• Supporting the capturing of ideas effectively both internally and externally of the client and then subjecting them to independent evaluations by the consultants own understanding and getting others involved (i.e crowdsourcing)

• Defining, supporting and communicating the long-range business strategy and the links with the innovation process alongside the leadership of the business.

• Understanding the innovation planning process and how to achieve input across the enterprise to align and effectively deliver. Providing the ‘glue’ to help make this work.

• Identifying and encouraging individuals with entrepreneurial skills;

• Indentify and empower individuals with the necessary skills to act as innovation champions, supporters or leaders in an emerging innovation process.

• Characterizing and delivering the customer’s needs; incorporating market links into the innovation planning process, seeing these with independent eyes.

• Establishing innovation metrics based on monitoring the broader benefits generated by the application of the innovation technology/ service/ product/ concepts developed and actively encouraging these to be adopted and, yes, actually measured.

• Positioning the cost and contribution of innovation in perspective and necessary returns. Show the client his  ROII (return on the innovation investment).

There are clearly many more I expect one can consider but  my point is this, they all point to the need of taking a  more ‘holistic’ approach to innovation by consultants.
As mentioned above, this holistic approach seems to be missing from many of the service offerings made by innovation consultants today- that of a complete view on innovation to provide good advice that is timely and more complete than the fragmented messages offered by many today.

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I have been working through my innovative points of focus, those that have, for me, my innovating purpose that needs constant referencing back and adapting to the future needs of innovation.

So here are my points of focus with a number of reference links that I have selected and written upon in the past. They help build out my narrative for innovation capability building and understanding for the future.

Asset Orchestration the new game around- structuring, bundling, leveraging the complex interactions. Asset orchestration is required for more dynamic innovation.

Dynamic Capabilities – opening up your thinking to dynamic capabilities by spotting and resolving the tensions, gaps, building a greater fitness landscape model that builds agility on a new pathway, strengthening and defining all the different stocks and flows

The multiplicity of Investment – transforming, integrating, identifying, contextual, common language, coherency premium

Value Creation – what is it, value creation resides where, wealth-generating perspective, a narrative to be broken down, integrated framework, impact points in new combinations and discovery

Innovation Capital – defining innovation capital,  the combination of the core sum, learning about, interactions, bundles, future value, recombine.

Innovation Infrastructure–  building-related innovation assets and dedicated resources, the architecture around innovation building, the connected building blocks, the innovation work mat approach.

Knowledge Management– learning how to absorb and translate in common ways the knowledge we need for innovation, recognizing how knowledge flows

Intellectual Capital – building our learning capitals, the importance to us,  the bundle of unique assets, agility and attitudes, collaboration, the building mechanism for organizational learning

Different Horizon Planning –  We need to plan in different horizons, to assign and think in different ways to sketch out the future sustaining pathway to meet the three different voices we need today, of articulating and innovating today’s business, adjusting the business of today to the immediate future by adjusting and update, and the longer-term sustaining one, that will offer a very different future from today, that we need planning and building for, today.

YOUR Business Model Innovation– articulating the value-generating story goes way beyond your organization, for today’s more compelling value propositions, it is becoming a critical interplay.

My final one is emerging as a repositioning towards innovation ecosystems. One of my posts was “Business needs innovation ecosystems” and I have been building understanding and knowledge on the influence of ecosystems and platforms consistently over a number of years.

There are so many points of innovation value, these are just a taster of all the knowledge, understanding and linkages that need to be built in any innovation capabilities for competencies and capacity to innovate.

Dip in, take a look, and go further by viewing the key reference tabs provided on the right-hand side.

The post Linking sense of innovating purpose first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

1. Firstly by exchanging fossil fuel hydrogen with renewable hydrogen for fertilizers and feedstocks
2. Secondly, exchanging coal and gas with renewable hydrogen for steel making and chemical production.
3. The Electrolysis method can bridge the gap between power and the industry sectors, increasing the value of electrons and provide the essential molecules.
4. The Electrolyzer can complement the intermittent renewable energy sources of wind and solar to form a complete energy source. Hydrogen can be stored, and the electrolyzer ramped up when you suffer variable weather conditions to offer continued energy, all based on renewable sources, solving the seasonal variations that wind and solar can have.

Hydrogen does the potential to tick all the boxes of the decarbonizing industry as well as be the alternative heat source fo building and through hydrogen fuel cells offer low-carbon mobility. Using renewable hydrogen can accelerate the shift to green energy and decarbonization as a replacement for fossil fuels. Finally, it has the potential to be substituted in many of the harder-to-abate industrial sectors reliant on hydrogen through steam methane reforming as well as compliment electricity and decarbonize the gas grids we presently rely upon.
Hydrogen is not an energy source but an energy carrier. It is versatile; it offers no greenhouse gases, particulates, Sulphur oxides, or ground-level ozone but does have a high Co2 intensity upstream if produced from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or natural gas. To make it green hydrogen, it has to be green, and that requires production through water electrolysis.
So We Are At The Time for Ramping up the Electrolyzer
I want to return to the discussion that Armin Schnettler EVP of Siemens Energy had with Kevin O’Donovan here. He was asked, “what are the technical challenges with the (PEM) Electrolyzers?
The reply by Mr. Schnettler was mostly about working on the fundamental technologies of Electrolyzers as the critical needs to make Electrolyzers Industrial ready. He pointed out the PEM technology is presently not mature enough, and this needs more robust solutions.
 The list of issues to tackle was in Mr. Schnettler’s opinion:
1) Certainly, get the capital cost down of the Electrolyzer
2) Make the Electrolyzers more compact, in their size,
3) Make sure they have high levels of reliability to operate in industrial application environments for 10 to 20 years and
4) Scaling up the Electrolyzers from the existing 4 MW to the next “ten-factor step” that seems achievable every 4 to 5 years and deliver the 100 MW plant solution next.
5) Finally, to get to these 100 MW solutions as soon as possible and then to 1 GW.
It was here he put it: “it is moving from MW to GW as the challenge (and opportunity)”
Why is this scaling up so important?
Just imagine Siemens have only delivered their latest Gas Turbine, the Siemens 9000HL model recently in the UK to work in a combined-cycle plant. Weighing in at just under 1.1 million pounds (497,000 kilograms), it’ll rotate 3,000 times a minute and generate 593 megawatts of power at peak, likely for decades. That turbine could be argued is “the pinnacle of today’s combustion technologies.”( Bloomberg / Siemens).
All these power generation technologies are competing; all are focusing on not just efficiencies but finding fuel systems that support that technology solution. Electrolyzers need to get into the big league of energy generation, pure and simple, to compete effectively. The pricing of the finished product of Hydrogen has got to get far closer to what the fossil fuel alternatives can deliver today in efficiencies and effectiveness and are matured through well-established solutions and integrated designs.
The significant upcoming advantage for the Electrolyzer is the marginal unit of power generation is coming from a smaller and smaller source. In 2020, the median kilowatt-hour generated in the UK will come from a plant of 596 MW of capacity. In 2040, the median kilowatt-hour will come from a plant of only 40 MW of capacity. (Source: Bloomberg). The other is by using the Water Electrolyzer (PEM) it is better to combine with other variable renewable sources for a faster ramp-up and giving a totally carbon-free fuel or product solution that offers a clean, sustainable alternative.
The commercial competitiveness of the electrolyzer will depend on the ability to advance the underlying technologies. These I will be exploring in my next post.
The need is for technology improvements of higher efficiencies, less degradation, higher availability, larger cell sizes, higher operating pressures, less reduced critical materials together with this need for reduced material size (Armin’s compactness). 
 Getting to this, the plants will require a significant plant production capacity ramping up and becoming more automated. That plant ramping up will need more automation production of the Electrolyzer cell components, the cells, and stacks to build GW scale electrolyzer plants. Then you will have a set of different challenges at the installing site, where the cost of electricity becomes critical. Coupling low-cost renewable energy with Electrolyzers makes them viable.
So the push by Governments brings up closer to the tipping point of building a significant renewable Hydrogen business in the next decades. Already according to Wood MacKenzie, the green hydrogen pipeline more than doubled in five months from 3.2 GW to 8.2 GW of electrolyzer investments by 2030
The plan in Europe is to take the share of Hydrogen from less than 2% to 13-14% of the European energy Mix.
So as we all look to Electrolyzers as the solution towards offering a power source of Hydrogen it is 1) the technology developments needed to be well-mastered, 2) to build out capacity volumes to bring down unit prices, 3) we need to see GW scale to make them industrially attractive,4) renewable integrated electricity- hydrogen partnerships and 5) integrated project development, construction, and installation approaches, so these solutions can ensure electrolyzers competitive. And that is a long hard road to travel between now and 2030 to get the Electrolyzer the Real alternative to other power generation options.
Exploring this further
So we need to look a little more at the Electrolyzer and see if it is scalable in asset readiness, system design, and value chain developed to offer an Industrial shift to Hydrogen in these next 5 to 10 years.
To understand this readiness and the issues to be addressed, I decided to take a further, more in-depth dive into Electrolyzers. You will find my outcomes from my research and piecing different parts of the Electrolyzer puzzle together over on my dedicated energy transition posting site: https://innovating4energy.com.
I plan to explore and explain some of the significant obstacles to be overcome in ramping up today’s “pilot” electrolyzers into full-scale industrial-grade solutions. Electrolyzer solutions than can compete with other power generation technologies, ones that are very mature and will certainly not yield their established market space without a fight and some compelling arguments of the reasons to change.
A more in-depth review of Electrolyzers can be found on my dedicated posting site for all thongs of Energy Transition by clicking this link “Show me an Electrolyzer.“

The post From MW to GW’s of Renewable Hydrogen using Electrolyzers first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Being in a personal crisis is one thing, but being in a global one is a whole lot different. So much is totally out of your control. You can rant and rave at some of the decisions have been made, or likely to come on some current performances.

Often you are left wondering where the insights or collective thinking was trying to offset the events that were unprecedented and scary but have now put us into such a massive economic downturn.

The decision to throw a protective shield around our health systems made sense, but the human suffering unfolding is going to be very tough on those that made these decisions, as it is to nearly everyone else. Facing this economic collapse is mindblowing.

We all are coming to grips with what this means in our working lives. We are in for immediate shifts in our working environment as we emerge from “lockdown.”

Innovation is going to become central to overcoming huge global problems of keeping our distance, inventing, and implementing the solutions to keep our “social distance” and know we are safe or not..

That will come from the use of the physical space and technology warning us of possible threats. Invention and innovation thinking will come to the fore; technology will be far more used to protect us, to notify us or alert us.

We will become even more reliant on our smartphone. “don’t leave home without it” will become a growing mantra. The reliance on our smartphone is going to mean we all can be identified, tracked in some form or other. Do we lose our freedom or do we gain our freedom?

If social distancing is going to be with us for some time, to protect the majority of people to being exposed to the coronavirus, this “distancing” makes for more remote lives, reliant on technology to bridge the human contacts of the past.

Separation is going to be high on our need to understand all of what this means in phycological and personal ways. What will this mean to our daily routines, as we unlearn and then rapidly attempt to learn a new level of normal

In some ways, Asian societies are better placed than Western ones.

In some ways, Asian societies have some advantages. They have social distance as part of their lives already. I wrote a post some years back “The ‘pull’ of the dual forces within our cultural thinking” describing several differences; we need to further explore the social distancing one that I did not specifically mention in that post, here.

There is real importance in fully appreciating sometimes considerable differences between not only cultures but ways different groups go about their ‘collective’ business. We need to recognize differences and balance them. Now is the time to also learn from Asia in this ‘distancing need’

“Hail and greet” become potentially dangerous.

We need to learn social distancing rules that are for many in Asian societies second nature. We like to hug, embrace, kiss far more readily; we like to get closer to the person we are talking too, which is the opposite in Asia. That formality, if you want to label it that way, gives them a better ability to distance themselves. We in the West exhibit a more extrovert manner, how will that change if we are forced to keep our distance due to the unknown enemy of this virus.

Will we want to shake hands as liberally as we have done, or will we take the guide from our Chinese, South Asian or Japanese communities that politely bow, nod their heads, or put their hands over their heart. Social distancing goes way beyond standing 6 feet away.

I was reading today this article Our offices will never be the same after COVID-19. Here’s what they could look like, written for Fast company. It is about the work being undertaken by Cushman & Wakefield as they have been helping 10,000 organizations in China move nearly one million people back to work. Using learnings gathered in China, along with World Health Organization data and the advice of medical specialists, the firm developed a new concept inside its own Amsterdam headquarters dubbed the Six Feet Office.”

The core premise is to ensure that six feet, the recommended measurement for safe social distancing, stays between people at all times. This behavior is encouraged through properly spaced desks, but also visual signals, such as a circle embedded in the carpeting around each desk to ensure people don’t get too close.

Can you imagine what this means in holding conference room meetings, those informal meetings around the “water cooler” or preparing your snack in the one kitchen space when you are required to have six feet or nearly two meters between you and the other person? How will that practically work? That goes way beyond any established practices we see today, anywhere.

Will we be structuring our days differently? We need to be creative and imaginative.

The daily meeting, gathered in the bosses office, can’t happen; it must be done at a distance. Perhaps we introduce the tannoy from years back, the public address system, where the daily “instructions” got broadcasted across the shop or work floor. Now that is a throwback, or will it come through a desktop message, as you log on.

Will we be using “instant messaging” even more? Presently these have served a purpose, liberally called collaboration tools. Still, the world of “distant collaborating” we are rapidly entering is going to bring out a slue of new tools to make this a newly emerging practice and business opportunity for many.

How will we be changing our work habits; how will we distance ourselves on public transport, for instance? Clearly, when we find a vaccination for the Corona Virus much of these new restrictions can be relaxed, but will they change our nature of work in the interim and the old ‘normal’ never returns.

Has the future of work arrived in a very unexpected way? The adjustments are immediate and huge.

Where is innovation going to rapidly figure in delivering the changes we all need to think about in this world, waiting for a vaccine not just to be developed but to be administered, to EIGHT billion people. How will we handle that, that needs a very creative way to track, trace, inoculate, and build the scale required.

How long will we be in this world of required “social distancing?” What do we need to change to recognize it is with us for some months or even longer.

The post The immediate shift in work and social norms needs innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

A growing reality might be that many people will be forced to stay at home until a vaccine is found, due to their risk of infection. Travel might become off-limits for many.

As we come out of the present crisis, we need to look at our social engagement and influencer profiles as we need to engage with the world differently. We will be in a greater world of virtual management, earning our “daily crust” from what we do at a distance.

This crisis period has become even more dominated by Social Media. What can this teach us?

What is being pushed towards us is overwhelming. We presently see the significant ramping up of webinars, @home advice, those multiple suggestions to fill our time but, is it making a real difference to you besides filling time?

It has one real problem. It is others talking to you. Your voice is missing most, and you need to be heard more than ever. You will need to begin to drive your significant engagement, not rely on others but your views and opinions!

All of this activity is being pushed towards you; you need to now organize yourself to “push back.” This is a time where you need to be seen and heard. You need to stand out and be recognized. This is a time for your social engagement.

It can be a time of significant distraction or time of thinking about what will help each of us to re-orient to a different set of realities and futures.

Are we ready for it, or did you merely ‘park’ your life on hold in these lockdown weeks? If we need to learn anything, it is simply that the world is going to be VERY DIFFERENT, so we need to start re-engaging differently.

How can we all be more productive now in what we do, learn, and get ready? We have become a “virtual online world,” and social media skills become increasingly relevant for each of us.

The changing world for Organizations- not physical events but becoming reliant on on-line and digital delivery

Many companies are struggling to keep themselves in ‘plain view’ to help continue their activities and shape the emerging needs when ‘lockdown’ or economic activity begins to return in the coming weeks.

The previous reliance on showcasing their latest products or technology will be less at physical events but in digital environments through a range of social mediums. They will be forced to ramp up their own social media present accordingly and many are badly prepared for this.

What about you as an individual, how will you be seen as “differentiated enough” to be part of the solution, not part of the problem? How can you be seen as leading and supporting your organization’s need for a “share of presence”, to step up and be seen as someone that could engage, amplify and influence others?

None of us remain unaffected from these unprecedented times

As we all re-evaluate our changing world there are realities that we all facing in this global crisis. We are about to meet some harsh realities that will mean we are all scrambling to rethink, to reposition ourselves to regain a new momentum after our economic lives have been shut down as well as our physical ones.

“Striking a balance between allowing economic activities and keeping controls tight enough to prevent a rise in infections “is likely to be the optimal strategy until effective vaccines become widely available, despite the fact that control policies, including social distancing, behavioral change, and public awareness will probably be maintained for some time”.- Guardian Article

We are about to enter a very different business and social world, where the name of the game will be to hold onto what we have got and fight for survival. We need to regain some level of control to balance our lives, as we feel that cold economic wind, one that will be blowing on us all. Will we find our income lost or that feeling that what we have known or achieved now seems all under threat? Possible, very possible.

A different business landscape could mean significant disruption to many of our own activities, all the way through to perhaps the end of this year, yes, the whole of 2020. We are facing a year of significant change in how we manage, prepare, interact, and provide value to others.

We are entering a highly fluid and rapidly adaptive world.

We are not returning to the old normal, that has gone, buried in the last few weeks. Where will our attention go, where will our creative energy be channeled, are we adaptive enough to make a switch, this is not a time for efficiency this is a time for being highly creative and very innovative. We all need to become far more “highly” creative to sense, respond, and react to very different marketplaces, to find our place within these.

The shift must be swift and decisive for each of us.

We must put on hold or totally abandon our past plans and goals. We must look to a  more ad hoc, opportunistic future to survive and respond. We can’t afford to be passive; we need to become personally engaged.

This is not just a wake-up call for the self-employed, or daily workers, this is about to sweep in and take many sitting in organizations.  Those that receive a regular salary perhaps about to face layoffs, downsizing, extended furloughs, and being told about all resizing that will all be very much in Corporate leader’s minds in the months ahead.

We need to recognize the economic tsunami coming towards us.  

We need a new plan. We need to get out there and present where we, as individuals, stand apart. We need to find creative ways to stand out. In many ways, social media has given us many of the tools and the abilities to shape our own futures, we are all on some level of “zero” or reset. We need to capitalize on our social contribution, we need people to see us and value this.

To be seen, we do need to communicate, or will we simply go back to being passive readers of other people’s thoughts and opinions? Or will we see this might become a “dog eat dog” world to climb back up the food chain?

Social media is in for a really very different onslaught of opinions, views, suggestions, appeals, and advice. There will be a very different set of winners and losers in marketing understanding and communicating their offerings. Can you position yourself to become active and engaged? We do need to get back out there and establish our presence.

What I think will not go away is the ones that position themselves in a new order of advocacy and influence. Emerging leaders or doers that offer an experience, not just “tweet” it on from someone else.

There is an urgent need to explore and experiment to determine your new “norm.”

All business activity has significantly dipped, in confidence and in the future, as so much is unclear, and regular activities are put on hold. Budgets and Resources will be reviewed continuously in this interim period of the remainder of this calendar year and beyond.

We all need an adaptive pivoting strategy that is continuously renewed. What can we provide in a world that is virtually online for some time and companies looking to re-engagement?

This is a time for the opportunity to develop new skills and communication capabilities in a world of changed expectations, where there is the need to act fast and decisively while maintaining flexibility in the face of uncertainties and making sure your views are heard.

Are you gearing up to a different world where you, as an individual, need to be seen, heard, and valued far more than ever before? My pivoting is very much a present work-in-progress, but I feel sure I am not alone in doing that.

The post We all need a different Social Media profile? Now. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I wanted to go back to one of my favorite frameworks, the Cynefin framework for partly thinking through the “known-unknown-unknowable” in our present world. We are seemingly more in the “unknown or unknowable” at present, perhaps in a world of disorder, in our understanding and actions relating to this coronavirus, a global pandemic.

The Cynefin framework is from Dave Snowden through Cognitive Edge. The positioning of Cognitive Edge is “making sense of complexity in order to act.”

I start by suggesting we need to find ways to navigate ourselves back into some (new) order; to stabilize the chaos we are in. What we first need to do is make sense of what is going on around us, we need to determine what actions to take and the level of action, resource and support each part needs. We need to constantly ask: is it clear, complicated, complex, or chaotic, or even worse, highly confusing. The Cynefin framework significantly helps us to determine what particular parts we are dealing with, in the decisions needed.

None of us today can predict when gaining a sense of order will come about while we are in the middle of the pandemic. Yet we should attempt to understand why certain decisions being made do make sense, others perhaps not.  In any chaotic situation, as we presently are,  the overriding need is to stabilize and determine the constraints to quickly establish some level of order.

We do need to make sense of this current global disorder so we can begin to act in a very different world

The best place to start is looking at this great framework from the present context, one where we are in disorder, possibly in chaos or seemingly chaotic, is recognizing not just how events are “hitting us but how we need to get out of them”. We are at this high level of concern at present. The “making sense in order to act” is paramount to reduce fear and bring some sense of order to our present world..

When there is chaos there is a certain reality of fear and uncertainty. The absolute urgency is to stabilize the situation and take what seems chaotic or in disorder and apply the rule of Act- Sense- Respond. It is crucial to reduce the pressures and find solutions that bring quick and decisive order.

In the Cynefin framework, you need to Probe- Sense- Respond or Sense- Analysis- Respond at the minimum, to gather the facts, makes sense of theses and make decisions to take Chaos into managing complexity at the very least. The need is always to respond in a crisis to reduce disruption and fast gathering pressures.

So, where do I start to explain this framework a little more?

I attempted my explanation some time back of the different framing domains in this post “The Use of the Cynefin Model for Innovation.” At the time, it was for framing innovation as these can pass through each of these domains, or actually, it can help those innovating to recognize different opportunities to innovate differently.

Let’s describe the domains that are highly relevant here in this pandemic crisis.

When you are faced with the chaotic domain, this needs a rapid response. This requires clear leadership and direct communications to attempt to impose immediate actions and re-establish order.

Then there is disorder, not knowing which domain you are in, and we often struggle to recognize which one we want to be in and if we stay confused, this disorder stays with us until we impose order, structures, or clarity to the thinking.

Finally, to complete the understanding of this disorder, Dave Snowden has recently renamed this domain of Disorder to Aporetic/Confused (A/C). The OED defines aporetic as a state of “perplexity or difficulty” Aporetic means “at a loss” and indicates an unresolved confusion, or a paradox, as it can all too easily produce catastrophic failure. The prime example of this has been in the current coronavirus where Governments imposed strict movement conditions and shutdowns far too late, to not avoid the spread of this virus. Thus that boundary is represented by a cliff, or more technically as a catastrophic fold.

Helping to explain this framework further, as it really is an essential frame for our thinking at this time

To help further explain the value of this frame to those unfamiliar; there is no better place than refer to those that are far more expert in understanding this framework. I liberally quote here from Chris Corrigan who explains this really well and its value in understanding complexity and how to frame it.

In a recent, beneficial post from Chris Corrigan, “A tour around the latest Cynefin iteration.”

He describes the Cynefin framework well extracted from this post:

“First, it’s helpful to orient people to the framework. To begin with, it has five domains: the one in the middle, plus four others.

“It’s helpful to think of the domains as a slope, starting high in the bottom right and tapering counterclockwise around to the bottom left. The domain in the middle is the most important for me, and the most underappreciated. It is the domain of Confusion (it used to be called Disorder).

The domains on the right side are “ordered,” meaning that stuff there is largely knowable and predictable, and problems are solvable. These Clear or Complicated domains are distinguished by the number of interactions going on – the more parts in the system, the more Complicated it is – and the level of expertise required to know what the answer to a problem should be.

The domains on the left side are “unordered,” meaning that situations are unknowable and unpredictable. This is the world of Complexity and Chaos. These are distinguished by the way the system changes, self-organizes, and creates emergent phenomena. Complex systems exhibit emergence and self-organization, and Chaos displays the lack of any meaningful constraints, that sense of randomness and crises.

The further you go counterclockwise, the more unordered and unstable the system is. If you go clockwise, you introduce stability and order to the system. Stability lies clockwise of where you are now, and instability lies counterclockwise. It is important to note that this is true until you get to the boundary between Clear and Chaos. That is like a cliff. One falls off of the Clear domain into chaos, and it is difficult – if not impossible – to recover and clamber back up to the well-ordered world with Clear answers.

Most helpful for understanding strategy and the use of the framework is understanding how constraints work. From Clear to Chaos, one can move through the framework using constraints: Clear systems have fixed constraints that can break catastrophically and can be repaired easily f you know what you are doing. Think of a water leak. If you know how to repair it, it is a simple matter to do so. If you don’t, you fall off that cliff into Chaos quite quickly, and it takes a lot of time to get back to normal.”

So at present, with the CoronaVirus, we are in the complex, chaotic, confused/conflicting stages.

Then there is no better place to go than with Dave Snowden. Dave is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. He focuses on complex issues relating to strategy, organizational decision making, and decision making

Dave wrote some timely posts recently, a series of five posts under “Cynefin St David’s Day 2020 (part one link) to his final one (5 of 5) within his Cynefin St David Day series. They are most useful to read if you are interested in deepening your further understanding of this framework.

One particular point that he makes is this need to quickly manage out of the confused and chaotic state of the A/C domain. When we are in high levels of confusion, we can soon slip into further chaos, and that is something to be clearly avoided.

As we manage out of the chaos, we need to keep these points in mind

The three key opportunities Dave Snowden suggests we can do in these chaotic, confusing times are, I summarize or quote here from a post he offered recently:

1. 1. You’ve never had a better chance to change things. Things will never be the same again but hopefully, we can use this time to come out more strongly, more resilient in the face of the wider challenges to come from global warming and more deadly pandemic.
   2. Start to learn at all levels now, as we also need to capture the day to day narratives as close to the point of learning as possible to manage differently in the future.
   3. His third point for me is the most important  I quote: “Retain diversity of response, not everything is chaotic and understanding the diversity of systems and sub-systems can allow you to apply the appropriate methods and tools in context.  There will always be complicated and often clear actions and techniques; decision making needs to stay agile not plunging into a single domain but maintaining awareness of them all and the movements between them.  The more we can shift from complex to complicated the easier it is to scale things, the more we can prevent entrained patterns of thinking and response from preventing that diversity the better.”

So the Cynifin framework really helps us make sense of our present world

Where it was, where it is at present and where it needs to return too or actually be reframed as a world that needs different order and thinking. Does it help you to make a better sense of how actions should be framed?

I leave you with this quote;

*****

My next post starts thinking about an innovation pathway that helps us to break down how we need to build our thinking in new creative, innovative ways. We need to return to scale and rescope and re-boot the global economy, but I would argue these need to be in different ways.

For example, our energy source should be based on our needs to accelerate the renewable sources and reduce the fossil omitting ones of gas, coal, and oil. Our purchasing habits need to change from constant consumption to more reuse. We are in a crisis, but in this, we need to emerge differently. Have we been outsourcing strategic supplies to the point of over-dependence on other countries? Is this correct, or can they be managed differently but at what cost?

The post Focusing on moving from disorder in today’s world first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Even if this is one month, two months, or longer, we need to become creative and innovative. We cannot be held in this “frozen state” for long without looking to become economically productive again. It may be in different ways, in new roles, or in transition until we have a higher “grip” of what we can achieve in a very volatile, challenging world.

If we remain in our present states, then what I suggest as a ‘frozen state’ remains, we default back to what we know, based more on repeating patterns, believing everything is orderly based on efficiency, effectiveness, and doing what is necessary to manage daily. Well it is not, we are in chaotic and unpredictable times.

This, regrettably, is simply not good enough in today’s world as it has changed so radically in these last few months.

We need to look differently at so much, but all of that comes in “good order.”

Do you recall Kurt Lewin’s model suggesting there are 3 steps to work through as a model: Unfreeze- Transition- Refreeze.

Firstly we need to unfreeze the existing situation the world finds itself in. We need to find a vaccine, we need to test for antibodies and “test, test, and test” to know where each of us stands in this coronavirus world we now live in. The difference is not just life and death that many are caught up with at this very moment.

We all are caught in this world crisis; we are in as much disruption and uncertainty as is possible, and “we” cant’ allow this uncertainty to manifest itself too long. We need to return to some level of certainty.

Let’s look at some thoughts on moving from uncertainty back to (a degree) of certainty.

We need to apply our thinking so we can begin to unfreeze, transition and refreeze

What does that mean? There are plenty of techniques to help in this, but I have taken innovation as the focal point as we all will need to become creative, adaptive, fluid, and flexible to changed situations. So to name a few:

We need to firstly unfreeze.

1. Burning platforms-  we have the most significant crisis this world has faced, as we have so much more dependency than in the past. At present, there are far more of those “burning platforms,” Burning platforms are potent drivers of strategic change. They are what happens when there is a real and immediate crisis, we are faced with difficult and challenging choice. Your choices might be irreversible and have a high risk of failure.
2. We have all been shaken out of our comfort zone.  What will help us unfreeze and capitalize on some rapidly emerging and “breaking” opportunities? Are we looking for these or staying immobilized in fear?
3. Provide your own proof points that the present situations you are facing are threatening- that cold hard evidence
4. Restructuring deliberately to force change into ‘our’ system in our thinking, in our habits, in our expectations
5. Revise and adjust past goals and visions to rethink immediate objectives- how do I/ you move forward?
6. Unlock and seek out opportunities to learn, to be trained in new thinking, different techniques and methods
7. “Nothing comes towards those that wait” we need to expect rewards far more on measured outcomes based on your own creative and innovative activities.
8. Recognize that many of what your previous contributions made do honestly make up the past, not so much the future of what is needed to be achieved, based on a very different understanding of growth and wealth creation.

Then we have to make a set of transition points.

These are the fuel to keep your innovation engine nourished and moving in the new innovation point of your direction.

1. How can you inspire others to achieve some remarkable new things to change the existing situation?
2. Can you act as the internal and external stimulus to others in coaching, inspiration talk’s, providing ideas, offering creative thinking, sharing with others to build different and valued new value, someone will buy or invest in.
3. Set about your own organized training and education program, understanding that this moves in steps of learning, so take this in stages of absorbing the lessons and then find creative ways to apply them.
4. Re-educate yourself by being more exposed, not staying in denial, to stimulate fresh alternative thinking, both with yourself and in areas of a business opportunity that you can ‘take, adapt and apply’ appropriately.
5. Offer open spaces, ‘safe’ environments to learn and experiment, to reach out and exchange with others. We all need to openly discuss within our “trusted networks” but also rapidly extend that network fast that we need each other. Each of us will need to experiment, to trial, and sometimes fail but learn from these moments the positives and re-apply them in new ways and lessons discovered. Be highly adaptive and flexible here.
6. Find your “innovation champions” to listen too and to learn from. Ones that can provide you the support environment to ‘go-to’ so you can relate and identify with. Just listening to others and their experiences can give you rapid insights.
7. Push beyond incremental creative innovation by slowing turning up the heat so it gets more visible and noticed. Start not slowly but announcing yourself to the new world and what you offer has some real depth of thinking behind it.
8. Learning to take first baby steps needs to be followed quickly as you need to keep improving the pace within your activities by applying the techniques of different experiments, prototyping, piloting methods, and approaches. Grow the confidence and talk of the learning from any failures along the way to improve. But keep reiterating like mad.

Lastly, we look to refreeze the ‘state’ into a new innovative one.

We actually do need to refreeze but in a more responsive, proactive, agile way – with clear innovation intent to achieve an end goal. In today’s world that is to secure reward, economic and regular work

1. We need to burn any bridges to ensure there is no way back to the old ways, where old dreams were based on those past days and reset these in new future-orientated ways, that are realistic and others can identify with.
2. Make sure you achieve the ‘show me the money moment’- your evidence stream of work activity and success.
3. Keep the focus on being ‘relentless’ and focusing on the future and why being consistently creative and innovative is an essential part of this in increased activity and performance and your sustaining value.
4. Keep returning to the ‘rationalization’ of this, re-evaluating and adjusting it to what you have learned, so each action is a validation of a path being traveled that gives you scale and scope to recovery, contribution, and offers your economic engagement.
5. Make sure rewards are aligned to any new ‘innovation’ ways, sometimes trading different forms that put food on the table, protect your family, and gives you various levels of economic bargaining points.
6. Build all the efforts over time, they will come by being determined, focused but highly adaptive.

Passing through these three learning stages

Unlocking any persons creative and innovating potential always needs to pass through different learning stages. Focus on  your ‘unlocking’ point in each of these three phases we all will pass through.

Do not let yourself by frozen in the past; we must all find ways to “unfreeze so we can pass through the transition phase and be well-prepared to “lock-on’ to new opportunities and then freeze these.

My final piece of advice is these are highly fluid times; we will continuously see shock and disruption, so keep a constant need to “unfreeze, transition, and then freeze until you need to do this again.

Eventually, we will get to a reasonable state of ‘freezing’ of feeling we are in a new norm.  Presently this is totally out of your hands in when the crisis is over, but your job is to rapidly pass through these phases to make your change and get you equipped early enough for a very different set of challenges in a new world, post Coronavirus.

****My next post relates to the Cynefin framework focusing on moving from disorder back into (some form) of order, we need to repurpose our lives beyond them being simply “on hold.”

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The expectation ‘bar’ needs to be raised from those practicing innovation, I feel the constant need is for those working within innovation; they have this real need to raise their game significantly. Innovation needs organizing but it also needs a better understanding of its contributing parts.

Learning and Education should always start with us.

The earlier we learn, have open interactions and form linkages, the more we will be ready to advance innovation into what it must become: a discipline highly valued for what it contributes with in terms of wealth and growth potential. Our knowledge becomes a powerful enabler to building out our networks, we are valued for what we know.

We need to find the determination to underpin the capacity for innovation, lying within us all, and that comes from knowledge and education through collaborative learning. So what is your capacity for innovation really like within your organization? Is the learning required for innovation set up in structured ways or left to individual learning and experimentation?

Do either structured or informal ways feedback into the organizational learning system to benefit others? Or is the knowledge gained just left ‘resident’ in the person, not being put to that greater use?

Knowledge exchange is the way forward but we need to avoid the easy paths.

Organizations need to move well beyond their lazy reliance on best practice comparison and they need to find better ways to explore emerging practices. But that takes many into the realm of increasing uncertainties, and most people and organizations are not trained for this exploration and experimentation.

It is easy to copy but we often fail to recognize all the context, all factors that went into making it that one specific organizations good practice, and I guarantee these are not yours!

Best practice does have their comparable uses, but it is your focusing on your own unique issues and needs, that you discover your emerging methods within your own organization is the area to focus, for learning and wanting to improve into those that make your practices really work. Then applying, experimenting and learning from novel practices that provide growing confidence in creative thinking.

Also give some thought for the next practice, those practices that prompt reinvention, they unlock barriers.

New practice gives us all the chance to start such totally fresh thinking, they challenge existing paradigms and move you towards considering new business models. We should always look beyond ‘simple’ improvêment and push out beyond existing thinking into new thinking, that ‘see’s’ things differently. It can radically alter your thinking and enable a breakthrough that provides a new ‘strand’ of value.

Organizations constantly anticipate risk by reducing all the variables within risk and play safe with just being incremental. Is that wrong? No, partly but yes far more! We are in a very volitile world, we need to contain risk but we need novel practicies to deal increasingly with these new complexities. Yet as long as we have our reward systems geared to short-term performance, while we measure leadership success the way we presently do, and the shareholder just expects consistent dividends as their part of the (current) equation, we stay trapped in only offering the predictable. We need to learn differently so as to quickly mobilized and force change if it does not meet this immediate aim of resoving barriers and problems we seem to be coming up against (constantly), we head down the wrong path if we stay on the existing one.We need to venture out and be ready to explore, learning and knowledge contribute to us seeking out new experience where we gain within ourselves.

We are not sustaining our organization and we are not advancing ourselves either, we are destroying much in our current approaches if we do not explore and experiement. We do need to focus more on the competence-enhancing not competence-destroying aspects and that comes from learning and acquiring new knowledge and fresh insights.

We need to re-balance the “risk and opportunity” to push our use of new knowledge into fresh innovation that ‘advances’ on the existing. To recognize the difference, we need to encourage knowledge to be ‘freely’ exchanged, and then provide the environment to encourage a re-educating on ‘seeing and exploring’ new possibilities that allow us to grow.

New Knowledge helps us relate to change, we can see more of it coming and are ready to absorbing it.

As the challenges we are all facing today seem to be coming faster at us, increasingly far more complex to decipher and then re-evaluate, then often we wonder how we should respond. To achieve faster response we certainly need to educate the organization more than ever to open up, to explore, to experiment and search for new knowledge understanding.

We need to absorb more, we need to encourage learning more especially to pursue innovation. We need to actively set up learning ways within our organizations to establish their abilities to recognize the value of new, external information (knowledge), to assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends.

Can we recognize that choosing the tougher pathway of building our own distinct capabilities, learning block by learning block, is the right one to follow? This allows us to build capacities that are ours

Finding our own way relies mostly on us to find the answers, our answers to our problems to solve. We grow by seeking out our knowledge that we need to progress,  as it feeds our minds to find out unique ways to contribute and share.

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In the last few months, I have got increasingly nervous about where we are NOT going on climate change

I have never before published one article on each of my three posting sites. This post I just had to. It is shaping me in how I look at innovation, collaboration, the power of networks, ecosystems and most of all, in our world of energy transition needed to reverse climate warming. So apologies if you see it on three separate sites but I don’t apologize for my real, underlying concern on where we are seemingly heading as a world.

The bush fires of Australia have been shocking, devastating, and crippling. They catalyze the concerns we all should have.

Each of us might or likely will face a shocking, devastating or crippling “event” in our lives in the next ten to twenty years. I feel it is inevitable, irrespective if we stopped all the debates and did the level of investment, we need to reverse the climate warming.

The next ten years of our investments in cutting emissions and refocusing our energy needs must go towards clean energy (renewables). Our ability to make a change will determine if these events recently will become the new norm, as our planet spins even more out of our ability to control climate-warming through greenhouse gases.

So I have to move through this shocking, devastating, and crippling effect but have I have begun to accept  the reality that our world is in a “state of climate alarm,” not just a “climate emergency.”

So my emotions are swirling at the moment.

Shocking and devastating was the size, the velocity, and how the fires caught hold and devasted so much of parts of Australia in land, plant and animal life, as well as the human cost and tragedies. As you read of one fire breaking out after another, you became “in awe” of the firefighters. Lacking decent equipment to fight this scale of the fires, they showed all the “Australia pluck and fortitude” they are known for. What a battle. With the intervention of some significant rains recently most, if not all of the blazes seem to have been extinguished; thankfully

Crippling has been the debate since then, and it is only just started. Australia is caught in the middle of the global and country debate on coal. Our need for it versus the need to stop using it. Asia is so reliant; at present, on coal for its energy, we are caught in a real problem.

Energy security is for everyone, irrespective, but while we have this Asian dependence on coal, we are going to struggle very hard with combating climate warming. The carbon emissions from coal are our equivalent “runaway train.” It needs stopping before the damage is beyond repair to our global planet.

Each time I return to the Australian bushfires, and all this means for them and us, I keep wondering is this the “crippling” debate we are going to have in all parts of the world? Can we afford this? The political pressures for coal to be still central to Australia’s thinking is simply staggering.

Then I heard the comment “politics, economics and climate” and the different perspectives.

Another alarm bell suddenly went off for me. I was listening to a podcast by Giles Parkinson and David Leitch “There is no new normal in climate change” (listen to the first 5 minutes if nothing else) introduced me to David’s “its the difference politics, economics, and climate.” Actually, that sums up nearly each “debate” I am reading, engaged in or listening too in recent months. It is politics, economics, and climate differences are today’s debate.

How much longer can we afford to wrangle over these? Saving our climate should be in most if not all our debates and decisions, politics and economics need to get behind, otherwise, they grow in size and scale.

Can we be so much nearer to some (horrific) tipping points?

In the last few days, I have also been reading on the nine different “tipping points” going on. This is an article from Carbon Brief on their “explainer of the nine tipping points that could be triggered by climate change”.

“ Imagine a child pushing themselves from the top of a playground slide. There is a point beyond which it is too late for the child to stop themselves sliding down. Pass this threshold, and the child continues inevitably towards a different state – at the bottom of the slide rather than the top.”

“The persistent march of a warming climate is seen across a multitude of continuous, incremental changes. CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Ocean heat content. Global sea-level rise. Each creeps up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.”

Passing an irreversible tipping point would mean a system would not revert to its original state even if the forcing lessens or reverses, explains Dr. Richard Wood, who leads the Climate, Cryosphere and Oceans group in the Met Office Hadley Centre.

This leads me to an article by Bob Watson. Does it seemingly get worse- oh, yes? In Bob’s “Nature is being eroded at rates unprecedented in human history, but we still have time to stave off mass extinctions.”

He states, “We have all assumed that nature would always be here for us and our children. However, our boundless consumption, shortsighted reliance on fossil fuels and our unsustainable use of nature now seriously threaten our future.

Environmentalists, scientists, and indigenous peoples have been sounding the alarm for decades. Our understanding of the overexploitation of the planet has advanced with grim, sharp clarity over that time.

We have entered an era of rapidly accelerating species extinction, and are facing the irreversible loss of plant and animal species, habitats and vital crops, while coming face to face with the horrific impacts of global climate change”.

Now I do not want to get into a bragging right position, but I have known Bob Watson since our teens. I stand in “awe” of him and all he has achieved in the years. He is now Sir Robert Watson and has been chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has influenced my thinking a lot on all of what matters on climate. How he crystalizes the issues is impressive whenever I have bumped into him or in what I read.

The other part of my past few weeks has been the “sense” the climate debate is shifting.

The message is we must take action”. It needs to be decisive and immediate as it is vital.

We need nature conservation and energy change.

In an article written in May 2019, John Vidal, a former Guardian environmental editor he wrote: “Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?”

This extracted from the article sums up our need to address and resolve:

“Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would clear up air pollution rapidly and save billions of pounds a year that the NHS must currently spend dealing with heart attacks, asthma, strokes, and respiratory illnesses. Cities would become more liveable, the countryside more attractive. Instead of being regarded by the government as a costly imposition, action on climate and nature regeneration could be easily recast as visionary politics offering huge public benefits.

But what happens when the voluntary measures run out and the warming is not seen to slow because greenhouse gases are so long-lasting? Really addressing climate and biodiversity collapse means rationing carbon. It means no more free ride for extractive industries such as mining, palm oil and forestry companies who profit from environmental destruction. It means heavy penalties for polluters, the axing of food and aviation subsidies, and taking a torch to vested interests. It means addressing the indirect causes of the crisis, such as population growth and consumerism, even rethinking the whole idea of progress and wealth.”

We are facing a crucial point in time; this decade is our last stand

How do you put together and explain the devastating effects of the Bush fires of Australia and put them into the context of where we live and what climate change will mean for each and every one of us? It is floods, crop failures, deteriorating air, fires, global epidemics, loss of habitat, loss of jobs as we increasingly live in a world of dealing with disruption and dislocation.

“What we’re seeing are the effects of climate change. Sometimes, it’s said that Australia is the canary in the coal mine with the effects of climate change being seen here most severely and earliest… We’re probably looking at what climate change may look like for other parts of the world in the first stages in Australia at the moment,” said Professor Dickman from the Faculty of Science.based in Australia.

If this comment is the reality then what this really will mean in any global action on climate, what will happen if we do pass a tipping point, how much more can we afford to lose in nature, in plants, in animals in our air we breathe before we face something that becomes “catastrophic”?

Do we have any alternatives? Is this too dark for you?

I come back to what made me sit up and realize. Today’s evaluation of anything we do is going to be based on “Politics, Economics and Climate” in what it costs, what it means, and its impact on us.

Which one dominates the others is not the issue; it is we need to make sure all three are of equal importance, yet we need to recognize climate action ‘determines’ the other two in bringing global warming under control. We have nowhere to hid in decades to come and if we do, it is only going to get a whole lot hotter.

I close by quoting Bob Watson “As policymakers around the world grapple with the twin threats of climate change and biodiversity loss, it is essential that they understand the linkages between the two so that their decisions and actions address both.

The world needs to recognize that loss of biodiversity and human-induced climate change are not only environmental issues but development, economic, social, security, equity, and moral issues as well. The future of humanity depends on action now. If we do not act, our children and all future generations will never forgive us.”

The post Politics, Economics and Climate need to come together. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.