The Innovation Bunker – Our Cognitive Traps Part One

May 1, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation


I suspect we are all caught in a cognitive trap most of the time. We are all more ‘hard-wired’ than we would care to admit too.

That cognitive bias that ‘permits’ us to make constant errors of judgement, ignore often the advice around us and certainly gloss over the knowledge provided or staring us in the face. Innovation does need us to break out of these cognitive biases if we want to really develop something very different, more transformational.

We should all recognize this constrain we all have, it might help our innovation activity. We are often guilty of being overconfident, actually staying nicely in a rut. Just how many times do we offer ill-framed challenges from lazy thinking or fail to offer the proper context into the discussions early enough, to avoid conversations that wasted our times or reduce the recommendations based on inadequate information.

We also simply allow poor idealization because we did not prepare enough or we want to immediately link back something new into our realm of experience, screening out emerging alternatives. We do these, all of the time.

Navigating the future landscape by developing adaptive innovation skills

April 24, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

So where are we focusing upon to make sure we are developing the right proficiencies and abilities we will need to manage our innovations of the future?

For me innovation capabilities and competencies needs to be far more adaptive and aligned to the different emerging skills we should be bringing to bear, so we are able to find better innovating solutions for our collective futures.

The issue is this: if we do want to reshape much of what we are struggling with today – poor growth, diminishing futures, disconnected communities, stagnating economies or ones struggling to emerge from devastated and austerity measures inflicted upon them.

We do need to change our skill sets to reflect a more realistic and up to date need to navigate and transform knowledge to tackle these. Often our present skills are not equipped to manage in these more “disruptive” environments.

The Business Model, a Canvas for Innovation Convergence

April 20, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

So where were you when this Business Design Summit was happening for innovation convergence? Did you miss it? Well kick yourself if you are remotely interested in where innovation is evolving too. I missed going as it was a sell out fast but I watched the live streaming.

So I had a more detached view but let me give you the flavor of what is bubbling up around the Business Model and its Canvas where a new (and older) generation of innovation ‘tool-smiths’ are all converging in a growing community.

In Berlin, held at the Classic Remise Berlin on 19th & 20th April 2013, around 250 people gathered around the Business Model and started to bring together the converging aspects required in any Business Models design in tools, concepts, and methodologies.

Lucky for many that were unable to attend, the wonderful thing was that the summit also was live-streamed and had a dedicated hashtag of #bdsummit. I watched it and got very caught up in the event. They plan to release the presentations and I think a whole lot more from this summit in outcomes through most probably the toolbox center to build better Business Models.

This summit became the place of the innovation ‘tool-smiths’ to meet and exchange so as to begin the forging and crafting of the new tools needed for innovation. These are aimed to help us in todays and tomorrow’s world where innovation is more central within business strategic thinking.

Innovation is like a Rainbow

April 15, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation Ecosystems, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Last week I was driving home after a round trip of 700 kilometres and as I got caught up in some evening traffic, the sun and the rain played that magical trick of offering up a rainbow to the ones in that right position to see it.

There was the actual end of a rainbow for us to see and it triggered two thoughts – the mythical pot of gold if you actually get at the rainbows end, and then my later thought “innovation is actually like a rainbow in so many ways”

Rainbow Innovation

The Rainbow Effect

They tell us you can never reach the end of the rainbow because the rainbow is a little like an optical illusion. The rainbow is formed because the actual raindrops act like thousands of little prisms that refract and reflect the sunlight towards you. So when the sun combines and those millions of raindrops have this light hitting them and split the colours for your eyes to see the effect.

Even when you change your position, the angles change and you see the rainbow at new angles of these little prisms. The ability to see the rainbow is that you have to be always be that certain distance away, even as you try to move towards the rainbow, it stays that distance away from you, so you can never get to the end of that rainbow.

I just think for many of us, that innovation is often just like that! So it got me thinking.

Innovation Job Chasing – A Race Needed To Win

April 10, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

There are times when we all have to “up our game”. We are entering one of those periods where we have to relearn how to compete, how to win. The world is in the throes of some dramatic changes and the innovation gloves have to come off. Innovation capacity in many countries needs a new, more robust solution.

I wrote about “The present jobless innovation era we face” raising up the theory that Professor Christensen points towards, that we are working on the wrong types of innovation to create jobs.

We are measuring our businesses in financial metrics that were more designed for periods of scarce money supply and not what most of our companies have today, cash in abundance, sitting on their books and a world ‘awash’ of cheap money. Professor Christensen calls this theory of his “the Capitalists Dilemma.”

Risk-aversion is dominating our Western thinking
The present situation is that we are in a period of risk-aversion where the innovation ‘bets’ are more incremental, more short-term pushing for greater utilization of existing assets that are designated by Professor Christensen as “sustaining or efficiency” innovations. He believes we need more “empowering innovation” – those that create jobs and invest capital across longer-term horizons than today.

The Present Jobless Innovation Era We Face

April 8, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Over the last few months I have kept going back and forth on Professor Clayton Christensen’s paradox he has named “The Capitalist’s Dilemma” and been relating it to this jobless era we seem to be at present.

This idea ‘hit the world’ when he wrote a piece in the New York Times last November, 2012. I gather this has been one of his best, if not his best read article ever.

As I’m sure you are aware Professor Christensen must be regarded as if not the top, then one of the top experts, on innovation. For me he sits at the top, so when he explores a theory, you stop to think about what he is trying to explain. It takes some of us mere mortal awhile to grasp and relate to these ideas and theories.

Theories into solutions sometimes is a long wait for wrong reasons

Firstly an aside, I need to get this off my chest. Although I suspect a book will eventually emerge, perhaps only next year 2014, far too often this is a little later than preferred or when really needed. The ‘currency’ or present day relevance often suffers from this parallel world of academics, moving on a much slower level.

They are still working within the publishing strictures and structures where a book has to be firstly written, reworked, proofed by editors, printed, bounded and distributed.

As you might guess here, I just wish some of these breaking theories that emerge from the academics could be sped up, they are seemingly just caught up in the dogma of rigour, validation and peer review. Weighed down in this legacy they often fail to provide the valuable insights that can alter the present day where the theory or dilemma has arisen.

That valuable thinking to address the very problem we need a solution too is today not having even further debate after a book comes out, sometime in the future. We need to begin to travel the road, not just survey it!

The Cascading Effect Needed for Innovation Success

April 3, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Getting innovation through any process of understanding is hard. Knowing what is required to generate innovation throughout an entire organization is even more so.

We need to deploy the cascading effect on innovation

Often we fail to understand our role in contributing to innovation, we need a cascading effect. For me the “cascading effect” for innovation is “a sequence of events in which each produces the circumstances necessary for the initiation of the next”.

It is the presenting of an idea, a concept, prototype, a piece of knowledge that provides the catalyst to be exploited in a broader community as the next step and so on. It cascades. It is where we fit within the innovation web.

Innovation often has to go through a set of stage gates, or cross thresholds, set by others or judged to be the essential cross over points. When you achieve these cross over points you induce more resources, more attention and momentum.

The more it successfully progresses, it eventually gains a higher resilience and then the innovation picks up more for this “cascading effect”.

Strike! Innovation is on strike!

March 27, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Interests, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Many years back to sell newspapers, sensational headlines were conceived to get immediate attention so people would buy the paper. It went like this “Strike! Innovation is on strike! Read all about it”  Today innovation is actually on strike! Just take a look at this:

We are in the middle of an Innovation Strike -source Nesta.org.uk
We are in the middle of an Innovation Strike – source Nesta.org.uk

A strike of declining investment, of a lack of confidence, of not sharing in the belief innovation offers a solution to our continued problems of wealth creation, of economic growth, of galvanizing society.

So for many, innovation is actually on strike, we are not investing as we should according to a series of reports and analysis, focusing specifically on the UK economy, sponsored by Nesta. Nesta is the UK’s innovation foundation and they help people and organisations bring great ideas to life.

They do this by providing investments and grants and mobilising research, networks and skills. They operate independently but are very central in shaping innovation thinking.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Innovation is on Strike!
Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Innovation on Strike!

You can “read all about it” through these links offered, firstly an Executive Summary and the downloading the full report from their site.

Determining our culture governs the greatness within our innovation efforts.

March 25, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Managing a fluid, rapidly changing culture that promotes innovation is complex. So often it is left to chance, left to individual experiment and interpretation, far too ad hoc in its design and progress.

We certainly need to find better ways to encourage and obtain a higher commitment to our approaches to building ‘culture’ and all it covers in our thinking if we want to really have innovation deliver on its potential.

Unless the values, norms and beliefs are not clearly thought-through and consistently reinforced daily through a consistent flow of initiatives to change, to explore, to learn from, any movement can simply wither and die from this lack of ‘total’ dedication.

The question we need to ask of our management is this: “if you are wanting innovation then we all need to work through the determinants that encourage innovation together” and then set about communicating these that are highly valued and expected throughout the organization, so as to encourage them to support and make innovation happen.

Often we can’t self-disrupt as we feel constrained

March 21, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

In the past few days I enjoyed listening to a webinar by Clayton Christensen and Max Wessel for the Forum for Growth and Innovation, a Harvard Business School research centre initiative that confirms to me we struggle to self-disrupt often and become constrained in ourselves.

The Forum for Growth and Innovation seeks to develop “breakthrough theories to help businesses become more successful innovators and create new, robust sources of growth”.  The webinar was all around surviving disruption but discussed also “looking beyond the horizons”.

The Theory of Disruptive Innovation

To offer a quote from the Forums own website (www.thefgi.net.):  “Disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors”.

“An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.

Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in their initial stages, can include: lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services that may not appear as attractive as existing solutions when compared against traditional performance metrics”.

The webinar raised in my mind many unanswered questions.