A New World of Co-Innovation

Have you noticed? Innovation is happening everywhere. In fact, according to the Bloomberg Innovation Index 2015 and the blog, These are the World’s Most Innovative Economies, innovation is spreading into many parts of the world. And if you look at the top ten countries on Bloomberg’s list, it’s exciting to see who’s leading innovation and how it’s spreading across the globe.

To quote Alex Goryachev’s recent blog (There Has Never Been a Better Time for Innovation),

“… Ingenious entrepreneurs around the world, sculpting new technology solutions, are the ones accelerating innovation at an unprecedented pace. These tech-driven innovators are highly creative in their own right—business and social problems capture their mind’s eye, digital platforms become their canvas, and technology tools are their paints and brushes.”

You may wonder what kind of innovation is happening in different parts of world. Since I’m based in the Asia Pacific Region, I’d like to share one of the latest activities happening in my part of the world. And it’s based on co-innovation, a growing approach to building new solutions.

The activity is the Cisco TAG.PASS Smart Innovation Programme in Singapore. This 20-week accelerator program focuses on corporate-startup, co-innovation. The main objective of the program is to create a collaborative ecosystem to nurture innovative IoT/digital solutions to develop solutions and help drive Singapore’s Smart Nation vision.

As part of the program team, I help select startups to incubate their solutions at our Songdo Cisco Innovation Center. I’m fascinated by the passion and interest in this program from so many startups and developers from all around Asia. They’re excited about jointly developing proof-of-concept (POC) solutions for the Smart Nation projects.

I’ve been seeing many startups very keen to develop innovative solutions using the latest technologies and areas below, which are linked to digital transformation:

What makes me most excited about this program is co-innovation. (To learn more, read Maciej Kranz’s blog that digs deeper into co-innovation.) The program structure is illustrated below, including the scheduled activities surrounding co-innovation and co–development.

At the same time, co-innovation, co-development, and co-creation are regarded as the key drivers to realize Singapore’s Smart Nation vision.

Pictures from during the orientation at Cisco TAG.PASS Smart Innovation Programme

We’re in the last week of this program and see a lot of innovation happening at the moment. The six startups selected as the finalists are working to mature their own innovative solutions. At the same time, they’re teaming up with each other for solution co-development. The finalists are confident this approach creates the needed synergy to develop innovative solutions.

It’s amazing to witness innovation happening all around the world, but it’s equally exciting to see co-innovation happening all around the world as well.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress and outcome of the Cisco TAG.PASS Smart Innovation Programme.

Meanwhile, in my next blog I’ll give you a look at Living Lab, another innovation activity happening in the Asia Pacific region.

Until then, happy co-innovation!