Hello, Fernando Moya once again. In this first topic The nature of innovation, we are going to talk about how you, as a Homo sapiens, as a human being are innovative and I call this section The Innovative Homo Sapiens. First of all write down what you believe innovation is and think of an innovator Have you done it? Which words did you write or which words did you think? When I do this exercise face-to-face I usually get the following words: technology, new, disruption, creativity, progress, science, commercialization, inventions, patents, design, improvements, solutions, future, leading-edge, risks, failure, amazement, and many others which I’m sure you’ve thought of. And when people say who an innovator is names such as Gates, Jobs, Zuckenberg, Musk, Bezos, come up, and after some more thinking Edison, Ford, Da Vinci, Rowling and many more And what did they do to be considered innovators? They changed our way of consuming products, they helped us to solve problems and needs in different ways, which many of us liked they did it in a simpler, cheaper, more entertaining way, easier to use, faster, more fun, in other words, they thought differently and they were bold, they were entrepreneurs, but even further, innovators. They changed industries, they changed the way in which we behave, the way in which we move, the way we go from one place to another how we have fun, how we communicate, how we work, how we eat, the way we dress, the way we get our education, but I would like you to think of innovators not as visible as they are, you can be innovators, every human being just by being a human being, by being a homo sapiens has got that inventiveness and innovation capacity. In the introduction to this course Shumpeter was mentioned as a pioneer of innovation I don’t want to leave aside Peter Drucker in his book “Innovation and entrepreneurship” who contributes that the two most important functions of a company are marketing and innovation. Everything else are costs. Regarded by many as the father of administration he already had in mind innovation concepts, but the one who put innovation in the map to be formally studied was the great Clayton Christensen (who passed away recently in 2020) and who coined the term of disruptive innovation, a concept that is huge for an innovator. Being disruptive may probably be the big dream of every innovator, being disruptive means that we all forget how we used to do things before and adopt the new way Mobile phones were disruptive to traditional phones, the e-mail to traditional mail, the car to carts, and Christensen makes it clear that when a technology is accessible for many people, and it is accepted and used on a daily basis, it can be classified as disruptive, Uber is disruptive in the business model of payment mobility, Netflix is disruptive in entertainment. Some of Christensen’s lessons are “innovation can be a predictable process that brings a sustained and beneficial growth…” and it contributes with solutions to identify innovative ideas which are really disturbing to the status quo, which we will discuss later on, about the clients who will buy these new ideas. These are excellent news for everyone as innovation is a process it is not only a product from the inspiration of an artist it is a process to innovation which demands a lot, a lot of work. The book that has fascinated me the most about Innovation, which was not written intentionally about innovation, is called “Sapiens, from animals to gods” written by the Israeli Yuval Noah Harari where he tells the story of the Homo sapiens since it appeared about 200,000(two hundred thousand) years ago until the present time. I see it through the eyes and the perspective of an Innovator, the Homo Sapiens is the only species in this planet who is able to innovate. Innovations throughout history, such as the innovation of the wheel, the use of fire, the invention of money, agriculture, democracy, market economy, and what about the industrial revolution where innovations proliferated, and to the present time digital transformation and technology. Something happened in the brain of the Homo sapiens, or of that caveman which gave us the capacity of inventiveness and innovation. Even with the existence of faster and stronger species today we are the dominant species, for the good or bad in this planet, thanks to that power bestowed on us by nature, of being innovative and solving problems better than other species. In his next book “Homo Deus” Harari poses the question of what will we do after controlling these great challenges: hunger, plagues, very relevant nowadays, war, and he predicts that the three big new objectives of humanity will be Immortality: overcoming old age, even death, and we see innovations in that sense. Happiness: achieving absolutely happiness. Divinity: transforming Homo Sapiens into Homo Deus? It is a question. Reading it under the perspective of Homo sapiens, of how this Homo sapiens is innovative and what he has done to improve, in many cases has worsened our condition, our life, it is an exercise that reveals that being innovative is in your nature.
