2014 - Innovation Thinking and Resources

As new digital technology dawns for innovation

By @paul4innovating November 22, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

Digital Technology is significantly challenging for organizations to re-think and re-equip due to the emergence of big data, smart mobile connectivity, social media, cloud, analytics and the growing commercialization.

These are all driving external technology change, all clearly pointing towards a significant disruption of the existing ways we conduct business internally. So we need to ask “how are we going to take advantage of the potential business transformation?”

The issue is how to capitalize and create the value from all this change for innovation and performance enhancement?

***This is the first of a seven-part exploratory ‘open thinking’ about digital technology and its potential impact on innovation as we know it today. These will be published daily over the next week. The intent at this stage is more about raising our thinking on what might need changing or at least re-orientation within our innovation management approaches.***

Questioning internally those many product failures

By @paul4innovating November 21, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

There is a variety of different views on our product failure rates. According to some, the failure rate for new products launched for instance in the grocery sector is 70 to 80 per cent in the US. For smaller US food businesses launching new products, the success rate is even lower around 11 per cent.

These are really high failure rates but is this a myth or reality? How does your organization evaluate product failures? Do you really want to talk about them?

The proliferation of transitory moments are ahead

By @paul4innovating November 12, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

Recently I was reading that up to now, each digital technology change was a separate era but today we are facing something seemingly different, a collision, a proliferation of transitory moments.

A whole mash-up of disparate technologies and systems, that seem to be heading for such an explosion of change, a post-digital transformation.

This merging of cloud, big data, social, and the internet of things is becoming the new system of discovery according to some. Others call it the crossroads where the post-digital reality of bringing together the cloud, mobile, interconnected devices, data analytics and embedded intelligence are pointing us to a hyper-connected world, less tomorrow, more speeding towards us in the here and now.

It is through people and things (IoT) we will get new innovation potential

Smart, Connected Products Will Radically Alter the Value Proposition.

By @paul4innovating November 6, 2014Polymers

Marketing has worked for years in framing the marketing mix on the classic 4P theory of product, price, promotion and place for finding its value proposition, today it is becoming smart by being connected.

Then this was extended for the need to bring in the service aspect, by becoming the 7P, adding physical evidence, people and process onto the original 4p.

Then this was updated in the nineties to become people, process, programs and performance.

Great as this may be in its ‘progressive’ evolution these are totally inadequate to ‘serve’ today’s world of smart, connected products. Product design has become hyper, connected and needed to be well-designed. It is more to do with what is embedded or how it is connected and less on the product as the value-generating a proposition.

Getting a deeper understanding of the smart, connected world

The Arrival of the Digital Monsoon for Innovation

By @paul4innovating November 1, 2014Polymers

If you ever have lived in the tropics you know of the arrival of the monsoons.

Skies darken, clouds gather, often thunder and lightning combine, the wind picks up and the rain ‘announces’ its arrival in sheer torrents of heavy, drenching, wave-upon-wave of unrelenting force.

It is hard to stand upright or know what to do. Everything around you transforms. Dry, often parched land quickly turns to rivers of water, seeking out everything to shift and move along and eventually going everywhere to transform the landscape.

We are presently being told we are at the beginnings of a digital revolution; it has been likened to a tsunami in its eventual (devastating) effect on our organizations and by inference, the impact it will have on each of our lives.

Lay out the path, get out of the way but give me ambition please.

By @paul4innovating October 22, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Today we see a new commission elected in Europe. As a European you always want this to be a new beginning, a new hope, having plenty of ambition, perhaps a new start for Europe.

Jean-Claude Junker has become the new president of the European Commission and along with his new Commission team has been setting out their priorities for regaining momentum for Europe.

I was re-reading Mr Junker’s policy agenda based on “Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change” and you realise not just the complexity and challenge all this entails, bringing 28 countries along still, it seems, a pathway that still talks “a single union.”

It prompted this post.

Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation

By @paul4innovating October 21, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Finally, I am completely surrounded by inspiration, ideation and implementation. I have that feeling of being somewhat overwhelmed, I can’t twist and turn anymore, it simply will not go away.

Do I throw myself off the building or decide to listen a little longer? It really is forcing me to think.

Today it seems whenever I pick up a business book each chapter has a section on it.

Also, I seem not to be able to not fall over all the articles extolling its virtues, I mindlessly “Google it” and you can see your whole life flash before you, if you decided to investigate this seriously.

What am I talking about?

Well, nothing other than Design Thinking. I know, most of you are so heavily into this you feel you might as well ‘flip’ over to the next article but are you, really?

Are you hearing all the voices for ideas?

By @paul4innovating October 17, 2014Molecules

So where do ideas come from? The most popular one is the ‘voice of the customer’ yet this is one of the many ‘voices’ that need to be allowed to speak.

In this fuzzy front end of innovation where ideas are generated, there are many places we can ‘discover and listen’ to the voices that will provide concrete ideas and concepts.

Let’s take the time to recognize these and ask you, the reader, do you have a systematic plan to capture all these voices?

The Voice of the Customer
The most talked-about place to find the ideas that are closer and relevant are the search for new ideas around the jobs needing to be done (jtbd).

We get closer to these voices when we use a variety of techniques that give this voice its chance to speak.

We do this through customer focus groups, user panels, customer surveys, lead-user research, direct observation of the user in their environment, and allowing ourselves to become fully immersed in a customer’s experience.

Connected Enterprise, Connected World with GE

By @paul4innovating October 10, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Fresh thinking, Innovation Ecosystems, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I was delighted to be invited onto a panel with GE at their R&D centre in Munich this week forming for me a connected enterprise and a world perspective that one rarely gets without being present and engaged with companies like GE.

Dubbed “Innovation Breakthroughs – Igniting Europe’s Growth” They were celebrating 10 years of the opening of the centre and as you arrived, you saw the cranes at work to double the facility as well as further deepen their commitments within the surrounding community even further.

The Real Race is to Invest in Knowledge Assets and Grand Innovation Challenges

By @paul4innovating October 5, 2014Molecules

We need to connect our knowledge and put these assets into solving grand challenges.

Lets focus on the bigger picture here.

Developing our knowledge and then putting it to good use gives us the potential for securing a competitive position- that goes without saying, perhaps.

Living in Europe offers us enormous history, diversity and a constant respect for the make-up of its different cultures.

Europe is a very proud continent forged from this history of competitiveness but it is grappling with its place in the global world where others seem to have a greater present-day advantage.