Improve Collaboration & Communication - Innovation Thinking and Resources

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.***

Lay out the path, get out of the way but give me ambition please.

By @paul4innovating October 22, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Today we see a new commission elected in Europe. As a European you always want this to be a new beginning, a new hope, having plenty of ambition, perhaps a new start for Europe.

Jean-Claude Junker has become the new president of the European Commission and along with his new Commission team has been setting out their priorities for regaining momentum for Europe.

I was re-reading Mr Junker’s policy agenda based on “Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change” and you realise not just the complexity and challenge all this entails, bringing 28 countries along still, it seems, a pathway that still talks “a single union.”

It prompted this post.

Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation

By @paul4innovating October 21, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Finally, I am completely surrounded by inspiration, ideation and implementation. I have that feeling of being somewhat overwhelmed, I can’t twist and turn anymore, it simply will not go away.

Do I throw myself off the building or decide to listen a little longer? It really is forcing me to think.

Today it seems whenever I pick up a business book each chapter has a section on it.

Also, I seem not to be able to not fall over all the articles extolling its virtues, I mindlessly “Google it” and you can see your whole life flash before you, if you decided to investigate this seriously.

What am I talking about?

Well, nothing other than Design Thinking. I know, most of you are so heavily into this you feel you might as well ‘flip’ over to the next article but are you, really?

Opening Ourselves Up to the Innovation Mashup

By @paul4innovating September 10, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Sometimes some things come slower than others, and then they suddenly rear up and hit you, opening you right up to completely new ways of innovation.

We don’t make all the connections we should; we are too caught up in our little world, beating our existing drum, drowned out by its own noise, to step back and appreciate something new is really happening.

Recently I was investigating one strand of thought and then bingo! Something else leads to something else and the rest, so to speak, becomes history.

I’ve been reflecting on the new era of innovation and opening myself up to exploring alternatives, different thoughts, discussions and viewpoints.

Seeing Your Innovating Future Across Different Horizons

By @paul4innovating September 5, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation Ecosystems, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Sustainability, Tackling innovation

The three horizons offer us much to frame our innovating future
Following a couple of recent posts on reflecting on the three horizons methodology, firstly here and then here, I wanted to come back to where I see real value, in managing your innovating future.

The 3H methodology enables us to look out into the future, across three different horizons that can manage the transition between the short, medium and long term in our innovation activities, something often badly lacking in most organizations’ thinking.

It allows us to gauge the challenges, adding aspects we are beginning to gain a sense of, transitioning from one position to another. It allows us to deepen our evaluation of the innovation portfolio of activities, resources and skillsets across different delivery frames of the short, medium and longer term.

Three Horizons – fields of future, full of foresight.

By @paul4innovating September 2, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I’d like to relate to parts of a book that came out in late 2013 from Bill Sharpe, actually more a booklet, called “Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope”, published by Triarchy Press, has some really helpful insights that is truly fields of future, full of foresight.

In this book, Bill outlines his distinct ways of creatively working through many of the unknowns, by framing and connecting through the Three Horizons, (3H) as his contribution to the patterning of hope for all our futures.

I draw out a lot from his thinking, experiences and approaches within the book. Some of these initial thoughts outlined here, re-affirm my own thinking and focus on the 3H, specifically for innovation and its management.

Here are some of the ‘triggers’ I connected with strongly from his book:

Reflecting on the Three Horizon Model for our Innovatation in the Future

By @paul4innovating August 23, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

There is that prevailing sense that we are just managing the business, as usual, leaving many increasingly uncomfortable and feeling exposed to concerns over innovation in the future. Why?

Our businesses are not adapting fast enough to changing conditions in the market, often lagging in the competitive race to update and keep relevant.

Businesses are struggling with conflicting knowledge flows and incoming intelligence, just simply managing their talent to keep them relevant, engaged and outwardly orientated.

They need to constantly adjust and adapt to the demands and challenges within the societal conditions, environments and markets, grappling with constant shifts in consumer demand and coping with the declining natural resources and what all of this might mean.

We are often short on foresight and certainly struggling with growing complexity.

Asset Orchestration is Required for more Dynamic Innovation

By @paul4innovating August 21, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation Ecosystems, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

We all should recognize the incredible power of orchestration that is needed in innovation to bring the initial idea into a final successful commercial concept.

We have an ongoing need to create, extend and modify resources constantly and to achieve this we need to orchestrate and enable those resources to exploit and execute our innovations.

We need to ‘asset orchestrate’.

One of our blind spots is perhaps the focus on pursuing and organizing around innovation just within an organization and not being as aware of all that is externally going on around us.

There are continued and rapid shifts taking place outside the walls of our organizations, constantly occurring and changing, often it becomes a ‘race’ between spotting an opportunity and executing on it before your competitors do, or the market further moves on and it becomes a lost opportunity to have exploited.

Risk Is Understanding Your Scope of Reach Should Exceed Your Grasp.

By @paul4innovating August 8, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Antibodies, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

We were not born as risk-takers but we can develop it through our own growing self-actualization, creativity, a pursuit for growth and enjoying that feeling of being stretched, going beyond your normal scope of reach.

Well some of us do, but sadly most tend to become risk-avoiding because of the environment they are in or have been associated with for long periods, where avoidance rubs off, it seeps into the soul.

Many enjoy being simply ‘passive’, avoiding anything that smacks of being ‘proactive’; it is safer to be ‘reactive’. Innovation and heaven can equally wait.

Putting it simply most people and organizations are just afraid to take risks and this fear takes over and drives their choices. Innovation is certainly something that suffers from this fear of risk.

Organizations miss critical opportunities, individuals fail to speak out and argue for a given change or innovative idea. We can simply stop growing, to want to become something more, we take the easy option, we avoid risk.

Exploring the Value Of Your Innovation Capital

By @paul4innovating August 2, 2014Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Following on from my last post of “Place your future bets- invest in Innovation Capital” which outlined the significant contribution innovation capital plays in our economic growth and value enhancement, let’s explore some more.

Let me offer some further thoughts on its value to really capture and understand, so we can measure it within our organizations.

We have the three components; of physical capital, knowledge capital and human capital that are the innovation-related assets, these make-up Innovation Capital.

I have been arguing that innovation capital draws from the core of intellectual capital and its suggested (and broadly recognized) components of human, structural and relational capitals or social capital.

I have previously discussed this converging up, as the ‘nesting effect’
Innovation capital needs assessing and measuring so we can understand the relationship between these innovation capitals (and their present and future potential) and organization performance. We need to know the innovation capital ‘stock’.

Why, well ‘stock’ can be ‘static’ and we need to make this more ‘dynamic’ so innovation can ‘flow’ from this constant renewing of our capitals and be transformed into new value.