“Every step involving innovation can be modified, improved and complemented”

Daniel Burgos, director of Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED presented on Thursday 14th in Quito the key issues about the innovation process in a conference for Pichincha Bank. The aim was to approach a concept, innovation, that is difficult to understand.

There are a number of interpretations about what innovation means. Innovation cycle is a long and very structured process: from the opportunity exploration to commercialization, also including daily management and improvements. However, it is often imposed the need for quick answers in some fields focused on the attention to the final user.

In this cases when we can’t wait for a whole process to close to introduce improvements, it is necessary to apply what Daniel Burgos has called transgenic innovation: “Every step of the structure can be modified, improved and complemented –as a genetic study– to generate an enriched final product. Innovation is a cycle in itself”. Moreover, as Burgos said, innovating is a continuous process, and such it needs agility in its development so, when the final product comes to the final user, is still innovative.

In order to integrate the transgenic innovation concept to the financial sector, during de conference he exposed success cases from which lo learn, as Open Educational Resources Foundation (case of service), Merlot II (resources) or Khan Academy and Athabasca University (institutions).

Innovating is a continuous process, and such it needs agility in its development so, when the final product comes to the final user, is still innovative

As the educational success case, Burgos explained the innovation process involving Open Education at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR): “We have an open repository with thousand of hours of free content. It is a model that can be replicated in any field: for example, if this conference were online and broadcast out of the work hours we would have made a better impact by wrecking barriers that usually have existed”. La Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) have shown repeatedly its compromise with a more equal information access with the Open Educational Politicy designed by UNIR iTED.

Innovation is an attitude, both at individual and corporative level

As Burgos said, despite having dificulties to define the innovation concept, there is a wide agreement that it is an attitude, both at individual and corporative level: “It is very important to know that the things you develop has an evolution and a lifetime, and there’s always a need of adapting them to what we need. We have to question ourselves which is the better way in adapting them to our context. You have to ask the question even if at the end things remain unchanged”.