From Paradox to Power: How AI can rewire Innovation for Impact

By Mondher Khanfir

We live in a time where knowledge has never been more abundant. Scientific publications are multiplying by thousands, patents are being filed at unprecedented rates, and public investments in R\&D continue to grow. On paper, we’re living in a golden age of innovation.

And yet, something doesn’t add up. Despite all the intellectual firepower, very few of these discoveries make their way into the real world — into products, startups, or solutions that truly matter to people, industries, or societies. What we’re facing is not a lack of ideas, but rather a breakdown in translation — from research to impact.

This is what economists call the Innovation Paradox: "The more we invest in knowledge creation, the less we seem to gain in transformative outcomes."

The Gaps No One Talks About

Behind this paradox lies a series of gaps, some technical, others cultural, and many political.

There is the Discovery-to-Decision gap, where promising research struggles to be evaluated for its market relevance or strategic potential.

There is the Decision-to-Deployment gap, where financing dries up or bureaucracy takes over.

And beyond that, the Deployment-to-Impact gap, where innovations get stuck in niche markets, unable to scale or deliver value.

Worse still, in the background looms a Sovereignty Gap — the growing dependency on external platforms, infrastructures, and opaque algorithms to guide what gets valorized, what gets funded, and ultimately, what gets seen and remembered.

A Compass in the Chaos: What AI Brings to the Table

Now, let’s be clear: Artificial Intelligence won’t fix broken ecosystems overnight. But it can offer something we desperately need; a new compass.

AI has the power to process complexity, reveal hidden patterns, and make sense of messy innovation landscapes in ways that were simply impossible a decade ago.

Just imagine this: You’re sitting on a database of thousands of research outputs from universities, labs, and startups. Most are unread, untagged, unprioritized. AI can now scan this sea of information, detect signals of technological maturity, map emerging market needs, and match them with purpose. It can tell you, “this one is just another paper - but that one might be the foundation of a startup that changes your energy grid.”

Navigating the Innovation Maze: The TPMP Matrix

To help answer a simple but powerful question; Is this innovation worth pushing? we’ve developed a tool, the Technology Push – Market Pull Matrix, enhanced by GPT models.

The idea is simple. Imagine every research project or invention sitting somewhere on a grid: On one side, we ask: How mature and groundbreaking is the technology? On the other: How strong is the demand for it - today or tomorrow?

This gives us four zones illustrated in the next quadrant :

The Blind Spot: low tech, low pull — best avoided. The Quick Win: low tech, high pull — fast results, but easy to copy. The Visionary Zone: high tech, low pull — needs long-term vision and risk capital. The Breakthrough Zone: high tech, high pull — where real transformation happens.

With AI, we can scan thousands of papers, patents, and market signals to position any idea in this matrix — almost in real time. Suddenly, the path becomes clearer. We know where to invest, where to license, where to build, and where to wait.

Seeing What’s Hidden: The IP Landscape

But even that’s not enough. In the real world, innovation doesn’t move freely. It moves within invisible fences — patents, licenses, legal risk.

This is where AI becomes a true ally. With the right tools, we can now map intellectual property landscapes like never before - identifying the white zones (where innovators have freedom to operate), the grey zones (where caution is needed), and the dark zones (dominated by patent holders or monopolistic standards).

This changes everything! Startups can now simulate their legal risks before investing. Governments can steer public R\&D away from contested domains. TTOs can focus on what’s really exploitable, not just what’s publishable.

It turns the question from: “Is this new?” to: “Is this possible, legal, defensible and aligned with our purpose?”

The Sovereignty Question: Who Owns the Compass?

But here’s the deeper issue. As AI becomes the brain behind decision-making, who owns the brain? Who gets to decide what counts as a breakthrough? Who has access to the models, the infrastructure, the datasets?

Today, too many innovation systems rely on foreign, black-box platforms to guide national agendas. The algorithms used to scout promising research, to evaluate patents, to assess startup potential — often belong to private actors whose goals may not align with public interest.

That’s why AI sovereignty matters! Because whoever owns the tools that map innovation… will shape the future of innovation.

Toward a Smarter, Fairer Innovation Ecosystem

Let’s be clear: AI is not a substitute for leadership, vision, or values. But it can become a powerful infrastructure for strategic governance, if we design it that way.

We can: Build "sovereign AI platforms" for knowledge valorisation. Train a new generation of "innovation translators", people who speak science, business, law, and AI. Embed "ethical rules" that ensure transparency, accountability, and purpose. Because the real challenge today is not to generate more ideas. It’s to make sure the right ideas are seen, supported, and scaled, before it’s too late.

From Paradox to Power

The Innovation Paradox is not a curse. It’s a signal telling us to evolve. In a time where ideas are abundant but attention is scarce, where data is cheap but insight is rare, we need new tools to govern innovation not as a linear pipeline, but as a living system.

AI offers us that chance. Not to replace human judgment, but to augment our ability to see, decide, and act with clarity. Let’s use it not just to move faster, but to move smarter, fairer, and with intention.

Because innovation, at its core, is not about technology. It’s about impact!