The wrong cultural context, discouraging social mores, xenophobia, a
paranoid set of mind, isolation from international trade and FDI, lack
of fiscal incentives, a small domestic or regional market, a
conservative ethos, risk aversion, or a well-ingrained fear of
disgracing failure - all tend to stifle innovation.
Product Development Units in banks, insurers, brokerage houses, and
other financial intermediaries churn out groundbreaking financial
instruments regularly. Governments - from the United Kingdom to New
Zealand - set up "innovation teams or units" to foster innovation and
support it. Canada's is more than two decades old.
The European Commission has floated a new program dubbed INNOVATION and
aimed at the promotion of innovation and encouragement of SME
participation. Its goals are:
"(The) promotion of an environment favourable to innovation and the
absorption of new technologies by enterprises;
Stimulation of a European open area for the diffusion of technologies
and knowledge;
Supply of this area with appropriate technologies."
But all these worthy efforts ignore what James O'Toole called in
"Leading Change" - "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.
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