Lately I’ve been reading about the efforts to build or create innovation accelerators. Universities, businesses, and even cities and regions are talking about innovation and the need to create accelerators or innovation enablers. I’m glad that everyone is excited about innovation, and that they want to provide the means to help it flourish and move more quickly. But the thing is, like most late arrivals, they’ve got the wrong end of the stick as the Brits like to say.

Buildings, programs, artificial meet-ups, and other activities that are put into place as accelerators won’t accelerate innovation. These solutions will accelerate interaction, perhaps, but not innovation. To do that we need to pay attention to a couple of important things that are being overlooked or ignored.

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