Wait a minute… Do you mean no more euro, dollar or franc to exchange goods and services ? No more central banks ?

Such a statement, a few years ago, would have trigger a wave of smiles on the face of the business community. Today, however, Nick De Mey, young founder of the advising company Board of Innovation, could rather get some eyebrowns lifted. In those disruptive times, when even the highest monuments can collapse overnight, fresh ideas and proposition are most welcomed.

Right, reputation and attention have long be mentioned, already, in books and articles regarding emerging business models on the web (have a look at this piece written in 1997, 12 years ago). Though, tells Nick De Mey, attention and reputation won’t be currencies worth only in the web startups world.

The Brick & Mortar markets, manufacturing, should be prepared, soon, to use that kind of immaterials to trade with customers and suppliers. And monetize new activities

1. Left and right brain innovation

European policy makers have long seen innovation as a left brain thing: scientific, rational, processed, structured, top-down…
Europe has been pretty good in doing that. Many European companies are world leaders in a number of key sector, like aerospace, chemistry, automotive, etc.

But innovation is also a right brain stuff, based on creativity, imagination, entrepreneurship, emotional behaviour, human and social relationship, bottom-up… This part needs informality, serendipity, interactivity, unleashed thinking…
Those later aspects are as important to drive the innovation potential up. To let right brain innovation grow, we need to set up open and inspiring environments (physical or virtual), to ease and amplify human interactions, to free up radical imagination, etc.
On that field, though, Europe is lagging behind.
We use to say that succesful companies have managed to create a right balance between left and right brain. So can it be with economies.

2. Untapped bed of creativity and innovation within corporations

Huge innovation potentials sleep in employees head, untapped by their employers. Top-down, command management focuses on efficiency at the expense of creativity and side moves. Hereabove, “Job” told about management innovation. Perhaps is it the most difficult to achieve. However, there lies one of the biggest innovation tank we can dream of.
A.o., it can pave the way for more intrapreneurship, then more innovation.

3. The tight link between entrepreneurship, innovation and culture

Should it be within (intra) or outside an organisation, innovation comes with entrepreneurship. Foster people to speak up, believe in their skills and ideas, help them interact with the best experts to make the case for their project, will boost innovation.
A European economy with many startups, well connected, with access to bigger corporation’s open innovation processes, or just cluster of SME’s, could sparks.
For sure, that is a matter of culture. Europe should lead by as many examples as possible. We should also tell the story of a changing economical environment. Why are we heading toward a more innovative economy ? A.o., because knowledge, today, is almost everywhere. Globalisation has made the world economy so fluid that, soon, anyone can become a partner or a competitor. Change comes from the outside as well.

The recession is coming to an end, says the president. In his weekly address to the US citizens, Barack Obama stressed that a solid recovery should be supported by a recaptured spirit of innovation.

“It is only by building a new foundation that we will once again harness that incredible generative capacity of the American people. (…) All it takes are the policies to tap that potential — to ignite that spark of creativity and ingenuity — which has always been at the heart of who we are and how we succeed”

For the American president, innovation is part of anybody’s DNA. Innovation doesn’t belong to scientist and white coats solely. Innovation is embed in any active or would-be entrepreneur. Innonvation blooms thanks to fresh looks, unleashed from any kind of prejudice.

On that respect, the American president is in tune with similar considerations regarding the corporate world. In a country’s economy as in a private company, innovation pops up from individuals. The creativity and the engagement of individual people is the first engine of it. In order to fuel a new period of growth, one needs to put a appropriate climate that will foster individual innovators to speak up, and set a proper environment to help them convert ideas into achievements.

Obama’s statement could (should) be, today, what CEO’s say to their employees and executives. Trust people. Forget paternalism.