Innovation Mentoring versus Coaching

April 5, 2017Posted inFoster Performance

I lot of people get caught out in not knowing the differences between Mentoring and Coaching.

Equally, when you are in the coaching mode you need to guard against moving over to the mentoring mode unless it is conscious ways.

We are facing highly competitive environment changes. The key to the need of having facilitation is to bring fresher, more innovative and leading-edge solutions into any innovation thinking but it is often all about the blending of experiences and the relationship dynamics of those involved in this set of dialogues.

“For fresh vision and momentum, I need your past like you need mine”

The objectives are to deliver innovation understanding in both mentoring and coaching approaches 

Mentoring versus Coaching for Innovation

April 5, 2017Posted inCreation of Sustainable Value, Foster Performance

I lot of people get caught out in not knowing the differences between Mentoring and Coaching. Equally, when you are in the coaching mode you need to guard against moving over to the mentoring mode unless it is conscious ways.

We are facing highly competitive environment changes. The key to the need of having facilitation is to bring fresher, more innovative and leading-edge solutions into any innovation thinking but it is often all about the blending of experiences and the relationship dynamics of those involved in this set of dialogues.

“For fresh vision and momentum, I need your past like you need mine”

The objectives are to deliver innovation understanding in both mentoring and coaching approaches 

Innovations Degree’s of Connectivity, Interactivity and Sharing

April 2, 2017Posted inAdvancing innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation3 Comments

We often forget it is our people that really make innovation work. They determine the ideas, drive these forward to deliver them as new innovation concepts into the world. People connect the fragmented pieces or dots within innovation from being random and intangible, into being explicit and tangible.

In the past we have often believed it is the genius laboring away in his lab that has made the discovery that has led to real breakthroughs in innovation.

So often in the past this lack of making the invention connection has often held many of us back to become engaged in discovery, ideas or contributions as we felt discouraged, as we had felt innovation can only happen in these ‘special’ places.

Most of us became disconnected with the early part of the discovery for innovation, we simply became just the implementors, pushing the innovation through the pipeline into its final execution. That can change if we are willing and able to challenge our past assumptions.

Time starved, innovation lacking

April 2, 2017Posted inCreation of Sustainable Value, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking2 Comments

Today most executives seem to be time starved. They are constantly reacting to daily events, for fix focusing and fixing short-term performance. This applies to the top executive down to the most junior.

This time-starved environment has real implications for innovation.

If we don’t sit down and think through issues and implication of our present performance around innovation, how can we close the gaps and improve it? We just simply don’t seem to have a more systematic, connected road map within our thinking that points the way to the improving longer-term as we keep doing this ‘reacting’ only.

We have such a limited amount of time; to pause, to evaluate, or redesign. We equally don’t feel capable to simply assign this over, even to outsiders to help. We are far too challenged and driven, often far too inbreed into thinking that “our solutions can only be the only solutions to our problems or challenges”.

Solving root causes of innovation blockage

March 30, 2017Posted inFoster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication

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.

A platform providing innovation learning.

March 27, 2017Posted inCreation of Sustainable Value, Foster Performance, Integrated Innovation Thinking2 Comments

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

Offering You An Innovation Coaching Methodology

March 22, 2017Posted inCreation of Sustainable Value, Foster Performance, Integrated Innovation Thinking

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.

Let’s look at a possible innovation coaching methodology here

Are you aware we all pass through 4 distinct stages when it comes to learning and being coached?

Differentiating Yourself Part Two

March 21, 2017Posted inCreation of Sustainable Value, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication

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 )

Do you REALLY want to know how to innovate?

March 20, 2017Posted inCapabilities and Capacities, Dynamic capabilities, Fitness Landscaping Regimes, Impact & Scale

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.

Business Needs Innovation Ecosystems

March 14, 2017Posted inAdvancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation2 Comments

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.