Renaissance comes from combining art and science for innovation

The art of innovation needs to be broken out of the science that needs to be applied”.

 I wrote this in my last article and I thought some might ask “what the heck does he mean by that?” So I owe an explanation, perhaps partly to myself as well.

I’ve often heard and read that innovation is either an ‘art’ or a ‘science’ but we do seem it always struggle to combine them.  Why is that?

I finished that particular article (bit.ly/NlrOpV ) with this:
“The art of innovation needs to be broken out of the science that needs to be applied, and then knowing its entire component parts then recombined in sustaining, thoughtful ways. We do need to harness the energy of innovation and we are not yet fully achieving that”.

Let’s begin at the beginning when art and science were one Continue reading “Renaissance comes from combining art and science for innovation”

The long and winding road we travel in the name of innovation

Innovation is a long hard and tough journey. Regretfully we do ourselves no favours in not having a common language, a repository of proven techniques and methodologies.

We often continue to layer on to the existing often failing to consolidate and validate.

I get frustrated as you look around there are most of the answers but not the ‘attention span’ or the real incentive to go and properly learn it, to master it.

We lack discipline in innovation although that might sound counter to the way innovation is often presented. The art of innovation needs to be broken out of the science that needs to be applied………

This was how I started in a reply to an email sent by Ralph-Christian Ohr (@ralph_ohr). He was commenting on my recent series on the Three Horizon framework, I had collated and sent this to him and Tim Kastelle (@timkastelle) to comment upon.

This had been updated recently and published in the site of www.innovationexcellence.com over five days recently.

Ralph clearly caught me in a reflective mood when I replied.
We travel a long pathway called innovation Continue reading “The long and winding road we travel in the name of innovation”

Self-inflicted wounds on innovation

Many organizations have made Stage-Gate or a mutation of it, their ‘go-to’ innovation process that all innovating concepts and ideas must ‘somehow’ pass through. We are often giving self-inflicted wounds caused by jumping hurdles and closed gate around managing the innovation process,

Squeezing all types of innovation through this, for whatever people claim is a linear process, is simply wrong.

You can simply say: “we destroyed much to get sometimes so little out as the final outcome, when initially it was seen to be so promising.

The difficulty is that we are still struggling to find a real alternative, although there have been some recent noteworthy attempts, firstly by Jose A Briones and his Spiro-Level 3D approach and then by Paul R Williams, of the American Institute for Innovation Excellence, to move the discussions beyond the Stage-Gate process from this linear into more spiral concepts and beyond.

There has been an awful lot written on Stage-Gate, some people attacking it and suggesting it “guarantees mediocrity for your business”.

Clayton Christensen has suggested “the Stage-gate system is not suited to the task of assessing innovation whose purpose is to build new growth businesses, but most companies continue to follow it simply because they see no alternative”

Stage-Gate has certainly earned its place for product management. Continue reading “Self-inflicted wounds on innovation”

The Case for Re-engineering Your Innovation Process (part one)

Real innovation is slowly grinding to a halt in many organizations. If the top leadership are not totally engaged in driving innovation it struggles, it grows in complexity; it gets bogged down in the internal politics of self-preservation and delivers only a ‘watered down’ end result, seen far too often to be a lasting sustaining solution, which it is plainly not.

When are we going to recognize that innovation, as we have it organized within many organizations today, is failing to deliver on its promise of providing the growth expected and so often talked about by the CEO?

Larger organizations, let’s face it,  are so caught up in the incremental trap. Risk mitigation rules at every level of the management of innovation, as it ‘churns’ slowly through the complex innovation process, built up over the years.

If an organization is totally happy with spending all its knowledge and internal resource on providing incremental products to its customers and gets away with it, then fair enough but does it have to be so? Continue reading “The Case for Re-engineering Your Innovation Process (part one)”

Establish a different global thinking for your innovation.

When you read through a paper on transformative innovation by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) at www.executiveboard.com that offers in its conclusion: “Innovation teams have been reorganized, de-layered, downsized, and (increasingly) dispersed, weakening the underlying structure of many companies ’innovation efforts” you do stop and reflect.

Then you read in one of the latest McKinsey Quarterly’s articles about “the global company’s challenge” (http://tinyurl.com/8yvwsrv) suggesting many issues are needed to be faced within large global organizations, you get even more of a confirmation that all is not well for innovation.

Innovation’s future seems to need some wholesale changes to take place and those innovation leaders are facing multiple dilemmas and choices that can’t be ignored for much longer.

The issue is “are the leaders of these organizations up to the challenges?” Continue reading “Establish a different global thinking for your innovation.”

Hacking away in the undergrowth, moving towards innovation

So you have your trusty machete, sharp, well-balanced and honed to cut through all the undergrowth that presently ‘pins you in’ and move towards the innovation land.

You plan to beat a path to the promised land where you have heard it is full of milk and honey from the occasional traveller that was passing through and telling you wonderful stories.

So you begin: you chop, you clear, your slash and you burn. At the end of the day you feel proud of what you have cleared, you put your machete away for another day. Tomorrow you will again attack the undergrowth that holds you back from innovation, the promised land.

Sadly when you awake in the morning, you wake up with an aching back, tired muscles and a realization that for all your hard work, you seem to have made such little progress.

You look around and you feel a little inadequate with all that hard work you had thought you had put in, yet it seems so little in achievement.

You certainly spent a lot of energy but seemingly for such a little return or so it seems, one little cleared patch still in the same forest you have lived in for years.

You face a critical decision.

Do I go on, with yet another day, upon seemingly day of equally hard work, of back-breaking endeavour in the belief that this ‘promised land’ is going to be worth all this effort, or do I return to the present existence that has got me to this point so far? Continue reading “Hacking away in the undergrowth, moving towards innovation”

Interpreting the Strategic Discussion for Innovation

The struggle for innovation alignment is one of those real challenging issues that are seemingly very hard to resolve, or so it seems.

I’m not setting out a comprehensive solution here, well not in this blog, of the suggested ways to address this strategic/innovation alignment issue, as that is far more complex.

All I will offer at this point of time is this alignment concern is becoming increasingly top of my mind.

Constructing an innovative conversation framework

What I am offering here is an innovation conversation framework, on how we can approach different strategic value propositions, and where we might need to debate these across the organization, as the points of impact so we can make this move towards a higher degree of innovation alignment. Continue reading “Interpreting the Strategic Discussion for Innovation”

The four framing technique for critical innovation questions

Often we do get a little muddled on our framing assessments for any innovation activity we are considering, and we then often don’t ask the appropriate questions at the right time.

I think there is a neat four-box approach to this which hopefully you might see has value to your rating and judgements of the innovation opportunity.
The four framing criteria

  •        Formulation Principles
  •        Formulation Risks
  •        Execution Principles
  •        Execution Risks

So the need is to ask critical questions in given boxes of enquiry. Continue reading “The four framing technique for critical innovation questions”

The Innovation Rubik Cube Approach

I’m sure we have all come across the Rubik Cube, a 3-D mechanical puzzle, invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik as one of the world’s best-selling toys.

The classic cube has six faces covered by nine stickers each offering a solid colour (white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow). The cube has a pivot mechanism enabling each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours.

For the puzzle to be solved you must achieve that each face is to be made up of one consistent colour.

It was suggested the cube was originally built to aid students to understand 3D objects but actually Rubik’s actual purpose was solving the structural problems of the parts moving independently without the entire mechanism falling apart.

Innovation is equally a puzzle with moveable parts Continue reading “The Innovation Rubik Cube Approach”

A No Better Moment

When you have some sun on your back after a long period of those winter months, you just always begin to feel life is so much better going forward.

Life seems to reawaken within. I often wish we could capture the ‘sense’ of spring and what it promises to bring from this change of season. Those of us who witness the change of seasons are so lucky.

I’ve also been reminded recently about the phrase offered by a number of leaders to explain a positive encouraging shift after a tough time, it goes like this: “we do see some green shoots that are offering some early signs of growth and recovery.”

Spring captures that growth moment. It is often talking to us of renewal. Innovation needs that capturing opportunity as well.

Freezing the moment to listen Continue reading “A No Better Moment”