Innovation and entrepreneurship in the age of the100 year life

Over a quarter of century ago Charles Handy introduced the concept of portfolio work and career. This being where a portfolio is defined by diversity of industry and role. Careers don’t follow traditional paths of rank progression in a particular function or company. Portfolio careers may contain more part-time, contract or temporary positions and are commonly used to ensure a more sustainable work-life balance. In many instances some individuals may also have more than one job at a time.

We are all portfolio careerist now

Portfolio careers have become more popular in recent years as achieving a better work-life balance has become more of a mainstream goal.  Various forecasters believe that by 2020 almost 50% of individuals who work for commercial organisations will work for three employers at any one time. Some might argue today that the zero hour contract is the employer’s modern day extension of this concept. For the record, I’m not so sure, as whilst I believe the concept of will become more prevalent the original vision was one where the individual had more power over their work and the zero hour contract seems to be one where the terms are accepted out of necessity.

Careers in the networked age

A more recent interpretation of the portfolio career comes from Reid Hoffman, the network philosopher, and Ben Casnocha, The Start up of You. They again tackle the challenge that the job for life and company loyalty are very much things of the past.  At this time of challenging slower growth and austerity we are not guaranteed a smooth career progression, particularly if the analysts are correct when the say, by 2025 the majority of commercial organisations’ will only directly employ 15% of their current workforce. The authors views are very much to think and act like entrepreneurs.  Be nimble, self-reliant, innovative, network effectively and stand out from the crowd.  No easy task, but the behaviours and core competencies that can underpin the use of 21^st century piecework, such as YunoJuno, Freelancer and TaskRabbit.

Working in an Age of Longevity

When you now consider that a baby born in the west today will more likely than not live to 105, as called out by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott in their new book, The 100-Year Life. They offer up a scenario when a fundamental redesign of life is required.  In their analysis, if I wished to retire on a liveable pension (which I do) then I’ll need to work till about when I’m 80. This could be a scary concept but opens many more transformations. I could have fourth, fifth and even a sixth act.

Age of entrepreneurial retirement

In the past, the innovator often hit their career peak at about the age of 40. Previous research by Vivek Wadhwa studied 549 successful entrepreneurs in 12 high-growth industries found that the average and median age at which they started their company was 40.  However if we recognise the challenge that we are all living longer and that 60 is the new 40.  This legitimately presents a view that entrepreneurialism and start-ups will not solely be a young person’s game.  If you disconnect age from stage of life, suddenly you could be at university when you’re 70.  You could be doing a portfolio when you’re 20. You could be creating a start-up when you’re 60 or when you are 30.

Changes are happening at every level of individual, we will see lots of experimentation as people, individually and collectively begin to build lives that are sustainable for the long term.  Exciting times are here to stay.

Innovation is dead, long live innovation (Part Two) The story for bravehearts, rebels, new kids, pioneers and renegades.

A quick recap for those on part one – Innovation’s death was questioned and challenged we put a view out there that people needed to look elsewhere for results. In unpacking the challenge we felt the noise was more about the trendy catch-phrases, excuses and fluffy titles had distracted people from the reality of the hard yards of Innovation to bring the idea to life and making it happen.

The lens is different, long live Innovation  

For the bravehearts and renegades. I paraphrase it’s not a matter of doing the same stuff it’s a matter of doing it differently, it is about seeing things through different vision through another lens. Like all industries the innovation development space has changed and will continue to change. New themes are emerging, learnings are being applied and crowded industry landscapes are being consolidated. The focus of corporate innovation is moving towards nimbleness, partnering with unlikely disruptors and practical back-end implementation, amongst other things.

According to a recent research publication released by Gartner, “The Practises that Deliver the Biggest Bang for your Bimodal Buck” - 5 key practises are consistently delivering the highest improvement in digital performance.  They are also, interestingly, the least adopted. It’s by no means a new message and according to Gartner signifies the pervasive ability of organisations to factor in and execute it. In other words, to make it work. This 2016 CIO survey found that the highest correlation to improved digital performance are driven by the key practices of:

·         Crowdsourcing

·         Differentiated funding

·         Differentiated metrics

·         Working with start-ups and

·         Innovation management

Each of these is not new in themselves, but they are not commonly used across organisations and most probably will be new to you.  The practices have certainly provided business benefits to their champions. The opportunity for Innovation remains on the field with everything to play for.

The big guns are calling it out, then and now.

Back in 1997 American business writer Tom Peter coined the famous phase Innovate or die. It was true then and rings even more true now.  Adam Trisk, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Skylabs calls this out in his article published by Inc, a premier print publication for entrepreneurs, pioneers and business owners, what happens when companies stop thinking about the future.  Being a follower is a perfectly good strategy and one that makes a lot of sense when disruption is forcing an organisation to focus on keeping a sinking boat afloat. But sooner or later it will beg the question for change, for bravery and thinking about the future.  These aren't isolated cases as Steven Denning backs this up, in his Forbes article Why U.S. Firms Are Dying: Failure To Innovate, he writes about a looming innovation crisis at organisations. The message is clear, “in a world in which power in the marketplace has shifted to customers and customers insist on “better, cheaper, faster, smaller, more convenient and more personalized,” failure to give priority to innovation is an organisational death warrant”.

Innovation the reality check – those hard yards and making it happen.

We can continue with the “innovational smoke and mirrors”, proclaiming innovation to be about glamour, glitz and unattainable new technologies and advancements only stumbled upon by the few. Organisations, individuals and consultants alike can act and market as if they were endowed with a special ability to do magic, to predict the future and manage it, doing nothing more but talk and pay marketing bills. Truth is, smoke has a tendency to lift, mirrors are known to reflect reality. We should all be prepared to face the truth when it happens, to answer and take responsibility.  Innovation is not to blame, it is not the root cause of the lack of apparent results.

We can call it innovation or not, remove it from our business language, job titles and processes and remember it as a fad, - or not. We can also decide to blame it on our own inactions and lack of leadership, citing the “worlds dumbest idea” – maximisation of shareholder value as reason. We can point at people, infrastructure, metrics, technology, budgets and other stuff too if we want.

The kingdom and the fairy tale is for us to create

The future is for us to create. For us to do something courageous to get there and to drive it to deliver results. To take responsibility for victory, but it is not about putting innovation on trial.

  

So coming back to our story in part one, in the end the warrior poets and soldiers found a new way to manufacture even cooler, more effective weapons and Innovation won the day. 

Jointly written with Henra Mayer