Creating digital innovation ecosystem - Part 1 : Lessons from Israel

I visited Israel in October this year, mainly Jerusalem, North and Tel Aviv district.  One thing you cannot ignore is that Israel is quickly becoming an innovation giant.  This country is known as a start-up nation, with most of their innovation coming from high technology industry. It’s amazing that this same nation that is forever under attack or attacking…


Israel created an innovation ecosystem at national level that allows small and entrepreneurial business to prosper and flourish.  Like US, Israel leverages on the fact that it is a multicultural nation, allowing for diversity and different viewpoints. I believe that there could be that can be learned from Israel.  

I asked myself, what if I take these lessons and apply to my organisation?  This should compel executives to create a digital ecosystem for their organisations, the fact of the matter is that digital is leading.  

A strong digital innovation ecosystem takes into consideration firstly the demand and supply.  Israel knew that in order to succeed, they needed to create an innovation ecosystem than have both strong supply and demand side components.  By digital ecosystem I am refereeing to organisational policies or control systems that enable the generation and incubation of ideas. This includes making available the right resources, environment, infrastructure, funding that drives innovation.  I believe that corporateSA must act promptly to improve the ease of digital innovation by creating an enabling environment. 

The second thing I observed was how diversity can spur innovation, this also refer to a culture that values and encourage different views.  Key to any innovation success, including digital is to identify organisational cultural elements that can spur innovation and creativity. I know that there is something great in your organisation culture that could be nurtured. An open culture encourages the free flow of ideas and collaboration among individuals with very different perspectives.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your interest

Popular posts from this blog

Image
IoT consist of a complex ecosystem and will be delivered through partnership and collaboration – African perspective. When it comes to adopting technologies, Africa is often a unique market for obvious reasons i.e. lack of infrastructure and diverse economies.   Our uniqueness can make Africa an implementation frontier.  However Africa’s regional diversity requires different approaches to implementing IoT Solution.  The localisation of global use cases will be key to implementation in sectors like agriculture. Health care and logistics. Firstly lets us unpack IoT The discussions around IoT continue to dominate in all government and business platforms.  The prospect of a myriad of interconnected devices inspires both hope and fear.  For business, IoT promises to deliver operational efficiencies and enabling faster decision making.  Business leaders are also tackling the fears around skills and loss of jobs.  In the midst of...
Read more

Vision Matters; Digital transformative vision matters even more

Image
  Where there is no vision people perish, that is a verse from the bible.  Kotter in his paper, why transformation efforts fails, he identified key steps required to make your transformation journey as success.  One of them is to create a vision – the better people can envision where they are going, the more they can focus on specific initiatives that will make that vision a reality. Successful digital transformation starts at the top of the company.  Only the senior-most executives can create a compelling vision of the future and communicate it throughout the organisation.  Then the people in middle and lower levels can make a vision a reality.  The real benefits of transformation come from seeing potential synergies across silos and then creating conditions through which everyone can unlock that value.  Only senior executives are positioned to drive this kind of boundary-spanning change. One is big question is where should you focus you...
Read more

Africa is Ready for the next wave of digital disruption

Image
Africa is ready for the next wave of digital disruption By Veronica Motloutsi – in her personal capacity While in Kinshasa, a city determined to make a full recovery and heal the scars of years of conflict and civil war, I thought of one thing which is what will make this city leapfrog and readies itself to join other African countries as a fascinating destination.  What kind of innovation while propel this city to move forward.  This is not the challenge only for Kinshasa but for many African cities. What not to like about a city controlled by enormous robots, complete with arms, legs and smiling faces. Africa’s socio-economic challenges forces will soon forces the country to be the early adopter of technology.  In the era of digital disruption, Africa, has responded very well in terms of the adoption of new innovation breakthrough.  Our continent is embracing technological, most especially the digital.  This disruption will work in ...
Read more