Plan your innovation resolutions early for 2012

For many October is the peak month for bringing together their strategic and operating plans for 2012. Meetings get frantic, issues get raised, and plans get drawn up, rejected and redrawn. The period becomes a fever pitch.

Where does innovation figure within this? In new products, new services and plenty of noble entreaties to adding to the growth I am sure. One aspect you might want to consider within all this activity and planning is to develop a resolution list of issues that need resolving.

I mean really, finally, actually resolving in 2012, to allow innovation to have a greater ‘hold’ on future thinking. Achieving a consensus, a clear focus, and a corporate commitment is what strategic plans are about so draw up your list of innovation resolutions needed to be resolved in 2012 and commit to them within the plans. Be upfront and bold.

Make sure you choose ‘soft’ as well as ‘hard’ innovation resolutions within any mix

One thing I would recommend when you draw up your list. Most corporate executives find the ‘softer’ aspects of innovation harder to work through.

There is this certain ‘hard wiring’ that everything has to be clear, measurable and tucked away  in the accounts or ‘ticked off’ in each person’s mind.

Softer aspects of innovation often don’t conform to this orderly view of the world and it is addressing this inconsistency ‘head-on’ has great value.

Clear trends are shaping the future of innovation

In the last week or so I took a step back to look at the emerging trends around innovation. It certainly seems to have a bright future but its management is growing in complexity.

It now needs a deeper understanding than ever. Are we achieving that?

My viewpoint on observing different innovation dilemmas:

  • Innovation used to be about product, technology and R&D but it is far more now about value and anything that carries value. It is about creativity and entrepreneurship and it is even more tied to a clear vision today than ever, so it does become a vital part of the culture of the company.
  • Innovation and its potential value generation have certainly broadened out in options and needs even more to be tightly integrated with the strategy- how different types of innovation are aligned is really critical. I think many organizations are failing badly on this alignment recognition.

Declarations and Social Innovation

I always get nervous when declarations are made, this one was over two days in the middle of September, 2011 in Vienna a “Vienna Declaration” was made determining “the most needed social innovations and related research topics”
Maybe it is the way it has been written as a declaration but I’m left uncomfortable. When you read within the declaration document:

the ‘deliberations’ took place on what could be done to strengthen the social sciences capacity to play a prolific role in conceptualising and research of social innovation, and thus favour desirable development of the globalised knowledge society. This led to the idea of a Vienna Declaration that should identify critical areas of social and scientific development, and state a number of equally important corresponding research topics

The rationale behind the declaration states the Vienna Declaration is the first and immediate Core Deliverable of the Conference, created and established during the conference by joint efforts of all participants.

This makes me even more nervous, those that went decided to make a ‘universal’ declaration but OK, I can’t fully comment as it is difficult to see the whole context for this meeting. it remains unclear if it has a pivotal role or not within SIE in Europe, on behalf of the EU, on behalf of society within the EU? I’m left really not sure.

Preparing the secret sauce for innovation delivery.

The secret sauce required for innovation delivery sometimes can be hard to itemize but knowing the ingredients and constantly improving on them wil make your ‘sauce’ stand out from others.

For many, it seems, execution or final delivery of the innovation is simply not given enough attention inside many organizations and that needs to certainly change and not just left to chance or delegated out as the less important stage.

For me, clarifying and committing resources on the innovation delivery part is a critical task to get right. I’ve discussed that elsewhere, but if your final delivery is wrong then all your preparation and effort simply ‘goes out the window.’

It is like a restaurant kitchen- correct delivery of the item makes or breaks all the hard work beforehand and if the final garnish or sauces are wrongly executed, the meal itself fails and leaves the customer dissatisfied, irrespective of the original efforts put in.

Mission Critical for Innovation – Final Delivery

Why is it that for some organizations innovation seems to be mission-critical and incredibly rewarding yet for the majority, it remains at best an unfulfilled promise, never in the core of the business?

Why does innovation present such a stark choice, often fraught with difficulties for many, yet so simple and successful for the few? Innovation delivery is one of those differentiation points.

Let me suggest here nine points needing your consideration when it comes to thinking through the innovation back end delivery part.

Execution as I have outlined in a previous post is the final rugged frontier– the tough one to truly master as it is so variable in its makeup. Just consider:

Patterns of Growth- how innovation spreads and grows

Patterns of growth- how innovation spreads and grows is taken from a report by Nesta, called “In & Out of Sync”. I like this very much for all innovation understanding but here the emphasis is placed on social innovation.

Although patterns of growth vary in detail, they highlight four necessary conditions for putting innovative products, services and (different) models into practice sustainably and on a large scale:

Understanding innovation – the W L Gore way.

Once in a while, you have to stop and reflect. Why do I keep banging away at innovation, along with countless others?

Often I feel we are preaching to the converted, or the ones forced to listen just in case they miss something and are suddenly banished to hell, a non-innovating organization.

A place where no one will ever listen to them and this would have been the message to free the shackles and bring them back to innovation salvation.

So here I am standing in the innovation pulpit giving the weekly sermon on innovation beliefs and principles, offering this weekly reading on the (next) ten steps to avoid in that particular sin which we all know you are certainly committing!

Sometimes at the end of the sermon (or article), someone comes up and leaves an offering (comment) that sustains us a little more during the week, as we go about our business, in my case consulting, advising and researching on innovation.

What a hard life we seemingly lead!

So it is one of those rare occasions you recall something truly inspirational and this is what happened to me in going back to one of the best examples of true innovation practised and preached, the “W L Gore way”

Innovation as the means for Economic Evolution

It is suggested that economic growth is an outcome of the innovation trajectory we set. Today managing innovation is complex; often success is measured and valued by the creative destruction of others.

The ability to ‘evolve’ is very determinant on the knowledge base, either within a given economy or within a ‘federation’ to bring together as something new, offering more value than what is on offer today.

The combining of the dynamics within innovations parts

Innovation is highly dynamic in its constant change but also in its need of constant co-ordination of its parts.

I’ve been writing a lot recently on different issues that need thinking through for regaining a more sustaining innovation growth engine. Here I wanted to think out loud, about National issues that become more drags and not accelerators to innovation.

I then have tried to identify some of the reasons, and then finish with a personal reflection on the US versus European and some suggested actions needed for improving their innovation activity.

Often we forget to put our own innovation efforts into context, so I’d like to go up to the helicopter view here, maybe it helps us to relate better to some of the external barriers that need equal resolution, as we do often come up against these as we try to innovate within borders. Innovation cannot be contained, it needs harnessing but allowed to ‘move’ where it needs to go.

Making the first crucial steps towards innovation renewal

Firstly you have to start out with why you feel a freshening up should be required, should this be radical, distinctive or incremental.

What do you actually want to achieve that takes you closer to your aspirations, not just immediate goals?

Can the way you conduct innovation today meet that strategic challenge? Does it ‘advance’ on your current position?

There are a host of reasons ‘renewal’ might be needed. Today, when markets are especially tough, looking long and hard at what you have and jettisoning what you don’t need becomes essential to reposition yourself as leaner and more flexible.

There are many pressing needs why you have to ‘shape up’. Don’t ignore the need for renewal.

Meeting competition in today’s market or positioning for the ‘forces’ swirling around global competition as it constantly changes the fortune for many does not simply arrive announced.

You need to be prepared, to be alert, and to be agile and fit. We have to create the right environment and now is the time to question many of the ‘established’ approaches.

We need to challenge them with fresher, more up-to-date thinking based on the multiple changes taking place around us constantly as much in our markets is certainly becoming more ‘fluid’, so renewal needs to be thought through irrespective.