Communities of Innovation

In a previous post we mentioned a concept that we refer to as "Communities of Innovation." We'd like to explore that a little further today. We think this concept is important because it helps determine where or whether Innovation will occur - in other words without the locations that Innovation tends to incubate - it may not occur at all. These communities are not a new concept per se, there have been communities of Innovation in most cultures across the span of history, from Medieval Florence to the Mayans.

The notion of "Community" has changed a bit over the past century and that change has accelerated at quantum speeds at the beginning of this century. "Community" now implies not merely regional connotations but also something that might be referred to as shared practice, shared concerns or shared interests. These collaborative communities span geographical boundaries and tend to center around unique groups of like individuals. The best example of this is witnessed in science; where initially several centuries ago, these communities began developing through personal correspondence and then those relationships became formalized through journals and "societies." Now of course, we have a mixture of relationships, societies and journals as well as physical centers of innovation and virtual collaborative communities which are significantly more dynamic thanks largely to recent advances in Internet technologies.

At one time, Dayton Ohio (home of the Wright Brothers) was one of the world's preeminent Communities of Innovation.

So, given that background, let's try to define what a Community of Innovation is today:

A Community of Innovation is a network of formal and informal relationships based upon shared practice, vision or interests. It can be either physical or virtual in nature and more often than not in the 21st century is both. The key characteristics which all such communities exhibit are:

• A long-term commitment to solving a specific set of problems / challenges.

• A reliance on technology and innovation as the chief or primary mechanism for solving those problems.

• An open-minded approach to viewing problems and potential solutions.

• The desire to established shared criteria, standards and methodologies for solving problems.

So today when our leaders talk about investing in education or research and technology in order to foster American competitiveness and innovation, they are in fact discussing how such Communities of Innovation can be created or nurtured. The difficulty of course in viewing this within national boundaries is that as technology has evolved the regional boundaries within these communities has become more fluid. There is still no substitute for meeting with people in person and collaborating within a narrow geographic region, but those are no longer prerequisites. This then requires us to become more creative in helping to define what Communities of Innovation will look like and how they will function in the future if we wish to have the ability to target innovation to specific national outcomes.

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