Innovation Thinking and Resources - Exploring Dynamics Within Innovation Landscapes

Exploring, explaining and amplifying innovation

By @paul4innovating March 7, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

In my innovation travels, I’ve always liked to explore many of the less understood sides of innovation. I have set about trying to explain them.

I’ve tried to relate them to the aspects of everyday innovation, give those novel and logical frameworks or some method and structures to approach them, so they can be integrated into this work.

Some have worked better than others. I believe we do need to constantly push the boundaries of innovation, experiment and explore to advance the management of innovation and its understanding.

Getting innovation into the organization’s mainstream
We do need innovation to enter the mainstream of our everyday thinking, to be something we all feel naturally comfortable undertaking, as part of our make-up for our growth or prosperity.

New report: Improving returns on your innovation investment

By @paul4innovating March 3, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I highly value the studies that are undertaken by larger consulting firms. They have the C-level access and geographical reach to give us some critical insights into the progress of innovation.

Recently Arthur D Little provided their latest innovation excellence study, its 8th Global Innovation Excellence Study, into what companies can do to achieve a better return on their investment in innovation management. The report can be downloaded or viewed here and outlines in their opinion what really works in terms of managing the innovation process.

They offer some good pointers and understanding of what differentiates top innovators within and across industries. It also suggests that it provides new insights into what companies can do to achieve a better return on their investment in innovation management. I think it does fall a little short on a depth to support and validate these claims in my opinion, but it does still provides sound insight.

They specifically attempt to focus on understanding what differentiates top innovators from other companies in different industries. Drawing on over 650 responses, the study sheds new light on the basic key question: what innovation management techniques are most important in achieving a better return on innovation investment? The results they suggest are important for any company that wishes to stay competitive.

Thinking about scalable engagement

By @paul4innovating March 1, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I wrote a piece sometime back on “people don’t buy the product they buy meaning” and was prompted on this again fairly recently around the need for engagement in all we do.

See http://tinyurl.com/chvu2la for this.

It is funny how this triggered a series of different thoughts which I’m going to try to explain here as I struggle with some disconnects on where we are going on engagement.

I first start out with engagement

There is an awful lot of disruption occurring all around us. Old behaviours, many well-established ones that we were somehow seemingly comfortable with, are being suddenly replaced.

We are being pushed far more today to search for achieving a greater personal meaning through a different set of connections, more remote, arguably more empowering and get offered in this deal the technology to make this happen, with ease and convenience in its place. What are we losing in this grand deal?

These shifts are changing our behaviours, they are seriously challenging many of our (past) accepted practices, because as we suddenly feel more in charge, to do the things we want to do, simply when we want to do them, we depend less on others.

Taking ownership for innovation – the litmus test.

By @paul4innovating February 21, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

There is always a healthy debate on who has ownership of innovation within any organization. Often it can boil down to where the innovation concept is along the pipeline or who has been designated with manoeuvring or piloting the innovation through its different stages.

The reality of lasting ownership is much tougher; there are huge, often yawning gaps, in innovation accountability. The right answer should of course be everyone but making that statement on its own is a little bit of a cop-out, an easy answer to a complicated dilemma. So let me offer a connected way.

Working through the Executive Work Mat , jointly developed with our friends at Ovo Innovation, this Work Mat was designed for many reasons but principally to gain leadership engagement within all things involving innovation.

One of its overarching principles was the quest to gain alignment from the top, at the board level, through its interconnected structure and their strategic inputs so as to establish and make the critical connections all the way down and throughout the organization.

What we needed also was putting in place a fairly rigorous ‘litmus test‘ to establish if this is achieving the positive reaction required and the Work Mats intent.

Mapping innovation across the three horizons

By @paul4innovating February 18, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

One of my most exciting areas within my innovation activities is applying the three horizon methodology, for working through the ‘appropriate’ lenses for different innovations and their future management.

Let me outline the rationale for adopting this within your organization.

Clarifying our options requires multiple thinking horizons
For me, the three horizons have great value to map different thinking and possible innovation options over changing horizons.

You can frame innovation in alternative ways by using this approach. Innovation has multiple evolution points and working with this framework allows you to significantly improve innovations contribution.

It goes well beyond the present value of ‘just’ fitting your existing innovation portfolio and directional management into a one dimensional, viewed in the present, framework.

You can see opportunities completely differently beyond the existing mindset and activities, it takes innovation from tactical to strategic, to foresight in your evaluations.

Different perspectives of thinking can influence your innovating future

By @paul4innovating February 11, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Following on from the Innovation Futures project (www.innovation-futures.org) that I’ve been exploring recently, I would like to pick up on the way the authors clustered innovation into broad forms that give us different perspectives and thinking of innovation.

They felt these offered the major trends and innovation patterns and I felt are worth high-lightening here so we can begin to think through the different innovation options we have available to us.

So we can test innovations future within our own activities in a number of different ways.

The broad forms of ‘emerging’ innovation

Fast-forward into the Innovation Future

By @paul4innovating February 7, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

In my last posting (http://tinyurl.com/af6vj6k) I spoke of the innovation fog surrounding me and that I was losing my orientation. This had caused me to press the ‘pause’ button so as to wait and allow the fog to lift. Then I could rely on my innovation compass a little bit more with confidence as it points again towards the future of innovation.

Well, only 24 hours later the fog was blown away and powerfully so. Do you believe in serendipity, that gift of making fortunate discoveries? Well it has certainly risen up the “I believe” scale for me. Over the last weekend I was catching up on the emails and I had one sent to me by ISPIM, a network of researchers, industrialists, consultants and public bodies, who share an interest in innovation management.

ISPIM had sent me their latest “Innovation Watch- issue 1-2013” and in this there was a timely (well clearly for me) article from Karl-Heinz Leitner, a Senior Scientist with the Austrian Institute of Technology, entitled Innovation Futures: How Will We Innovate in the Future?

The fog surrounding innovation is disorientating me

By @paul4innovating February 2, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I’ve been in a little bit of an innovation fog recently, I’m possibly losing orientation. I hear so much sound around me but it is becoming disorientating, I’m not sure where to tread. Am I heading in the right direction, or going off on a tangent, away from much that is “the place to be”.

The more I read, the less I understand, yet the more I read, the greater my awareness of innovation and all the mountains we have still to climb. It is a never-ending journey it seems, yet I’ve found I have pressed the pause button. I need some time to allow the fog to lift but can I afford too?

There is this increasing intensity of innovation wisdom being produced daily, you can just get utterly and totally all-absorbed in all the nuances, all that advice.

So much that is written is offering the ways forward on past approaches, highlighting where we are going wrong on past experiences, and in some cases providing the “cure all” simply all within one article based on their narrow view of the solution, set in a specific context.

It can bring you to a stand-still but much more than this, it can all be highly dangerous.

Millennials see innovation differently from today’s leaders.

By @paul4innovating January 25, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, innovation execution delivery, Leading innovation, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) has provided a set of interesting results from a survey of the world’s future leaders and what they think about innovation released for the World Economic Forum, January 2003

The top line was only 26% of those surveyed believed their current organization’s leaders encourage the practices that foster innovation. This indicates a major shift really is needed in the organizational mindset to give innovation the chance to thrive.

The implications are nicely summarized by this statement from Deloitte’s Global CEO. “Innovation at the institutional level is needed to sufficiently shift an organization’s mindset to allow new ideas to truly emerge and thrive,”

The Deloitte Global CEO Barry Salzberg went on to say: “While our current business leaders can debate how and where to innovate, it’s clear how much importance our future leaders place on innovation—not just as a driver of business growth but also as a catalyst for solving society’s most pressing problems.”

Heat-seeking innovation that comes inbound from a panel discussion

By @paul4innovating January 23, 2013Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

I’ve been listening to and watching some of the discussions and panels coming out of the World Economic Forum and the value is worth the investment.

I’ve saved the $40k that it is estimated to attend this annual event and I can certainly find the time to absorb what is being said in my own environment.

Perhaps the messages are more salient because of this, I don’t know, as I’m highly unlikely to be attending this forum as you have to be invited.

So what has caught my attention is not surprising for its relevancy, to what I do and think about, around the issues of innovation and its ability to lead us out of our present adversities

The one discussion that was valuable on this involved a panel that spoke at length about risks in uncertain times. It was headlined as “Leading through adversity” but focused on the uncertainty being faced and where innovation can help in reducing unfamiliar risks and giving us some clarity.