amplifying the innovation signal - Innovation Thinking and Resources

Traversing across into horizon 2 for new breaking innovations

By @paul4innovating June 4, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Within 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

By @paul4innovating June 1, 2014Achieving 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

So 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.

By @paul4innovating May 27, 2014Achieving 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

I’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…….

Are we moving towards integrated software for innovation management?

By @paul4innovating May 20, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

What is striking me recently is the upsurge in the software being specifically designed for managing innovation within our organizations.

The competition seems to be warming up in the more ‘standalone’ out-of-the-box segment and the innovative tools being provided are certainly accelerating the innovation process.

The software being provided is going well beyond the simply mining and capturing of promising ideas. The solutions are moving into sound idea enrichment, evaluation processes and managing a portfolio of innovation in more holistic ways.

The providers here, namely Hype, Brightidea, Spigit, Imaginatik and a growing group of others have been significantly improving their ‘front end’ offerings to capture and develop concepts

They are increasingly turning their attentions to the ‘back end’ and support with a greater focus on governance, knowledge repositories, campaign cockpits, evaluation and dialogue exchange mechanisms. Mobility has also been a growing feature to capture innovation ‘on the go’.

So what drives value creation?

By @paul4innovating May 9, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I seem to be reading a lot about the concept of value creation recently.

It seems to have the same ‘heady vaulted position’ as innovation in that we all talk far more about the ‘promise’ of it. So what is behind value creation?

What drives it? What will allow us to stand out as the place to invest in?

So what is value creation?

Value creation is highly dynamic, it is going on all the time and can increase, decrease or transform in different ways when you exploit your different capitals that will change and reflect your organization’s business activities and eventual outputs.

This is when you can begin to see the value created by the use of deploying all the capitals.

Are we measuring what really matters?

By @paul4innovating May 8, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Today, it is the non-financial performance, made up of mostly the intangibles within organizations, that is accounting for upwards of 80% of present investors’ valuation of our organizations so are we measuring what really matters?.

Yet do shareholders really have the knowledge to judge the real source of value creation inside our organizations? I think not but they should. Does Management actually themselves, equally I often think not?

We lack a real line of sight into the true value of our organizations.

Getting the Business Model Story Right.

By @paul4innovating May 3, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Framing the business model needs a compelling story so that it can be quickly and well understood by others. This is absolutely core. So, how do we go about it?

Recently I provided this contribution to Patrick Stähler’s blog that forms part of fluid minds, a think tank and consultancy for strategic and disruptive innovations. They focus discussions on their very distinctive version of the Business Model and its design.

This was on some thoughts on how to explain your business model through a story or your business narrative. The original post is here

The hard part comes after designing your new Business Model when you have to explain it.

That sheer consulting muscle hopefully delivering global momentum

By @paul4innovating May 1, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Has consulting changed over the years? Certainly the business model behind them has, big time.

I really do wonder where it is all going inside the business organization.

Consulting has become a huge business dealing with our global and local organizations and governments.

Just take a peek around the board room doors, just who are all those strange faces, bulging muscles, huddled in meetings with the boss? Ready to take on the world.

Following on from my recent post on “the value of the visiting consultative fireman” this further post explores the external reliance on the consultant our organizations have become accustomed too. It got a little long, my apologies for that.

The value of the visiting consultative fireman

By @paul4innovating April 27, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I was reflecting on the value and role of consultants and have written here, here and here on this.

These thoughts have covered the topics of suggesting different consulting models, exploring the shifts taking place in consulting and where consulting can contribute.

Then I offered a post late last year under the title of “client engagement- full of whipped cream and lumpy gravy?”

So in this post I will reflect and look at the visiting fireman here, the ones I experienced in the corporate world. I still believe they are far from endangered species.

Consultants hold a specific fascination for me, they come in all shapes and sizes, offering a bewildering array of solutions for your business.
For many clients, consultants have become ‘totally essential’ yet for others a necessary evil.

Today with far less resource within our business to call upon and coping with increasing pressure on time there is also this total reluctance to employ someone on the books, it is better to bring it in on an ‘as and when’ basis.

Keep it lean and mean, charge it off against that years operating expenses, don’t bring it onto the longer-term books.

Mostly the consultants knowledge leaves when they do

There are no easy innovation answers.

By @paul4innovating April 20, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

In response to a recent post of mine, Tobias Stapf on the Social Innovation Europe LinkedIn networking group, pointed me to a really good report “Innovation Is Not the Holy Grail” and

I really have appreciate it. I wanted to draw out some useful learning from this report and useful reminders here in this post that there is no easy answers in innovation, social or business related.

The report outlines the difficulties of enabling innovation in social sector organizations. In this review the authors undertook exploring what enables organization capacity for continuous innovation in established social sector organizations, that operate at an efficient scale, delivering products and services.