Out of the Blue and into the Black: The Pursuit of Innovation and a visit to the DSM Biotechnology Center

The Bottom Line

Only the biggest companies can try this — with resources that far exceed those of academics or early-stage companies. And only a handful of them will succeed. though not for the lack of targets for innovation, not for the lack of urgency from the board room and not for the lack of interest among the scientists.

DSM is getting down the road. Competitiors: make tracks fast.

It’s not for the faint of heart. The limitations lie more in the attraction of old habits. We love our habits more than we love life — can’t tell you how many lives have been sacrificed to bad habits. Just look at the smoking statistics, some time. Or the stats correlating fast driving speeds to auto-related fatalities. And so on and on.

At smaller companies watch the trends and judge for yourself. Watch the evolution of language, the evolution of financial instruments, the evolution of machinery and the rise of non-conscious intelligence in the machine. Think about everything in one place, and yet nothing in one place.  Think about corporate M&A crazy, the Break-Ups and the Shake-Ups. Think about Rust Never Sleeping. Data shift.

The epic signs of change are all around us. But it is a different kind of change. Because change is changing, and it has been a long while since that happened. Just ask your manger, director, executive or president.

Innovation will be arriving in different ways than before, it will feel like its’ coming from Out of the Blue. But it is not enough to invent for the sake of inventing. It has to meet a market at a price the market can clear. It has to go Into the Black.

Out of the Blue and into the Black. As Neil Young put it so well, if some time ago.