Exploring the criteria for collaborative activities within innovation

July 1, 2014Posted inPolymers

Collaboration discussionsThe shape of our collaboration activities has been radically changing in recent years.

The combination of technology, the internet, resource constraints and the opening up of innovation to the outside world has changed the shape and content of conversations.

Shaping conversations can be either intentional or through serendipity. Ideas are usually never fully formed but emerge over these conversations, from fragments that need nurturing, encouraging, aligning and developing through ongoing conversations. Often the fragments need a wider network to come together and form around.
sharpen-ideas-quickly

The push today is the ability to sharpen the ideas quickly and move into some early testing and validation, ideally with the final customer somehow engaged and then from this ‘interaction’ the idea shapes and its final understanding deepens onto a concrete delivery.

There is a growing need for more radical, out of the existing box innovation to tap into. Collaborators help here.

So what is holding innovation back? A new GE report

June 25, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

GE Global Innovation Barometer 2014I always look forward to the GE Global Barometer and the 2014 report is no exception, actually it really has moved the needle on what is presently holding innovation back.

The Barometer has explored the actions or constraints that senior business executives are worrying over in their pursuit of innovation.

The fieldwork was undertaken in April and May, 2014 and covered 3,200 phone interviews to people directly involved in the innovation strategy or process. It covered 26 countries and was conducted by Edelman Berland on GE’s behalf.

The supporting website provides the GE view of how this report reflects and provides an overview, an interactive, resources and key point headings sections to explore.

I  personally think GE have actually been a little too low-key on this report and frankly far too conservative on the potential takeaways in reading their ‘take’ in the overview.

It has significant implications for our organizations to grapple with but each is certainly not alone, it is a collective need to move innovation forward or you place much at risk if you don’t find solutions to the issues raised in this report.

This year the Barometer broke out of its past and steamed ahead.

Understanding Challenges Within Innovation Complexity

June 23, 2014Posted inUncategorized
Complex adaptive system 1
Termite colonies are a complex adaptive system

We need to think differently about innovation and why it needs complexity and adaptive thinking as part of its design.

Complexity within systems challenge us to think differently, it pushes us to think outside often our normal experiences, to confront and understand and then restructure, often the unordered, into a new order.

Organizations are in need of understanding the complexities within their systems far more.

Complexity within innovation is always adaptive.
The challenge with managing complexity is that it is made up of many shifting and connected parts, that form much around interactions and relationships. These new ‘connections’ are shifting and challenging much of our previous understanding, built often on past practice and entrenched thinking.

The Use of the Cynefin Model for Innovation Management

June 19, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Cynefin Revised 1
The Cynefin Framework is a sense-making one and is registered copyright to Cognitive Edge

Firstly a very brief explanation of the Cynefin Model and why I find it highly valuable for innovation management.

Innovation has many characteristics of a complex adaptive system as I have crudely attempted to explain here.

The three primary states within the Cynefin framework are Ordered Systems (including Obvious and Complicated), Complexity and Chaos.

Order is split into two, as this handles a key difference in human knowledge between those states, where the cause and effect relationship is obvious and those where it requires greater analysis or expertise.

Exploring a process of emergent discovery for innovation

Most innovators are working in and certainly are far more familiar with the ordered domains, for ‘obvious’ innovations that extend, enhance or evolve their existing products and services.

Equally, they understand their more specialised place and contribution to be growing in their comfort, in the part they play in the more ‘complicated’ domain, where expertise, dedicated focus and specialization are often required or called upon.

Are our organizations ossifying their innovation or simply have no clue?

June 17, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Innovate or dieThe balance between risk mitigation and being equipped for risk readiness is still an ongoing struggle to balance for most organizations in their innovation activities.

There is still a continued reluctance for exploring new radical innovation opportunities and although organizations ‘talk’ growth, they continue to struggle in achieving it through new innovation.

The incremental commitments to innovation still rule the day to move growth along. Until new sustaining confidence returns to our economies, risk mitigation dominates as markets continue to be more volatile and unreliable in predictive data and executive sentiment remains cautious.

Our organizations are looking for a higher certainty of return and seek sometimes endless validation and justification before they commit, even to small incremental changes. It is no wonder incremental innovation dominates in our innovation decisions; it is where reality sits for many. Are we heading off in a bad innovation direction?

The Ability to Move Innovation from the Existing to the Preferred

June 12, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

The Innovation PathOne of those defining extracts I came across many years back, as it is one that has shaped much of where I believe innovation needed to go, let alone where I believe it still does.

It is a pathway I want to continue to travel along and will constantly try to encourage others to equally take the walk.

I was working through a set of presentation files today and came across this extract again and thought I must share this. It rings true as much as it did those years back.

“Strategy is useless without innovation; innovation is directionless without strategy”.

I wonder who is withering on the innovation vine?

June 8, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Dying on the grape vine 1This week I tuned into the Pipeline virtual conference for product development practitioners and gained an encouraging feeling that innovation is progressing along nicely.

Packed all within a day there was plenty of material ‘fodder’ to feed off of and learn from.
A really good conference but what quickly followed was a strong dose of that withering on the innovation vine.

I read two consulting surveys on innovation

I’ve been suddenly pulled out of my virtual bubble back into the harsh realities of where innovation really is. Just simply how innovation is struggling and that lies far more at the top of our organizations than below, those below who are simply trying to ‘get on with the job’ but with at least one hand (or even two) tied behind their backs.

I have been reading two sets of observations, one from Fahrenheit 212, the other from Innosight and my mood began to change. I’m suddenly back in reality where we have this huge gap between those ‘working’ innovation and those at the top simply not engaging with innovation or still failing to understand it or even failing to connect the dots.

Traversing across into horizon 2 for new breaking innovations

June 4, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

The Conflict Sapce of Horizon TwoWithin our ‘business as usual’ attitudes lie the seeds of destruction. Today there is a relentless pace; we are facing stagnation in many maturing markets.

We place a disproportionately high amount of our resources in the ‘here and now’ to defend what we have and what we know. A potential ‘big mistake’
We actually subvert the future to prolong the life of the existing.

We constantly look to make it more efficient and more effective but this is in the majority of cases just incremental in what we do, both in innovation and our activities. These are often simply propping up the past success instead of shifting the resources into the investments of the future.

Spotting signs of innovating decay

Within the Three Horizon framework for innovation the horizon two is beginning to address some of the current decay arising from the core within the existing activities (or system). Here we have the highest tension point as it is the place for transformation to take shape and form.

Make Virtual Room In Your Innovation Pipeline

June 1, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Pipeline ConferenceSo what are you doing this Friday, June 6th 2014 to help in your innovation pipeline thinking?

Fancy joining me and up to 2,000 others that are expected for an Innovation virtual conference.

One that has been constructed around an agenda, made up of a  seemingly good mix of practitioners, a key-note or two and product development experts working through the end-to-end product development process, or selected bits of it, in a one-day event.

Crossing over the crossroads of conferences
Innovation conferences are for me at least, at a crossroads. I find many jaded, struggling to justify the costs and commitment of time we need to put in to participate, often in one way dialogues.

Building an innovation framework that has real capabilities as its formula as its heart.

May 27, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

SCA FormulaI’ve strongly believed when you begin to think through a framework for innovation, see my last article as an example, you also should equally need to recognize the capability framework that you will need to build into this.

Working through these as essential combinations can become the real enabler.

Here is my solution that I think is worth working through, to firstly absorb and then consider for applying to your own innovation building activity. Try it!

I have worked on a formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE for this. I have never published the make-up of this in the public domain before, although I had briefly outlined it in a past post here.

In that post I outlined my thinking and I do not think it needs repeating, does it? So onward…….