Leveraging the core of what we already have

The need to leverage our existing core first in any change

Embracing our core and leveraging these to the best of our abilities is a great place to start undertaking and preparing organizations for necessary change. This begins a journey so it is not simply efficiency we are looking for but achieving a much higher level of effectiveness to be ready to make changes ahead less disruptive.

Do you really know your capabilities, competencies and capacities?

In most cases, an organisation has a capable, familiar core – and improving the performance of this core will contribute a significant value at a lower cost and faster than introducing new tools, but the need is to understand the how, where and what.

Existing tools don’t often require being replaced by new technologies, but knowing the data flow and having greater analytics needs changing, updating and improving. Changing and improving existing processes can be much faster than introducing new approaches and tools requiring new skills.

Is this the early adopter stage for shifting towards a new Ecosystem design? Build on what you have first and then make a staged, purposeful move towards a change that is transformational, partly gained from learning from the existing first.

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Fears of those unknowns

The fear of the unknowns explodes upon those not ready

When the established order begins to creak and dismantle, seemingly in front of our eyes, those fears of the unknown can kick in, especially if you have been used to managing in an established (slowly) evolving way for most, if not all, of your business life.

We seem confronted with rapid change, and it is primarily within the business world related to technology and market uncertainty that is driving this. We need to counter “fear” with a different approach, recognizing most of what we feel might be the ‘unknown’ is actually ‘known.’

We need to recognize our unknowns, search out others who might be experts in that point of not knowing and gain their help in piecing the parts that might be fragmented together to bring that need for recognition and clarity in our mind.

Fear can immobilize us.

In a recent exchange I had within one innovation community discussion, it was suggested that Innovation Business Ecosystems did not have the expected uptake because of this “fear of the unknowns”.

What initially prompted this was my post on making the business case for “Thinking about Innovation Ecosystems” Well, we need to address fear to get past this mental blockage of the “fear of those unknowns”.

So this short post is on tackling fear and dealing with the unknowns.

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Innovation comes in different forms and problems, all requiring financial support.

Innovation & Finance needed for the Energy Transition in developing countries

Innovation has a very tough job of attracting the necessary money to take a concept or idea all the way through to commercialization. There is always that constant asking about the economic return and the associated risks.

Financing game-changing investments, replacing something existing or simply providing something new have tough financial questions always to be answered.

Here I am taking an innovation need in a different way than most are used to reading about. So what are right conditions to invest and realize innovation?

The Energy Transition is one of the toughest innovation challenges ever. We must remove fossil fuel as a source of energy, decarbonize our planet and replace it with clean energy alternatives of solar, wind, hydropower, nuclear and green hydrogen solutions. To make the transformation in just under 30 years is a massive task. So far, we are doing a poor job of this as markets, solutions, opinions, and financial support are all highly fragmented.

Tacking emerging and developing markets is even harder to achieve an energy transition.

Can you imagine what it is like in a developing country that lacks sufficient energy and infrastructure yet is faced with the sizable task of expanding its economy to meet growing population expectancies and the need for rising incomes to give that essential potential for growth that having energy available can provide?

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Innovation: the accelerator for the changes in our energy transitions

No energy transition will be achieved without invention and innovation, yet we are currently failing badly to fund research, development and deployment. We are losing the race to stop our planet’s warming as our innovative human endeavours are not at the level they should be, or we lack the “will” to make the changes we so desperately need to undergo to protect our planet.

The sheer scope of the energy transition often pulls me in so many different directions. Still, the foundation stays in place, that of making the contribution of my understanding of innovation as my focal point of contribution- the accelerant to energy change.

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An innovation framework that offers a formula for sustainable advantage

A formula to build a framework for sustainable innovation

Here is my solution that I think is worth working through first to absorb it and its combination. Then apply it to your innovation-building activity as a framework for innovation. Each time you are reviewing innovative activity, run through this formula in your head to see if each of the parts is embedded into the work.

I have worked on the formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE for many years.

In that post, I detail the make-up of the formula, made up of the combination of positive relationships between the following interrelated parts.

We are or need to be, in search of a sustainable future where we can constantly build upon innovation capabilities, capacities and competencies that can be refreshed, strengthened and sometimes reduced to meet the circumstances.

The formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE makes sense to me. How you build out these yourself further adds more uniqueness and source of advantage.

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Governance within Ecosystems

Managing Governance within Ecosystem Designs

Governance needs to constantly “account” for change. Here is a handy reference or reflection of its capacity to deliver:

You need a living environment, one that evolves constantly

+ Here, you must establish a relational, institutional and coordination set of strategic and operational approaches. The “living” document needs to reflect on the constant reshaping of the ecosystem as it evolves and recognize that this is a constantly evolving design.

+ Governance needs to articulate the influencing and coordinating mechanisms, their different levels, and the protocols and procedures to resolve any disputes or pathway directions all would need to follow and adhere to.

+ It needs to determine the boundary conditions and if and when these change, which they are most likely to, there is a mechanism in place to recognize this and determine any new scope, direction or design to be accepted going forward.

+ A governance document must have built into it sufficient commonality and be transparent in its spirit of amiability to coordination and decision-making.

+ It needs to determine the critical driving forces but equally reflect on the different catalyzing forces in tensions and design that individual members will attempt to impose, so there needs a resolution method to be able to go back and refer to.

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Gaining energy and idea generation

Gaining energy and idea generation

I have been asking myself how a combined effect of innovation and ecosystem design thinking will support the energy transition we are undertaking to give it additional traction and generation.

Let me share my thoughts and proposition here.

The vital “infusion” of innovation in thinking, approaching and building this into the front end of any energy transition provides a greater discovery structure and process that can greatly facilitate the changes, with more informed knowledge, insights and validation of a path to travel.

Finding fresh ideas and momentum Continue reading “Gaining energy and idea generation”

Exploring points of value in adopting Business Platforms.

Business Platforms provide the backbone of the Network.

Today we are still caught up in the validation and relevance of managing a business through platform thinking by making the business case of its value and impact. We should not be; it is time for you to hop onto the train.

The ability to present a compelling business case for the use and application of platforms is overwhelming. I think I have well over 100 plus arguments for their use, value, impact and application.

For me, platforms are needed as we face a very different economic landscape.

We need to choose where to focus in the future, where to concentrate our resources and attempt to bridge the fragmentation that is occurring. The world of collaboration, where we can find partners to share and reinforce what we do, is leading to new dynamics of combining.

Platforms are more viable and relevant.

Platforms allow you the opportunity to innovate in very different ways. They can add value through collaborations that can add more to the internal efficiency options through learning and sharing. Platforms help manage the difficulties of transitions we are all undergoing and change how we see the world through a broader collaborative set of lenses. Continue reading “Exploring points of value in adopting Business Platforms.”

Transforming What? Delivering Future Impact

Delivering Future Impact on Performance

As demand is more volatile today what becomes more important is the work to be done, not the work done.

Surprisingly Adam Smith identified this important difference back in 1776.

This can be explained as the work done is the accumulated knowledge, which has built up and been embodied in the firm’s results with the innovations achieved in the past and is seen as the tangible capital.

The work to be done is how well it can adapt to change. In the past century, we operated in the mass production era, with systems with standard goods and stable market conditions, the work done was equivalent to the ‘work to be done.

In today’s global market, with its rapid technology diffusion, disruptive and constant change with an emphasis on servicing the work to be done is more important than the work done and intangible assets are fundamental to this. Continue reading “Transforming What? Delivering Future Impact”

Sustainability will increasingly come through innovation ecosystem designs

Making Sustainability central to our future innovation capability building will be through the adoption of taking on a new open ecosystem approach.

Broader collaborations will become central for future organizations to find ways to cooperate, network and build relationships, that recognize the partnership value, to achieve a sustainable, future business that offers impact and connected design for customers to value, that meets their changing needs.

Today’s challenge is to build the capacity to be different, to sustain and accelerate the critical aspect that innovation, ingenuity and creativity can provide, with the additional stimulus for sustaining lasting growth.

Our thinking needs to reflect a longer-term horizon, beyond just achieving immediate results. The dividend of thinking for a sustainable future has the promise of greater value and recognition. The reward by customers comes from the value of resolving growing complex problems, which is increasingly coming through this understanding of ecosystem design and collaborative endeavours.

We need to build far more collaborative environments for exchanging knowledge and sharing. To achieve this the recognition of the value of ecosystems as central to any future design is becoming central to this need, to co-create and capitalize on a wider knowledge only available in an open approach. Continue reading “Sustainability will increasingly come through innovation ecosystem designs”