The art of winging it

When the question of how to innovate is proposed, a cluster of essential building blocks can be returned in the answer – location, networks, financing, the right idea, and so forth. However, one crucial component is often overlooked and yet is integral to success. That element? The ability to wing it, or, for our international audience, to improvise.

Winging it, as I have learned over my editorship at Global University Venturing, is also a key part of both being a startup and someone who works in the media. In press terms, along with a penchant for communication and an ability to assimilate information quickly and accurately, winging it is an indispensable tool in the journalist’s playbook. From Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson to Jeremy Paxman and Matt Taibbi, journalism’s most impactful figures are bound together by a comparable aptitude for being able to adapt to a developing story and go with the flow, as well as to get both hands on an opportunity and run with it as far as it will go.

With regards to the startup side, I instigated conversations on winging it with numerous individuals in the technology transfer space last May. One such discussion took place at Reed Elsevier’s Research Commercialisation conference, where surrounded by startup owners, investors, and Isis Innovation’s Tom Hockaday, we all shared our stories on how we got to where we are now. While different routes were taken, one thing was clear. We had all got to where we are with a mix of dedication, ability, and winging it. Once all the stories were shared, we even had a toast to the art of winging it.

I had a similar conversation with SetSquared’s innovation director Simon Bond the following night at Global Corporate Venturing’s awards ceremony. We discussed that, over our careers, we’ve had to employ a combination of thinking on our feet, kicking in the door of opportunity, and a little luck along the way. While it’d be egotistical to speculate on the development of GUV, Simon’s work along with his team at SetSquared speaks for itself – 1,000 companies incubated in a decade, £1bn in external funding raised, and ranked as Europe’s number one university business incubator.

In fact, everyone who I’ve proposed the question of “do you wing it?” to over the past couple of months has admitted to a certain degree of going where the winds take them, adding weight to Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman’s recent post, titled ‘Everyone is totally just winging it, all of the time’.

It becomes a necessary trait in innovation due to the uncharted waters many of us must venture into in order to find success. The universities and technology transfer offices we report on draw on different sized pools of research and resources, and therefore employ a range of differing approaches to research commercialisation. The spin-out companies that fall out of them usually employ untested, cutting edge technology with no predetermined roadmap to success. The financial backers of these companies can never be assured of a 100% success rate. In those sort of conditions, an ability to roll with the punches becomes one of the most, if not the most, important trait anyone working in this ecosystem can possess.

Of course, there is an element of risk in winging it. One of the greatest wits of British comedy, Paul Merton, has made a career out of improvisation. However, a flick through the pages of Private Eye magazine, edited by Ian Hislop, Merton’s counterpart on the BBC’s topical news show Have I Got News for You, demonstrates a comprehensive listing of politicians and other individuals who attempt to think on their feet, trip up, and are met with ridicule. In terms of innovation, those who improvise take a gamble which sometimes pays off, but those in the ecosystem need to allow for the risk of failure.

Therefore, for anyone looking to wing it successfully, individuals need to draw on the best information and data available before stepping into the pioneering gear. There also needs to be an ecosystem which not only appreciates the art, but proactively provides support for it, or, to repurpose a phrase from infamous Stanford academic Timothy Leary, the “set and setting” for innovative thinking and activity.

To this end, Global University Venturing this month is publishing its half year data for 2014, along with a comparison to our data for the same period in 2013, to assist the wingers out there to make the most informed decisions before venturing into the unknown.

Also, our third publication, Global Government Venturing, launches its online platform this month. The third title, alongwith Global Corporate Venturing, extends our view of the ecosystem through research and startup mode, to initial pubclicoffering and beyond. The site is now live, and you can find it at www.globalgovernmentventuring.com.