WEF opens to innovation theme in Rio

The World Economic Forum on Latin America has opened today in Rio de Janeiro. IT Decisions will begin reporting from the ground tomorrow. As I write, Angelica Mari is flying from São Paulo to Rio and getting ready for a couple of days mixing with the most important decision makers in the LatAm region.

Initial tweets using the #WEF hashtag have focused on innovation and appear to be mostly from the organisations publishing the research. It looks like the real activity won’t kick off until tomorrow, or at least until some of the delegates have sampled the delights of a Carioca caipirinha de maracuja.

GE has published new research indicating that Brazil is the third most optimistic country about how innovation can improve the life of citizens. It analyzes a number of variables, such as unemployment, healthcare, the environment, and well-being, in addition to the more traditional GDP per capita.

However, as anyone who works in a small or medium sized company knows, innovation is hard to quantify – or create. Large companies (sometimes) have the bandwidth and strategic foresight to realize that their future is not just doing more of the same. Smaller firms trying to keep the lights on rarely enjoy this luxury.

This conventional wisdom is challenged by GE.

The GE research surveyed 1,000 senior executives across 12 countries – including Brazil – and found that 88% believe that innovation is the best way to create jobs in their country.

What is really interesting about the GE research though is who the executives think will do the innovating in future. Only 19% is attributed to ‘large companies’, but 27% is expected from small and medium sized companies, and a huge 40% from players partnering together.

There are two major discussion points opened up by these results, the change in emphasis to smaller companies driving change and a move to genuine business partnerships. Both are fundamental changes to the way we work today and therefore to the way new ideas are harnessed and exploited.

It’s easier for smaller companies to be more innovative. Take a look at IT Decisions for a good example. Every time we talk to traditional media companies about the network of CIOs we have created, and the thousands of readers this magazine gets each day they are stunned – visibly stunned. We haven’t spent a penny on advertising, yet in three months our audience rivals – or is better than – many established technology magazines thanks to social media tools, such as LinkedIn.

Imagine starting your own company tomorrow. Your communications infrastructure is on Skype, your email is on Google, your marketing is on LinkedIn, and your storage is on Dropbox. Most of the infrastructure any company needs can be bought off the shelf with a few clicks.

Got an idea? Has there ever been an easier time to try making it happen?

And what about partnering? Partnering is the future and outsourcing is the past. Traditional ‘partnerships’ involved a client with lots of power hiring a supplier with none. Those days are gone because suppliers now have specialist expertise that is essential for the smooth functioning of the client – they become an integral part of the client’s value chain.

And so, even a relatively expensive country, such as Brazil, can compete in the international IT sourcing market because of the specialist skills available here.

Of course, innovation is often discussed in only the most vague terms. Try calling an IT provider tomorrow and asking them to help you innovate and you will get a different response depending on which company you call.

But with such fundamental changes taking place in the marketplace in Latin America, it is no longer about enforced innovation, requiring research labs or teams of PhDs filing patent after patent, or contracts that promise to ‘discover’ innovation.

Today, innovation is happening because the way companies do business is fundamentally changing – much of this change is being driven by technology. And your boss once told you that Facebook is just a waste of time?

Photo by Andrew Stawartz licensed under Creative Commons