Exploring Dynamics Within Innovation Landscapes
So what does block innovation? Arguably there are plenty of things up and down organizations.
For instance a lack of resources, an overcrowded portfolio of ideas, a lack of dedicated people, treating innovation as a one-off, keeping it isolated and apart from mainstream activities.
Yet many are simply hidden and need surfacing and require often an outside perspective.
Here are ten really important barriers, that can hold innovation back.
I was reminded last week on what I seem to have forgotten in my years of focusing on innovation, or was simply repeating, just how innovation has seemingly stayed still in much of its design in recent years, irrespective of what we believe has been ‘innovation advances’.
We certainly do keep moving relentlessly on in finding new tools, to squeeze a little more out of the innovation process but when you stop and think about it, we actually are still extracting mostly that incremental juice, we are not transforming how we innovate.
In the main the radical solutions often so desperately needed in our business are somehow avoided. This is where this repeating cycle comes in, we are as stuck today in the same incremental ‘stuff’ as we have been for years.
Revolving doors and growing intensity
Coaching offers real benefits. For instance, in Leadership Coaching, the results offer an ROI on the initial investment of nearly SIX times on average. Can you image this X return factor going through the roof, going way beyond the initial investment if the innovation outcomes ‘take off’ and delivers the level of growth across the organization’s business, partly gained from a greater awareness of innovation and how to apply these different levers within it’s application?
It often puzzles me the lack of investment we make in coaching, mentoring, or even facilitating innovation with the use of an external innovation expert. That should change and this is one of my personal goals to contribute to this intent as outlined in my Building a Strong Advocacy Practice on the launch of this site and service.
Are you aware we all pass through 4 distinct stages when it comes to learning and being coached?
So my further part of how we need to set about and differentiate ourselves
How do we show the real difference that innovation can provide?
I believe we have eight needs to achieve.
Each of us will arrive at our own personal understanding of what this “all means”.
Innovation is about achieving difference so if we all arrived at the same point of understanding then we actually are defeating ourselves from the very beginning
So what are these eight ‘triggering’ points? Briefly Part one is here:
Exploring the second four below ( the first four are here )
Applying a lens of discovery:
The basic questions that need to be addressed are:
“what are our dynamic capabilities that will deliver innovation impact?
More importantly: “which ones should we focus upon to improve our capabilities and competencies over the longer-term?
We recognize resources are scarce as our starting point
Yet we fail to understand the makeup of innovation. We still don’t understand the parts that contributes to the ‘dynamics’ of innovation or how they combine for the interdependency of the parts we so often need.
The significant transformation taking place around exploiting technology and digital management has made ecosystems and platforms a mainstream prospecting need, in most of our businesses today. We must engage in what all of this means and its business impact.
I certainly believe the ecosystem approach will increasingly become the main value-producing stream for innovation delivery. Platforms, strategic partnerships, new business models all will be on the agenda of any serious global organization and ecosystems through platforms are the organizing environment to enact these.
How do we show the real difference that innovation can provide?
I believe we have eight needs to achieve.
Each of us will arrive at our own personal understanding of what this “all means”.
Innovation is about achieving difference so if we all arrived at the same point of understanding then we actually are defeating ourselves from the very beginning
So what are these eight ‘triggering’ points? Briefly:
How can we establish Innovation as the vital link to a process of change and strategic direction options? One that lifts the debates of managing today’s business by linking it into the future and then turning this thinking into a series of plausible and coherent set of activities?
Innovation can drive change, change is required. Without innovation, we progressively die, as we provide no option for change, no prospects of new, different growth. So why does it continually fail to happen?
We innovators certainly need a new model of change, for at least eight important reasons I can think of, that render what we have practiced in the past as obsolete:
Breaking News: “Over the past 15 years, a portfolio of stocks based on the Innovation Leaders analysis has repeatedly outperformed all major indexes. Average return has been 14.5% CAGR and in 2016, growth was 18.9% – significantly higher than S&P500, NASDAQ and FTSE 100.
Year after year, this analysis has proven that those firms identified as being the most effective innovators consistently outperform their peers and the market.”
Now is that surprising?
It should not be but sadly for the vast majority of companies that do not treat innovation as seriously as they should, as the growth enabler, it keeps them in a constantly lagging position. It tells a very powerful message, one of investing in innovation seriously and in sustaining levels, you can grow well above others.
Points from this research