The Shock of the New

On September 5th 2012 NOKIA unveiled the Lumia 920, according to its makers ‘the most innovative smartphone in the world’. The result of this launch? An immediate 18% drop in share price.

Admittedly, the launch event itself was bedevilled by embarrassing technical hitches and shares at the one-time mobile phone giant recovered again swiftly enough, but the sudden plunge goes to show how risky innovation can be as jumpy investors scramble to get a piece of the Next Big Thing.

Even if you are not in smartphones, though, innovation is an essential part of driving any business forward. New markets, new ideas, new ways of doing things — all involve risk, but the alternative is stagnation and decline.

No wonder, then, that business schools and their clients spend so much time and effort on how to manage innovation effectively. An important finding is that key aspects of successful innovation tend to be human rather than technological, in spite of our automatic equation of innovation with things like smartphones. Another is that innovation is everyone’s business. On 13th September three experts from the Open University, Professor James Fleck, Professor Steve Potter and Dr Clive Savory share their cutting edge research and insights on innovation in business, transport and healthcare with an audience of local decision-makers over breakfast. The event, run in association with Thames Valley HIEC, is now fully subscribed, but we’ll be sharing highlights on the web in due course.