Walking that narrow innovation pathway.

April 19, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Walking that narrow innovation pathway needs some rethinking.

The narrow innovation pathway

“Innovation is the pathway to travel and seek out our future”

Today there is as much of a gap between the aspiration to innovate and the ability to deliver on this.

We still continue to ignore the constant suggestion that innovation should be systematic so the organization can provide some degree of reliability to innovate in a continuous fashion.

We often allow the concept of ‘holistic’ to simply float over us and ignore the intimate connection between strategic thinking, innovation and their alignment. It is still sad we seem not to go beyond a certain point in our innovation thinking, it continues along a narrow path of limited understanding. Will it ever change?

I appreciate the statement, I think made by John Kao: “Strategy is useless without innovation, innovation is directionless without strategy”. Innovation can be a strategy catalyst but is it still? I really do believe we need a new sense of the scale and scope of innovation; we do need to get a firmer grip on its complexities.

The new extended innovation funnel

April 13, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation, Uncategorized

The ideas funnel has been with us a long time. We put our ideas into the funnel and then through a process of elimination out ‘pop’s’ finished products.

Henry Chesbrough’s famous depiction of the Open Funnel has continued that concept, that ideas enter the more ‘open’ innovation process and go through a more ‘staged gate’ or equivalent process to emerge as the finished product or even spun-out- all well and good.

In the past few weeks the funnel has been constantly coming back in my life. It has been bugging me. Recently I was at a European Innovation Conference and we got into a roundtable discussion on managing ideas and up pop’s the fuzzy front end and the funnel and putting ideas through this.

To be provocative I said “well ideas are actually in the middle of the innovation process” and we got into a significant debate on this and concluded that we all did not share a common language on this or understanding of what I was struggling to articulate.

So let me lay out my view. Firstly this was not as inspired as an insight I can fully lay claim to as mine. I had read somewhere this very point, that ideas lie more in the middle of the innovation process but just could not remember where I had read it- grey cells are my excuse.

The Antibodies Sitting in the Innovation Petri Dish

April 6, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

For many years I’ve been fascinated by these ‘Corporate Antibodies’ that we find in that classic management pathology that instinctively rejects and refuses to alter its ways, so as to protect itself, well innovation management is full of them.

The internal immune system somehow identifies and neutralizes often far too many foreign objects, ideas, concepts or solutions. In the medical world, the antibody is a protein produced to protect the body’s immune system when it detects harmful substances, called antigens.

Innovation to be successful has to immune itself from many ‘antibodies’.

Last week I was remind of this. I attended a good, insightful conference (www.eic2011.com)  on open innovation and new business creation, along with 200 practitioners from large mostly European organizations.

What struck me was the consistent reference to stopping the ‘culture’ of rejection; ‘killing off’ projects, the fear of not-invented here.

I often felt some of the speakers themselves were actually reinforcing this antibody culture, yet they were leading the charge for more open innovation, the very force to eliminate this.

Going behind the outside-in of imagination at GE.

March 23, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

In the past few months, I have become interested in GE and how it is managing innovation. Often you read a number of negative reports on GE but is this just the big guy being picked upon by more nimble observers that have limited insight into what is going on behind the walls of GE?

What is under the innovation bonnet at GE?

There does seem an awful lot going on in GE around innovation on what we can observe from the outside looking in. Of course, you would expect this in an organization the size of GE employing 300,000 people across 100 countries and generating $150 billion dollars in revenue.

In Jeffrey Immelts (Chair and CEO) own words “the toughest years of my life were 2008 to 2009”.To drop 31 billion dollars in revenue in two years is tough to manage through, and to see net earnings drop by nearly $6 billion dollars in this period to where it is today, of $11.6 billion dollars, must have been very hard.

Open innovation stands at the crossroads- where to next?

March 14, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Although open innovation has been around for some years, it is in the past three to four years the notion of open innovation has accelerated and moved very much and becoming embedded into the structure of many organizations.

Presently most organizations are dealing with the roadblocks surrounding open innovation either internally within their own structures or with the potential partners that they want to work with, for a more diverse innovation portfolio.

Arguably open innovation will merge into simply a way of doing innovation, then into something more specific. For me that is more into a collaboration and co-creation innovative approach I touch upon further in this article

Today we are broadly at an emerging stage of OI. In summary, you could say:

Societal Innovation – challenging our future thinking

March 10, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

There needs to be this major shift from market-led to more societal led organizations occurring. We see pockets of this in a number of business organizations offering clearer governance and sustainability outlines as part of their annual reporting.

We need to push them a lot harder. We need to move away from business-only innovation into a society based.

The shifts taking place

Society has shifted, is shifting; the consumer is becoming the supplier of content, meaning, of their taste preferences, their emotions and the goods and services they will buy. Mass consumption, the model honed in the 20th century doesn’t work anymore.

Customers are actually saying “less choice, more say” and seeking deeper self-determination. This personalising of preference can seem more complex for organizations but there are many ways to manage this it requires real change in organizations, oriented to society more, serving them more.

The marketing thinking is in need of adaptation also.

Shortage and Plenty- the growing shift towards Social Innovation

March 8, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

On 16 and 17 March 2011, Social Innovation Europe will be launched in Brussels. Funded by the European Commission, Social Innovation Europe will create a dynamic, entrepreneurial and innovative new Europe with the intent for Europe to embrace the broader concepts within innovation and set an example globally for this social movement.

The aim is by 2014, Social Innovation Europe will have become the meeting place – virtual and real – for social innovators, entrepreneurs, non-profit organisations, policy makers and anyone else who is inspired by social innovation in Europe.

This can provide the opportunity for social innovation – for so long on the margins – to take its place alongside business innovation at the centre of the economic stage.

Social Innovation Europe

The intent will cover the following:

Transform European activities around innovation ecosystems

March 3, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

The challenge today is to transform European activities around innovation. It is the same for the United States as the growth and job mantra will simply come from innovation. In the EU case, Innovation forms a central plank of the 2020 Europe goals.

Regretfully the next Titanic is waiting to happen.

In recent months there has been considerable activity to formulate the new policies to support innovation through EU funding. The EU has been inviting dialogue and offering a mountain of guidelines and suggestions to help us all.  Much of the focus is on streamlining what is already in place.

I’ve called this on some different discussion blogs a little like “reorganizing the innovation deck chairs on the titanic as it heads towards an iceberg”.

There is enormous activity and pressure to perform as the past results of many of the EU initiatives have not delivered on the goals set, and there is this real urgent need to reflect upon the lessons learned from the failures of the Lisbon strategy.

It does seem the present ‘effect’ is put on more steam, lighten the load where we can and let’s try and navigate through these challenges (or icebergs), no time to lose.

Everyone is on high alert in Brussels and around the EU all busy doing their job to contribute to present dialogues on making innovation a success. We need to take really radical action in my view.

Perhaps we should be shouting “all stop”

The power and promise within innovation: shifting up our gears

February 28, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Are the rules around innovation changing? Are we spotting the changes in the drivers and current deterrents of innovation? What are the present-day perceptions around the innovation challenges?

GE released their first-of-its-kind “Global Innovation Barometer” at the end of January 2011. It is focusing on identifying the changing landscape for innovation in the 21st century. It suggests innovation will be a catalyst for improving multiple areas of citizens’ lives in the next ten years.

In many ways, it paints a very optimistic future for innovation. Innovation, the survey predicts, will create jobs, improve lives, address more human needs, find better ways to collaborate and learn, and simply create good in people’s lives with the promise of prosperity.

I wonder a little differently: “are we not placing too bigger a burden on innovations’ shoulders?”

Social innovation comes of age in Europe

February 22, 2011Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

“Social innovation is about new ideas that work to address pressing unmet society needs”

The shifts taking place in Europe

The competitiveness and challenges that Europe faces in the next ten years are significant. Innovation has been placed at the heart of Europe’s 2020 strategy.

It is this clear recognition that innovation is the best means of tackling issues that will affect our future living standards is not new in itself, but it is this real political recognition of its place and importance, now that is.

Innovation is also our best means of successfully tackling major societal challenges, such as climate change, energy and resource scarcity, health and aging and becoming more urgent each day to address in more systematic ways.

European funding of innovation in recent years has perhaps placed far too much emphasis on research and development to deliver the growth and jobs it requires.