All major revolutionary waves of human history – agricultural, industrial, information, and now convergence – are all about innovation for creating new and better value.
Political leaders exhort the importance of innovation for social justice and a better quality living environment for the citizens. Global executives stress the importance of continuous innovation for new products/services and ventures for customers, yet 94 percent expressed dissatisfaction with their innovation performance.
Managers of non-profit organizations pursue innovation to challenge the social ills of the economic divide, digital divide, and goal divide. The purpose of innovation is much more profound than just creating greater customer value, better competitive advantage of firms, and an environment for better quality of life.
The ultimate goal of innovation should be the creation of a better future. The “small i” for innovation is for an individual, organization, society, or country. However, the “Large I” should be innovation for creating a smart future.
The benefits of innovation may accrue to individuals, groups of people, communities, industries, societies, nations, regions, and the world. What is common to all these entities is that they all pursue innovation for better preparation of the future. However, innovation should not be for passively being future smart by preparing to meet the uncertain future by being predictive, adaptive, and agile.
Instead, innovation should be for more aggressively active in creating a smart future that provides more opportunities for a better quality of life.
The term “smart” has been used widely nowadays, for example, smartphones, smart cars, smart homes, smart infrastructure, smart cities, smart countries, and the like. The term “smart” represents the concept of hope and aspiration that depends on a person's perspective. The smart state depends on the given condition, environment, culture, and the person's value system. Nevertheless, the general concept of a smart future should mean a living environment which is much better than the current state of affairs.
The smart future should be where innovation would help develop intelligent solutions to complex problems to secure a humane environment (Streitz, 2015). In such a smart future, people can more freely pursue opportunities to learn and grow, be engaged in good relationships, be happy with the community and work place, and also have a comfortable and healthy life style with adequate financial resources.
Creating such a smart future requires much more than just smart gadgets, advanced technologies, convergence strategies, and government support. It requires a fabric of soft innovations that can nurture an aspirational future such as social justice, rule of law, transparency, accountability, cohesive collective wisdom of people, and shared visions and goals.
In “Innovation for value creation” section, we discuss the purpose, classification, and organizational purpose of innovation. “Innovation life cycle” section presents innovation life cycle from idea generation to harvesting on the S-curve. The concept of a smart future is articulated in “What is smart future?” section, while the requirements for creating a smart future is presented in “Requirements of a smart future” section.
“Innovations that disrupt barriers to the smart future” section discusses innovations that can disrupt barriers to a smart future. “Conclusion” section concludes the paper by proposing the soft social requirements for s smart future.
A Guess Editorial