In our fast transforming world where we on one side get the feeling of getting closer to each other where Internet phenomena’s like Face-book, Twitter and Skype definitely has shrunken the world and contributed to a feeling that we belong to the same human community.
On the other hand have the distribution of information and the globalization forced us to a situation where we on a higher extent compete with each other on limited resources. Everything from the price on money, agriculture products to human resources are today globally priced sometimes also with bid and offer prices in real-time.
Are then also Innovation capacities globally priced? The answer is say yes and no. Building blocks in form of talented individuals are priced on the global market. There are prices on innovative individuals rented (recruited) as employees or on short-term bases hired as consultants. But so far few examples of innovation capacity offered as a “capability”. Some might then say, look at the marketing and advertising sector, they have been outsourced for long. Yes they have, but according to common definitions, marketing and advertising are component in innovation managements and could not alone represent innovation as a capability.
Why are there then so few offerings of “Innovation capabilities” on the market?
One conclusion is, there are no demands!
There are today more demands for requiting and hiring talented individuals that could match into an innovative organization than demands for packaged innovation capabilities. Innovations and innovation capacity is so critical for organizations in the today hypercompetitive market that the whole capacity would hardly be outsourced, at least not yet.
If that is true, that then drives the need for other highly specialized skills and tools to further develop an organizations innovation capacity, a topic which I will come back to in later posts.