The beginning of the new year this month (Gregorian on the 1st and Chinese on 31st) is a good time to look ahead at what the future might bring for the providers of innovation capital.
Toby Lewis, editor of Global Corporate Venturing (GCV), and Gregg Bayes-Brown, editor of Global University Venturing (GUV), have run their titles’ respective surveys and added their views on the important issues for the year ahead in this month’s issues. Lewis’ editorial is here for this outlook issue and the survey is here.
By looking at both titles, as well as the initial feedback about the publishing company’s planned third title, Global Government Venturing, a pattern is emerging for how these three organisations (if a polity can be so-termed) are increasingly working together to shape and develop an innovation ecosystem. It is no surprise that all the respondents to our GUV annual survey said building more and better relations with corporate venturing units was important, while a long list of those answering GCV’s survey said tapping earlier stage ideas and working with academia was increasingly important to them, too.
Gerald Brady, chief executive-designate at US-based bank SVB Financial Group’s UK and Ireland bank subsidiary and managing director of its corporate relations unit, summed up in a DLA Piper-hosted webinar with me how these three organisations were responsible for the vast majority of the $475bn of innovation capital going to create a patent or start a company in the US.
But how they connect, consider the implications of the innovation being developed and align interests is still developing – partly as the surge of venturing activity explodes for all three groups and then join syndicates together and also alongside venture capital firms and others.
There is no question innovation is exploding. Through a combination of Moore’s Law still broadly holding true to maintain the exponential increase in computing power and the connectivity of researchers, investors and entrepreneurs through the internet and globalisation more broadly, the pace of innovation is speeding up.
Al Gore, 45th vice president of the US and keynote speaker at the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium last May, in his latest book, The Future, did an excellent job summing up the main technological changes, as well as their historical wellsprings.
What was most fascinating in the book (I finally had time to fully read it over the holiday period) was how the individual developments and innovations were impacting each other but could be broadly grouped under terms, such as robo-sourcing and offshoring (using robots and cheaper labour and facilities in other geographies, respectively, by corporations collectively called Earth, Inc.); the global mind (for the sharing of information through the internet); depletion of natural resources and population growth (under labels of the Edge and Outgrowth); and reinvention of life and death to change the “being” in human being.
However, Gore in the book expressed concern that while the individual innovations can be used as effectively tools for good but also potentially for ill, the cumulative impact of so much change has received less discussion (bar pieces such as in Harvard Business Review here and others) and the ability for some societies to make and execute decisions based on fact-based reasons has been hampered. (Gore’s pedigree for following and understanding these innovation trends and government efficiency goes back more than 30 years – he co-chaired a cross-party group that commissioned a fascinating list (see below) of what the subcommittees making up much of US Congress’ information-gathering and decision-making functions thought in 1982 of the big issues. It is enlightening both for the perspicacity of the insights into the big issues as well as well as how little many of them have been resolved.)
Effectively, the rewards for innovation in general seem to be going to relatively few individuals and the corporations. Chris Brightman, head of investment management at boutique Research Affiliates, in a paper, The Profits Bubble, the main points were:
1. Corporate profits are at or near an all-time high relative to both GDP and wages and salaries.
2. Globalization facilitated by a corporatist economic policy is the cause of the upward surge in profits. The resulting degree of income inequality seems socially intolerable.
3. Rising populism will likely lead to changes in government policy. Expect real earnings per share to grow much more slowly, or even decline, over the next couple of decades.
It is notable that China’s political reforms announced at last year’s Third Plenary move its governance to a mandate of “effectiveness” alongside relative economic liberalisation, even if the world’s largest economy, the US, is apparently becoming even harder to govern efficiently, according to Gore.
In general, according to Harvard professor Josh Lerner in his book, Boulevard of Broken Dreams (summary article here and lyrics to Green Day song of same title here), governments, as well as corporations and universities/research institutions, around the world have repeated mistakes in their approach to venturing. But paths to success for all these groups are also becoming clearer (the positive sides of the global mind), as shown by the many experienced managers and units and their successful strategic and financial track records.
Few groups have publicly joined up the ethics of how they proceed, apart from relatively rare examples, such as the US intelligence agencies’ venturing unit, In-Q-Tel, in a 2011 review on the use of robotics, such as drones, by Cal Poly professor Patrick Lin.
Gore in his Symposium keynote challenged venturing units and their sponsors to consider their impact and purpose. This is in some ways a return to an earlier ethic. Stanford professor Fred Turner’s research found the very civic-minded business leaders of the 1930s to ‘50s had done by seeing their mission as simultaneously the making of profit and the making of a better society. In his HBR interview, Turner rhetorically asks: “Has the rise of information technology and the expansion of what was originally the military-industrial complex substantially improved our lives? The jury’s still out on that.”
This year, the jury will increasingly sit again on the management of global innovation and whether society rather than individuals is gaining.
While it is hard to imagine how society or people could want or be able to put the innovation back in its bottle – a cyber-Faustian pact, as Gore phrases it, is hard to undo – the responsibility is on all in the industry to consider the implications of what the changes could be bringing.
Box: Predicting the future from the 1980s.
The following is a sample of the replies from Congress:* published by Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future based on the reports produced by the 200 subcommittees:
- Options for solving global problems will require careful assessment as the United States finds ifself increasingly challenged by European and Japanese industry, as well as competition in agriculture.
Simple concern for the maintenance of a strong defense establishment must be expanded to include industrial capacity, agricultural productivity, energy self-sufficiency, materials availability and infrastructure repair. At the same time the readiness of the armed forces has been under scrutiny, particularly in manpower, training and equipment. - The challenges posed by the far-reaching wealth and power of multinational corporations must be addressed, since they could well affect decision-making functions around the world. The need for a long-term approach to national policy matters will demand coordinated longer-range efforts in transportation, manpower training, environmental protection, critical materials, housing, education and health.
- The consideration of the role of government as major protector against risks in areas such as regulation, welfare, Social Security and assistance to ailing industry must be met and dealt with.
- Concerns must be met in the national productivity and the health of the industrial base. The decline of traditional industries – automobile and steel manufacturing, for example – has provoked serious discussion; but the stress that continued decline will have on the future must be analyzed, with particular attention paid to automation, a major educational need.
- The national well-being depends to a large extent upon the health of roads, railways, waterways, bridges and water and sewer lines. Will their use decline, or will increased decentralization require yet more investment?
- The fast-proliferating communications technologies may be difficult to evaluate or anticipate, but the protection of privacy, the growing tendency to replace man with machine and the growth of video may entail unforeseen consequences in the fragmentation of national concensus.
- The gradual disappearance of American farmland is of great concern to Congress, as is ground water depletion and pollution.
- Global desertification and deforestation have received attention, but will demand more as these trends have implications not only for species survival, but also for climate, food supply and wood products.
- Medical cost containment continues to be now and in the years ahead, a continuing focus of study. Interest appears to be growing in new approaches to health care that should be embraced.
- The problem of financial support for the aged as well as other nonworking citizens demands attention in the years to come. The impact of crime, too, upon the elderly will share that attention.
- The phenomenal growth of litigation means great costs and a tremendous burden on the court system.
- Technological advances have raised new questions about definitions of life, the right to die, the patenting of life forms and access to life-saving technologies.
*This information was found in an Editorial in the Nashville Banner (Gore’s home state newspaper) dated Tuesday, February 1, 1983.