In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, the ability to build a strong case, stay informed, and think critically is the key to unlocking success and driving innovation.
For me, this landscape is marked by its dynamism. Here, market trends evolve, new technologies emerge, and consumer preferences shift lightning-fast.
In this environment, success isn’t just about being prepared for change; it’s about actively shaping it. But how can you empower those responsible for innovation to not only navigate this terrain but thrive within it?
We need to navigate a very different terrain that requires a deeper investment in skill development in a culture of continual learning.
After a series of posts introducing and explaining the thinking and design behind the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework, I thought it would be a good idea to put this into a sequence of visuals that should take you through this to provide a decent understanding of its make-up and logic.
Organizations in today’s business environment need to adapt rapidly and dynamically, have the need to bring the innovation management process into a constant technological advancement, and be more tailored in its design by their own specific needs and not “offered” as a rigid set of solutions. We need to embrace a significant change in the way we “set about” innovation.
If you are interested in reading more in the series I have been posting then here are the links in the order of posting.
The importance here is recognizing the shift in mindset and thinking towards a Building Block approach to build up the Innovation Stacks. Each stack “sits” on a technology platform. Thinking through what this means requires understanding, relating, and putting a clear context of innovation, what you want to achieve, and how to set about this.
As I mentioned in a previous post, for any innovation enterprise change, I do not recommend a “big bang” solution; it should be phased to validate and grow to understand, build up validation, justify making the changes, bedding in the thinking needed and approaches to provide the level of returns and the growing understanding of cost/ benefit conversion.
The potential returns, including increased agility, improved innovation outcomes, enhanced collaboration, and long-term competitiveness, make this radical change worthwhile for organizations aspiring to thrive in today’s dynamic business environment. The ability to build the context and show its (ongoing) value makes the difference. You need a systematic approach and project staging plan.
The importance here is recognizing the shift in mindset and thinking towards a Building Block approach to build up the Innovation Stacks. Each stack “sits” on a technology platform. Thinking through what this means requires understanding, relating, and putting a clear context of innovation, what you want to achieve, and how to set about this.
How difficult would it be to embrace this Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework, as it is often argued that most people want to keep innovation management and its process simple? I wonder if that is the current incumbents, be these current innovation management software providers or individuals inside the organizations resisting change, as it brings significant uncertainty of change and disruption to the (inadequate) process, one that I feel is not fit for today’s and tomorrow’s innovation purpose.
So how to set about making this change and who should be involved as it is a more radical design of a holistic nature is what I am outlining in this post and the next one focuses more on the project organization needed.
Organizations in today’s business environment need to adapt rapidly and dynamically, the need to bring the innovation management process into a constant technological advancement, and more designed by their own specific needs and not “offered” as a rigid set of solutions. We need to embrace a significant change in the way we “set about” innovation.
It needs increased agility and looks to have innovation consistently redesigned to meet different challenges and needs. It needs a better set of flexible design elements and system thinking to gain from reuse and redesign rapidly. I like the term I saw the other day “systems of gravity” to get tasks completed faster than what is being offered today in innovating software solutions.
The need is to set about building a compelling business case to make the move to embrace this (radical) design change and its potential value in returns and flexibility. I want to begin to sketch out the pathway of change this might need. It will be hard work, but doing this in stages gives growing understanding and value, and I believe ultimately rewarding.
We cannot afford not to avoid changing our innovation processes as we deal with a far more complex and challenging world. We seem to be keeping innovation as a disappointing and often frustrating outcome for many leaders of organizations today, innovation needs to be top of mind and better equipped to deliver.
This morning I decided to have an exchange on ChatGPT on the future of Innovation Management Software, I asked a number of questions in a short series and can well-relate to the answers provided incredibly quickly.
What do you think?
Do they make sense and are the suggestions a competitive threat or a trend towards a future that needs fully embracing before others do?
Innovation requires a more dynamic, systematic approach
All companies talk about innovation and its growing importance, but why is it that still so few succeed in actually doing it on a repeatable scale?
What inhibits innovation? What would drive innovation success? What aspects of innovation are critical to achieving such innovative growth? Where should a company place its emphasis to gain both an improving impact on its performance and strengthen its innovation capabilities?
The difficulty for many is that innovation is a complex process that has many intangibles within the total mix to manage. Management today is far happier managing the ‘harder’ aspects of business, the current physical ones of everyday organization, not the ‘softer’ more intangible ones, where innovation often lies or emerges from.
The approach we take to embedding innovation in all its forms is a unique one that we call the Pathway Curve Methodology.
Innovation needs to be worked at, to grow into a deeper understanding, over time. It needs to be understood in all its different forms and often many can become confused and disappointed by their initiatives by not taking a more measured approach to them.
Innovation building faces a multitude of obstacles to overcome so innovation has a chance to be embedded within an organization.
I was recently working through a set of older presentation files and came across this extract concerning innovation again and thought I must share this. Sadly, it rings true as much as it did those (many) years back.
“Strategy is useless without innovation; innovation is directionless without strategy”.
Below is an extract from “Reinventing Innovation” by John J Kao. For me, it is sadly as relevant today as when I first came across it, some years back. Are we making real progress in our innovation activities?
You get this increasing sense that the ‘fizz’ has gone out of the innovation bubbly, we are seemingly in a trough of innovation disillusionment. The innovation party presently feels a little flat.
When we turn up at those creative innovative parties today the numerous delicious canapés to choose from are turning up at the edges as we are becoming disillusioned, just being fed on a present unexciting incremental innovation diet, lacking any real substance.
We are not being challenged, we are being constrained, bored and fearful of taking bold risks
People are milling around with that bored look on their faces, some are also slumped down checking their watch or smartphones on when is the best time to cut out and find somewhere else to be, rather than be here. Has the fizz gone from 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.
