Many organizations are struggling with their metrics and ways to measure the progress and success of their business, and from this writer’s point of view, their innovation, it gets caught up in plenty of unintended consequences, to put it mildly.
Firstly, we are still locked in the old paradigm of thinking this is an industrial economy where we set about measuring inputs to innovation (R&D expenditure, capital investment) and then focused on the intermediate step of throughput and then outputs (publications, patents, end products). We also perceive innovation as an activity within just one company – viewed as linear, with considerations for services more of an afterthought (like ‘bolt-ons’). Production systems remain the driving force.
Why is it we always seem to fail back into the same traps or pitfalls? Bad habits seem to always reoccur even when we work on trying to eradicate them.
For me, innovation has eight pitfalls or sinkholes that we need to consciously try to avoid. Some are in our hands, others are clearly out of our hands and all we can do is try to influence them as best we can, for what we believe is right and appropriate. Continue reading “The 8 Pitfalls and Sinkholes of Innovation”
I always show a particular interest in statements claiming to have identified a relevant driver of innovation change, to think through and see if they are as applicable to my own situation. Often they are but the underlying force sometimes needs to be seen differently to incorporate this ‘driver’ into your innovation activities and thinking.
I try to constantly work around nine drivers of innovation change.
I periodically work through each of these and see if anything has changed or the fact I am focusing on this specific driver I can see a different angle or opportunity.
I would like to lay out some thoughts on why we should be considering a curation platform for innovation and the value it can bring to a broader innovation community.
These are some opening thoughts that I felt needed to just “hang out there” and see where they take me and clearly, you as a reader.
The issue I am reflecting upon is our growing concern that we all are living in a world heading towards digital overload, with the risk of it simply overwhelming us, perhaps we are becoming more isolated and detached within this.
We can’t simply rely on focusing on ‘all things digital, we need people to bring the insights and their experience together for the eventual innovation solutions. We need to provide a curator’s platform for innovation, to make all the essential connections. Continue reading “Having A Curators Platform for Innovators”
I would like to lay out some thoughts on why we should be considering a curation platform for innovation and the value it can bring to a broader innovation community.
These are some opening thoughts that I felt needed to just “hang out there” and see where they take me and clearly, you as a reader.
The issue I am reflecting upon is our growing concern that we all are living in a world heading towards digital overload, with the risk of it simply overwhelming us, perhaps we are becoming more isolated and detached within this.
We can’t simply rely on focusing around ‘all things’ digital, we need people to bring the insights and their experience together for the eventual innovation solutions. We need to provide a curators platform for innovation, to make all the essential connections. Continue reading “The Value of Having A Curators Platform for Innovators”
To deliver innovation, sustaining innovation, it needs to be built on dynamic skills, then you have to learn how you can orchestrate the capabilities you have, with those you have to bring in.
Building on those that give the necessary dynamic result you are looking for; to purposefully build what is needed to deliver the required result.
I have reconfigured my thinking around what will influence the evolution leading from building ‘just’ internal innovation capabilities to a whole ‘network effect’ from these.
This work just gets more exciting as it evolves.
It relies on how you purposefully build and construct these capabilities and competencies. The orchestration is fundamentally dynamic, full of uncertainties but the need is still to connect the parts to deliver the right result. We need to orchestrate, to build and then conduct and deliver the right results, to the innovation goals we seek.
I would like to discuss the effect digital will be having on our innovation activities, be these presently opened or closed. The impact of digital innovation changes the paradigm.
Organizations can stay closed in their innovation activities but will move beyond simply themselves into a connected (closed) network, so the platform becomes the enabler and those that join share common ground but are pursuing separate value propositions. These provide a level of competitive advantage but these are increasingly transitory.
We will see a new wave of open digital innovation
So why do I say that? There are four aspects where technology will trend towards open (see more on that here: http://digitalsocial.eu/) so as to exploit our connected world to extract ever diminishing competitive advantage as the world just keeps speeding up, pushing us as technology continues to run ahead of our capacities to assimilate it. Continue reading “The longer term winner is open digital innovation”
I have been heavily influenced by the great work of John Hagel and Deloitte’s “Big Shift Index” as a frame to measure the forces of long-term change. What really holds my attention is “knowledge flows” and they are suggesting we are moving from a world of push to a world of pull.
The world is increasingly uncertain and to steer through this we need new ways to access, attract and accumulate understanding.
Knowledge is highly intangible. Today it is less to do with the “stocks” of knowledge we have the ability to keep refreshing and that means increased participation in the relevant “flows” of knowledge. Continue reading “Seeking out new Knowledge that Flows”
Innovation often fails to align with the strategic needs. This is often not the fault of the innovator happily working away with no specific guidelines, apart from the general remit of “we need to be more innovative”, it lies in the boardroom not communicating the board’s needs clearly enough down the organization.
Building up our capacity to innovation does need to understand and reflect the organization’s business activities but it is grasping the value creation aspects that will deliver the necessary capital-efficient and profitable growth.
Even the basic questions often remain unclear, those of are we looking to grow revenue, reduce costs, reduce working capital or improve our fixed capital? I expect the CFO would say “all of them” but each does have implications on the understanding of the fit and eventual role of innovation. Then where does risk fit into the strategic equation for innovation, it lacks often the clarity it needs.
Deciding that capabilities can be better leveraged requires a separation of exploit and explore.
The aligning of strategic direction (and importance) with any capability needs is in the understanding of what activities are diverging with core and those converging, then figuring out the future core. It is the two dynamics of exploitation and exploration we should be leveraging for our innovation and future growth
Today we need to exploit and explore and our capabilities need to be built fit for one of these two purposes. Exploiting is today’s business need, to leverage and improve the existing business and equally, in parallel, explore for tomorrow’s new business growth.
Then we also need to diverge and converge
The diverging ones need to have a real emphasis on improving performance, how they are managed for cash or to eventually sell or dispose of along with those converging on the new ‘known’ core of the business to grow and expand. So by recognizing these and that is not easy in itself, you are beginning to know and identify the capabilities you need to have in place to fix today and make it as healthy as possible, alongside those new capabilities that will create a new winning set of growth and value propositions.
We certainly need bolder investments in knowledge around the make-up of innovation capabilities
I certainly believe there is a real call for fresh and bolder investments in knowledge, in infrastructure that focuses on activities that spur new approaches that lead to innovation. These are not just the traditional ones based on managing today’s core but on finding those innovations that provide new value, the new generation activity that is occurring from recognizing how we can build, yes build for further exploitation (extending the life) and exploration (new understanding) and manage each as separate risk evaluation exercises with different metrics of progress.
We also need a deeper innovation grounding of internal workings and alignment
What I feel we need is a deeper grounding in what is actually going on inside organizations within their innovation activities and how these align with the needs of strategy and what is clearly missing. We start here as it gives us all this clarity and coherence, missing in much of our existing understanding.
We have the real opportunity today, in finding new ways of combining the four emerging forces of knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation, which will drive the growth models of tomorrow. It is these that are forming the new innovations ‘black box.’
It is mastering this new ‘black box’ of actual innovation activities, exploring and exploiting the necessary innovation capabilities that are required to be ‘going on’ in organizations to achieve a closer coherence we need to radically improve the innovation performance.
I have plenty of ideas, frames and methods built up to help you make innovation fit and be more coherent in its contribution. Why not find out?
So there we all were, getting very comfortable in our open innovation activities, learning to collaborate and co-create outside our organizations. We had worked through some of the cultural stuff; we had established the process, practice, and tools. We even had our legal teams on board, helping sort out all the conflicting positions open can mean when it comes to dividing up the IP spoils and even had our leadership tuned in, singing our praises and even (heavens forbid) getting engaged in the process.
When the world shifts, we all need too.
Then suddenly the world shifts on its axis once again, everything seems to be digital. The buzz is big data, analytics, smart mobility, and social media, with lots of talk of interconnected devices giving us the next big paradigm in innovation growth. Continue reading “Are you going all digital on me?”
I would like to lay out some thoughts on why we should be considering a curation platform for innovation and the value it can bring to a broader innovation community.
I would like to lay out some thoughts on why we should be considering a curation platform for innovation and the value it can bring to a broader innovation community.
I have been heavily influenced by the great work of John Hagel and Deloitte’s “
