Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation

June 4, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding

Being surrondedFinally, I am completely surrounded. 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?

Design thinking is a mindset

Exploring Diffusion and Adoption of New Innovation – Part 2

June 4, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

Letting go Grabbing more

The future of our engagements will determine diffusion and adoption

It is all about letting go but grabbing more

Technology has opened up the door to both scale and fragmentation and social business is the one pushing through this open door. We are increasingly facing the Collaborative Economy everywhere we turn. Social business is becoming the denominator of success or failure.

New rules are emerging – you could say new theories – and where are these fitting within the corporate mindset?

The shift of what our customer means to us, are we still competing with them, pushing them to accept a value proposition that forces them to begin to look elsewhere?

Are we still determined to hang onto control, in the (mistaken) belief we know what is best for our customers?

A platform providing innovation learning.

June 4, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Integrated Innovation Thinking

I was reminded last week of what I seem to have forgotten in my years of focusing on innovation or was it that feeling it was simply repeating. I am constantly aware on 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. A sort of “rinse and repeat” cycle.

Revolving doors and growing intensity

Exploring Diffusion and Adoption of New Innovation – Part 1

June 3, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

 

crossing-the-chasm

According to Professor Clayton Christensen and drawn from his book “Seeing What’s Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change, by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, and Erik A. Roth. Harvard Business School Press, the only way to look into the future is to use theories.

“The best way to make accurate sense of the present, and the best way to look into the future, is through the lens of theory.” The theory of innovation helps to understand the forces that shape the context and influence natural decisions.

This might not be fashionable for many because as soon as you introduce “theory” into the discussion for many of my practical colleagues they want to dismiss it.

Exploring the criteria for collaborative innovation

June 2, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

 

identification

The shape of our collaboration activities has been radically changing in recent years. The combination of technology, the internet, resource constraints and opening up of innovation to the outside world has changed the shape and content of conversations. Shaping conversations can be either intentional or through serendipity. Ideas are usually never fully formed but emerge over these conversations from fragments that need nurturing, encouraging, aligning and developing through ongoing conversations. Often the fragments need a wider network to come together and form around.

sharpen-ideas-quicklyThe push today is the ability to sharpen the ideas quickly and move into some early testing and validation, ideally with the final customer somehow engaged and then from this ‘interaction’ the idea shapes and its final understanding deepens onto a concrete delivery. There is a growing need for more radical, out of the existing box innovation to tap into. Collaborators help here.

Are you opening up the Stage Gates to let the new innovating world in?

June 1, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

clearing-hurdles

Surprisingly the Stage-Gate concept was created in the 1980’s and led to Robert G Cooper’s different evolutions of this evolving and absorbing many new practices and experiences gained by different organizations across this time. Let’s reflect on this, as the Stage-Gate process is still very much alive, although it has been adapted increasingly to fit individual organizations but does it fit the test of time in today’s faster-paced, more risk-needed world of innovation?

There is no question the Stage-Gate process has had a significant impact on the conception, development, and launch of new products. Yet there have been consistent criticisms as the world of innovation has moved on. Today it is faster-paced, far more competitive, and global and becomes less predictable.

The cries of the Stage-Gate process as being too linear, too rigid and far too planned, bordering on prescriptive have all been offered up. The gates are too structured and the constant ‘creep’ of the controlling bureaucracy surrounding it in paperwork, checklists and justification have simply led to so much non-value-added work.

How does it survive, is it because there is nothing else to take its place?

Offering You An Innovation Coaching Methodology

June 1, 2018Posted inFoster 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’ ? One that delivers the level of growth across the organization’s business, partly gained from a greater awareness of innovation through coaching and how to then apply these different levers within it’s application to achieve this X return?

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?