Recognizing the Building Blocks of Innovation

I finished my last post, “Are we EVER going to embrace innovation?” With the argument, we need to change the innovation narrative and significantly update the innovation approach and processes to meet today’s and tomorrow’s business challenges.

I am working through what I think this should become in design and application, involving providing the key innovation building blocks as components of the innovation stack, using the innovation stack to guide platform development and the platform to support this innovation stack.

It is the “fit” of this framework that needs more of my time as we need a new powerful innovation engine that leverages the strengths of each but to ensure innovation flows across organizations transparently and openly so collaborations can utilize all that we have in proven innovation thinking to take advantage of and build this out in new ways of thinking and design.

To look forward, I would argue we always need to look back and account for the progress made in managing innovation over the years. The need today is not to dispense with this but to link it fully up.

So this post reviews many great contributors to advancing innovation over the years.

Many tools, techniques, frameworks, mechanics, and emerging methodologies have allowed different parts of the innovation process to be explored and exploited. Over the years, so much has improved and understood by the explanations, case examples, suggestions, clarifications and ways they were “built into” the individual innovation processes that each company chose to construct their innovation process. We are moving innovation along but not at a pace or design that reflects the need to connect “it ” into one comprehensive process.

I think of the Gartner Hype Cycle here as we have gone through each of the stages of recognition of the parts of the innovation process and individual application and the learning from this; we have the innovation triggers first, then a peak or inflated expectations, followed by troughs of disillusionment and finally by the slope of enlightenment, to give a new plateau of productivity.

But there is a time we need to bring this all together into a comprehensive innovation process, not allow it to stay as islands of knowledge, interpretation, or constant re-learning in making the same mistakes or not having that recognition of validation points that come from designing a transparent innovation process that provides universal approaches, the Innovation ERP system for example. We need to reach a different plateau of productivity collaboratively with a fresh, connected, and fully comprehensive end-to-end innovation system.

So let me offer what has stood out for me in nearly twenty years of practicing, mentoring, and advising on innovation.

The tool and techniques that stand out for me, in their contribution, value, and my use have been, in no specific order, cover the jobs-to-be-done, ten types of innovation, crossing the chasm, blue ocean, business model canvas and value proposition canvas, building core competencies, lean start-up, agile and design sprints. These tools and techniques enable ideation, validation, design-build, and scaling.

In frameworks and mechanisms, my favorite has always been the three horizons, followed by ideation platforms and contests, innovation centers, labs and accelerations, ambidextrous growth (explore and exploit), taking principles of disruptive innovation, and staged and venture funding approaches.

Yet the most significant contributors came in emerging methodologies that built so much of an innovative discovery or design; the five for me that stand out are:

1. Open Innovation: This thinking opened up the collaboration concepts between organizations and individuals, sharing knowledge, resources, and ideas to develop new products or services. The idea encouraged exploring the organization’s boundaries and engaging with customers, suppliers, and partners to co-create and co-innovate. This evolved over many years.
2. Design Thinking: The whole emphasis and approach involve using empathy, creativity, and experimentation to solve complex problems. It emphasizes a user-centric approach, where the focus is having a central understanding of the users’ needs and designing solutions that meet them.
3. Lean Startup: This approach was about creating a minimum viable product (MVP) and testing it in the market to get customer feedback. The idea is to iterate quickly, make improvements based on feedback, and continue to test until you have a product that meets the market’s needs.
4. Agile Development: This approach involves having a flexible and iterative development process, where cross-functional teams work together to deliver software or products in short iterations. The idea is to respond quickly to changing requirements and customer needs and continuously improve the product.
5. Frugal Innovation: I include this methodology as it has such underused power but is so incredibly important when you are working in emerging markets, developing countries or have minimal funds but having the ability to spot “more frugal” solutions that could equally do a good job, compared to existing, more complex designs. This approach involves developing low-cost, high-quality products or services that meet the needs of consumers in emerging markets. The idea is to use limited resources creatively and come up with innovative solutions that are affordable and accessible to a large number of people.

We gained in the use of many of these tools, techniques, frameworks, mechanisms, and evolving methodologies a broader perspective, more customer-focused thinking, encouragement for experimentation, concepts of faster, more flexible teams, and the mindsets of more dynamic organizations and greater alignment to where innovation contributes into more significant growth and purpose-driven thinking. Encouraged by applying these, we moved towards better design and thinking transparency, sharing in learning and celebrating success, and being encouraged to build more dedicated time to innovate.

Then we moved into an era of technology-associated innovation

These are building on a higher reliance on AI, Technology, and Digital approaches, connecting more to the customer and more collaborative across organizations.

Briefly, I summarize what these have been bringing into innovative thinking.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning: With the explosion of big data, AI and machine learning have become increasingly important in innovation. These technologies can help organizations analyze vast amounts of data, identify patterns and insights, and develop new products and services that meet customers’ needs.
2. Digital Transformation: Digital transformation has used technology to streamline business processes, improve efficiency, and create new business models. It has driven organizations with higher reliance on digital technologies such as cloud computing, mobile apps, social media, and data analytics to transform how organizations operate and deliver value to customers. The transformation journey is still part way complete.
3. Customer Co-creation: This approach involves collaborating with customers to co-create new products and services. By involving customers in the innovation process, organizations can better understand their needs and preferences, develop products and services that meet those needs and have increasing dialogues along their innovation process from discovery to commercialization.
4. Open Innovation 2.0: Taking the principles of open innovation, we have been taking it to the next level by leveraging digital technologies and social media to engage with a broader community of stakeholders. It involves using crowdsourcing, social networking, and online platforms to co-create and co-innovate with customers, suppliers, and partners. Open Ecosystem and platform designs are emerging from this as perhaps an Open Innovation 3.0.
5. Agile Innovation: Agile innovation has been pushed using agile methodologies to develop new products and services quickly, effectively, and efficiently. Methodologies have evolved that are breaking down complex projects into smaller, more manageable chunks and using iterative, feedback-driven processes to develop and improve products and services through the increasing use of data, technology, visualization and simulation, and human/ AI learning.

These methodologies and techniques offer organizations new ways to innovate and stay ahead of the competition in the digital age.

Looking at the last Hype Cycle for Innovation Management Techniques, 2021, you see many changes in innovation management, both building and moving down the curve.

Lastly, we are learning to combine all these tools, techniques, frameworks and methodologies.

For example, here are some ways in which these approaches can be combined:

1. Agile and Lean Startup: Combining agile development principles and lean startup can help organizations develop new products and services quickly and efficiently. The focus is on delivering value to customers through iterative, feedback-driven processes and continuously improving the product based on customer feedback.
2. Design Thinking and Customer Co-Creation: By combining the principles of design thinking and customer co-creation, organizations can develop products and services that genuinely meet customers’ needs. The focus is on understanding customer needs, using empathy and creativity to develop solutions, and involving customers in innovation. As we move towards recognition of having sustainability and lifecycle management built into our future innovation offerings and solutions, this combination will grow significantly.
3. Open Innovation 2.0 (or 3.0) and Artificial Intelligence: By combining open innovation 2.0 and AI, organizations can tap into a broader community of stakeholders and leverage AI technologies to analyze data and identify patterns and insights. This can help organizations develop new products and services that meet customers’ needs and stay ahead of the competition. The broader use of spotting trends using data-driven innovation will trigger additional tools and techniques to capture a richer understanding.
4. Frugal Innovation and Digital Transformation: Combining the principles of frugal innovation and digital transformation can help organizations to develop affordable, high-quality products and services that leverage digital technologies. This will be essential in a world of diminishing raw materials and resources. The focus is on using limited resources creatively and innovatively by leveraging digital technologies to streamline business processes, improve efficiency, create new business models, and extract and recycle what we have to reduce rising costs from our present “throw-away” society.

By combining these emerging innovation approaches, organizations can move increasingly towards a comprehensive and exploratory approach to innovation that leverages different components, select individual building blocks and move towards the design and use of my “innovation stacks” approach, one that strengthens and helps stay ahead of the competition in the digital age due to the uniqueness of the design, but more importantly build the innovation process on a platform where design is tailored to the need.

Moving towards a comprehensive innovation ecosystem design

Our innovation process must accommodate all that contributes to innovative thinking by providing a comprehensive design. Take the tools, techniques, frameworks, and mechanisms as the building block components of the innovation stack and use the innovation stack as the guide and process flow to guide the platform development.

So my next post goes deeper into the components, thinking, and design and explores how it fits into a new, more comprehensive, innovative thinking and design.