Molecules - Innovation Thinking and Resources

Should any innovation be nationally structured?

By @paul4innovating September 9, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

In a recent article I submitted to Social Innovation Europe, they are building and streamlining the social innovation field in Europe, I made some arguments against national borders for social innovation, actually, I’d say any innovation, even in its organizing values.

We simply miss to much in today’s globally connected world.

Let me explain that part here on ‘the why’ that I believe in this:

Innovation is simply not containable within borders
Firstly innovation is not containable within borders; not ideas, not practices, not final concepts.

If we try to simply constrain it, it will never get the traction and momentum often needed from those ‘great ideas’ born locally, to ever grow and scale and achieve their true success.

Nationalized innovations are never seen or valued by others, and even more importantly, they aren’t seen and adopted as ‘our own’ solutions.

What are the new paradigms in innovation?

By @paul4innovating August 26, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

There are some huge shifts taking place across innovation activities, are these paradigm shifts?

The simple fact that innovation has been thrown open and organizations and individuals can simply explore outside their existing paradigms is offering us something we have yet to fully grasp and leverage. This is a W-I-P for us all.

Secondly innovation is simply getting faster, better is another story, but it is expected to move from idea or concept to final launch in ever decreasing compressed time

As they say ‘you can’t have one without the other’. Open innovation is potentially allowing for this compression of time but where we still ‘lag’ is within our organizations to reap the rewards. Why?

We are still stuck in the previous structures, systems and processes designed for internal developments that were designed for different times.

We need two really critical things really fast.

Innovations ‘rates of exchange’ require better understanding

By @paul4innovating August 19, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Innovation happens across time. We often constrain our innovation because we ‘shoe horn’ any conceptual thinking into a given time, usually the yearly budgetary plan seems to exercise a large influence in this constraining. We should make the case that different types of innovation operate and evolve over different time horizons.

I call this the innovation rates of exchange.

A little of the theory: Coherence between organizational context and coordination of outcomes is subject always to those natural tensions of planning, resource allocation and the time imposed. Often decisions have a real tension built into them and they ‘shear’ against the real forces in play.

Like our tectonic plates ‘shear’ and cause earthquakes, the ‘shear’ effect has a disruptive influence on innovation outcomes.

Often the time horizon of possible desired innovation often has these real conflicts. The actual realities and needs of the organization we lower the innovation impact in final delivery. We fall back on incremental solutions as the organization does not have the patience, appetite or desire to see through the potential fully.

So that puts the theory out there.

The Navigation of the Three Horizon Framework- An Emerging Guide.

By @paul4innovating August 17, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I have planned to explore in three simultaneous blogs, a trilogy of blogs, the three horizon model more extensively. It is a most valuable one to build into your thinking about strategy and innovation.
This is the final blog of the trilogy on the Three Horizon Framework and offers my thinking on an emerging framing to help in navigating through this.
The need is to define your different horizons.

Connecting the Future Across Three Horizons combining Strategy and Innovation

By @paul4innovating August 17, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Fresh thinking, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

This is part two of three blogs on the Three Horizon Framework and follows my one called “The value of managing innovation across the three horizons.” It further adds to the initial blog I wrote last year, called “the three horizon approach to innovation (http://bit.ly/ck8KfN). That blog gave a short introduction to the three horizon approach arguing we should take a more evolutionary perspective across the entire innovation business portfolio by using this model.
Going beyond that initial introduction in a trilogy of blogs, I plan to explore in this one, the second of these three simultaneous blogs, much of the thinking behind the Three Horizon model.

The Value of Managing Innovation across the Three Horizons

By @paul4innovating August 17, 2011Molecules

I wrote a blog last year called “the three horizon approach to innovation (http://bit.ly/ck8KfN). That gave a short introduction to the three horizon approach arguing we should take a more evolutionary perspective across the entire innovation business portfolio by using this model.
Going beyond that initial introduction- a trilogy of blogs

I plan to explore in three simultaneous blogs the three horizon model more extensively, this is the first of the blogs. Part two is here and part three here
The three horizon framework is valuable to build into your thinking about strategy and innovation. It places emphasis on where to tackle the different approaches to innovation (incremental, disruptive and radical) and place these within their different timing frames that are often need to manage these successfully across their development cycle.
The three horizon framework also allows for greater organizational participation on taking out ‘future thinking’ with different mindsets to visualize a variety of challenges in these various horizons and that has a huge value to work through and frame the activity and resources they will need over different time periods.

Economic growth is an outcome of the innovation trajectory we set.

By @paul4innovating August 7, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Today managing innovation is complex; often success is measured and valued by the creative destruction of others.

The ability to ‘evolve’ is very determinant of the knowledge base, either within a given economy or within a ‘federation’ to bring together as something new, offering more value than what is on offer today.

Innovation is highly dynamic in its constant change but also in its need of constant coordination of its parts.

Nations are Very Different

No one nation can just copy another, the same as one business entity cannot simply copy another, each has distinct characteristics, a history and a certain set of ‘physical’ boundaries on where it is located.

Different cultures, and different histories set each Nation apart.

The dual forces within our cultural thinking

By @paul4innovating August 3, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I lived for about fifteen years in Asia until a short while ago, and in the before and in the in-between period, I travelled there a lot and often felt the pull of different cultural thinking.

Participating in Asia, watching how Asia has evolved has been a real experience, that stays with you as something hugely valuable, as it partly shapes your thinking and how you look at things going on in the world.

Some events today set me thinking that resulted in this blog.

It was August 3^rd 2010, exactly one year ago today, I wrote one of my first blog entries for this site, entitled “The Yin and Yang of Innovation” (http://bit.ly/gXeWir) and talked about the ‘fluidness’ in innovation that makes it hard to manage. How do you get the balance right in managing the innovation activity?

I described yin yang as polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces that are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only exist in relation to each other.
Yin and yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole

Can innovation lead us to economic recovery?

By @paul4innovating July 25, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

After some recent #innochat debates (www.innochat.com) around innovation and economic recovery, including the future of Nations, of the US, and of innovation itself and how it needs an organizing framework to work more efficiently, I wanted to dig a little deeper, to get my own head around all of this.

We do have real problems in the world and we need to find solutions but something strange is happening and I was not sure I understood it. So I’ve been on a little investigative journey that is beginning to make some good sense, well at least to me.

A host of financial contagions has been heaped upon us progressively in recent years.

Renewing Innovation through the Social Innovation Agenda

By @paul4innovating July 22, 2011Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

The challenges are growing in their social dimension across Europe, the United States and a host of other countries, both developed and developing, that are needing new fresh responses.

Social demands will inevitably increase as nations are being confronted with budgetary constraints, increased deficits and mounting debts to resolve.

Social needs will become more pressing and innovation, social innovation, will increasingly explore opportunities to extract ‘more from less.

Innovation can play an increasing part in resolving social challenges that are increasingly confronting us.

Starting a new movement on social innovation in Europe

Recently I became a member of www.socialinnovationeurope.eu . I certainly feel this is going to offer something exciting and vibrant. It is a growing community of thinkers, creators and innovators with the knowledge and skills to change the way we face Europe’s most pressing issues.

Contributors to the site will take a strong hand in shaping the direction of social innovation across Europe, breaking down silos and raising a unified voice. I need to find my own part in this, as there are multiple ways for contribution, which I’m still presently figuring out.