Fresh thinking - Innovation Thinking and Resources

Is all investment about the future?

By @paul4innovating January 13, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation4 Comments

I was reading an article by Doug Collins on the “three wishes for the innovation practitioner for 2015” where he points out “2014 was the year for share buybacks and dividends“.

An article from Bloomberg reports that companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index are “poised to spend $914 billion on share buybacks and dividends this year, or about 95 percent of earnings.”
95% of earnings – Doug rightly says “wow” and offers a thoughtful set of observations

“Every organization that enjoys free cash flow makes a decision on where to allocate that resource. If the opportunity available to the organization meets or exceeds the hurdle rate—the desired, expected rate of return—then, in theory, they invest in that opportunity. If not, then no: the organization returns the cash to the investors. Of course, earnings come after investments the organization makes in innovation—research & development expenses, for example. Many do invest a lot in R&D”

He then remarks “And yet…..and yet” ….

Where are the new feeding grounds of innovation?

By @paul4innovating January 4, 2015Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

Credit Wildebeest migration, Kenya, by Bonnie Cheung — Wildebeest migration, Kenya by Bonnie Cheung

I am presently reading an early release draft of a book written by Mike Docherty of Venture2, on innovation, and I would certainly recommend the read when it comes out.

The book Collective Disruption will be available as of February 2015.

The book as Mike wrote to me, is aimed at corporate leaders, both in large and small companies, charged with new sources of transformative growth and makes the case for co-creating new businesses with entrepreneurial partners.

It builds on a foundation of open innovation, but is focused specifically on new business creation (vs core business support).

I know that Mike is passionate about the intersection of corporate innovation and entrepreneurship for co-creating new businesses and business models. As CEO of Venture2, a consulting and new ventures firm, he works with leading brand companies and start-ups to commercialize breakthrough new products and businesses.

Mike has experienced disruption many times.

My innovation wish for 2015

By @paul4innovating December 26, 2014Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

I would like to see emerge a different ‘sustaining’ capacity built around innovation as the continuous core, constantly evolving, adapting, learning and adjusting, in perpetual innovation motion.

A truly integrated innovation solution that sits in our organization to allow innovation to be fully leveraged and exploited.

We need to recognize innovation has many touchpoints and a myriad of dimensions that need to be aligned and integrated. I genuinely believe we need a solution provider, who takes a more holistic view of innovation management that can make a significant advancement on where we are today, in our processes and systems.

These need a total integrated solution as the approach. this has its complexities in the challenges but we do have the potential through technology deliveries, platform constructs, and using the flexibility and adaptability found in the cloud.

If we combine these technology enablers with our innovation management understanding, then we can begin to construct this systematically and thoughtfully. It is very achievable and necessary for our organization’s abilities to absorb and translate knowledge into innovative growth, something missing for many.

The Need to Automate the Innovation Process

By @paul4innovating November 27, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

There has always been a consistent call to automate the innovation process.

Now it might turn into a stampede, based on real ‘digital’ need.

We have made solid progress in the use of out-of-the box software for capturing ideas at the ‘fuzzy front end.’

We have developed pipelines and use product life cycle software systems to manage this through to commercialisation.

Yet today we still have a fragmented, often broken innovation process, very reliant on the manual processes, where the human intervention dominates.

Can this be changed? Technology must form a greater core of the innovation process.

The need to respond quickly to new business objectives

By @paul4innovating November 26, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

The business objectives will change as we invest heavily in digital technologies, as we increasingly recognize and embrace this changing world where digital knowledge and insights begin to challenge and change our existing frameworks of innovation thinking.

Part five of a seven-part series

The outcomes of the investment are expected to provide clear returns and these might include but are not limited to:

1) different customization of services 2) quicker response to market trends in new offerings 3) identifying real-time cost optimizations, 4) concentrating on faster, more accurate decision-making to give new competitive edges 5) better and more holistic R&D 6) automating even further the supply chain management, 7) alter your approach channels to market, 8) move your business into new adjacencies or even white spaces and finally 9) design new business models and value propositions.

There will be lots of new moving parts to grapple with to be future innovation agile.

IT is Struggling to be the Digital Technology Master

By @paul4innovating November 25, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

There is so much occurring in new applications and alternative solutions, it is a very tough position for most dealing in technology to truly master all of these breaking options they might have to consider.

It must be a little overwhelming when many responsible for IT have for years not had any strategic involvement and not been given clear line-of-business oversight.

Business management equally has over the years built up an ‘arm’s distance’ to IT and found ways to overcome barriers they felt were seemingly put in their way when it came to ‘bringing in’ the technology they deemed as essential.

Something needs to change going forward. Both the business manager and the IT need to find ways to exchange, collaborate and share. It is in their ‘vested’ interest but more importantly for the future health of the business itself.

Aligning digital discovery with physical innovation outcomes.

By @paul4innovating November 24, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

We really do seem to be in a really evolutionary period, with the explosion of change taking place in the post-digital world of cloud, big data, social and interconnected devices.

The discovery of insights from all this embedded intelligence, social activity and data analytics is leading us to realize a potentially significant wave of new innovation opportunities from this digital knowledge.

The question is “are we internally ready for this?” Are our innovation systems and structures able to adapt to a need for exploiting ‘breaking’ opportunities where speed and agility become a critical deciding factor to capitalize on breaking commercial advantage by tapping into all these fresh insights?

Is the balance in innovation activity about to change?

By @paul4innovating November 23, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation3 Comments

Is the digital technology we see emerging today going to be able to provide the positive tension between rational and randomness that takes place in our innovation activities today?

Will digital begin to dominate our innovative thinking, will we lose this randomness, this spark of human creativity or will it be allowing this to connect multiple strands in new, more exciting ways? How are we going to adjust to the changing way technology will impose itself on our innovation activities and needs?

How will all this Mobile Connectivity, Cloud Computing, Social Media, Crowdsourcing, Internet of Things, Industrial Internet, Big Data, Analytics, 3D Printing and Scanning be presented and managed as a part of successful business scenarios and intertwined with changes in social behaviour?

Are our existing innovation systems ready for this potentially set of sweeping changes in knowledge inflows and translation, so they can be successfully commercialized into new innovation?

Part two within the series of seven

As new digital technology dawns for innovation

By @paul4innovating November 22, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

Digital Technology is significantly challenging for organizations to re-think and re-equip due to the emergence of big data, smart mobile connectivity, social media, cloud, analytics and the growing commercialization.

These are all driving external technology change, all clearly pointing towards a significant disruption of the existing ways we conduct business internally. So we need to ask “how are we going to take advantage of the potential business transformation?”

The issue is how to capitalize and create the value from all this change for innovation and performance enhancement?

***This is the first of a seven-part exploratory ‘open thinking’ about digital technology and its potential impact on innovation as we know it today. These will be published daily over the next week. The intent at this stage is more about raising our thinking on what might need changing or at least re-orientation within our innovation management approaches.***

The proliferation of transitory moments are ahead

By @paul4innovating November 12, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

Recently I was reading that up to now, each digital technology change was a separate era but today we are facing something seemingly different, a collision, a proliferation of transitory moments.

A whole mash-up of disparate technologies and systems, that seem to be heading for such an explosion of change, a post-digital transformation.

This merging of cloud, big data, social, and the internet of things is becoming the new system of discovery according to some. Others call it the crossroads where the post-digital reality of bringing together the cloud, mobile, interconnected devices, data analytics and embedded intelligence are pointing us to a hyper-connected world, less tomorrow, more speeding towards us in the here and now.

It is through people and things (IoT) we will get new innovation potential