Building for the Innovation Business Case

November 28, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Making the Business CaseOne of the toughest aspects within Innovation is making the Business Case.

Much of the information is imperfect, the returns are often fuzzy and unclear in the early stages and the doubters line up ready to block and deter new ideas from entering the commercialization process.

Justifying new innovation can be often really hard to make for others.

How can you reduce down many of these uncertainties?

Often what is missing is ensuring the innovation business case takes a clear methodical approach and builds the arguments up in a sound structured way.

Far too many cases are based on emotion and gut feel. Some of these clearly work but an awful lot get lost along the way, especially in the more structured organisation.

So often good ideas are ‘killed’ because the Business Case was not as well thought through as possible. It simply became the necessary chore at the end of a set of events that were in themselves a mountain to climb.

It is putting together the best possible business case is the last nine yards, sometimes the hardest to achieve but the accumulation of all your efforts rest on this document in many cases.

Are we constantly checking for the pulse of innovation?

November 22, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

So often our innovation health seems to change abruptly or equally just simply slip away. It could be caused by many things: a call for reorganization or restructuring or a key part of the team decides to leave.

It might be the organization has a second quarterly drop in sales and profits or those layoffs simply keep cutting away until you are into the bone. Suddenly the ‘beating heart of innovation seems to slow and sometimes even stops completely. Innovation abruptly goes into intensive care.


We so often miss the ‘vital signs’ of healthy innovation as we get caught up in the issues of the day, in defending our corner or simply playing safe, hoping the ‘ill winds’ that constantly blow over us go away.

In the meantime we often fail to recognize what has ebbed away in creative energy or innovation initiatives until we are heading for the emergency ward, fighting for our competitive lives like others who we had been competitively jogging along with having stayed fit and healthy and simply ‘kept on innovating’ and pulled away. Where did our fitness actually go?

So how do we check our innovative vital signs?

Placing Design into the Innovation Equation

November 18, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Let me be clear, this is not my blog entry I really wish it was. It is the relevant part of a blog written by Sarah Stein Greenberg (http://ideas.economist.com/blog/design-mind) that just seemed to hit one of those ‘buttons’ that sum something up so well, and in this case, I think the best compliment is to just share it. I’ve put in what I feel are appropriate headings for ease of reading only.

It is about the power of design and interaction to make something new happen fast.

Tackling messy problems

“A pressing question for more established economies… is how to foster more entrepreneurship and innovation despite greater stability and predictability.

One method that companies and individuals are adopting is design thinking—the approach of scaling or “group-sizing” the way that solo designers have always worked to enable to cross-functional teams tackle messy problems that don’t fit neatly into any one person’s job description or academic discipline.

Design thinking is one way to simulate some of the extremely dynamic conditions of an emerging economy and foster entrepreneurship in the US.

Forcing direct contact with users

Moving towards a more distributed innovation model

November 15, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

How are we going to really unlock the true potential of frontline managers, middle managers and the whole workforce for ‘seeing’ and engaging for their contribution to innovation?

Far too many organizations still don’t provide the opportunity for everyone to contribute to innovation. I think as open innovation moves from the labs and research centres then OI will be one of the ways for a shift in thinking to take place, not just with the outside world but within the inside organization for a number of reasons.

Critical needs of open innovation are the trust, the behaviors and the relationships that need to be at the forefront of thinking when you engage in more opening up to fresh avenues of innovation thinking. I think this changing mindset of how to manage within will permeate throughout the organization more and more as these (often dormant but available) skills get put into practice more.

We struggle to get rid of the ‘command and control’ approach to encourage more distributed sharing and exchanges to reflect the need today of being more agile and fluid in how we meet rapidly changing market conditions and counter threats or seize breaking opportunities.

How can we influence leadership in everyday contexts?

Thinking over dynamic capabilities for innovation success

November 9, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
The innovation fitness dynamics for innovating capabilities

As someone who runs a small, independent consulting and research business that is 100% focused on innovation, the focus has to be on capabilities so  I am always grateful for the continued involvement of the bigger consulting companies in producing sound, relevant and topical research issues on innovation and the building out greater, well-researched understanding.

Large consulting organizations ‘stoke the innovation fire within’, they confirm what you felt you knew but needed it to be validated. These great sources include McKinsey, Bain & Co, Booz & Co, Monitor, BCG, ADL and to a lesser degree Accenture for innovation research.

There are others but the ability to have access to C-Level thinking is this groups real strength and so they come more immediate to mind.

The emphasis is on distinct capabilities for innovation success.

Taking on the world; innovation as unfettered, different and holistic

November 7, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Taking a little more time out to delve into the excellent articles provided by Europe’s top innovation on-line magazine, http://www.innovationmanagement.se one article caught my eye.

It compelled me to comment upon as it relates to Singapore which is dear to my heart. This was about the Singapore Management University (http://www.smu.edu.sg) and the new Presidents vision of its future place.
Inter-disciplinary research for equipping students for comprehensive solutions

Professor Arnoud De Meyer, the new president, recently made his inaugural address laying out the future of SMU. He stated “Inter-disciplinary research and teaching will be key to producing graduates who can give comprehensive solutions for a changing society”.

Making untested hypotheses compatible to Business model innovation success

October 29, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

An email from Business model innovation hub (http://bit.ly/bnTd6G) landed on my laptop that stopped me to think a little harder on the whole momentum of Business model innovation. It summarized the ‘breaking’ collaborative work going on between Alexander Osterwalder, Steve Blank, Alan Smith and Bob Dorf.

This is around untested hypotheses coming out of new business models, that need a better structured and systematic way of exploring these to test assumptions, as early as possible within the lifetime of the model.


A breaking collaboration that seems really valuable

Steve Blank has summarized this first step in the collaboration in an entry on his site www.steveblank.com under http://bit.ly/9cElPf. He stopped me in my tracks (well briefly) with the statement that the “Business model canvas was at the end of the day a tool for brainstorming hypotheses without a formal way of testing them”- “a static planning tool”- the very thing I thought the canvas was taking us away from.

Shifting to the 21st Century Business models

October 25, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Gary Hamel is amazing, he is constantly thinking about the future and lays out how to get there; he has been doing this repeatedly for years, this time it is discussing the innovation drags we presently have and how they are holding back the 21st Century business models.

One quote of his seems to hit home for me especially “The real brake on innovation is the drag of old mental models. Long-serving executives often have a big chunk of their emotional capital invested in the existing strategy”

A real big challenge is changing old mindsets but how?

Today, the value of Business model innovation seems to be a critical part of breaking out of the old and finding new avenues to growth and prosperity.

The trouble today is the existing mindset of the manager is often the major block to challenging the existing business model and working towards a real change.

This lack of realisation is increasingly allowing the young usurper, the entrepreneur, into seizing the opportunities and seizes the initiatives of the very growth needed by existing businesses.

Simplicity drives Adoption often in Innovation

October 22, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Getting us lined up for adoption

Keeping it simple can often drive adoption. This week I had the pleasure of attending a Brightidea (https://www.brightidea.com/)  “Birds of a Feather” event in Zurich.  A pleasure clearly, why? Simply because it turned out differently than I had expected. Let me explain.

I have a tendency to be wary of claims or statements like “global leaders in innovation management” and “driven more success than any other innovation management solution provider” as it is hard to validate that from simply what I can read on Brightidea’s website, or through verification of independent research.

What can be said as a growing validation though is that they are clearly being increasingly recognised by many global customers as an important platform contributor to their collaborative innovation process.

Research, platforms and collaboration for Business Models

October 17, 2010Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

My last week was spent in the UK and it was a fascinating trip when it came to advancing my thinking on innovation. Innovating through new Business Models was constantly being discussed in the meetings, workshops and the conference I attended. It is becoming a lightening rod for growth and change.

Let me try and bring together this ‘convergence’ that is going on through the different dialogues I had, that in my opinion is bringing together the strands of research and collaborative activity needed for accelerating Business model innovation.

Firstly Technology Strategy Board’s Innovate 10 conference & networking event

I attended the Technology Strategy Boards (http://www.innovateuk.org/) Innovate 10 conference. Innovate 10 is a leading networking, conference and exhibition event for businesses to meet other businesses, government and academia with the aim of making innovation happen – creating opportunity and growth for the future.