Our Journey So Far

We at InnovatingSMART have been on a wonder-full journey together, and we look forward to the path ahead.

I initiated this journey by viewing InnovatingSMART itself as an innovation:

• As with most innovative ideas, my idea for a social-media enabled knowledge-base on sustainability-driven innovation percolated for over a year, while I was working as an "innovation advocate" and program director for the Silicon Valley Innovation Society. Also as with most ideas, similar albeit distinct ideas were percolating in others' minds; something along these lines was needed, was now possible, and was wanting to emerge
• at the end of 2009, I decided to invite young people -- the digital natives of social-media content -- into the idea. I launched an initiative aimed to bring young professionals -- the innovators, leaders and managers of tomorrow -- into close contact with the sustainability-driven innovators of today
• I found a sustainability-focused non-profit home for this effort, provided through generous and well-aligned colleagues at Sustainovation.
• I recruited an Advisory Board of innovation-minded colleagues -- key allies who provide advice, a sounding board, and a sanity check
• I developed a detailed and comprehensive prototype -- to make concrete my core ideas, and through which to attract a team of young professional interns to join me
• and then I threw it all away!

Once a creative team of collaborators had gathered around an articulated idea, the "I" became "we", and the real work began...

Over late spring and through the summer of 2010, we looked together afresh at every aspect of the project. We re-envisioned our platform, our media vision, and our audience. We completely re-designed our branding. We collaboratively outlined our funding approach, our research approach, our communication approach and our project management approach. And then came the best part -- we began to ask people to tell us their stories...

We've learned much so far, including how much more we have to learn.

In future blog posts, I will discuss more deeply some of our design choices -- choices which we continue to evolve. I will share a bit about how we do our research and about our evolving communication strategy. I'll let you know what additional funding support we need to thrive. But for now...

Welcome! to our Pilot system, the first-wave result of the richly collaborative team effort that is InnovatingSMART.