26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

As digitalisation and machine intelligence are rapidly emerging towards disruptive status, the question should be asked whether humans will or should remain in control of innovation? Often people only think of artificial intelligence boosting growth by substituting humans, but actually huge value is going to come from the new goods, services and innovations artificial intelligence will enable. The 4th industrial revolution; the Internet of Things; smart everything, from wearables to cities; and artificial intelligence are future waves that will change forever the world as we know it today. We tend to think that future “smartness” is hidden in the creative abilities that humans have to innovate. But as machines are entering the workplace and our daily lives, not only as static robots on a manufacturing line, but with the potential to replace lawyers and accountants, doctors and teachers, companions and partners, their role in innovation in complex environments need to be explored. Innovating machines have been demonstrated. Already, governments are considering introducing new systems for protecting intellectual property that is generated by a non-human entity. This means that the notion of innovation, which up to now has been an attribute of humans only, will have to be redefined to accommodate these new innovators of the cyber world. An analysis will be done, based on the maturity of machine intelligence and human-machine relationships, on the potential of machines becoming autonomous innovators. Innovation is dependent on the ability to recognise patterns, combine and integrate existing properties and knowledge to represent something that is perceived as new by the user, seeing the gap in the market and intuition. This is exactly what machines are taught to do and teach themselves to do better in a conceptualisation era that follows the knowledge economy and takes us along into the algorithm economy. This paper relates to a better understanding of future innovation systems and strategic thinking and the complexity of innovation systems in the future digital world. It will present a thought model of how individual innovation, company innovation, industry innovation and national systems of innovation could be replaced by a global machine innovation network in future.