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Innovation Insights

UnGrounded Innovation: What I Learned in the Skies

  • By Duncan Logan, RocketSpace  
  • 1:20 pm  |  
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Image: jepoirrier/Flickr

For entrepreneurs working in the midst of the current technology revolution, it seems there are never enough minutes in a day. When British Airways announced its UnGrounded Innovation flight, I was concerned. I envisioned 130 Silicon Valley influencers on a plane for 10 hours taking advantage of the time to catch up on their own items, rather than working on an innovation challenge. I’m pleased to admit that I was wrong.

Prior to boarding the plane, we were split into four teams and challenged to create a solution that would bridge the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) employment gap. Why STEM? At the current rate, the U.S. economy will generate 120,000 new computer science related jobs each year for the next seven years, and we are only producing 40,000 computer science graduates. Simply put, our nation is in need of more STEM talent for economic growth.

During the flight, each group focused on a separate component of STEM. Team Altitude focused on finding new ways to foster women in STEM; Team Ground Control worked on growing STEM in emerging economies; Team WingSpan concentrated on expanding STEM; and Team Transatlantic thought about meeting the U.S. demand for STEM talent globally.

As soon as everyone was seated, the conversations and ideas started flowing. Once the seat belt sign went off and passengers were free to roam about the cabin, full chaos ensued. Within seconds, the plane was filled with flip charts and post-it notes. Each team split into sub-teams and grouped around bulk heads, pantries and exits — anywhere on the plane that had extra space.

It was particularly interesting to see such a large number of “innovators” at work. In most company brainstorming sessions, there are one or two primary innovators and the rest of the group builds on their idea. Within this group, it took more time to hone in on one idea because there were so many independent ideas to solve the same problem. In the end, the results were outstanding.

Leading ideas included AdvisHer, an online community that leverages the power of pipeline programs to advise, advocate and accelerate women into STEM university programs and companies, and Tech21, a non-profit STEM education program targeted at post-college graduates in the workforce.

Just as interesting as the ideas that came out of the flight was the diverse array of innovators. Real innovators manage to ignore human preconceptions within innovation, and go far beyond incremental improvements to develop completely new approaches to a particular challenge (I always think to The Fosbury flop in the sport of the High Jump, when Fosbury decided that going over backwards would be better and won a Gold Medal). Bringing together individuals from all walks of life helped to break down the preconceived mindsets that can be so damaging to the process of innovation, resulting in new and unique solutions around STEM.

I firmly believe that people are more likely to be innovative when they are surrounded by innovative people, and British Airways’ UnGrounded flight was testimony to the truth of this notion.

Duncan Logan is the founder and CEO of RocketSpace, an open innovation campus in San Francisco.

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