The Three Horizon Approach to Innovation
The three horizons for innovation thinking
Drawing fresh innovating oxygen into the body
This must be the time of year for all those innovation reports to resurface for fresh innovation thinking. Recently I went back to the OECD report (opener here. http://bit.ly/buIiv8) and began to breathe in more innovating air.
Not bad from the OECD but that is one of their purposes in life I suppose. Why? A number of points stand out and using OECD summary headings, these were:
Policies need to reflect innovation as it occurs today.
We all do get stuck in repeating old ways yet the world and how it explores, experiments and investigates is constantly changing. It has become highly interactive and a multidisciplinary process with so much more need for collaboration across a diverse network of stakeholders.
Although it is getting more complex focusing on performance through innovation is very much a today thing.
People should be empowered to innovate
Will we ever learn to manage innovation to make progress?
I was asking myself when are we ever going to really learn about how to manage innovation as we seem to make so little progress?
Reading through the latest global survey results from McKinsey entitled ‘Innovation & Commercialization, 2010’ at http://fwd4.me/cRK and you must wonder with all the activity (and hype) surrounding innovation why we do not make the type of positive progress you should expect in innovation management.
There are very positive signs innovation is emerging stronger than ever from the recent bout of economic ‘flu’ we all have been going through. The report starts on a high note “84% of all executives say innovation is extremely or very important to their companies’ growth strategy”- yippee!
The darker side is the ‘but’- “little has changed in the way they generate ideas and turn them into products and services plus many other challenges remain remarkably consistent”- oh dear!
Do we ever learn?
The National Innovation Institute argument
Further to my last blog post on the need for a National Innovation Institute, I’d like to expand on this further as I’m presently here in Singapore and feel this is even more topical.
Always Singapore provides you with a positive impression when it comes to development. It is a country that consistently experiments and explores its options to grow its economy. Innovation is within this mix but I still think it should be more central, visible and coordinated to extract that little ‘extra juice’ often needed today.
Visiting Singapore on this trip I’ve been examining where innovation ‘fits’, and there are plenty of examples of experimentation backed up by investment seed money, but for me, innovation still lacks a certain coherency and consistency of purpose within policy.
I feel with the changing nature of innovation and its increasing value creation aspect it does need to be given a greater sense of attention, so further investments can build innovation deeper into the fabric of society.
A national innovation body can bring this coherency of purpose that Singapore strives for.
A Need for a Ministry of Innovation
I am presently busy preparing for a visit to Singapore. I balance my time between Switzerland and Singapore as my business base and as they are ranked 1 & 3 in the WEF’s Global Competitive Index, it is sometimes hard to get even deeper attention to innovation as this sort of ranking gives a certain belief, yet I often wonder why. I think countries often get blindsided in the pursuit of what they know and ignore what they seemingly can’t capture.
Let me be perfectly clear both countries I operate between, take competitiveness seriously; they both have a real need to maintain their attraction to foreign investment for their prosperity, as they have limited resources to call upon if you compare them to the USA, China, India or Germany for example, and do set about creating the right environment for this but they have their blindsides it seems to me still.
Sustaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation
A formula for sustaining competitive advantage through a structured innovation framework
The yin yang of innovation understanding
Can we recognize yin yang as a dual force of innovation?
Scholars tell us that there are two natural complementary yet contradictory forces at work within our universe.
The Chinese call these ‘Yin Yang’. Yin is regarded as more passive, receptive, more outside-in, whereas Yang is more active, creative and inside-out. These are seemingly opposing forces but interconnected and interdependent; one gives rise to the other, they actually reinforce each other.
Yin & yang seemingly have the following characteristics: they are opposing yet equally rooted together; they have the power to transform each other and eventually are balanced out.
Exnovations place in the innovation life cycle
I was some time back reminded about the term “exnovation” in an interim report prepared for NESTA by the City University, London and the Work Psychology Group entitled “Characteristics & Behaviours of Innovative People in Organizations.”
Exnovation is if you were unaware, is at the end of the innovation life-cycle, where it “discards” or even purges existing practices to allow the organization to adopt different and fresh thinking to any new innovation activities.
A number of writers have discussed exnovation but its first use was attributed to Kimberly in 1981, who described innovation as a series of processes which in combination define an innovation life-cycle (Fiona Patterson, City University for NESTA).
The real desperate need for innovation
A desperate need for social innovation is where we should focus our energies.