Focusing on moving from disorder in today’s world

April 1, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Building Innovation Capability, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation

To borrow and adapt a phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald and those over at Cognitive Edge: “The test of (complex adaptive) intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

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.

Working through the current disorder we find ourselves in

March 31, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation

In times like these, we need to “unfreeze.” It is a necessary time where we need plenty of adaptive thinking on our needs to start thinking how we are going to emerge out of this “lockdown,” so many of us are in and apply our reasoning to literally “crank starting” the economy engine again.

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.

Seeking out knowledge that feeds our innovations

March 10, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation

Knowledge and learning 3The more we embrace change and recognize innovation demands more of our time, the more we must seek out knowledge that ‘feeds’ innovation. And the more we ‘push’ for learning, the greater chance we have of thriving in a challenging world.

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.

Everything is changing faster- can we respond differently in our Innovation work?

March 5, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Interests, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation

Suddenly we are stopped from traveling; we are advised to work from home to keep us safe from this coronavirus and catching it.  We have the choice of “self-imposed” or “company-imposed” time at home.

Time takes on a different meaning; we are cutting out those (unproductive) meetings, the train, car, and flight times, and we have the luxury to do what?

Well, it is offering us that luxury of actually having time to think and reflect. Now that is dangerous as it takes us off our ‘chosen’ treadmill of pursuit.

I was pondering some thoughts around the quest for growth, the demands for change, and the need to become nimble, agile, and more dynamic in what we do. We crowd out our days and never stop to reflect.

So I started to think a little more. Now that can be dangerous, and I am not too sure it gave me answers, just more questions. My starting point was the endless journey of innovation.

Politics, Economics and Climate need to come together.

February 13, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation

 

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.”

Recognizing different innovating capabilities to develop and grow

January 22, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation2 Comments

IFD Complexity WebA firm’s ordinary capabilities are the ones that enable us to perform efficiently and effectively, those essential routines and practices that often require having a high level of technical need supporting these activities.

In contrast, dynamic capabilities are those higher-level competencies that determine a firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure both the resources and skills to possibly shape, they have the power to transform, and then be deployed to meet rapidly changing business environments, to take advantage of these changing conditions. We need to seek out the dynamic ones and nurture these as they give us the real ability to grow and build our new capacity.

Recognizing the importance of Dynamic Capabilities

Dynamic capabilities are about selecting the right things to do and getting them done, while ordinary skills are about doing something right. The former implicates dynamic efficiency, the latter static efficiency.

Dynamics within the system are always dominated by the slow components.

January 16, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation

The worrying thing is within any dynamics within the system they are dominated by the slow components, and the rapid components simply have to follow along.  Look at how larger organizations operate when they are discovering and learning. It seems to take for ever.

They will often wait while one part of the organization is reluctant to make a decision, even when their part of the ‘collective’ decision is not one that has real implications, it is that ‘they’ expect to be within the decision loop and will undermine any deicsion they were not partly too. So many ‘breaking opportunities’ get caught out in the lack of dynamics or that real energy and purpose to decide. It goes into a perpetual loop.The opportunity becomes a struggle to execute upon.

“Slow constrains quick, slow controls quick”.

The only way to ensure speeding up is to be more coherent on the purpose, clarify the bounds and governing principles that need to be enacted and expect delivery on a clear, set timing. If one part simply ‘sits and waits’ what chance do you have of injecting something that might have a real impact, it gets reduced down, it gets pushed back, to a point where an original idea is unrecognizable when it finally emerges.

Organizations suffer constantly from unhealthy Innovation tension

January 9, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation

How often do you feel the tensions surrounding innovation?  A tough part of managing within larger organizations is in reducing the layers and competing forces, the underlying tensions that innovation (uncertainty) brings out?

Hierarchy so often dominates or dictates the speed of what we do. That is so often set in weird logic and a shrug of the shoulders.

Confronted by the need for gathering facts, innovation often struggles as much of this takes significant time and is often outside the organization’s present understanding.

It is in the pursuit of logic, and often this lacks real (hardened) facts that hold innovation back, as it runs on a very different ‘timeline’ too much of our everyday organization processes or approaches.

In this post, I aim to tackle the question of “Reducing the tension in the layers or structures for innovation.” It follows on from a recent post I wrote on “peeling away the layers of your innovation reality.”

This is a more extended read than usual, about eight to ten minutes, so be ready for that, please.

Peeling away the layers of your innovation reality

January 6, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Building Innovation Capability, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation1 Comment

So do we have a clear understanding of where we are in our current innovation capabilities?

We have to establish a way to map our ‘terrain of innovation reality’ is not just how we are performing but what lost opportunities have slipped through. Why well simply because we lacked the awareness to seize on these opportunities when we first spotted them.

We have significant gaps in our innovation capabilities and competencies. Have you ever really audited them? Taken them through a structured examination?

Achieving a more dynamic innovating environment

December 23, 2019Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, gaining innovation momentum, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation

There is a growing need for having some dynamic tensions within the organization’s innovation system; this helps generate better conditions for innovators to thrive.

We are continually learning more about all the different tools, techniques, and approaches available for innovation that will certainly help in putting the learning tensions into our work, making them more dynamic, linked, and increasingly relevant to the work-to-be-done.

We do need to embrace a more open, experimental approach to explore and then extend concepts, tools or frameworks that seem to work. I say “seem to work” as each situation often needs different paths to get the best out of any innovation work.

Yet before we jump into all the frameworks and tools that are available, let’s think about establishing the “common” environment innovation needs. Set this up, and you have the potential to create those dynamics out of your innovation activity.