.”