A new group of professionals using the future as a tool for transformation.
According to expert Gerd Leonhard, the world will change more in the next 20 years than it has in the last 300. Today, the pace of evolution regarding demographic, climatic, and especially technological changes is exponential. This means that the innovation processes companies have carried out until now—planned in a centralized and linear manner—no longer work. According to a global PWC study, 45% of CEOs believe that in 10 years their company will not be viable if it continues on the same path.
Alfons Cornella, along with a team of expert innovation consultants, has studied the needs of innovation models to adapt to new times and has identified four major success factors.
1. An innovative professional profile
The first success factor is a new professional profile. Organizations need professionals who lead innovation from the frontier: the
edgers. When innovation is led from the center of a system, its antibodies slow it down.
Edgers innovate from the margins of the system, far from the center and close to the outside, in contact with clients and other actors in the ecosystem.
These edgers require a new competency profile, more similar to that of entrepreneurs than to employees of large corporations. Thus, edgers must be:
- Curious, asking questions and exploring answers systematically.
- Rebellious, maintaining a different perspective and a constant will for change.
- Bold, taking meaningful risks.
- Connectors, to involve the team and mobilize resources.
- Multipliers, to involve other actors in the ecosystem.
- Tech-open, to leverage the potential of new technologies.
- Decisive, to make things happen by adapting to changes in the environment.
2. A new innovation planning model
The second success factor is a
new innovation planning model. Traditional innovation was based on a long-term linear planning process that determined the desired destination from the start. Today, during this innovation process, there will be so many significant changes that the predetermined goal will become irrelevant. It is therefore necessary to set
opportunity horizons—spaces that are broad and flexible enough to allow the innovation project to be continuously redirected, adapting to environmental changes throughout the process.
3. The future as an innovation tool
The third success factor is the use of the
future as a tool for innovation. The problems of the future cannot be solved with today’s tools. And how do we use the tools of the future? By identifying the technologies used by the most advanced organizations around us and studying how to leverage them to respond to our own organization’s challenges.
4. Flow: the necessary balance
The final success factor is
flow, a highly focused and productive mental state in which people experience a deep sense of gratification and fulfillment. Flow is achieved when there is a
balance between the challenge a person takes on and the skills they have to face it. If the challenge is too easy, it leads to boredom; if it is too complex, it generates anxiety. In any case, it is about breaking a large challenge into small challenges and tackling them sequentially, training the necessary skills at each moment while staying in the flow.
If you are an edger, want to learn more about edgers, and/or want to connect with other edgers, follow the page on
LinkedIn. You will see that a common characteristic of edgers is that they all state with conviction:
I am what I want to be.
