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?

Balancing fluidity and stability

May 31, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

I would argue for new management practices that need to be evolved to deal with digital, disruption and rapidly changing conditions on a consistent basis. Our high levels of rigidity and linear thinking need changing

One of the most critical ones is the degree of fluidity we can achieve in ourselves and our organizations, this will significantly help us to adjust to a changing world, more dynamic, requiring us to be constantly adaptive, with information coming at us at an ever-increasing speed, that needs assimilating, transforming and embedding as new knowledge.

Innovation Formula- Intensity and Purpose

May 30, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

The Innovation Accelerator Model Formula by Agility Innovation

The innovation accelerators model – I often am coming back to this as the formula for building intensity into your innovation activity.

I have been arguing that you can have a unique model for some time. I think the way I have it structured is it is a formula for an innovation acceleration model.

I think it is worth working through, it seems to move with the times of what we need to focus upon.

Differentiating Yourself in Innovation Part Two

May 30, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication

So my further part of how we need to set about and differentiate ourselves

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 Part one is here:

Exploring the second four below ( the first four are here )

Risk Aversion Makes Us Feel Ordinary

May 28, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

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”.

What goes around, comes around, in Innovation

May 28, 2018Posted inAdvancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Shifting dynamics 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 :

Differentiating Yourself in Innovation Part One

May 28, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication

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:

Extreme Edges- Tough Choices

May 27, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

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.

The Impact Needed From Innovation

May 26, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

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.

Doesn’t the innovation needle keep shifting constantly

May 25, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

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.