Finding knowledge and research to help you learn and adapt

October 8, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery1 Comment
Learning and Knowleodge Sharing“The world has never been as complex, dynamic and uncertain as it is today and the pace of change will only increase.”
We hear this consistently, our continual problem is trying to make sense of it.
So much is coming towards us and to assimilate it and turn it into value, usable value, so we can adapt and respond to it in new ways of opportunity by adding further to the knowledge by turning this into new innovation potential.
Seeking out knowledge, and being proactive, partly helps as being consistently caught by surprise makes your world even more insecure.
To attempt to keep up to date we all need to invest increasing time in acquiring a better understanding, a deeper knowledge of all the interconnected parts. Even if we are “time-starved” we simply must try and keep moving along in this understanding.
As part of my job, advising others on all things swirling around innovation, I invest significant time in researching, learning and applying what I feel is important to others, so as to understand or at least to raise their awareness to change practices, thinking or approaches.
At times it all seems to come literally flooding in, overwhelming the senses, that I just have to wait and let it settle in my mind before I can attempt to process it and translate it into something of value to me, then eventually to my clients or readers.
 

Opening up our innovation to stay relevant

October 3, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Staying RelevantOur whole understanding of innovation is changing; there are numerous shifts occurring.

We are opening up our thinking about where and with whom, to collaborate.

We are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into one that is having a far more open stance. We are searching for more collaborative innovation (external orientation) combining external partners into more ‘collective thinking’.

The shifts taking place are offering us the promise of “extra acceleration” that is needed to improve our innovation performances from concept to market delivery. Or, we hope it is!

Collaborative innovation is also leading us to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success, as nearly all novel ideas lay are mostly outside the organization’s domain of understanding. We need to always bring the knowledge inside and build from it.

As we increasingly include the customer and their more exacting needs within our understanding, these multiple collaborations and dialogues are building this better internal understanding to align our innovation with specific opportunities, relevancy and needs.

Innovators – are you thinking about Ecosystems?

September 7, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation Ecosystems, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation3 Comments
Business Ecosystem Trends
Business Ecosystem Trends by Deloitte

Thinking about ecosystems certainly allows us to go out of our normal scope of internally generating new products.

It opens up a host of possibilities, that can add significantly to a new service design, new capabilities and solving more complex problems.

In opening up to managing within ecosystems, you begin to see your ability to contribute and tackle societal problems within a collaborative system.

You can see new opportunities that can allow you to enter new markets that would have been impossible as an individual organization.

You begin to see the power, scale and strength of having the collective collaborative ability to extend beyond more traditional thinking design. You go beyond the utilization of leveraging existing infrastructure, building on others’ specializations and leveraging through technology powerful new concepts to tackle increasingly complex innovation design.

The sharks that prey are arriving a lot earlier now

September 2, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation3 Comments

The Sharks are CirclingChange is all around us, it is accelerating not abating. Do you feel you are trapped, encircled and just a little concerned.

You often hear of volatile trading conditions, a more complex market and situations changing constantly and moving faster than ever. ‘Much’ seems to be closing in on us.

We do know we need to re-equip ourselves for constant disruption; we are really beginning to see a shift from the classic bell curve into more of a shark fin for adopting change.

One that is characterized by sudden, even violent success or an event, some moments of brilliant dominance, followed by a dramatic change in conditions as others have spotted the same opportunity and you hit a rapid decline, the race to the bottom of competition constantly negating one another.

Market are segmenting, the life cycle is shortening or having an even longer tail of dealing with slow decline and constant erosion of any competitive position. The sharks are arriving even earlier and in a greater need to show their dominance.

market_segments
It does seem “creative destruction” is a central force in many of our activities. Activities where innovation is continually replacing not just in products and new services but in designing radically different business models, searching to replace less adaptive competitors in the marketplace at faster rates.
Adoption is far earlier, the pace of change is quickening and from this, the competition is responding in new ways, often surrounding the new innovation with their version, built on often a really ‘fast follower’ principle to keep in step, and throttle off any different adoption, knowing what it costs to have to win this back over time if it can at all when it switches.
The life cycle is becoming even more important to manage in all of its stages, as its traditional shape I feel, is radically altering. It is coming faster and fading away quicker unless you manage its parts very specifically.

Making an impact on an organization’s innovation environment

July 23, 2015Posted inAdvancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Sustainability, Tackling innovation

Our Innovation EnvironmentWhere do you set about to intervene and begin to change the organization’s ability to innovate?

There are seemingly so many intervention points it can get bewildering.

The innovation environment can be made-up of how well you collaborate and network, the level of the group and individual interactions, the presence and commitment of leadership towards innovation, as well as the organizational set-up and structures.

You can explore the make-up of the innovation environment in so many ways.

So what makes up the environment to innovation?

It is the culture, management and its people who have a mutual dependency. Culture can enhance or inhibit the tendencies to innovate, it certainly has a profound influence on the innovative capacity and provides the rich nutrients to nurture innovation or kill it. Culture has always been regarded as a primary determinant of innovation.

The Interplay Surrounding Innovation

June 17, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation3 Comments

The Interplay Surrounding InnovationInnovation should be the primary source of real change. Often when exciting new innovations occur they have the power to significantly change our habits, and choice of product, preferences and ways we set about our daily lives.

Yet why is it we often ignore the power of change when we design innovation?

We often fail to fully appreciate the changes that are occurring from the innovation we produce, it often seems an afterthought, there is this lead and lag effect and needs, firstly recognition and then addressing in how we manage innovation going forward.

In a recent series introduced initially and given a feature of the week prime spot on www.innovationexcellence.com on June 7, 2015, we discussed the importance of the emerging interplays.

This series will be re-produced here as it is an important concept to consider all the aspects within any innovation interplay.

The emerging concept of “interplays”

The "C" change within innovation

June 12, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Change and InnovationWe all want innovation but often we take a ‘selected’ focus on the changes we are bringing about.

It is either in the external market place in new products, services and even new business models, yet we often ignore the amount of change we should be considering within our own organization.

As we ‘learn’ to innovate we ourselves change but often we are poor at recognizing these changes and the greater impact this might have on on all that is around us.

We miss opportunities to alter our processes, systems, structures or methods. We often fail to ‘advance’ in all the positive change innovation can bring.

We tend to ignore the change part of innovation
I believe we need to rethink this and evaluate the significant changes that should be taking place within our internal organizations as we expand our innovation activities.

The challenge for the CIO is the fusion of business and IT.

May 19, 2015Posted inAdvancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Field guide Practicial IT Deloittes 1
Taken from the Field Guide for Practical IT by Deloittes

In the past twelve months or even more, I think there have been some exceptional reports and thinking coming out of Deliotte’s group   on business issues

These have been from their dedicated practice centers, their University Press and the Deliotte Consulting LLP, mainly from the US practice.

I would regard their thought leadership as close to the top or even at the very top of any of the big consulting firms.

I’ve certainly gained some richer understanding as I am sure many others have and for me Deloitte deserve significant praise for investing in their thought leadership thinking.

Delivering the innovation core: building capability, capacity and competency.

May 14, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation2 Comments

Building capabilities 4Each organization needs to understand its strategic resources to build continuously innovation, so as to sustain and grow the organization; otherwise, it will eventually die, starved of what is vital to sustaining itself.

The resources provide the lungs that give oxygen; they need to constantly be nurtured, too breathe and pump new life into the existing.

For innovation the same applies, we need to consistently build our innovative resources, they give delivery of the healthy living cells to promote and sustain us in new value potential.

The problem is we often are not very good at maintaining our resources and innovation activity. We just simply do not sustain our efforts, we tend to allow them to drift along or become lopsided from one individual team’s efforts, while the others simply ‘wallow’

The Connected Art of Selling Outcome-Based Solutions

May 7, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

Outcomes ROI neededThe typical linear and often siloed mindset that we have for much of our innovation thinking within our business organizations has to rapidly fall away.

We are in the ‘cusp’ of a fundamental change that technology, platforms and connected ecosystems will bring into the mix for connecting and collaborating in dramatically different ways than in the past.

One of the implications will be our need in measuring the metrics within companies. The measurement of inputs, throughout and outputs need to become far more focused on delivering speed and scale potential as the critical points. We are far more needing to focus on the outcomes as our primary point of measurement.

This is a further post on discussing outcomes as the focal point of our innovation measurements, following my recent one of “Shifting to Ultimate Outcomes”

Recognizing the emergence of the outcome economy

The outcome economy which is emerging has many implications within it and how we measure and value these will become increasingly important. Companies will need better data to calculate costs, evaluate its potential value and will be modelling far more the risks and tracking the factors required to deliver within any outcome-based value promised.