Building Innovation Capability - Innovation Thinking and Resources

Shifting to Ultimate Outcomes

By @paul4innovating April 24, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation3 Comments

Many organizations are struggling with their metrics and ways to measure the progress and success of their business.

From this writer’s point of view, their innovation activity gets caught up in plenty of unintended consequences, to put it mildly, in wasted debate, discussion & bad decisions through wrong measurement criteria.

Firstly, we are still locked in the old paradigm of thinking this is an industrial economy where we set about measuring inputs to innovation (R&D expenditure, capital investment) and then focused on the intermediate step of throughput and then outputs (publications, production units, patent filing, end products).

We also perceive innovation far too much still as an activity within just one company – viewed as linear, with considerations for services more of an afterthought (like ‘bolt-ons’). Production systems remain far too often the driving force of performance judgement.

Walkabouts are needed for learning and testing ourselves

By @paul4innovating April 15, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Tackling innovation7 Comments

Walkabout picture — photo credit: Walkabout (1971) film by Nicolas Roeg

How often do you pause for thought, testing yourself, questioning even simply for ‘just those few minutes,’ to allow yourself to openly challenge where you are and what you are attempting to do?

We keep relentlessly moving on, like a wandering herd of buffalo, always looking for fresh pasture, those new feeding grounds. It’s not good.

Of course, I often get caught up in this restless pursuit of gathering more, when I spend a growing amount of my time researching innovation. I keep coming across so many things that ‘trigger’ the thinking, pushing me on.

Do you let them go, ignore them, quickly pass over them, or attempt to capture the issue as something well worth investigating further at a later stage, or just get them simply behind you in the here and now.

Moving innovation into our core – Part three

By @paul4innovating March 27, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation Ecosystems, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Interests, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

This is the third and final part of this series on the rethinking within the management of the innovation system and how to view the core.

Part three– Technology will drive innovation change.

We are in need of a different sustaining capacity, one build around innovation as its continuous core; constantly evolving, adapting, learning and adjusting, in perpetual motion.

We are heading for transformational change

Digital technology and the cloud are offering us a radically different conduit to achieve a new engagement process within our organizations. Innovation is going to be very much caught up in this transformational change.
Technology and data will be innovation’s catalyst for change.

Moving Innovation into our Core – Part Two

By @paul4innovating March 25, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Interests, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

A three-part series on rethinking the management of the innovation system.

Part two, recognizing the broken process we currently have that stops innovation from becoming a core.

The innovation process and the structures build into our organization certainly need to be changed.

I outline here different barriers that require a change to bring innovation more into the core of a business.

Today, we are needing to build greater agility and responsiveness into our innovative design to counter a more rapidly changing market, sensing changing conditions and ‘seize’ breaking opportunities. .

A new combination of speed, flexibility, networking and focusing on adapting and fusing the skills and capabilities needed, will require changes in our innovation work.

Our current structures and processes for innovation are holding us back and will continue to not deliver the expected results needed today or the future, giving real growth and sustainability. We do need a far more radical approach to a solution for managing innovation inside our organizations.

Moving innovation into our Core- Part One

By @paul4innovating March 22, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation5 Comments

Innovation has sat outside the core of organizations’ central systems for long enough.

Arguably this lack of being a core as the central need of providing sustainable growth holds the deeper understanding of innovation back.

A core that could offer up the sustaining value and contribution innovation can make, to the growth and future well-being of organizations and having available the level of resources and commitments it needs. Today innovation seems to be falling short in delivering on its promise. Why?

A three-part series on rethinking the management of the innovation system.

Part one, building the business case of needed change in how we manage innovation.

This part is about those constant top-level concerns that needs finally to be addressed, if innovation ever can become core

Exploring the Drivers of Innovation Change

By @paul4innovating March 18, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I always show a particular interest in statements claiming to have identified a relevant driver of innovation change, then think through these.

Can these be valuable and be associated to the portfolio situation within an organization’s need, in seeking different viewpoints of product or service change?

Opening up our thinking to change can drive our business offerings very differently.

Often within these drivers, we do need to explore what is the underlying force behind them, it allows us to pause and think. As you think through what these different change drivers on what it might mean to extend your new product or service developments, these can prompt radically different and imaginative solutions to consider..

Using the different drivers can give you new insights into your innovation activities plus also can prompt significant changes to freshen up your innovation portfolio.

They are certainly a good place to start to get the creative juices flowing even more.

Tuning out, a need for simplification and better value

By @paul4innovating March 11, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation4 Comments

I have been totally struck by the overwhelming number of webinars being offered to me on a daily basis, all related to innovation and all free.

Am I the only one getting overwhelmed in choice, underwhelmed in content value?

This is a bit of a long rant, so turn away now those who love all the free choices you currently have, don’t waste your time reading on.

Those a little more curious, as my friend Michael Fruhling always says in his useful blog “then read on, dear friends….”

What do you get of real value when it is offered free?

What makes up your innovation capital?

By @paul4innovating February 25, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation, Uncategorized8 Comments

If someone came to you and asked the question: “tell me what makes up your financial capital?”

I expect you could answer this fairly comfortably.

It might need a little added help from your finance department but you could produce and show significant details that we are all ‘schooled’ to understand and generally have accepted, under common definitions and standard practice.

Our businesses are measured constantly on their financials, we produce a constant flow of reporting documents that provide useful insight and allow for a more informed judgement by present and future investors on the health of the company. We are ‘wedded’ to our financials and ignore the real value within our organizations of all the other critical capitals that generate and strengthen the business.

What if that same person came to you and asked instead: “what makes up the innovation capital of the company?’” could you answer this as clearly as the financial one – I would suggest most probably not. (By the way, if you feel you can then please let me know I would be more than interested).

We are focusing more on past performance and not future generating potential by staying fixated on just the financials within all that makes up our organizational capital

So what makes up our innovation capital and why is it important to know?
Should we care, does it matter? I would argue it does, increasingly so. Within the innovation capital lies the future of the organization and holds one of the real golden keys to the sustaining performance of the company, or not.

Building Innovation Capability Through Three Interlocking Platforms

By @paul4innovating February 20, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Interests, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation3 Comments

A little while back I was reading somewhere an academic paper and it triggered a thought on interlocking platforms for innovation, so I set about capturing it for this post, and then it somehow got filed away.

So this is the reworked opening thought to record the idea to ‘capture’ it, so I can reflect later on, on how I should build on this further. I show a number of hyperlinks to help in pulling this together…..well for me anyway!

So this is a work-in-progress and should be taken as a thinking out loud at this stage.

Linking capability through interlocking platforms
We are in need of a different “sustaining” capacity build around innovation as its continuous core, constantly evolving, adapting, learning and adjusting, in perpetual motion.

How? Innovation has many ‘touch points, a myriad of dimensions that need to be aligned and integrated. How can we achieve this more holistic view, so innovation management can make a significant advancement on where we are today?

Making the business case for innovation to change is not easy but essential

The Four Lenses of Innovation by Rowan Gibson

By @paul4innovating February 17, 2015Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation4 Comments

Every now and then, a book comes along that completely surprises me in terms of my own reactions to it.

They always force me to unglue some of my preconceived ideas thankfully, and then I can stick them back together again into a whole new pattern.

To be honest, I still have not fully figured out why I keep pondering over Rowan Gibson’s “The Four Lenses of Innovation: a power tool for creative thinking”, which will be published in early March, and why it is forcing me to reconcile different thoughts in my mind.

Rowan Gibson’s previous book was “Innovation to the Core- a blueprint for transforming the way your company innovates”, which he co-authored with Peter Skarzynski. It has been one of my favourites since it came out in 2008.

I often dip into this book and refer to some of its thinking and frames that have emerged following its publication. One of those frames was the “The Four Lenses of Innovation”, outlined in Chapter Three, which became the basis for Rowan’s new book.