ENTOV-HVM Kick-Off Call

All – when I lived in the US I often went to the (quarter mile) drag races on Sundays. Really exciting were the starts when the Christmas tree lights turned green and the cars with already spinning wheels launched – amazing experience! This is what ENTOV-HVM is beginning to feel like as everyone is rearing to go, yet the lights are not green yet since we are working on fueling the tank (therefore getting funded J)

Thank you to all those who took part (Mor – Israel, Raminta – Lithuania, Mesam & Peter – Luxembourg, Paulo – Portugal and Taner – Turkey). Thank you also for those who tried to attend but could not make it after all (Pinar – Germany, Sait – Italy, Nuno – Portugal and Lynne – USA). For those of you who could not make it at all please rest assured there will be future meetings – in particular toward the end of July when we come together to discuss the final version of the proposal.  In the meantime there will be different meetings I will be sure to circulate invitations to.

The first hour of the meeting was spent with introductions and getting to know each other. It was especially interesting to learn more about everyone and especially about what they are passionate about. ENTOV-HVM is intended to be a place where you can bring those passions to bear for making a difference in many ways and on many levels – more about this in the coming weeks since it truly mirrors our aspiration to make a fundamental contribution to innovation for the benefit of society at large.

In the second half of the call we began a discussion about what sort of contexts give rise to rapid innovation. We explored approaches like action research, experimentation, living labs, agile and a few more and ended up reflecting that innovation speed is an adaptive phenomenon that might best be explained from a complex adaptive systems perspective – great insight I think and more on that in a moment. We also reminded ourselves that whatever the speed of innovation the deliverables will need to meet legal, commercial and regulatory requirements for widespread implementation as well – these often being the factors slowing down sustainable implementation as we well know.

The complex adaptive systems path of inquiry seems very well suited for one next step which will need to be a journal paper on the innovation web process. Can we describe the value network archetypes and dynamics using complex adaptive systems principles? The starting point might well be a thorough review of innovation methods that are out there and to assess them using complex adaptive systems thinking – if anyone is interested let me know and we can launch into this?

The other interesting paths of inquiry might perhaps be around the ethical responsibilities in innovation and the degree to which innovation can „enacted“ from a drama perspective – discussions we will launch into in the future and both intended to frame the dinner event on the first day of the training schools.

It seems we all enjoyed the event and I look forward to the continuing discussions. Trying to maintain the „hop on hop off“ nature of course and respecting that (for the moment) everyone is contributing on a pro-bono basis to set the stage for something truly exceptional.

Next steps? Please do review the circulated proposal and get any comments back to me before the end of the month. I will then revise the proposal based on all input received and organize a call to agree on the final version. Please do also continue recruiting participants - the more we are, the more fun :)