We need to know how to unlock the real value of innovation both personally and within the organization, we work for. If we do not fully understand where the innovation capital comes from, how new capital and stock can be provided, innovation will remain tentative, always stuttering along. It will lack that essential organization innovation rhythm, stay disconnected for many and will be frustrating your own evolution in understanding.
I’d like to offer a fresh view on building your own capital.
There are different building blocks and types of capital. Let’s start with the vast knowledge inside the organization, as this forms learning capital. We’re all expected to combine our existing internal knowledge with the external knowledge that flows into the company these days, mostly intangible, searching for its relevancy and context. The stock we build in our use of this fresh knowledge so we can combine these into new insights that eventually create different sets of advantages – ones that foster value creation. Continue reading “Building Your Own Innovation Capital Lies Within Organizational Learning”
I would like to lay out some thoughts on why we should be considering a curation platform for innovation and the value it can bring to a broader innovation community.
These are some opening thoughts that I felt needed to just “hang out there” and see where they take me and clearly, you as a reader.
The issue I am reflecting upon is our growing concern that we all are living in a world heading towards digital overload, with the risk of it simply overwhelming us, perhaps we are becoming more isolated and detached within this.
We can’t simply rely on focusing around ‘all things’ digital, we need people to bring the insights and their experience together for the eventual innovation solutions. We need to provide a curators platform for innovation, to make all the essential connections. Continue reading “The Value of Having A Curators Platform for Innovators”
To deliver innovation, sustaining innovation, it needs to be built on dynamic skills, then you have to learn how you can orchestrate the capabilities you have, with those you have to bring in.
Building on those that give the necessary dynamic result you are looking for; to purposefully build what is needed to deliver the required result.
I have reconfigured my thinking around what will influence the evolution leading from building ‘just’ internal innovation capabilities to a whole ‘network effect’ from these.
This work just gets more exciting as it evolves.
It relies on how you purposefully build and construct these capabilities and competencies. The orchestration is fundamentally dynamic, full of uncertainties but the need is still to connect the parts to deliver the right result. We need to orchestrate, to build and then conduct and deliver the right results, to the innovation goals we seek.
I have been heavily influenced by the great work of John Hagel and Deloitte’s “Big Shift Index” as a frame to measure the forces of long-term change. What really holds my attention is “knowledge flows” and they are suggesting we are moving from a world of push to a world of pull.
The world is increasingly uncertain and to steer through this we need new ways to access, attract and accumulate understanding.
Knowledge is highly intangible. Today it is less to do with the “stocks” of knowledge we have the ability to keep refreshing and that means increased participation in the relevant “flows” of knowledge. Continue reading “Seeking out new Knowledge that Flows”
Innovation often fails to align with the strategic needs. This is often not the fault of the innovator happily working away with no specific guidelines, apart from the general remit of “we need to be more innovative”, it lies in the boardroom not communicating the board’s needs clearly enough down the organization.
Building up our capacity to innovation does need to understand and reflect the organization’s business activities but it is grasping the value creation aspects that will deliver the necessary capital-efficient and profitable growth.
Even the basic questions often remain unclear, those of are we looking to grow revenue, reduce costs, reduce working capital or improve our fixed capital? I expect the CFO would say “all of them” but each does have implications on the understanding of the fit and eventual role of innovation. Then where does risk fit into the strategic equation for innovation, it lacks often the clarity it needs.
Deciding that capabilities can be better leveraged requires a separation of exploit and explore.
The aligning of strategic direction (and importance) with any capability needs is in the understanding of what activities are diverging with core and those converging, then figuring out the future core. It is the two dynamics of exploitation and exploration we should be leveraging for our innovation and future growth
Today we need to exploit and explore and our capabilities need to be built fit for one of these two purposes. Exploiting is today’s business need, to leverage and improve the existing business and equally, in parallel, explore for tomorrow’s new business growth.
Then we also need to diverge and converge
The diverging ones need to have a real emphasis on improving performance, how they are managed for cash or to eventually sell or dispose of along with those converging on the new ‘known’ core of the business to grow and expand. So by recognizing these and that is not easy in itself, you are beginning to know and identify the capabilities you need to have in place to fix today and make it as healthy as possible, alongside those new capabilities that will create a new winning set of growth and value propositions.
We certainly need bolder investments in knowledge around the make-up of innovation capabilities
I certainly believe there is a real call for fresh and bolder investments in knowledge, in infrastructure that focuses on activities that spur new approaches that lead to innovation. These are not just the traditional ones based on managing today’s core but on finding those innovations that provide new value, the new generation activity that is occurring from recognizing how we can build, yes build for further exploitation (extending the life) and exploration (new understanding) and manage each as separate risk evaluation exercises with different metrics of progress.
We also need a deeper innovation grounding of internal workings and alignment
What I feel we need is a deeper grounding in what is actually going on inside organizations within their innovation activities and how these align with the needs of strategy and what is clearly missing. We start here as it gives us all this clarity and coherence, missing in much of our existing understanding.
We have the real opportunity today, in finding new ways of combining the four emerging forces of knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation, which will drive the growth models of tomorrow. It is these that are forming the new innovations ‘black box.’
It is mastering this new ‘black box’ of actual innovation activities, exploring and exploiting the necessary innovation capabilities that are required to be ‘going on’ in organizations to achieve a closer coherence we need to radically improve the innovation performance.
I have plenty of ideas, frames and methods built up to help you make innovation fit and be more coherent in its contribution. Why not find out?
I’d suggest that today innovation is caught up in the survival race, where the bolder ones are more innovation fit and pulling further ahead. We need many more organizations to get out of this survival trap and exploiting innovation in bolder ways, become fitter in their innovating purpose.
So much of what we do actually is ‘static’ work, activities that are simply repeating what we have done time and time again, gaining us little new knowledge and offering poor value creating worth. These activities on their own keep us happily ‘treading water’ and does the job of locking us comfortably into the ‘efficient and effectiveness clan mindset that most business organizations like to be ^keep us all constantly working within.
The harsh reality is this is becoming a very crowded, increasing uncomfortable place to be, as we reduce our capabilities to take a risk, too invest, to take those decisions that create more radical innovation. If we don’t offer value creation, we become increasingly unattractive and not regarded as essential, simply disposable. The more we play ‘safe’ the more we run the risk of being disrupted. We are failing to leverage much of the liberating power within innovation. Is our business world today is it so predictable? No, it is well and truly ‘dynamic’ and evolving.
Innovation can be fairly complex in what needs to be pulled together, as often it ‘flies’ in contradiction to the normal organizations ways and wishes to work in structured, efficient ways. Innovation can often be rather chaotic and discovery driven.
One of the useful ideas of using an external resource is to put additional coordinates into your innovation world, they see contradictions in a different way and can assist in working through the conflicting signals, so as to help align innovation in helpful and thoughtful ways. Certainly the innovators role is not an easy one inside the structured world of larger business entities.
I like practical advice with evidence, it helps bridge misunderstanding. This can come through a variety of methods: benchmarking, validating, frameworks and interpreting how innovation can fit with your current or future needs. Often the outside advice can place innovation into a greater context that can accelerate the outcomes you need to gain understanding and achieve increasing identification. Continue reading “Putting the coordinates into your innovation World”
A firm’s ordinary capabilities are the ones that enable us to perform efficiently and effectively, those essential routines and practices that often require having a high level of technical need supporting these activities.
In contrast, dynamic capabilities are those higher level competencies that determine a firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure both the resources and competencies to possibly shape, have the power to transform and then be deployed to meet rapidly changing business environments to take advantage of these changing conditions.
Recognizing the importance of Dynamic Capabilities
Dynamic capabilities are about selecting the right things to do and getting them done, while ordinary capabilities are about doing things right. The former implicates dynamic efficiency, the latter static efficiency.
If you don’t have time, how can you learn? We are in need increasingly, of faster understanding, to quickly learn or resolve an immediate need, or we have this determination or essential requirement within our innovation role to deepen our knowledge and understanding of innovation. These are usually split into two parts, called are “micro or macro learning opportunities”.
The value of having an innovation guide, mentor or coach helps you accelerate through both these needs and learning opportunities. I see four points of value, my value proposition, if you like, for you to achieve personal innovation growth: Continue reading “The Value in Personal Innovation Learning Journeys”
Formalizing a new Innovation learning-as-a-service is complicated, far more than I originally thought. Still, a certain course has been set and it is now working through much of its structure, learning much myself on the way to fit this within the innovation puzzle we all have.
When I was thinking through this concept I fell back onto one of my most valuable techniques to work through, clustering a set of questions and capturing all the different thinking through the use of Mind Mapping techniques. Such a valuable tool.
A selection of maps that included: what a curator can do in innovation, of painting a picture of a strong advocacy practice, of working through a guiding approach, the need to reflect on the whole facilitation process, etc., and each brainstorm takes a time to work through, build and formalize. The end result becomes a much richer landscape of what I can offer and what equally might be needed. Continue reading “Fitting understanding into the innovation puzzle”
We need to know how to unlock the real value of innovation both personally and within the organization, we work for. If we do not fully understand where the innovation capital comes from, how new capital and stock can be provided, innovation will remain tentative, always stuttering along. It will lack that essential organization innovation rhythm, stay disconnected for many and will be frustrating your own evolution in understanding.
I would like to lay out some thoughts on why we should be considering a curation platform for innovation and the value it can bring to a broader innovation community.
I have been heavily influenced by the great work of John Hagel and Deloitte’s “
Innovation can be fairly complex in what needs to be pulled together, as often it ‘flies’ in contradiction to the normal organizations ways and wishes to work in structured, efficient ways. Innovation can often be rather chaotic and discovery driven.
If you don’t have time, how can you learn? We are in need increasingly, of faster understanding, to quickly learn or resolve an immediate need, or we have this determination or essential requirement within our innovation role to deepen our knowledge and understanding of innovation. These are usually split into two parts, called are “micro or macro learning opportunities”.
Formalizing a new Innovation learning-as-a-service is complicated, far more than I originally thought. Still, a certain course has been set and it is now working through much of its structure, learning much myself on the way to fit this within the innovation puzzle we all have.