When in Newport (II). It is the turn of Innovation 101.
Good night! Hope you had a beautiful weekend.
Since the arrivals of the teams to Newport, the Volvo Ocean Race Village did its celebration debut opening. Newport is the home of American Sailing, it´s no wonder why I found something in the city of Newport which I would like you to look out. The City of Newport and other private companies will develop a project called Innovation and Resiliency Center of Excellence (Innovation Hub).
The vision for the Newport Innovation Hub is to create a global scientific, technological and convening center that focuses on resilience, ocean and defense technologies that include: applied oceanographic research, defense/cyber applications, environmental technology, alternative energy, emerging digital industries and community resilience. 
And this project seems to be the seed for building a national American model of resilience and innovation. What is interesting about this project are three things: (1) It is a private-public partnership; (2) It has a clear focus and visionary purpose for the city of Newport core mission goals and the future of its citizens; (3) It is an open innovation source of support for research and development using public-private financing structures too. This initiative started in the year 2016 and is a work in progress. Let´s see how it will evolve over the next months and years. The project is new, and it will take at least decade to start giving results to the Newport Community.
Let´s start today with the material we have prepared for you today. The first subject to share with you is Innovation 101. I have tried to do the briefest summary about Innovation applied to business. This is just the introduction of our Newport Soujourn.
If you wish to download the last set of slides, click here please: Eliescalante Newport stopover Innovation 101.
Read the slides, please. Let me remark some fundamentals about my personal view of innovation. Innovation is a mental framework of living. Innovation is more than creativity. And as everything in life innovation is inherent to failure, simply because innovative minds do know it is part of the process of living. For innovators, failure is part of the natural cycle of innovation. For example, the Volvo Ocean Race yachts have had several failures in the past. And the design, testing, and construction of each version is an effort to evolve for a better boat which stands the conditions of the cruel oceans. Nevertheless, it has taken more than 40 years to build the VOR 65, and still, Vestas 11th was dismasted a few weeks ago in Cape Horn. Failure is part of the culture of an innovator.
But the happy news about innovators are these two wonderful attributes: persistence and passion to find the right solution for the business model or product or service or process. And this is what matters the most. 
The innovator will continue in his or her quest for the right vision model or prototype independently if it will take a few months, 10 years or 20 years or a complete generation of 80 years to accomplish it. In addition, the excellent innovator is an ethical sponsor of ethical projects. There is no separation between the aspirations of reaching integrity in an innovator´s character and his-her aspirations to innovate in business. Those are the good innovators. A good innovator will never release a business model, or product or service if it will cause damages to the next generations to come.
Well, this is all for today. I hope that you can follow me over the rest of the week. We have to finish this theme before the start date of Leg 9, that is next Sunday 20th of May.
Good night, and blessings from home.
San Salvador – 00:01 am (CST time).
Inspiration Source References:
https://hbr.org/resources/pdfs/comm/merck/BreakthroughInnovationinthe21stCentury.pdf
https://hbr.org/2017/09/what-your-innovation-process-should-look-like
https://www.inc.com/gordon-tredgold/4-reasons-why-you-need-to-focus-on-innovation.html
https://www.bcg.com/capabilities/strategy/four-approaches-business-model-innovation.aspx
http://www.clomedia.com/2017/07/12/how-do-you-teach-innovation/
https://www.creativityatwork.com/design-thinking-strategy-for-innovation/
http://www.cityofnewport.com/departments/planning-development/projects/newport-s-north-end
Disclaimer: All the presentation slides shown on this blog are prepared by Eleonora Escalante MBA-MEng. Nevertheless, all the pictures or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.
Eleonora Escalante Strategy 