When you are going to reform something, the goal is to change it to something better. It is to reshape or correct something. It comes in cycles. We see it in the financial industry through Wall St. and the many government regulations. Policies, rules, regulations, laws, etc. all drive reform. What is the catalyst to reform? To go in the opposite direction by deregulating, removing regulations to let the market take over. On today’s show, I am going to be discussing and explaining what innovation reform is.

Innovation Reform

Does innovation need reforming? Can something as nebulous as innovation be changed? The reason that this issue bothers me is due to the misuse of innovation, done in a whole variety of ways. Innovation tends to have minimized support financially. What is the proper role that innovation plays in our daily lives? We tend to view innovation as the new shiny gadget from Apple, Dell, or HP.

The reality is that innovation plays a much more significant part of our daily lives. It’s the continuous role of innovation solving issues such as healthcare, education, politics, etc. It allows us to share ideas globally uniting us rather than dividing us. Back to my fundamental question. Does innovation need reforming? If so, what approach should minimize? Should more regulation or other incentives be applied? Or is there another completely different approach?

3 Key Areas of Innovation Reform

What is wrong with innovation that requires reforming? I believe there are three critical areas that we, as innovators need to be thinking about:

Unethical Innovation

* Presenting Misleading Information – People have presented innovation in a misleading way to investors and the public. Ex. Theranos promised to do blood tests with a single drop of blood. They were installed into Walgreen’s stores and provided false information misleading their customers.

* Academic Research Retracted – There has been a growing number of retracted academic research in the last few years. It is so common that somebody created a website to track retractions for the public’s use.

* Knowingly Faulty Products Released – Innovators releasing products they know are faulty. Ex. Boeing knew that their 737 Max had issues and still released it.

Stolen IP

* Small to Large Companies – I’ve seen this happen from small startups to large companies. Rather than doing their R&D, they take an idea from another company. It’s all about avoiding the need to do R&D and to save money.

* Employees misappropriating IP – People have downloaded IP from a previous employer and take it to a new employer.

Lack of Transparency

* There is an apparent lack of transparency when it comes to investment returns. Instituting GAP created a balance and to compare companies. The balance does not exist in innovation. This issue of a lack of transparency has been one of my most frustrating areas. How a company looks at it is entirely different from company b. It becomes hard to attach intangible value related to innovation.

How do we address these innovation reform issues? What are the best ways to address these issues? What do we as a society do to encourage innovation to solve the challenges we are facing?

How to Initiate Innovation Reform

How do we reform unethical innovation, stolen IP, transparency?

 

Here are my proposals:

Unethical Innovation

* Establish a Code of Ethics – I propose that we establish a code of ethics similar to what the medical field has. Define an oath for innovation so engineers and project managers etc.