2018 - Building Your Innovation Intelligence

Risk Aversion Makes Us Feel Ordinary

When did we lose the appetite for risk? Innovation is suffering badly from our present risk adverse approach. Risk-taking has become threatening, we are all ‘fixated’ on covering all the downsides of risk, looking more at the possibilities of loss and less so at all the possibilities of success

So, we end up with “mediocre work within a mediocre company” yet it was not previously like that. Risk aversion had become dominating and the organization’s leadership was signaling “they were really more comfortable being ordinary”.

How does that square off with “we want to be highly innovative, it is important to us, our growth and delivering ongoing value to our shareholders and to our customers depends on us being innovative”.

Continue reading “Risk Aversion Makes Us Feel Ordinary”

Understanding Our Knowledge-Based Capital

Knowledge-Based Capital Visual It is our non-physical assets that drive innovation, these make up our knowledge-based capital. The economic value of managing our knowledge capital offers the Enterprise the opportunity to transform themselves and perform at higher levels of awareness.

It is becoming critical to understand our sources of knowledge, it gives us the unique capital that differentiates one Enterprise from another. The intangibles today are up to 80% of the value assigned to the (market value) worth. Managing these intangibles is critical to our future. Yet, we still have a very poor grasp of how to capture these and drive this knowledge capital. That needs to change.

It is the Knowledge and Innovation combined that make the firm competitive. There is this positive correlation between these two.

One amplifies the other, one deepens the other in the connected understanding. The basis for this comes from both human and artificial intelligence. As we learn to capture from both we build our capital base and strengthen our future potential. We make ourselves more sustainable as well as increasingly adaptive.

The greater the stock of knowledge understanding will increase the potential flows of innovation.

I wrote this about “stocks and flows“, it is worth a read in relating to the position of knowledge and innovation

What goes around, comes around, in Innovation

It is funny but that often-used phrase “what goes around, comes around” seems appropriate here.

I was catching up with my often collaborator and sparring partner on “all things innovating” Jeffrey Phillips recently, and within our conversation, some of our discussions sort of triggered a reflection back to some fundamental work we undertook some years back.

In revisiting it, I felt it does stand the test of time and does seem to make this “come around” seem true. Let me provide a quick introduction along with some brief explanations : Continue reading “What goes around, comes around, in Innovation”

Differentiating Yourself in Innovation Part One

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: Continue reading “Differentiating Yourself in Innovation Part One”

Differentiating Yourself Part One

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: Continue reading “Differentiating Yourself Part One”

Extreme Edges- Tough Choices

Within our present business, we are being many ‘transforming’ questions around technology. For instance, the cloud asks a lot of questions for us to determine and decide what ‘resides’ where, what stays inside, what can be dispersed out. Decisions we make will alter our performance ability and how we compete, how we connect and interact.

Are we smarter, can we download the software seamlessly, can we determine what data stays where? What is valuable, what is not, can we layer on increasingly complexity but at the same time strip away unnecessary activities or analytics?

Each of us is making tough technology-related decisions that will determine our abilities to evolve or simply fade away due to this set of evolutionary questions we are all facing.

Continue reading “Extreme Edges- Tough Choices”

9 Stages for building innovation fitness

Achieving innovation fitness is a journey- to get there we often have to manage the switchbacks as we build our capabilities and capacities to innovate.

Getting Started – Understanding the Needs & Imperatives of Innovation Fitness

Why we must travel this critical path for Innovation.
The meaning of dynamic capabilities and innovation fitness landscapes
Merging the theory with practical reality to produce new outcomes and positive results.
Focusing on resources and performance – why is this important
The problem is knowing what we have and what we really need

Continue reading “9 Stages for building innovation fitness”

The Impact Needed From Innovation

The shifts taking place around innovation have been significant in their impact

There is a lot changing in and around innovation, are we accounting for it as much as we should?

The shifts taking place around innovation are been hugely shaped in how digital transformation continues to grow in its importance. How it is influencing much that is surrounding innovation, as it continues to disrupt in faster, demanding ways, where it deconstructs.

It is forcing us to reconstruct our innovative thinking, so as to gain from all this transformation occurring all around us.

Continue reading “The Impact Needed From Innovation”

Doesn’t the innovation needle keep shifting constantly

Shifting the Needle

Often we are guilty and ignore many of the constants that are required to be overcome in our innovation organizations. We need to ‘set in place’ many aspects of innovation to work. I call these those anchor points, otherwise, we often are simply increasing the layering on, more and more, not giving enough emphasis on how to integrate these into a newly emerging practice of innovation that builds on a solid foundation. Let’s reflect on the changes occurring innovation.

The basics of innovation still form around building the engagement, leadership, and involvement, in constructing a culture, the climate and environment needed, so as to allow innovation to evolve and thrive. Then there is that need for constant investment in people, in our networks and relationships, that all need to come together. These are the foundation to build innovation capacities.

Continue reading “Doesn’t the innovation needle keep shifting constantly”

Forging our future through innovation

This is the excerpt for your very first post.

I’ve been working in the innovation forge arena for coming up to sixteen years; relating, learning, designing, shaping and writing about innovation, trying to translate this into value for clients and their innovation challenges.

Innovation Advocacy needs strong guidance. As a “go to” trusted authority that can influence, argue, advocate new directions, and provide clear options for change, I can push the ‘edges’ of today’s status quo, perhaps be your required catalyst to trigger ideas or offer different insights.

We have to remember that innovation is always restless and constantly changing and I want to bring about meaningful up-to-date thinking in innovation practices adding further to your own.

Balancing the ‘inflow’ of knowledge about innovation with the necessary customer ‘insights’ is not easy, you have to be well positioned to advocate and show value, to guide different conversations and provide ‘impactful’ results.

Over the years we all see the business model has evolved Continue reading “Forging our future through innovation”