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I am a “transition advocate” for innovation, ecosystems, energy, and sustainability. I explicitly focus on the industrial and energy systems that are radically changing our world, which provides me with a platform to understand, build, and recommend many dramatic changes taking place that are relevant across all business environments.

• Transformational insights are seen at the front end of the transitions that we are all undertaking where innovation drives these changes. These observations are providing the “fuel” to underpin my supportive advisory & mentoring services to a client. This dynamic environment nurtures my understanding of what is evolving and what impact and growth opportunities this has for a business to explore and exploit by taking the innovator’s perspective into the assessment of the need of a client’s energy and industrial transition as my areas of focus to validate the value and worth of Ecosystem thinking and design.
• My primary role is advising and coaching in building innovation and ecosystem capability and capacity. The principal focus then is to support and build internal capacity and develop the external capabilities to undertake any transformation journey and make the undertaking sustaining, built on future-orientated approaches.
• I break my business out into dedicated focal topics into “big transforming” points of impact, applying understanding and insights that are in my mind complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections, for growth potential that has value-adding impact and business model change.
• The combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach has arrived, capitalizing on the value points of digitalisation combined with technology and human ingenuity; both in the Industrial IoT world and finding a growing place and pace in the Energy Transition, each is having, in my view, a very different combination effect for value creation and business impact.

My Innovation intent has been central to this period in consulting, mentoring, coaching and advising business entities, start-ups, not-for-profit and government agencies. This intent has progressively ‘funnelled down’ into recognizing the value of ecosystems as the business design for innovation in the future to thrive and deliver more significant value creation, especially in the Energy Transition underway. I run a specialized advisor and mentoring business called Agility Innovation based in Switzerland. It has an intense focus on its clients’ needs and is always looking to contribute to their specific journey. Consistent contributions from my posting sites, paul4innovating. com and ecosystems4innovating.com, provide much of the “creative” fuel in my contributions and worth in advisory work.

https://paul4innovating.com/about/

Agility Innovation Specialists are presently based in Switzerland Paul Hobcraft’s profile can be viewed on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hobcraft-innovation/ Contact Paul Hobcraft on his email:  paul4innovating@gmail.com

Innovation has been central to my work in the past twenty years, in coaching, advisory, consulting, and mentoring roles building sustainability through evaluation, growth impact, and value creation alternatives. A depth in research and analysis, with a continued curiosity of change and exploring transitions, has built my understanding in thought leadership, and the recognition of the major shifts to ecosystem designs, to integrate into future business designs leading to focusing on how innovation impacts the Business Ecosystem in thinking and designs

Agility is deeply committed to your success for innovation.

“Our objectives are to help identify promising business opportunities, develop innovation expertise and competencies, create value, and grow competitive and profitable businesses alongside you by being 100% focused on providing dedicated innovative support.”

Agility Innovation Specialists offer a real “intensity in innovation and ecosystem building in thinking and design” at its core.

The focus on Ecosystems in design and thinking is central to the offerings made

We constantly aim:

–  To find ways to disrupt the accepted, to reduce the barriers to innovation understanding, to achieve a greater adoption.
–  To constantly challenge your current practices so as to provide a fresh, possible alternative set of outlooks and alter those perspectives that can potentially lead to increased value.
–  Sometimes, we push into uncomfortable territory but always with a clear purpose of searching for improvement, not just for the sake of it.
– We seek out customers’ unmet needs and unexplored opportunities to give new diversity to any idea and accelerate its realization.
– We aim to strengthen your business’s core and extend its potential by exploring its adjacencies and white spaces.
–  To provide clear superior results that will give you fresh growth options and more substantial innovation outcomes.

We welcome enquiries; please contact paul@agilityinnovation.com

In terms of reach and recognition, Agility’s client work has been broad and extensive across business and government sectors and globally.

 Agility’s innovation work focuses on identifying today’s challenges and supporting the changes needed to build a sustainable future based on establishing a solid innovation core.

• We look to provide leading-edge advice on building innovation capabilities.
• The focus is all about bringing new forms of innovation competency into the world of everyday thinking through framework designs.
• We look to deliver a clear impact and returns on the investments made.
• We deliver a broad, more holistic understanding of what is required in innovation, unique to each client.

Client work, the industry area and geographical focus

We build frameworks that reflect today’s business needs and realities

Sector consulting experience has included advising into:

Electronic Contract Manufacturers, Telecommunications, Utility providers, E-business ventures, Restaurants & Food Service, Retailers, SME service advisors, Executive Recruitment firms, Government Statutory Boards, Publishing, Consumer Products, Alternative Energy providers, Not-for-Profit Institutions, Integrated Facility Management and Logistic & Supply Chain integrators.

Part of the practice has been a subcontractor of choice or consulting associate to other solution providers, often in back-office roles providing the specialised inputs critical parts of innovation, resource development and change management.

Geographic focus:

This has been mainly in Asia and Europe, but working with many US Corporations within these regions as well as large Asian and European organizations. Paul Hobcraft has lived and worked for 15 years in Asia and initially consulted and advised under an associate practice and then moved back to Switzerland to build and develop different networks and experiences all evolving out of the innovation focus.

Today Paul is based in Ticino, Switzerland and continues to work where the client requires their solutions globally to be designed and executed but increasingly recognizes that staying “put” and working more remotely is saving valuable time, money and travel but achieving a new engagement model that delivers, often, a more focused impact through technology touchpoints and targetted outcomes “*on-line” and at clients adaptable needs.

Paul Hobcraft can be contacted at +41 91 751 4350 or by email:  paul@agilityinnovation.com 

I am a “transition advocate” for innovation, ecosystems, and sustainability

specifically focusing on the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and energy systems that are radically changing our world

• Transformational insights are seen at the front end of our transitions that we are all undertaking, these observations are providing the “fuel” and underpin my supportive advisory & mentoring services to a client. This dynamic environment nurtures my understanding of what is evolving, and what impact and growth opportunities this has for a business to explore and exploit, by taking the innovators perspective into the assessment of the need of a clients energy and industrial transition.
• My primary role is advising and coaching within these areas. The principal focuses then is to support and build internal capacity, competencies, and capabilities to undertake any transformation journey.
• I break my business out into dedicated focal topics into “big transforming” points of impact, applying understanding and insights that are in my mind complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections, for growth potential that has value-adding impact and business model change.
• The combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach has arrived, capitalizing on the value points of digitalisation combined with technology and human ingenuity; both in the Industrial IoT world and finding a growing place and pace in the Energy Transition, each is having, in my view, a very different combination effect for value creation and business impact.

My Innovation intent has been central to this period in consulting, mentoring, coaching and advising business entities, start-ups, not-for-profit and government agencies. This intent has progressively ‘funnelled down’ into recognizing the value of ecosystems as the business design for innovation in the future; to thrive and deliver more significant value creation, especially in the Energy Transition underway.

I run a specialized advisor and mentoring business called Agility Innovation; it has an intensity of focus on its clients’ needs and always looking to contribute to your own specific journey.

https://paul4innovating.com/about/

Agility Innovation Specialists are presently based in Switzerland

Paul writes consistently about innovation, ecosystems and the future of business design, under paul4innovating on his blog www.paul4innovating.com and in different media channels specifically for innovation AND thought leadership, as well as some specialised focus, posting sites shown below.

Paul has been consistently voted in the top innovation knowledge providers since 2011 through his writing, providing different and often novel insights into innovation and the approaches we all need to take. He offers his personal views and experience on the DNA building that is required for innovation.

Related sites

Dedicated sites are my points of reference for others to explore

DNA building of Innovation: https://paul4innovating.com/
Capability Building for Innovation: https://innovationfitnessdynamics.wordpress.com/
Exploring the New Era of Innovation: https://ecosystems4innovating.wordpress.com/
Advisory and Mentoring Innovation: https://guide4innovating.wordpress.com/

With two breakouts of innovation advisory service

Pure Innovation Work: https://thinking4innovators.com/

 
Paul Hobcraft’s profile can be viewed on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hobcraft-innovation/

Contact Paul Hobcraft on his email:  paul4innovating@gmail.com

Place For Innovation Discoveries

It does not matter what you want to achieve through workshops, seminars, training or innovation dialogues, we can provide the stimulating environment to bring these together.

The workshop or dialogue itself, although important needs commitment and follow up. It has to have clear objectives.
Here are some opening thoughts:

How can we all broaden our perspectives?

What gives us a safe space to think and develop?

What allows us to ‘synthesize’ learning?

What can be a stimulus for new lenses of discovery?

What are we trying to achieve actually?

What do we need to consider before and after any workshop and dialogue?

 ******

Are we looking for a synthesizing space where we can Divergent, Convergent and then Evolve our thinking, deepened the knowledge and strengthen the resolve to move forward?

****** 

Offering different thinking can come through using Agility Innovation Specialists- bringing diverging into converging innovation wisdom together in one place adding new space and potential.

Firstly we need to achieve Innovation Foresight

It really is about knowing the needs, those that can be seen and articulated but also those that are the unmet needs, the jobs we are all struggling to complete but don’t have the ideal solutions to complete it without a lot of ‘spent’ energy and applying solutions designed for other issues.

When we have foresight we need to look at both the external customer ones and to encourage the organizational ones that need extracting and working upon. Then it is for the leadership to focus their innovation creative energies and attention on these two crucial aspects to find new innovation opportunity, it is pretty simple really! 

Well perhaps it is not that simple. Foresight can be a science unto itself…….but we can help you develop your foresight for innovation? Just ask us.

Moving from your Core

As you work through new business models, mergers and acquisitions you arrive at the question of how close are these to our existing core or do they build up other pools of core value?

Moving from the core needs some considerable thinking through on its potential impact within the organization

How far away and how important does any move become as you then enter the transformational space? Potentially you are committing yourself to considerable change, both in internal and external learning and resource commitments.

Equally ‘how far’ are you prepared to go in future designs of new product and services away from your core? Is the organisation equipped to make such a move? Knowing the pitfalls and dangers of moving too far is important to understand; often there is increased value in asking an external party who has no ‘vested’ interest to make their assessments.

Moving from your core in innovation and what it truly means is vital to think through before you embark on the journey.

Perhaps we can contribute to this thinking through assessment? Having foresight saves so much in lost energy, investments made, time spent.

The Three Horizons can structure the mission and intent, it can frame the options, determine the resources and ‘paint’ the viewpoint of how to manage innovation across multiple horizons

The workshop is introducing the multiple values and benefits this powerful methodology can offer for framing innovation.

Why is it necessary?

We so often struggle to articulate our innovation activity and then can’t seemingly project our plans into the future in consistent and coherent ways.

We often lack the framing necessary. If this rings true of the innovation activity in your organization, then it is in danger of being seen as isolated, one-off events, that fail to link to your organizational strategy. Furthermore you’ll be missing out, or not capitalizing on emerging trends and insights where fresh growth opportunities reside.

I so often come back to the messages we need to learn, which centers around the three horizon methodology.

This methodology lends itself well for mapping out the different horizons for innovation to begin to position capabilities, capacities and fill-in those needed competencies, to manage across different opportunities that emerge.

It also requires a certain amount of ‘letting go’ as well as ‘embracing’ a future that still may have many uncertainties that can really challenge our established mindsets.

Its value – if well-managed – can offer a helpful way for a significant series of dialogues and tensions to surface, but through this engagement and respect for different positions you can find mutual ways of connecting your innovation activities over different horizons, and managing uncertainty in better ways as a team or organization.

 The Three Horizon framework is about having strategic conversations about the future and feeds the conversation about your innovation direction and longer-term portfolio and capability understandings.

The workshop is broken down into nine parts of exchange by all the participants within the workshop

* How do we visualize and talk innovation options

* Recognizing that different opinions and discussions are always needed

* Allow the Evolutionary Perspective to progress across multiple horizons

* How to look across the Multiple horizons so you improve, extend and change

* So framing the “Burning Needs”- where does the growth come from?

* Our search for emerging winners- discovering and managing the Winning Needs

* Recognizing the Mindset traps- fixations, time constraints, intractable positions

* Avoiding the “typical” dangers, spotting and amplifying the weak signals, avioding the creeping “uncertainty”

* Constructing the three horizons through different lenses and tools.

The key takeaways from this workshop:

– You will recognize and really make it a “must go to” it within your innovation thinking and toolbox.

– It frames much within the innovation activity to manage and structure this.

– It ‘aids’ the framing of your present to future needs and gives ‘voice’ to all the different thinking and opinions on building the innovation pipeline and dialogues surrounding the innovation activity.

– It strives to actively balance the portfolio and different, often conflicting voices within the room, by helping to identify all the gaps and opportunities that need resolution.

– It brings a greater dynamics into your innovation thinking.

The Three Horizon Workshop

The Three Horizons can structure the mission and intent, it can frame the options, determine the resources and ‘paint’ the viewpoint of how to manage innovation across multiple horizons

The workshop is introducing the multiple values and benefits this powerful methodology can offer for framing innovation.

Why is it necessary?

We so often struggle to articulate our innovation activity and then can’t seemingly project our plans into the future in consistent and coherent ways.

We often lack the framing necessary. If this rings true of the innovation activity in your organization, then it is in danger of being seen as isolated, one-off events, that fail to link to your organizational strategy. Furthermore you’ll be missing out, or not capitalizing on emerging trends and insights where fresh growth opportunities reside.

I so often come back to the messages we need to learn, which centers around the three horizon methodology.

This methodology lends itself well for mapping out the different horizons for innovation to begin to position capabilities, capacities and fill-in those needed competencies, to manage across different opportunities that emerge.

It also requires a certain amount of ‘letting go’ as well as ‘embracing’ a future that still may have many uncertainties that can really challenge our established mindsets.

Its value – if well-managed – can offer a helpful way for a significant series of dialogues and tensions to surface, but through this engagement and respect for different positions you can find mutual ways of connecting your innovation activities over different horizons, and managing uncertainty in better ways as a team or organization.

 The Three Horizon framework is about having strategic conversations about the future and feeds the conversation about your innovation direction and longer-term portfolio and capability understandings.

The workshop is broken down into nine parts of exchange by all the participants within the workshop

* How do we visualize and talk innovation options

* Recognizing that different opinions and discussions are always needed

* Allow the Evolutionary Perspective to progress across multiple horizons

* How to look across the Multiple horizons so you improve, extend and change

* So framing the “Burning Needs”- where does the growth come from?

* Our search for emerging winners- discovering and managing the Winning Needs

* Recognizing the Mindset traps- fixations, time constraints, intractable positions

* Avoiding the “typical” dangers, spotting and amplifying the weak signals, avioding the creeping “uncertainty”

* Constructing the three horizons through different lenses and tools.

The key takeaways from this workshop:

– You will recognize and really make it a “must go to” it within your innovation thinking and toolbox.

– It frames much within the innovation activity to manage and structure this.

– It ‘aids’ the framing of your present to future needs and gives ‘voice’ to all the different thinking and opinions on building the innovation pipeline and dialogues surrounding the innovation activity.

– It strives to actively balance the portfolio and different, often conflicting voices within the room, by helping to identify all the gaps and opportunities that need resolution.

– It brings a greater dynamics into your innovation thinking.

The Work Mat Approach

This work mat approach illustrates our unique approach to ‘working out’ your solutions in novel ways. We need to ‘wrestle’ with the problems but in a creative way

Getting a thorough any workout makes us all feel ‘fitter’. These can be brain storming, structured design or collectively working through a difficult problem.  We use our ‘work mat’ approach that helps you ‘wrestle to the ground’ your unique challenges.

We can tackle different problems through this work mat approach but to share one example with you here that covers a part of the series around “Building Sustaining Competitive Advantage” through our intensity approach.

There is a structured approach to this to gain the best from your innovation workout.

If you would like to find out more about this approach to working out through workshops then contact us through paul@agilityinnovation.com

Designing Unique Workshops

Finding opportunities for Innovation and Growth is hard work.

We design our workshops to meet your needs, to push the thinking and to generate new returns in innovation understanding.

Our workshop are designed to help you need to think through many areas of productive innovation opportunity. For example:

1. Understand the trends and drivers in your industry as well as explore alternative perspectives allows you to look at not just ‘best practice’ but leading and emerging practice.

2. Look constantly outside your organization to ‘see’ and collaborate from the values of applying open innovation principles and techniques

3. Fostering the culture and climate for Innovation to workinside your organization can create the environment you are looking for but it takes a real understanding.

4. We all need to be aware of the way we earn our profit and where and why and it becomes absolutely vital that our innovation activity fully aligns to the strategic needs

5. Complete differently in the value chain- what it gives from new Business Models and discovering new opportunities to energize your business in different ways

6. When we stop and look at customers in different ways so as to listen to their needs we can discover new innovation opportunities and then how do you discover those unarticulated ones?

7. Expand into new markets and customers thoughtfully using the core within your business, in exploring the adjacency spaces and probing those ‘white spaces’ needs careful consideration.

8. Develop new product, services, structures and processes needs debate and understanding

9. Pursue a range of degrees of novelty to generate a greater sense of innovation possibility

10. Being able to sustain your momentum and make innovation repeatable does needs a broad identification and set of discussions to raise awareness, and build those capabilities and capacities well.

We need a crisis, a shock!

A priority shift is required for innovation– in leadership, responsibility, accountability, overcoming the reluctance to innovate.

“Even though it is important and we want to do innovation, we believe that there are many more important things in an organization to be done……..”

As a result we do these more important things and by the time we come to the just important ones we have run out of time and we never do it.”

“Unfortunately, innovation is important but not urgent. And as a result, it stays in the middle of the bottom of the list and we never find time to do it.

 In my experience, for an organization to encourage the honest questioning to take place, it has to create a positive crisis.

“We have to create some kind of a shock.”

a quote made by Professor. Costas Markides of the London Business School

This statement about turning the intent to innovate into actually want to innovate, we believe does apply to many organizations in our opinion- they fail to convert their words into actions and deeds.

We believe innovation should be a far more critical business priority for growth, prosperity and sustaining our institutions, communities and nations well-being.