The Innovation Race

10 FUTURE TRENDS The new innovation agenda

‘We were making the future … and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!'

H. G. Wells

As we launch into the future, we need to reimagine and reinvent the ways we do things to ensure more sustainable solutions at all levels. We recommend:

• systemic change that generates viable alternatives to our current economic structures, along with creative and innovative cultures
• new definitions of innovation that recognise a move away from technological measures towards integrated and sustainable systems
• a shift towards purpose-driven innovation, exploiting business opportunities associated with solving the world's biggest problems, while maintaining a clear priority on ethics and integrity.

This chapter offers food for thought on where we could go next by providing a new innovation agenda for changing the game.

Key challenge: How to innovate responsibly to deal with a rapidly changing world.

Our wildly courageous friend Matt McFadyen, extreme adventurer, does not look like an elite athlete. He has a stocky frame and solid build, but this physique has actually been well suited to the sorts of polar expeditions he has undertaken. Matt was the youngest Australian to sail to Antarctica. He also told us of a particular expedition he took to the North Pole, which (unlike Antarctica) offers no firm land mass, but only shifting, drifting ice.

Matt conveyed to us the incredible energy and determination needed to ...