Innovate on Purpose: What accelerates innovation

Innovation accelerators have gained popularity in universities, businesses, and cities as a means to speed up innovation. However, they are not enough to accelerate innovation. The focus should be on defining an important problem or opportunity, describing benefits of incremental or radical changes, giving innovators stakes in the outcome, encouraging exploration and experimentation, choosing the right judges, and not worrying about money until the idea needs to scale. Accelerators may accelerate interaction but not necessarily innovation. Critical mass, evaluation and judgement, easy exploration and cultural acceptance, clear definitions of the problem, and having a stake in the outcome are most important.