Seeing innovation differently through ecosystem thinking and design

We need to re-think innovation and provide a new level of innovation integration and optimization.

What we see increasingly is the need to change to a different thinking, one of what “innovation ecosystems.” can provide.

In designing these innovation ecosystems, we might have the potential answer to overcoming and giving innovation that chance to be more central to the core of the business. It might offer us the ability to connect much of the rich internal knowledge with that outside one, that other organizations and individuals can provide, in diversity, or thought or contribution.

I envisage an ecosystem of working upon like-minded goals and ambitions, by collaborating for delivering a new form of innovation value. Collaborating in ecosystem thinking and design I would suggest opens up significant potential and combinations, that provide added value and significant opportunity for improvement on the existing offerings.

Approaching innovation on a common, shared technology platform can significantly enhance the discovery, experimentation, exploring and exploiting diverse skills and expertise through to commercialization.

The need to recognize and build these innovation ecosystems designed increasingly on digital platforms seeks to offer the technical and organizational context and knowledge, so a community of innovators or solution solvers can build out a wider community and begin to interact on a more shared purpose of common understanding.

For me, ecosystem thinking and design are accelerating mutual learning, and through this innovation, outcome potential for sharing and knowledge building. As we build an understanding of the power of digital platforms and ecosystem thinking, we can see gains and new values and realize different opportunities denied to us in the past by a lack of clarity, depth of understanding of what was in front of us but not appreciated, as we were looking at it differently and not seeing its potential in a combined value or bundling.

Firstly, we must ask, “Why to change the innovation narrative around innovation ecosystems?“

Organizations today are no different from the past; they seek fresh growth and establish new competitive positions. The difference is that the straight jacket they often “wore.” constrained them.

In this recent post, “Do you recognize your current innovation barriers” you get many of the barriers holding innovation back.

Today we live in a more connected world; technology has enabled this. We are becoming far more networked and have a growing awareness of hyper challenges that we are part of resolving and blurring boundaries across market positions, competitors and global trade. We are in a more complex world, needing different approaches within business organizations.

We hold the promise of liberating potential in resolving wicked problems and opportunities, providing we embrace the potential to combine and share outside our organization and tap into the rich diversity of knowledge, equally keen to collaborate and cooperate to achieve a more cross-cutting innovation that provides solutions to these more complex problems.

Building a collaborative environment requires digital technology as the platform.

The need for digital platforms and ecosystem designs has the growing potential to achieve this collaborative environment. The ability to evolve enterprise capabilities is evaluating value webs and artificial intelligence, pushing the need to reshape structures to be more outwardly facing, open to receiving new knowledge and prepared to share and exchange in return.

We are shifting critical capabilities that are growing the agility to trial, pilot and learn quickly as information flows in. We are achieving a faster adaptation and exploring mentality. Combining data and human knowledge reveals this new collaborative potential and a new set of competitive opportunities.

The increased ability to deploy, activate and utilize resources and assets requires these digital platforms to constantly exploit latent potential through the network and relationship engagements that engage in mutual pursuit.

The need for a new conceptual innovation framework

We need a better conceptual innovation framework, this innovation ecosystem one, to achieve this.

What is needed is something more radical and cohesive than we presently have. Let’s call it a “co-evolutionary dynamic ecosystem.” It moves from systems to ecosystems of innovation activity. It is knowledge-based and well-grounded.

It needs much of what we have been arguing for over many years. Clear strategy leadership, a different organizational culture but with an emphasis more on partner engagement.

Organizations need to be well-equipped in supporting knowledge, data, insights and people in their data handling, management, analysis sharing and processing.

To achieve this evolution, which has been called for over many years, is to facilitate and allow innovation to thrive and work. This means we finally need to address controls and provide different structures and emphasis by re-orienting at faster learning rates on the reliance on the technical aspects.

Seeing the end result

The end result needs to be robust, dynamic and holistic in its dimensions; it has to be systematically designed and implemented, knowledge-driven by events and process design, and driven by dynamic interactions.

This call for a different end result does require this profound shift in the business landscape.

Ecosystems and platforms become the core of any design.

Ecosystems fundamentally challenge how we currently do things (in isolated actions) and rearrange how innovation is managed today. It cannot work through stand-alone systems or software components. It needs “digital platforms that offer the technical and organizational context soi a community can interact for a shared purpose” (adapted from Yochai Benkler)

It relies increasingly on a network of interconnected organizations organized around one or a few valuable focal points. These firms can contribute to a shared platform that offers both producers of value but constantly engages with user-side participants, helping to dynamically shape, offer and provide insights, understanding and a forum for criticism and discovery on what they see as valuable to them.

It is in this ecosystem design that organizations can act differently on strategies, business models, leadership commitment and encouragement, building out different capabilities to build collectively new value creation, breaking down previously complex or challenging problems by having in place capturing systems and organizational models that reflect a common ecosystem design thinking.

Innovation today cannot stand alone.

It is this recognition that today, innovation rarely succeeds in isolation to achieve real, lasting impact but needs this growing dependent type of complementary innovation that ecosystem design provides.

Any new narrative has many parts of a story to tell.

Those willing to listen and recognize a story that needs to be built out that they can identify with. My work over the past few years is gaining the experience and insights to attempt to tell this story of needed change.

I often speak of my innovation journey; I sometimes call myself the innovation journeyman. I recently wrote a post, “innovation passion led me here“

My personal energy is drawn from all the challenges we face, looking to help find solutions.

In my view, we must promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for innovating purposes, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.

Our need is to transition toward innovation ecosystems in thinking and design

It is all about the translation points in innovation guidance and finding the time to engage with the external catalyst of innovation understanding. That is my place.

Relating and understanding the potential in adopting an innovation ecosystem design and thinking can potentially offer an exponential return to you, your team and your organization’s innovation activity. That is, of course, if you have the desire to build your innovation capabilities in new ways that are more based on “innovation ecosystems”.

For that, I need to change your innovation narrative. Have you the time? Contact me