Innovation Ecosystem Understanding through an AI-driven approach

March 8, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation Ecosystems, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

I always find it interesting when different though-strands seem to collide. You can put that down to serendipity, fate, luck or just being in the right spot at that time. I have always been a fan of the book “The Medici Effect; breakthrough insights at the intersections of ideas, concepts and culture” by Frans Johansson.

I like to think I am often colliding at the innovation intersections where I keep finding lots of synergies that feed my research and innovative curiosity to support others.

For the past six or so weeks I have been looking into Ecosystems and one of those (famous) strands took me to “Natural Language Understanding” and I read an article by Mark Seall, Head of Digital Communications at Siemens called “How AI is shaping the future of marketing communications” and it got me curious.

The critical interplay among innovation, business models and change

February 20, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

The critical interplay among innovation, business models and change

Jeffrey Phillips and I have collaborated over a number of years and I have always felt these have been highly productive, original in thinking and truly valuable.

One such collaboration was around the interplay of innovation with business models and change.

I wanted to extract part of this white paper”Critical Interplay Innovation Business Models Change 6-2“(goes to PDF), in this post, as it offers all involved in innovation a structure to break down innovation into its different models of application. It describes some important observations we often forget when innovating.

Confronting Your Darwin Effect through Innovation

February 2, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Confronting Your Darwin Effect through innovation

It is so hard to let go! It is so often harder to carry on, but determination prevails!

I have been working away, call it my labour of love, with plenty of frustrating moments but have “pushed on” through sheer determination, on my thinking through the ‘harnessing’ of the dynamics within innovation.

The journey has forced me into terrain that presented diverse challenges to achieve fresh insights and traversed many a rugged landscape to get closer to my goal of offering organizations their innovation fitness and future landscape design, one designed to alter their present capabilities and capacity to innovate radically.

Building the use of the innovation work mat as a compelling business case

January 1, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Sustainability, Tackling innovation
The Executive Innovation Work Mat as a compelling business case

After a series of conversations around the Executive Innovation work mat, Jeffrey Phillips and I decided there was a need to add one more to the series, one that makes the business case for the work mat, one that is more from the leaders perspective.

In this video conversation of around 13 minutes, we explore why the leadership of organizations needs to get deeply involved in the innovation activity.

The reason top leadership needs to be fully involved

How many of our organizations are not looking to search for new ways for organic growth, improve their profit margins and create differentiation? This makes innovation central to this CORE need.

Providing the glue in the common language, communications, and context needed for successful innovation

December 29, 2021Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
The Tower Of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

 

Central to any organizational innovation building, the enormous value of having a consistent common language is paramount; it is essential to gain identification and understanding that all can relate to; it provides the backbone to a clear, united “sense of purpose”.

Building upon this common language gives a greater chance of effective communication to place the innovation activities into their appropriate context.

In the fifth of a series, I am working with Jeffrey Phillips, a long-term collaborator on “all things concerning innovation” we have been discussing the different domains of the Executive Innovation Work Mat we propose as a framework to provide a great chance to bring all the various aspects of innovation together.

We explore why each factor is essential to innovation in the videos we’ve created. These have covered

Why we should focus on Innovation Governance

December 20, 2021Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Sustainability, Tackling innovation

I am working with Jeffrey Phillips, a long-term collaborator on “all things concerning innovation.” We have just had our third short conversation of a five-part series on Innovation Governance.

This specific conversation is all about the fit of innovation governance within our Executive Innovation Work Mat. This is the link on Innovation Governance to the conversation, just under 14 minutes to listen to. Hope it gives a different set of insights to this area of innovation alignment.

If you would like to listen to the two previous conversations then these are here in the links that take you to youtube.com  The first was setting the scene for these conversations on the “fundamental building blocks for innovation success” (LINK) and then the second into “the essential alignment of innovation to strategy” (LINK).

I have written supporting posts to these conversations, more to flesh out a number of different pointers to add more value and awareness of the importance of having a clear integrated solution for innovation in the solution we offer, the Executive Innovation Work Mat.

Innovations linkages to Strategy is vitally important

December 15, 2021Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

I have just finished the second of a planned series with one of my favourite long-term collaborators Jeffrey Phillips.

The link to this conversation is here, it is just over 15 minutes long. as a conversation between us, where we emphasise the important linkage between innovation and strategy. You might believe this is a no-brainer but you would be really surprised that this ‘tight’ linkage is often lacking.

Our first conversation called the Fundamental building blocks for innovation success (13 minutes), links here, introduces the series and the areas of our focus. I wrote a post supporting this “Getting back to the future about innovation”

All of these short conversations are drawing out the value of having an integrated approach through the Executive Innovation Work Mat, our central theme of the series and solution to integrating innovation.

In this latest conversation, Jeffrey and I argue most problems or disappointment with many innovation efforts within a business can be attributed to a lack of alignment to the organization’s strategy, resulting in poor growth and impact from innovations contribution.

We need to resolve that issue within any innovation activity, it needs a “tight” linkage to strategy.

We are falling badly behind on our invention in technology for the Energy Transition

November 17, 2021Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Shifting dynamics in innovation

No energy transition will be achieved without invention and innovation,  yet we are failing badly at present to fund research, development and deployment. We are losing the race to stop our planet warming as our innovative human endeavours are not at the level they should be, or we simply lack the “will” to make the changes we so desperately need to undergo to protect our planet.

My focus continues to get deeper and deeper into the Energy Transition from my innovation perspective, it is highly critical to our future.

I provide different perspectives and thinking, firstly on my innovating4energy.website for my offerings of service and a dedicated posting site for energy, innovating4energy.com  that provides a decent mix of thought leadership, news and awareness, for the Energy Transition.

Do visit these sites if you are curious and want to understand more about the Energy Transition we are all undergoing (really all of us in the World). Also, I can only encourage you to get in touch to see if we have areas of some collaboration opportunities.

So let me get back to what this post is about, providing critical reference points on technologies we need to improve and innovate.

One really rich reference site is the Internation Energy Agency, the IEA who provide some incredible, in-depth knowledge for “Shaping a secure and sustainable energy future for all.”

On their extensive site, they provide constant updates. This site is primarily a place I go back and constantly check when it comes to the progress on the technologies that need to be researched, developed and deployed.

Having the insights and their knowledge helps knowing if we are on track and going to be successful in transforming our Energy Systems. And make the dramatic contribution level for us to achieve the net-zero pathway we need to have in place by 2050.

Applying innovation thinking to Affordability versus Sustainability

October 18, 2021Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Sustainability2 Comments

I recently wrote a post, “Affordability versus Sustainability – a cause to be addressed.”

That post looked at the shifts that I felt were underway in moving from a society that accepts where it is heading, in expecting “affordability” is changing as our “choice” gets constrained.

I argued there is this growing recognition that a consistent amount of crisis points are causing growing anxiety and stress, and these tensions and pressures are not sustainable, they are shifting our attitudes.

Are we appreciating that there is a fundamental change happening, and we have to have an increased sustainability focus, one that is becoming a much larger part of our thinking in the future?

So how do you vote?

So if you are voting for a continuance of affordability expecting an abundant world, then our innovation stays locked into incremental improvements to keep forcing the price down and demand up. But we are deluding ourselves.

Presently we drive efficiency and effectiveness but progressively into a crisis of our own making. Demand outstrips supply. We are consuming more than we can sustain, and something, really soon, will have to give.

Choosing Sustainability then innovation has that real chance of being radical, distinctive and providing breakthroughs that can revolutionise and change our world. It can allow us to begin the pathway back to getting our planet and its limited resources into some semblance of balance.

My own transformative dynamics of disruption

September 17, 2021Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Shifting dynamics in innovation1 Comment
The Gordian Knot We Are All Facing

I can honestly say I have been back at school for the past months. This remote learning stuff has been hard, challenging but stimulating.

Let me tell you about this as it recognises how things are changing in our world and certainly in my world, in particular. It is a very disrupting, disturbing world.

We often make what amounts to a series of mistakes, constantly extrapolating the present and layering it onto a way we see the future, based on what we know or are reluctant to give up. I’m afraid that’s not right, sometimes painfully wrong in lost time, investment and sudden realisation.

We are doing nothing but constraining the change occurring all around us at a limited pace and speed by placing the wrong lens on this.