When you look at the origins of innovations, one thing quickly becomes clear: it happens anywhere and everywhere,

Take the innovative art of Bjork; it hails from Iceland.

The Ski-Doo snowmobile; it’s from Quebec.

Apple electronic devices; California.

Red Bull from Austria.

Creative spark and visionary execution can happen anywhere...providing they are enabled. The ingredients for this alchemy are made up of ideas, timing, expertise, capital and distribution; and most importantly, the passion and collaboration of willing participants. As this mix is hard to assemble and even harder to keep together for any length of time, the need for an ad hoc platform to leverage opportunities is a must if your innovation process is going to be effective. Conversations leads to ideas, ideas engender to concepts, concepts evolve into actions and actions lead to outcomes. These are all driven by altering and converging participants motivated by a passion for the piece that they want to play within this realm. Few activities self-motivates people more  than working on something that is of interest to them, to prove a point they want to make or to showcase what they know. So in order to have an innovation process that delivers sustainable results, it has to be organic enough for the various and necessary role-players to collaborate on their terms; while purposefully contributing to the overall innovation mission.

Innovation is an opportunistic pursuit; it can only spawn value if the conditions and resources are aligned. As cycle times decrease and demands increase, the need for an agile innovation process will be paramount. Ideas, timing and talent must have a common place to converge so that innovation can occur anytime and anyplace.