Innovation needs a platform

Innovation is not created in a vacuum. Multiple factors (a “platform”) are required for it to become successful and widespread. Until that platform exists, any innovations introduced to an ecosystem are bound to fail.

This platform can contain one or more of the following elements:

• Cultural: a change in cultural perception or taste that creates the space and the necessity for a new way of doing things.
• Technical: a new technology that enables what was previously impossible (e.g., LLMs, DPPs).
• Regulatory: a regulatory change that forces agents in an ecosystem to do things differently–see Regulation can create opportunity.

Interestingly, there’s a parallelism here between “technical” change (e.g., airplanes) and “organizational” change (e.g., cultural changes): no matter what impact you’re trying to have, you can’t just make something new appear out of sheer will—you need to create the right support system around it first.

Furthermore, if you want your innovation to take hold, you will often also need to “play nice” with the ecosystem (see Effective change requires collaboration).

References

• The Fifth Discipline: “The journey from invention to successful innovation in technology represents a search for synergies among diverse developments, which only together enable something new to be viable.”