Life has a funny habit of going full circle. At least mine does.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with my kids about the new UK Defence Investment Plan, parts of which commit us to developing advanced drone technology by 2030. I couldn’t help but make the point that Ukraine were developing new drones almost monthly, and they were under constant attack. Needing four years sounded like a joke. We quickly started talking about the concept of innovation out of necessity.

Then, last night I stumbled across a fascinating paper published last summer by the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum focussing on Ukraine’s world-leading drone industry, which made the very same point​. They argue it wasn’t created through conventional entrepreneurship, government planning or commercial ambition. Instead, it emerged because ordinary engineers, software developers, volunteers and small businesses were confronted with an existential crisis that demanded immediate action.

The authors describe this as ‘reluctant innovation’, drawing directly on the concept in my book, The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator. In their case they define it as innovation driven not by profit, prestige or long-term strategy, but by necessity and an overwhelming desire to solve urgent, real-world problems. In other words, a full-scale invasion by Russia.

What’s particularly interesting is that, rather than focusing on a handful of heroic inventors, the paper explains how thousands of citizens became innovators almost by accident. Existing technical skills, volunteer networks and grassroots initiatives combined with rapid government reforms, supportive procurement policies and international partnerships to create a decentralised innovation ecosystem capable of producing hundreds of drone designs in just a few years.

But perhaps the most striking finding for me is that the Ukrainian experience reinforces the central argument behind my book that many of the world’s most transformative innovations emerge not because people set out to innovate, but because circumstances leave them with little choice. Faced with immediate human need, individuals stop asking how they might ‘invent something’ and instead ask how they can solve a very real problem. In other words, innovation becomes an outcome rather than the objective.

You can download a copy of the paper, ‘Ukraine’s Drone Industry’,  here. The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator is now out of print, but you can buy second hand copies online or very cheaply on Amazon for Kindle. There’s also a free PDF available on the kiwanja website here.

Thanks again to Pontus Braunerhjelm and Maryna Brychko for a fascinating paper, and for their openness and transparency in the use of my earlier work.