There is a need in any framework design for building a new integrated innovation network that it needs to have openness, agility and flexibility purposefully built into it. It is more than likely that in the past design, the legacy within existing systems needs radically dismantling and redesigning to reflect the multitude of changes happening.
The reality today is we have to tear down much of what we have built up and in place to reflect the changes occurring all around us. We need to account both internally, in making a new structure for crucial decisions, based on those far more dispersion principles but also on the external, in how you will be reacting to competition and the challenges being presented in changing market conditions.
Increasing knowledge dispersion, shorter cycle times demanded to meet and respond to ‘breaking’ opportunities requires you to effectively manage these across your network in speedy response cycles, having in place a highly focused management and clarity of what is important and needing to worked upon. Even harder strategic choices, evaluating what gaps are needed to be filled in capability constraints, the ability to project and build a new collaborative culture play significant roles in any design and managing across this network.
Any new design has to carefully reflect on overcoming existing obstacles as well as anticipating and accounting (as best it can) new barriers. You consistently are working towards the maximization and leverage of this new dispersed knowledge and what it can collectively bring in its contribute into that ‘greater’ competitive advantage than the old system was able to achieve.
Building new designs for innovation needs to be more central in our thinking.
To make innovation more central, it has to designed in. This is not just building an internal innovation core but today it has to go one step further. We need to build into our thinking structures and flexible designs for constructing a dispersed integrated innovation network. This firstly needs recognition of its growing critical importance, then it requires a understanding of what and where this impacts on today’s existing organization design and then followed by a huge organizational commitment to make the evolutionary changes, in its sustaining and management. Our worlds are full of growing complexity that is being faced, externally within our market places and we need to be far more externally facing to understand these.
It is becoming absolutely essential to make these commitments in rapidly changing circumstances and global challenges to seek out innovations potential that lies across the globe, in every corner and the organization needs to have all the essential connections and avenues to this, to capitalize and turn the knowledge gained into commercial innovation opportunity. The more you are networked and get closer to emerging opportunity, the greater chance to translate this (quickly) into new innovation value to meet different and common market needs.
We all have come to recognize today, that “all knowledge does not reside within one place” and how we set about dismantling and redesigning our organization for tapping into global innovation knowledge will determine our future place in any competitive race. Innovation needs to be fully designed into the core of what we do.
