Balancing Our Innovation Understanding

May 1, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

Balancing the equationRecently I have been hearing a lot about different innovation equations that will deliver value on the efforts you put in.

I think the activity behind all of this is actually very encouraging, it shows the current dissatisfaction with what we have and the quest for providing a formula for overcoming this ‘present state’.

I think they are all contributing to a promising future. Yet we need to consider the balance within any innovation understanding or equation to derive its real value.

Shifting to Ultimate Outcomes

April 24, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation3 Comments

OutcomesMany organizations are struggling with their metrics and ways to measure the progress and success of their business.

From this writer’s point of view, their innovation activity gets caught up in plenty of unintended consequences, to put it mildly, in wasted debate, discussion & bad decisions through wrong measurement criteria.

Firstly, we are still locked in the old paradigm of thinking this is an industrial economy where we set about measuring inputs to innovation (R&D expenditure, capital investment) and then focused on the intermediate step of throughput and then outputs (publications, production units, patent filing, end products).

We also perceive innovation far too much still as an activity within just one company – viewed as linear, with considerations for services more of an afterthought (like ‘bolt-ons’). Production systems remain far too often the driving force of performance judgement.

Walkabouts are needed for learning and testing ourselves

April 15, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Tackling innovation7 Comments
Walkabout picture
photo credit: Walkabout (1971) film by Nicolas Roeg

How often do you pause for thought, testing yourself, questioning even simply for ‘just those few minutes,’  to allow yourself to openly challenge where you are and what you are attempting to do?

We keep relentlessly moving on, like a wandering herd of buffalo, always looking for fresh pasture, those new feeding grounds. It’s not good.

Of course, I often get caught up in this restless pursuit of gathering more, when I spend a growing amount of my time researching innovation. I keep coming across so many things that ‘trigger’ the thinking, pushing me on.

Do you let them go, ignore them, quickly pass over them, or attempt to capture the issue as something well worth investigating further at a later stage, or just get them simply behind you in the here and now.

Moving innovation into our core – Part three

March 27, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation Ecosystems, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Interests, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

Not fit for future purposeThis is the third and final part of this series on the rethinking within the management of the innovation system and how to view the core.

Part three– Technology will drive innovation change.

We are in need of a different sustaining capacity, one build around innovation as its continuous core; constantly evolving, adapting, learning and adjusting, in perpetual motion.

We are heading for transformational change

Digital technology and the cloud are offering us a radically different conduit to achieve a new engagement process within our organizations. Innovation is going to be very much caught up in this transformational change.
Technology and data will be innovation’s catalyst for change.

Moving Innovation into our Core – Part Two

March 25, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Interests, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

Papering over the innovation cracksA three-part series on rethinking the management of the innovation system.

Part two, recognizing the broken process we currently have that stops innovation from becoming a core.

The innovation process and the structures build into our organization certainly need to be changed.

I outline here different barriers that require a change to bring innovation more into the core of a business.

Today, we are needing to build greater agility and responsiveness into our innovative design to counter a more rapidly changing market, sensing changing conditions and ‘seize’ breaking opportunities. .

A new combination of speed, flexibility, networking and focusing on adapting and fusing the skills and capabilities needed, will require changes in our innovation work.

Our current structures and processes for innovation are holding us back and will continue to not deliver the expected results needed today or the future, giving real growth and sustainability. We do need a far more radical approach to a solution for managing innovation inside our organizations.

Moving innovation into our Core- Part One

March 22, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation5 Comments

Innovation at the CoreInnovation has sat outside the core of organizations’ central systems for long enough.

Arguably this lack of being a core as the central need of providing sustainable growth holds the deeper understanding of innovation back.

A core that could offer up the sustaining value and contribution innovation can make, to the growth and future well-being of organizations and having available the level of resources and commitments it needs. Today innovation seems to be falling short in delivering on its promise. Why?

A three-part series on rethinking the management of the innovation system.

Part one, building the business case of needed change in how we manage innovation.

This part is about those constant top-level concerns that needs finally to be addressed, if innovation ever can become core

What makes up your innovation capital?

February 25, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation, Uncategorized8 Comments

A new core Innovation CapitalIf someone came to you and asked the question: “tell me what makes up your financial capital?”

I expect you could answer this fairly comfortably.

It might need a little added help from your finance department but you could produce and show significant details that we are all ‘schooled’ to understand and generally have accepted, under common definitions and standard practice.

Our businesses are measured constantly on their financials, we produce a constant flow of reporting documents that provide useful insight and allow for a more informed judgement by present and future investors on the health of the company. We are ‘wedded’ to our financials and ignore the real value within our organizations of all the other critical capitals that generate and strengthen the business.

What if that same person came to you and asked instead: “what makes up the innovation capital of the company?’” could you answer this as clearly as the financial one – I would suggest most probably not. (By the way, if you feel you can then please let me know I would be more than interested).

We are focusing more on past performance and not future generating potential by staying fixated on just the financials within all that makes up our organizational  capital

So what makes up our innovation capital and why is it important to know?
Should we care, does it matter? I would argue it does, increasingly so. Within the innovation capital lies the future of the organization and holds one of the real golden keys to the sustaining performance of the company, or not.

We need the engagement platform for translating big data learning

January 25, 2015Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation2 Comments

Knowledge BuildingBig Data is knocking very loudly on our door, how are you going to let it in and manage it?

How can we liberate that creative energy we have within our organizations, how can we achieve higher engagement?

How can we learn, share and transform the knowledge that is all around us, simply flooding in? How can we translate the data flowing in with the knowledge insights and innovation outcomes expected? How are we going to unleash the creativity that goes with new knowledge?

We need to actively encourage connected minds for value-creating opportunities and knowledge sharing for innovation to flow right across the organization. All the raw data needs connected and engaged minds.

“For this, we need to think about installing a modern engagement platform that has the knowledge and learning as its beating heart”

Where are the new feeding grounds of innovation?

January 4, 2015Posted inAchieving 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.

Is the balance in innovation activity about to change?

November 23, 2014Posted inAchieving 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

New Technology Dawns 2Is 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