From economic indicators to global visions of citizenship, the world seen through the lenses of a shared need for change enlightens concepts and initiatives that are taking innovation debates a little further, one question at a time. Even though knowledge barriers remain in our approach to economic analysis and information sharing, including regulation, a greater sense of community is leading experts to consider challenges under varying angles, aspiring for a richer reality to explore. As a result, knowledge and experiences are connected to share life lessons that can drive the rise of effective platforms able to deliver change with concrete results. Halfway between leadership and community-based decision making, innovation strategies enable to build two way conversations to consider a greater variety of data and take into account social demands emanating from the crowd.

“Many eyes means less is missed”

Economic experts outline the downsides of our approach to performance evaluation. Taking into account single variables leads to underestimating the now systemic trends that are affecting our economies.

If GDP is failing on its own terms, as a measurement of the value-added in an economy, its use as a welfare benchmark is even more dubious. That has always been so: the benefits of sanitation, better health care and the comforts of heating or air-conditioning meant that GDP growth almost certainly understated the true advance in living standards in the decades after the second world war.

Read more: “How to measure prosperity”, The Economist

 

The systemic functionalities of networks built through globalization is also creating a need to consider individuals as citizens and actors of a global world. In that respect, experts and analysts underline our need to work from commonly shared values to solve globally recognized issues.

“Of course, our global responsibilities extend beyond human rights. We also have humanitarian responsibilities in circumstances of disaster and poverty. We are responsible for protecting the planet and its climate, particularly as it relates to our obligations to future generations.”

Read more: “Why we all need to start thinking like global citizens“, Jeremy Waldron, World Economic Forum

These global issues are often echoed on the social platforms that provide a world wide connectivity to wills and requirements for change. Despite the propagation of this communication tool, change on the daily lives of global citizens remains stymied by a lack of tangible actions coordinated from those social platforms.

“Pour les chercheurs, il est essentiel de trouver de nouveaux paradigmes expérimentaux et de nouveaux outils d’observation qui favorisent non seulement la dynamique communicationnelle, mais aussi d’autres dynamiques qui engagent à la mobilisation sociale. Pour eux, il est essentiel de construire une nouvelle génération de médias sociaux qui favorisent la construction consensuelle de changements durables. “

Read more: “Pourquoi les médias sociaux ne changent-ils pas le monde?”, Hubert Guillaud, Le Monde

Instead, business experts and leaders remind readers about the extreme danger of leaving knowledge and powers in the hands of “knowledgeable” happy fews. Even if, ironically, they happen to be part of this minority.

“”I haven’t seen any concrete proposal on how you would do the regulation,” Gates wrote. “I think it is worth discussing because I share the view of Musk and Hawking that when a few people control a platform with extreme intelligence, it creates dangers in terms of power and eventually control.”

Read more: “Bill Gates on Reddit: I agree with Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking about artificial intelligence“, Rosamond Hunt, World Economic Forum

For many, the solution seems to include openness to foreign cultures and the ability to answer critical human emergencies while creating new opportunities to learn. This is the reason why they encourage knowledge sharing within communities, especially within the capabilities brought by refugees and the life lessons they can also teach us.

“There is something more that we can do than just simply helping refugees survive. We can help them thrive. We should think of refugee camps and communities as more than just temporary population centers where people languish, waiting for the war to end, rather as centers of excellence where refugees can triumph over their trauma and train for the day that they can go home.”

Read more: “How do you make the international community care about the refugee crisis?“, Melissa Fleming, TED Radio Hour

Collaborative intelligence brings a new array of possibilities to build constructive solutions that result in concrete change. The recent Panama Papers investigations is another example of how connecting global human competencies and knowledge is critical and necessary to analyze great amount of data.

“The affair is also a triumph for a new model of investigative reporting. The ICIJ enlisted some 400 journalists to help it sift the data dump, which they did using a bespoke search engine. It picked some odd collaborators: in America it chose to work with the Charlotte Observer and Fusion, a news site for millennials, rather than, say, the New York Times. Still, many eyes meant less was missed. And distributed journalism of this kind is almost impossible to censor or stop.”

Read more: “A torrential link“, The Economist

 

Leading through life lessons

Getting to think and work together is not enough, though. A critical emphasis is put on the functionalities needed to get online platforms to deliver meaningful results through the definition of specific roles and expectations for each players.

“Because platforms depend on the value created by participants, it’s critical to carefully manage the platform’s “openness” – the degree of access that consumers, producers, and others have to a platform, and what they’re allowed to do there.”

Read more: “6 reasons platforms fail“, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey g. Parker, Sangeet Paul Choudary, HBR

Once roles and responsibilities are agreed, and results start to show, the next critical phase is about maintaining growth and results by adapting infrastructure and following closely changes in market environment.

“Break Out countries such as India, China, Brazil, Vietnam, and the Philippines are improving their digital readiness quite rapidly. But the next phase of growth is harder to achieve. Staying on this trajectory means confronting challenges like improving supply infrastructure and nurturing sophisticated domestic consumers.”

Read more: “Where the digital economy is moving the fastest“, Bhaskar Chakravorti, Christopher Tunnard, Ravi Shankar Chaturvedi, HBR

It indeed appear critical to keep an open eye on indirect impact of strategies and investments deployed so as to keep a positive balance across ecosystems necessarily generated by the actions we take.

“With attention fixed on the obsessive search for the next high-tech “unicorn,” vital investment is lacking in “Main Street” companies that could fuel precious growth and employment.”

Read more: “The Promise of a Truly Entrepreneurial Society“, Richard Straub, The Economist

This is why innovation is seen as a critical component of change. Proposing new ideas, trying them, is now a necessary ability to maintain growth in ever changing conditions surrounding businesses, platforms and people engaged in them.

“Si vous ne bougez pas, vous ne profiterez pas longtemps de cet état de grâce. Continuez d’innover et de proposez d’autres produits avant que le marché ne change. “

Read more: “Les 6 erreurs les plus répandues des chefs d’entreprise“, MB&Scott

With that in mind, experts encourage to use leadership as a way to teach and share knowledge, inspiring new innovations and ideas while using the best of customers needs and employees competencies.

“John Maxwell said, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” This is one of your functions as a leader. While it may not be in a formal classroom setting it is teaching nonetheless and the lessons are important.”

Read more: “Ten things every leader should always teach“, Paul Sohn

This inspiration capability must then be applied to a variety of situations and a variety of personalities. Experts identify great leaders with this specific capability of leading a diversity of people to reach the best of themselves.

“But a ‘great leader’ is someone who awakens others to the possibilities and inspires them to attain them, and who does it consistently regardless of circumstance and for a variety of people.”

Read more: “Is there a scarcity of great leaders?“, Bob Bennett, People Development Magazine

Crowd leadership

The rise of platforms and the connectivity between leaders, customers and employees is marking a new milestone in the communication and impact business decision may have on both the direct and indirect environments.

“This isn’t just about consumers, either: it’s about your workforce. Social media has helped erase the wall between consumer and job candidate.“

Read more: “Why Social Media Is Shaping The Future Of Work“, Meghan M. Biro, Forbes

As places and roles are being redefined, experts outline a critical need to learn to manage oneself on top of managing others. Beyond the ability to manage oneself lays the critical need to know who we really are.

“In the popular imagination, entrepreneurship is just about having an idea. But successful businesses–even those with just a single employee–have great leadership. And the best leaders know, above all, how to manage themselves.”

Read more: “What nobody tells you about being an entrepreneur“, Lolly Daskal, INC

More importantly, creating the appropriate framework and environment where specific and well understood personalities can bring value is a growing necessary step which businesses still struggle to deliver. Gender equality is one of those specific issues which businesses fail to resolve despite the rise of successful women leaders and entrepreneurs.

“Gender equality is a fantasy in the business technology world – men outnumber women and it is apparently going to take around 100 odd years to reach gender parity.”

Read more: “10 of the most successful women in UK technology on influence, leadership, equality and being digital role models“, Eleanor Burns, Computer Business Review

Maybe this all means it is about time to break with traditional approaches and start using our global intelligence to understand critical needs and issues we have through the analysis of data that is now able to reflect more precise needs of individuals.

https://plus.google.com/+WeAreInnovationblog/posts/dTTcUoSBYRw

“While traditional approaches focus largely on estimating the sources of household expenses and income, the Fundación Paraguaya self-evaluation helped Doña Mercedes break down her needs into 50 discrete areas that she could work on, piece by piece, and monitor over time.”

Read more: “Why we need more than a single number to measure poverty?“, Julia Corvalan, World Economic Forum

Alternatively, it may well reflect a need to think about the interim models that could lead us to reach economic, political, business models where individuals eventually find the place they need to express their opinion.

https://plus.google.com/+WeAreInnovationblog/posts/dmb9WKc6RLx

In the end, experts seem to emphasize the benefits of keeping conversation open and two-sided so our global intelligence and interactions can lead to meaningful changes. 

https://plus.google.com/+WeAreInnovationblog/posts/V8Pe8cShFKn

“By contrast, true two-way conversations reflect a more open, balanced, and reciprocal sharing of perspectives. Here, communication is approached as a puzzle or a collage, with each person holding a critical piece. The purpose is not to deliver the perfect message or to win people over, but to explore an issue or opportunity together — pooling observations and data, raising and testing assumptions, and creating new ideas out of the mix. “

Read more: “Why Leaders Who Listen Achieve Breakthroughs“, Elizabeth Doty, Strategy and Business