What Jolito Ortizo Padilla says about Innovation

Four years ago, this mission was submitted to a strategic committee to one of the colleges in the Middle East where I was a mentor, but outright rejected. Now, thousand of universities and colleges refers to this insight.  

Innovation involves the creation of new knowledge. At the same time most innovations are new combinations of old insights. They come out of an interaction where people with different talents, interests, insights and experience get together in open communication and willing to share their knowledge with others.

Innovation processes that neglect the needs of users are inefficient. Science based innovations that are not supported by experience based learning are not successful. Therefore, innovations are best seen as outcomes of collected entrepreneurship. A generalized trust among people in working life contributes to innovation.

Science plays a growing role for innovation, but without experience based knowledge about production, markets and organization investment in science has little impact on economic performance. Innovation strategies and policies need to be broad. Firms need to combine research and development with building a learning organization that includes networking with external organizations. Public policy that aims at harnessing innovation for growth needs to combine science and technology policy with institutional change in education and labor market systems.

We are in a learning economy where success of people, organizations and countries reflects the capacity to learn. Old knowledge becomes less relevant as technologies change and global competition transforms working life, making some types of jobs disappear and others grow. Whatever knowledge you have, it does not constitute a lifelong guarantee of success for firms or for individuals. This is very important in the designs of education, in labor markets and for strategies of organizational trade and unions. All institutions need to focus on how to facilitate learning.