The Innovation in the Wild series draws on several different academic practices that inform the structure of the sessions as well as maximise the outcomes for the businesses attending.
The series was designed to help learning on the key themes of innovation and entrepreneurship in a variety of settings, by looking at types of innovation that are modelled in the natural world and using guided walks and activities through landscapes to demonstrate them:
This is primarily enabled by the practice of peripatetic learning, which is a school of philosophy dating back to ancient Greece. Under this methodology, students of philosophy learnt through the medium of discussions taking place while they walked around the Lyceum grounds, learning from the great philosopher Aristotle.
The term peripatetic translates to “walking” or “given to walking about” and in this way the thoughts and doctrines of Aristotle were developed and discussed – not from theories, as was the style of Plato, but from experiences. Discussions were aimed at understanding and extracting meaning from those experiences.
This investigation into how we might better develop and instil innovation within organisations has been a key theme throughout Professor Allen Alexander’s research. His determination to combine innovation theories with the more tangible and less theoretical world that exists in nature is a culmination of his large body of research. Research which has centred on the analysis and investigation of innovation and knowledge transfer between higher education organisations and businesses.
Innovation in the Wild is a peer-to-peer network where open innovation is facilitated, with businesses taken into a stimulating environment designed to be different than their day-to-day. By sharing ideas and challenges within the group in a natural environment, they can gain understanding of the different eco-systems existing around them, including from other businesses and sectors, which can in turn enrich their own business and spark problem solving.
Water is a naturally occurring resource but with expanding populations and the global demand for water for industrial and food production increasing exponentially, considerable research has been done to try to establish ways of better managing the water within our immediacy. Early efforts in Corporate Social Responsibility led to companies choosing to adopt environmental protection strategies. Eco Innovation is the next step, where cradle to cradle design thinking principles are being used to create design philosophies that embrace the water, energy, food nexus, deliver positive environmental growth and secure socio-economic returns from long life-cycle products, which embody circular usage patterns and lead to minimized waste.
One of the fundamental disciplines in the management of innovation is that of product innovation and Dartmoor is now seen as an important product in the region’s tourist industry. With the basic business models surrounding mineral extraction falling by the wayside due to increased labour and transportation costs, the moorland has had to reposition itself as a product and has innovated itself, in-line with the current customer trends of increased leisure time and a drive to recapture the great outdoors. Local villages and towns have enwrapped the product, the moor, with their service offerings – to create vibrant tourist attractions that bring people from far and wide. Much of the shift in business and revenue models for Dartmoor are considered to be positional, in terms of improved marketing and outreach to new potential customers, the moor has proven to be a resilient asset that Devon and the south west benefit from year on year.
One misconception in Innovation theory is that all ideas need to be new ones, but that just isn’t the case. Many examples of successful products are a recombination of knowledge – knowledge from one area that when applied to a different area, e.g. the natural world to the manufacture of clothing, can present real advances in technology and create products and service that are unique. This crossover of ideas that are sometimes considered as common place in one sphere can be exciting and innovative when applied to another. One potential way to develop these ideas is to recruit experts from outside of the development sphere and harness their knowledge, transferring it and internalising it within the new business team.
It is rare that the action of one, has no reaction to another and Innovation is no different. Commercial organisations are typically embedded into supply chains and the act of one player in the supply chain has an impact up and down the chain. This is well understood, but what is less understood and is now the focus of significant research is the systems approach to innovation. In an example using Peregrines, work done to understand the species’ declining population resulted in finding that the innovation in the chemical treatment of grain in agriculture, to reduce both infestation and deterioration of it, was making its way into the food chain of the Peregrine, via the Pigeon that the Peregrines preyed upon. Once discovered, grain producers and handlers were quick to act in reducing their reliance on DDT and other organophosphates and current populations of Peregrines are now recovering to almost that of the 1940s and 50s.
Many aspects of innovation are born out of necessity and the economic drivers for mining tin were such that process-based improvements were required to increase the productivity of the tin mines.In the tin-streaming times, labour was very cheap and the deposits easy to reach, but soon these deposits were played out and more intensive mining practice was required. By diverting the streams to power water wheels, automation speeded up the processes and made deeper mines more feasible. Latterly the invention of steam improved the process of abstraction even further, providing access to even deeper reserves and also creating power to drive machine tools for crushing the granite to reach the tin.
Many industries today are considered to be stable if they enjoy ten years of constant trading, through two, five-year cycles – ‘start-up and early growth’ and then ‘growth and consolidation’. The seeding and harvesting of ice lasted less than 10 years with the works finally being decommissioned in 1886.
The disruption offered by artificial ice, using processes similar to today’s refrigeration, could be argued as inevitable, when viewed as a historical example, but the pressure developing the operations, patenting the mechanical devices and constructing the tramway led to the disruption being outside of the inventor’s field of view.
