Potential measures and innovations to tackle the grand challenges are often systemic, resulting in system innovation or transition, in other words a shift from one socio-technical system to another.
Apple's entry to the handheld market has caused Nintendo some problems in envisioning its next move in handheld system innovation.
System innovation is the buzzphrase of the moment – but what does it mean in practice, and how can it be used to solve some of sustainability's trickiest challenges?
Anna Birney is head of the system innovation lab at Forum for the Future and author of Cultivating System Change: A Practitioner's Companion (Dō Sustainability, 2014).
"We don't have the luxury of just looking neighborhood by neighborhood," said Judy Li, a vice president of health system innovation and community benefit with California Pacific.
Here are some of the ways that it works: Identify the process of change Forum for the Future, a non-profit that works in sustainability, has outlined six steps to significant change, a general road map for system innovation.
It will explore the ways system innovation has been used to create large-scale change outside of the business world and apply these lessons to empower companies to help solve big sustainability issues.
Rather than focusing on an individual problem or issue, system innovation looks at the larger context of a problem, defining the roles, needs, and potential actions of all stakeholders.
At the same time, it attacks the notion that Marxism is obsolescent, calls for more "ideological work" to inculcate an innovative spirit and aims to buttress the party's continued monopoly on power through "system innovation".
Is the social innovation a system innovation?
Against these weaknesses, the system innovation model (fourth generation) emerged.
