White Spaces Innovation in Sweden - Innovation policy for ... - Vinnova

WHITE SPACES INNOVATION IN SWEDEN2 Grand Challenges and CrossCluster Innovation in aComplexity Context2.1 What is Complexity?What does it mean to refer to complexity in a study of Grand Challenges and CrossCluster Innovation? As an indication, recent evidence of the growing importance ofcomplexity can be found in an IBM survey from 2010. The biennial IBM Global CEOStudy featured interviews with 1,541 CEOs, general managers, and senior public sectorleaders from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide. Eight in 10 CEOs, the surveyfound, expect their environment to grow more complex, while only 49 percent believetheir organizations are equipped to deal with it. According to IBM this factorrepresented the largest leadership challenge identified in eight years of research.There is an important issue involved in the process of transforming Grand Challengesinto actionable grand potentials that has to do with the inherent “wickedness” ofgrand challenges, or their unanticipated consequences and problems arising. For instance,biofuels moderate greenhouse gas but cause food price hikes and riots in poorcountries if incentive policy is too simplistic. In recent years there has been an increasedinterest in what „wickedness‟ means and how it should be dealt with from viewpoints inbusiness strategy, policy making and in respect of regional, national and business innovation.The very basic argument is that a Grand Challenge seen as a wicked problemcannot be made actionable by using normal procedures in business and in policy ofreducing problem complexity by successively breaking it down into smaller subproblemsthat can be acted on. So, why is that?Wicked problems aren´t merely harder or more complex than hard problems. Theydon´t just involve more factors and stakeholders. They don´t just take us longer to solve.Analytical thinking alone, no matter how skilfully applied, isn´t going to generate ananswer to a wicked problem. In an important article from 1967, C West Churchmandescribed them as:“a class of social systems problems which are ill-formulated, where theinformation is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makerswith conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole systemare thoroughly confusing”.In other words, wicked problems are ill-defined and unique in their causes, character,and solution if there is one.21