Innovation requires a more dynamic systematic approach

July 28, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Innovation requires a more dynamic, systematic approach

All companies talk about innovation and its growing importance, but why is it that still so few succeed in actually doing it on a repeatable scale?

What inhibits innovation? What would drive innovation success? What aspects of innovation are critical to achieving such innovative growth? Where should a company place its emphasis to gain both an improving impact on its performance and strengthen its innovation capabilities?

The difficulty for many is that innovation is a complex process that has many intangibles within the total mix to manage. Management today is far happier managing the ‘harder’ aspects of business, the current physical ones of everyday organization, not the ‘softer’ more intangible ones, where innovation often lies or emerges from.

The lost innovation pathway

May 9, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Credit Chrisnaton, Flickr

I was recently working through a set of older presentation files and came across this extract concerning innovation again and thought I must share this. Sadly, it rings true as much as it did those  (many) years back.

“Strategy is useless without innovation; innovation is directionless without strategy”.

Below is an extract from “Reinventing Innovation” by John J Kao. For me, it is sadly as relevant today as when I first came across it, some years back. Are we making real progress in our innovation activities?

Tackling Societal Challenges through innovation ecosystem application

May 2, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Innovation Ecosystems, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Societal Challenges
Tackling Societal Challenges with Ecosystem collaborations

Perhaps why innovation feels somewhat flat (well for me) is our organizations and societies are utterly failing to allow us all to step up in innovation to tackle those huge societal issues; those massive, growing problems that are swirling all around us.

We need to shake out of our lethargy and really begin to attempt to solve the real issues of our time. Some organizations are clearly working on and trying to draw attention and gain greater engagement but we need a much greater concerted effort to focus on the big societal challenges.

Global warming, rising health issues, finally cracking cancer, malaria, dementia, finding different solutions to the ageing within society. How are we going to tackle the rapidly depleting natural resources, the future conflicts over water, food, or energy? These are big, hairy, audacious gaps to be resolved.

Are we capable or simply just avoiding these BIG challenges?

A pathway towards building your dynamic innovation capabilities

November 18, 2020Posted inCreation of Sustainable Value, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking
A pathway towards building your dynamic innovation capabilities

To build a pathway in order to enable more dynamic innovation capabilities one needs to go through Nine Stages.

These nine stages are, in my opinion, needed for developing an understanding of your innovation capabilities, so as to make them more dynamic and, as a result, to be at the top of your innovation game.

This “step process,” I believe, gets you to the point of understanding what innovation capabilities are a better ‘fit’ for the purpose, to deliver on your innovation needs on a consistent, repeatable, and evolving basis.

Building innovation capabilities take time; they are complex, highly structured, and multi-dimensional. Any structured approach to tackling innovation takes time and considerable commitment. Any learning involves sensing, seizing, and then transforming.

We are searching for what makes up the present system and what needs to be part of the future to create a ‘best’ innovation capability environment that is sustainable in the longer-term. Those that can be continually ‘orchestrated’ and constantly adapted to meet the strategic need.

We are striving towards a true ‘innovation coherency premium’ in design, knowing what makes up your core dynamic components. The outcomes are to know where to invest, what to dampen down and what aspects can evolve naturally and be ‘taken along’ – as you focus upon the ones that are more dynamic and relevant to your innovation needs.

Surfacing the real barriers to innovation.

December 28, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking

Here I am suggesting that there are ten intractable challenges that need breaking down and addressing to allow innovation to begin to really take hold

I’d suggest this might be a great starting point. Considering the intractable in anything is hard. To recognize these firstly is terrific, as they are tough to manage but phenomenal if you can surface them.

Then having the capability of knowing how to set about tackling these, drawing in a growing consensus that these are the real blocks to the team becoming truly innovative.

If you could ask a series of question that might help unlock innovation blockages it would make such a difference to our innovation performance and engagement. I think this might need a good external facilitator as my recommendation, one who has deep innovation knowledge and expertise, able to manage the ‘dynamics’ within the room.

These are shaped as discussions to raise, explore and extract views and then to be pulled together into a collective position, that gives strength and identification to resolving issues surrounding innovation. Surfacing differences, finding common ground and developing a ‘collective’ way forward makes a significant contribution to building a common language and a common sense of identity. It underpins innovation engagement. It gives confidence to any innovation undertaking.

Innovation Coaching Has Real Value

December 1, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking

Although this seems to be expensive to undertake, one-on-one coaching offers a lasting value to connect innovation far more deeply in the way a person and their organization ‘sees it’. It provides the place of context, meaning and content if facilitated well.

The importance, like all behavioral change coaching, is to create a safe but challenging environment so the recipient can take risks and learn. You as the coach find the balance between challenging through inquiry and supporting different thinking to draw out possibilities to gain new understanding from.

All the work is usually based on the recipient’s agenda, through a set of opening discussions you need to balance both personal learning’s with organizational needs. These need consistent clarification and re-calibrating as you go.

Building Your Own Innovation Capital Lies Within Organizational Learning

November 18, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking

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.

The Value of Having A Curators Platform for Innovators

July 5, 2018Posted inCreation of Sustainable Value, Foster Performance, Integrated Innovation Thinking2 Comments

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.

Having A Curators Platform for Innovators

July 5, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Integrated Innovation Thinking2 Comments

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 on ‘all things digital, we need people to bring the insights and their experience together for the eventual innovation solutions. We need to provide a curator’s platform for innovation, to make all the essential connections.

Putting the coordinates into your innovation World

June 27, 2018Posted inFoster Performance, Integrated Innovation Thinking

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.