The different challenges seen in this terrific depiction provide the sort of dialogue and efforts that needs to go into ‘crafting’ the innovation vision. It is hard, thoughtful work. Let’s look at each of these a little more.
The Time Challenge

We get caught in annual planning cycles that often leave little time for ‘considered’ opinion and debate. The annual plans all come in a deluge, and this is plainly wrong. Creating a vision needs a lot of time to consider all the aspects. The ‘time gap’ seriously impacts the vision’s success and clarity of purpose.
The Diversity Challenge
Within the same board room do you have a diversity of opinion; you have that up and down any organization. Getting the views first out in the open, then managing the conflicting aspects and dealing with the ‘polarization effects’ all is difficult. This is where a dedicated focus, a Chief Innovation Officer, can really make a difference. To get people to talk about the vision, what it should stand for, what needs to happen leads eventually to greater clarity.
The Relationship Challenge
Managing the relationships both within and outside the organization when it comes to the right thinking on innovation is hard, converting doubters, drawing out differences, improving the quality of any conversations around innovation (ideally with facts, not conjecture) and raising the enthusiasm to engage is crucial to moving towards the right vision.
The Vision Gap Challenge
There is a reality to what and where you are and the perceived gap that needs addressing honestly. We tend to be very poor at this, is, holding a ‘creative’ tension that can stimulate and create a vibrant and exciting innovation vision. We try to dampen the divergence in opinions far too early so we can (quickly) got to convergence. This ‘keenness’ to take away the ‘creative’ tension tends to replace it with a potential set of ‘destructive’ ones, which often creates much of the beginnings of the barriers to innovation. People resent not being well listened to or allowed time to develop their arguments.
The Vision and its Success
If you get people to ‘freely’ talk about innovation, its importance, its impact and can ‘paint’ the future in broad brush strokes, they achieve a growing clarity and enthusiasm. They often miss a critical component of a sense of shared identity.
Innovation is complex; it deals with formal and informal mechanisms. There is an awful lot to constructing a solid innovation vision but believe me, it is even harder to understand the right components that make up the innovation strategy, so it eventually becomes a well-articulated innovation strategy. This visual makes up for the thousands of words you would need to describe how and what makes up an innovation vision.

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The post Going beyond the 5 bold steps offered to Reimagine the American Innovation Agenda first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The report “Five Bold Steps Towards a Reimagined American Innovation Agenda“, written in February 2021, argues for embracing these five bold steps of story, stewardship, strategy, scaling, and system reimagine innovation for the decade ahead.

In all honesty, it is a little underwhelming, not just the bold but simple five steps but the short document of five pages. It assumes a position, and that is dangerous.

Their argument regarding innovation is that Americans have come to see U.S. leadership as a birthright, as a matter of course. In my view, they lost the leadership mantle for innovation years back. I totally agree it should and needs to come back as a bedrock of future growth, prosperity and dramatically altering today’s landscape.
The authors quite rightly recognize most innovation has drifted to the two coasts. U.S innovation has got fixated on technology as the ultimate solution (to all our ills). Partly, this is not wrong, but it cuts off all the different types of innovation the U.S needs.

It needs a greater regenerative type of innovation; it needs to find ways to fund the incremental or distinctive needs to resolve local, national or logical problems when the time, inclination and appropriate funding can be made available.

Far too much of the investment money is chasing the big breakthrough. The chase for unicorns, fast scale, disrupting existing and constantly reiterating what is successful into the next version. Of course, having companies like Apple, Tesla, or whoever building on monopolies or technology prowess is great.

Often this innovation is off the backs of poorer paid countries cranking out the final product, and I think of apple especially here. The money they make, where is this being invested back to build innovation capacity?

Clearly, with the Biden big deals flowing through, who will be hoovering up that money. Will it go to the entrepreneur sitting in the middle of the country, or will those there simply sit back and wait for the payouts and funding offered by the Government?

How is the middle of the country not going to avoid being further left behind as clean energy positions closer to its markets, the coasts and not account for the coal, steel and other heavy industries that can’t escape legacy within a bold reinvigoration plan? Hence why terming innovation reinvigorating allows for a different narrative to be built.

The authors claim, as step one, to reclaim the narrative. They leave it as stories needed that connects with citizens from all walks of society. I would argue firstly, is to find out the stories of the citizens and then build up the innovation narrative. Bottom-up, not top down. to bring positive change (regeneration).

I think the U.S is way off what the authors talk of shared national purpose and share national values. Really with all the current destructive storylines, fake or blatant. Will this change? Will the U.S ever reforge a national narrative of shared purpose or values? That is questionable and some time out if it ever does. The idea of “catalytic aspirations”, “great purpose” sounds wonderful, does that gel with what is being faced today and every day by a majority?

Step two: We then get into empowerment, often as an innovator; I die a little hearing this. How often does empowerment really happen? What I like here is the harvest, organize and scale concept. But not through stewardship. America does have enormous innovation value lying in its foundations, institutions, and research bodies, but these are fragmented or lacking real national cohesion.

The authors are right, innovation remains less than the sum of the parts. Find a way to bring those parts together, for example, to transform energy or other big global challenges, and America will begin to find its way back to the top of the innovation pinnacle. Throwing money at a problem is not necessarily the answer but it certainly helps. Others less fortunate rely on ingenuity, then search for the money.

Their suggested steps three and four- develop a coherent national strategy seems so out of fashion in America. They point out disparate policies towards scientific research, technology, commercialization, information and communication technology, education and skill development, let alone tax, trade, intellectual property, government procurement and regulatory policies all need desperately fixing in some form of integrated fashions. Can they be pulled together, or is this too far gone, lost in individual ownership, funding or constraints?

The love of “making it scalable” I do not buy at this point in time. My counter-proposal is to make it accessible, and over time it will scale. We need engagement more than empowerment. Yet as they point out, 80% of the venture capital is in four U.S states. Equitable, fair, or even hope of changing this is not pitched on the scale, where investors articulate as a must. Going back to basics, funding these in local, highly focused ways gets closer to my accessible alternative.

People want to start seeing growth in themselves, in their earning, in their self-esteem, and that needs to be local in new infrastructure, economic activity so the community gains and begins to pick up its vibrancy. Not in payouts those simply get spent on keeping going.

The investments proposed by the Biden administration in science, technology and R&D of $300 billion will go where. The key industries identified are all or mostly based on the two coasts.

These are essential to fund, promote and develop as technology is one of the critical places that must have an American dominance to counter other parts of the world but with the high levels of foreign talent that eventually takes what they know back?

What about tackling environmental, climate, and nature challenges on a similar scale?  These can be regenerating the middle of America.

The author’s last bold point to maximize human, intellectual and financial capital takes me back twenty or so years in all the discussions on leveraging the intangible capitals. I am far more in knowledge and nature capital but brought up to date centred around ecosystem designs, so they generate the whole not stay trapped in silos.

Information, actionable, honest, believable information tied to knowledge access and relationship connections, will do as much more to restore innovation. Of course, the world needs STEM, but for its grassroots, it needs the rebuilding of Reputations & Trust, Culture & Values, Skills & Competencies that are not technically driven but non-technical.

I know what is wanted in America is a resurgence of its pioneering spirit. We all want that.

Applying these five bold steps might have many parts that need fixing to keep it globally competitive. Still, America’s innovation engine is so lumpy and firing on a few cylinders even with this call to action. Success in a few areas distorts and blinds those who are not seeing a continued hollowing out of any innovation and creativity based in America employed by Americans. These five steps are simply not enough, even to get the conversation flowing.

Innovation to take hold in America needs a deeper, broader fix. It needs to be inclusive but not on technology but on some of its oldest attraction points, hard work, adventure, pioneering, use of both hands and brain to thrive and renewal in itself.

These five bold steps don’t provide the force of change necessary. It needs far more Stephen and John.

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Today we are facing many current disruptions where we need to react fast and intelligently. There are many situations we are facing that are a race against time. As we continue to respond to Covid-19, technology has the power to reduce the complexity often faced, speed up and contribute to solutions that help resolve pressing issues.

We recognize that equally as important as the technology are the people using the technology. Having people at the centre of designs enables more intelligent, rapid and lasting innovation.  The Digital Twin is where data from the physical and virtual world come together and is increasingly where people and technology come together to resolve many of today’s challenges.

Applying human-centred innovation

Tony Hemmelgarn, the CEO of Siemens Digital Industries Software, presented “Human-centred Innovation” at the Hannover Messe show (April 12^th to 16^th, 2021), which was held in a virtual environment.

Siemens provided a three-day event showcasing their hardware and software solutions and many other technology innovations.

Tony touched on how digital technology is being used to solve today’s present issues and how working with the comprehensive digital twin and having people at the heart of the design make a significant contribution to some current challenges.

Throughout the presentations, the digital twin was positioned as the catalyst for change, with the digital twin featured in nearly every presentation and across the stories of Siemens customers from multiple industries.

The powerful engine with digitalization

I see this digital twin as the powerful engine under the Siemens bonnet to drive growth and Industrial and Societal Transformation. The digital twin spans so much in industry and changing the products we use through its predictive, modelling, optimizing approach.

Recently, Frost and Sullivan praised the Siemens Software portfolio: “such a diverse line of solutions offered in a modular, open portfolio makes Xcelerator a game-changing catalyst for companies of all sizes.”

Tony’s examples show the power of Human-centred innovation and how digitally enabled software solutions have been in powerful use to resolve some critical issues in the past year.

The rapid need for Vaccines

In the past, vaccine development has traditionally been a process measured in years, if not decades. Over the last ten years, new vaccine technologies have been increasingly available. Fast-forward to today and the crisis we all face with COVID-19, we needed a rapid acceleration of vaccines from discovery through trial validation and production ramp-up. Already most of the major pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies had some levels of vaccine platform technologies.

American pharmaceutical company Moderna took 42 days to produce an experimental vaccine. GSK, in collaboration with Atos and Siemens, have been building and ramping up their vaccine facilities and have successfully developed a digital process twin through an innovative partnership. Just announced is the collaborative work that Siemens has been doing with BioNTech, getting involved in converting existing facilities in Germany to produce the mRNA-vaccine project.

With a digital twin, Siemens’ customers use different technologies to create a virtual world where research and development can explore new therapies and vaccines. A digital twin can simulate the process like cell culture, fermentation, formulation and filling. A digital twin combines all biological processes and physical models into a single integrated virtual image. It is the power of Siemens’ simulation and automation that has enabled the “race against time.”

The pharmaceutical and life science industry embraces technology to accelerate research and development to production by recognizing the value of simulation and modelling by merging the virtual and physical worlds. This allows infinite opportunities from industrial data to extend and build out the digital twin capabilities faster, more expanding ways with a greater push towards a complete embrace of digital transformation.

Keeping Us Safe for Resuming Travel

We all have had imposed on us severe travel restrictions. Airlines are looking to encourage us back onto their planes. Using Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio, the need was to design and simulate air quality.

Using part of the solutions available by simulating airflow, calculating filter rates, the ability to design a filter for cabin air to change every 2-3 minutes was tackled. The ability to simulate and analyze detailed sensing data allowed for modelling and finding a more optimal design that has progressed to more innovative and safe solutions for air quality.

The Digital Manufacturing Factory

Manufacturing that has been taking their digital journey before the COVID-19 crisis was equally hit but have been far more able to react, adjust and reposition themselves in a particularly challenging, volatile time.

Initially, to get Manufacturing restarted, Siemens Digital Industries Software introduced workplace distancing solutions to manage that “next or new normal” in manufacturing.

Extending out the Digitally Connected Factory

Across the Siemens Virtual event held in Hannover Messe week, the examples of so many changes have been enabled by using digital solutions, especially the Digital Twin contribution. You can view these by first registering even after the event has closed to view these significant stories of how the Digital Twin has radically altered the design and management of different industries, plants, and adaptive approaches to design.

Siemens Digital Industries Software approach’s foundation is Xcelerator; it is at the core of the strategy.

This integrated portfolio of software, services, and an application development platform for electronic and mechanical design, system simulation, manufacturing, operations, and lifecycle analytics.

As pointed out in this talk, the three levers provide a comprehensive digital twin, a personalized adaptable and modern approach and a flexible open ecosystem but delivering in a closed loop to individual needs.

The story around Human-centred innovation shows the power of technology.

As Tony states, Siemens’ Digital Enterprise solutions are solving not just today’s challenges but tomorrows. The digital twin is all around us if we look and explore digitalization and gain productivity in new, exciting, and accelerating ways. It is becoming essential, for example, in managing across a manufacturing plant, designing a new aircraft or modelling our cities.

The digital twin brings solutions to life quickly; it can provide generative design techniques, allow for mass customization, it is flexible and self-organizing. It is a compelling digital solution.

As we learn to merge the physical and virtual worlds, it is the ingenuity of the people that are at the centre of the design that enables this more intelligent, raid and lasting innovation that derives from the application of all within the Siemens digital twin; they drive the imagination and curiosity to solve complexity.

Reference Links

The Siemens Hannover Messe event. Register through this link for on-demand viewing: sie.ag/3tnhVD4

Introductory videos

https://video.mentor.com/embed/6390475a-6c60-4f14-b4c5-ae303897f24f!

The post Human-centred innovation in a digital world. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

A 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.

Dynamic capabilities require an organizational form that leverages the knowledge and capabilities of managers throughout the organization. In business firms with strong dynamic capabilities, the critical tasks of managers, especially those in the top management team, are entrepreneurial. It’s not just a planning role; it’s also strategic. It involves planning along with engagement and enactment; it encourages agility.

Appreciating and leveraging those ordinary capabilities is equally essential

The stronger these regular capabilities can be ‘honed’, then organizations can go beyond performing essential business functions well and can excel in these. While most capabilities, including some dynamic capabilities, are underpinned by organizational routines, many of the activities of top managers are non-routine by nature.

The key entrepreneurial capabilities needed for asset orchestration and realignment of the enterprise often reside in the skills and knowledge of top managers, managing the routines and assets and respond dynamically when changes are happening to adapt and respond

Ordinary capabilities involve operations, administration, and managing governance. They are rooted more firmly in routines than are dynamic capabilities. A method is a repeated action sequence, which may have its roots in algorithms and heuristics about how the enterprise is to get things done. Organizational routines transcend the individuals involved.

Finding the right complementary blend of capabilities is a real challenge to achieve

The capabilities perspective views the enterprise as clusters of complementary assets that must be combined and coordinated to create value. The utilization of such assets, therefore, requires managerial action. Managers in the dynamic capabilities framework perform that role. They orchestrate and call into being, the assets that are vital to firm performance.

They determine the speed and the degree to which, the firm’s particular resources can be aligned and realigned to match the requirements and opportunities of the business environment to generate sustained positive returns.

The alignment of resources both inside and outside the firm includes assessing when and how the enterprise ought to form alliances and joint ventures with other organizations.

Understanding all your required capabilities needed is essential

Valuing and knowing both your ordinary repeatable capabilities, to enhance and improve existing performance, and discovering those that are more dynamic in nature, to change performance more significantly are both critical to identify, build and support in consistent and thoughtful ways. The key is knowing what is critical and then how to focus and invest in those that drive and sustain performance.

Investing in a mapping of your innovation fitness landscape can significantly contribute to this understanding and advance organizational performance in the critical areas that offer it present and future value.

**Extracts were drawn from the paper and built upon: “The Functions of Middle and Top Management in the Dynamic Capabilities Framework” by Sunyoung Lee and David J. Teece

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The post Cracking the complexity code first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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.

Simply by consciously working on all the dysfunction points within an organization will reduce the tensions, reduce the ‘shearing effect’ and allow the organization in all its layers to ‘react’ and be allowed to come back into a balance but this needs the impact of time to be imüposed. What innovation often lacks is the same attention space, to equally site alongside efficiency as the organization’s two value creation points. They need to share an outcome orientation that “compels” decisions to be made. Realized value only comes from outcomes that are ‘tested’ in the market place. We are judged in performance on our efficiencies, effectiveness and innovation capabilities.

Where do we start to make innovation more dynamic?

Firstly we need to revisit the work on “adaptive enterprises and systems”. We need to find ways to deal with unpredictable, discontinuous change and make this more predictable for us to manage. That means making calculate risks, more of them.

We lack often a real coherence of purpose; we lurch from one opportunity to another, from one quarter of results into another with often no consistency in our activities. Performance has been taken over by opportunistic behaviors.  Innovation often takes the real brunt of this as it cannot behave on a quarterly result forecast, it has a different rhythm.

How many times have we been caught in this series of defending needs due to the focus on short-term results? Our intended strategy moves suddenly into a deliberate strategy, and then somehow this gets abandoned or unrealized and slowly we replace this with an emergent strategy that is rapidly become our realized strategy that we present to the world, as a response to ‘factors outside our control’ for our often indifferent performance.

We need to react to performance.

Who really talks about the EXACT results achieved from innovation for instance in a consistent, structured way? We draw attention to a given innovation but not to the (world-class) capabilities we are building to turn innovation into a ‘sustaining innovation machine’ All we here is just a general reference to it, to cloak innovation often in the ineffectiveness that lies within.

For innovation and many things going on within organizations they often lack real coherence, they ‘signal’ inconsistent behaviors, especially within the organization. These bad signals simply build up all the tensions and dysfunctional aspects that middle order management and the organization, in general, has to mop up and cope with.

How can innovation thrive in this sort of chaotic mess? No wonder it never takes hold, it just has nothing ‘permanent’ to attach too and grow. Management needs a radical overhaul so innovation can be the vehicle for what is articulated but often poorly delivered on a consistent basis.

Context & Coordination needs designing in purposefully.

Again, where do we start? We start with the ‘disconnect’ that organizations often have. The understanding of the underlying purpose of the organization beyond just making money and keeping the shareholders happy does need a deeper primary function, it needs rearticulating. Some organizations do a reasonable job of this but many simply don’t.

We need to restate our primary function and purpose far more in its societal contribution. We need to express the bounds as a governing set of principles that are known, reinforced and measured against. We then need to set about building in a consistent way, the capabilities that are able to produce the outcomes. We need to build in the accountabilities into the roles that reflect that innovation, effectiveness, and efficiency that is needed so they can be managed equally side by side. We need to teach the ability to be adaptable and recognize the differences so as to actively manage the ‘creative’ conflicts and tensions.

Reduce the tension in the layers or structures

The really hard part of managing in larger organizations is in managing the layers and competing forces. Often we forget to reinforce acceptable behaviors, we leave role structures to lose and incomplete and we set deliverables in often ‘woolly’ ways. This just promotes uncertainly and it is not an adaptive organization in leaving this so open. These unnatural built-in tensions create this shearing effect. They grind against each other, like tectonic plates that force further disruption and upheaval.

These different layers actually require several levels of reconfiguration designed into the organization. One really critical one to address and to ‘kill off,’ is the pressure of time. Time horizons to achieve different tasks often cannot be ‘legislated’ or ‘dictated’ but sadly they are forced on reluctant innovators responsible for delivery of new concepts. We need to re-establish the difference between goals– within a certain period covered (one year), objectives– attained later but are progressed within the period and finally ideals– those unattainable but clearly possible concepts, that progress at slower rates and go well beyond normal goals. Innovation works within this environment, actually it will thrive.

Not just the incremental, but the radical, disruptive and breakthrough innovation craved for by the top management, can finally have a ‘decent’ time horizon to be managed through. Planning needs to account for all three horizons and publically discussed, irrespective of the industry you are in, it does not matter if you are building planes or developing food products.

We really should stop pretending that innovation is not so hard and actually state it is often incompatible to much of what we perform on a daily basis.  The task of managing intangibles (unknowns) alongside tangibles (known’s) needs a greater appreciation of their complexities and the difficulties of balancing the two for achieving a ‘decent’ result. Leadership, I believe, would need to understand innovation far more in this demanding environment of inquiry. No wonder it is often ducked and just vaguely talked about as much of innovation understanding is still poorly understood in its impacts and effect.

The opportunity of the network economy

Again, the realization of the growing web of networks that we are constantly engaging with becomes a growing part of the new more adaptive innovating enterprise. We need to encourage more empowerment to engage with outside parties, to explore, to investigate, to bring in and then diffuse and disperse in new ways. For this, we need to design around more absorptive capacity I’ve often written about. (See   http://bit.ly/zdfmba).

Reducing activities and replacing these with outcome orientation

Innovation is no different from what we expect from efficiency or effectiveness; we want to see the outcomes.   We have struggled on many parts of establishing really good metrics for judging innovation. They seem to get lost within organizations. Part of the innovation activities has been assigned to some other cost center, or the capacity was already established and we often don’t break these down and assign these clearly enough to the different activities, we should, but into outcome orientation ones. Were the activities contributing to efficiency or innovation? We judge these through the effectiveness of the outcome.

We need to balance existing performance engines for repeatable everyday tasks with innovation delivery engines for new activities to make our organizations function more effectively. Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble have offered some thoughts on this at the implementation stage, although they still need more examination.  As Scott Anthony points out in his article “Negotiating Innovation and Control’ on the different ways to balance tension there is one, in my opinion, that needs deeper investigation and development and that is the ‘ambidextrous’ one. This makes distinctions but links the parts of the whole organization by developing competing frames, not competing forces. Roger Martin suggests in one of his books “The Opposable Mind” that we need to develop “integrative thinking” as part of this need to change.

Ecosystems often reflect the shearing effect.

In any environment, the ‘rates of exchange’ of the different components or constituents operate at different speeds. Interactions occur more at your own level of contribution or awareness, the different dynamic layers sometimes you are simply oblivious too or ignore..We need to become far more aware. Often we get away with something due to that  ‘in-spite of’ syndrome that kicks in. Sometimes though, something catastrophic does occur and you have to pay attention ( a merger, layoffs, threat of closure) but the real reality is, different layers within organizations tend to be often simply oblivious, even impervious, to necessary change and just ‘does its job’.

Maybe then, this is why so many organizations seem dysfunctional but do continue to survive, to limp along until something really does disrupt their world as the existing ecosystem just seems to allow different interactions and speeds. Can we not alter this though in more thoughtful ways, than the usual ‘carrot and the stick’ approach or ‘fear and retribution’ approach and methodologies often employed to achieve results?

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the worrying thing is that any dynamics within the system are dominated by the slow components, and the rapid components simply have to follow along. Slow constrains quick, slow controls quick. The only way to ensure speeding up is to be coherent on the purpose, clarify the bounds and governing principles that need to be enacted.

Simply by consciously working on all the dysfunction points within an organization will certainly reduce the tensions, reduce the shearing and allow the organization in all its layers to ‘react’ and be allowed to come back into a balance, where innovation sits equally alongside efficiency, especially if both focus on outcome orientation and that certainly is not the current business, as usual, we see today.

Perhaps working on these dysfunction spots it might free up some real, much-needed space for innovation to take a deeper hold. It does seem with all the suggested emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness, if you accept this argument, it might be a good idea to have innovation alongside, as it does thrive more when there is creative tensions around!

You bring a more ‘dynamic’ environment into play by bringing together the sense of purpose and the governing principles of how you are setting about achieving this- through your people and building their capabilities to innovation.

The post Dynamics within the system are always dominated by the slow components. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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.

The constant re-organization is ‘killing’ the organization to form any rhythm.   Innovation is often in that uncomfortable territory of ‘not knowing,’ it cuts across established structures, and so many time challenges the “status quo.” I often suggest that “innovation is a very uncomfortable bedfellow to have around. It does need separation, or it will never perform at its ‘very best.’

Let’s take a look at some of the consequences of these tensions.

Presently we see in large organizations this lack of “pushing for risk” or wanting to change the underlying business offerings. There is always a stated “we must be innovative to survive,” but we very rarely see what this means in real ongoing support to give that some framing, some guidelines, and clearly identified resourcing.

How many times do you see the organization set the deliverables in often ‘woolly’  undefined or impossible ways to truly measure the success of innovation.  Unable to meet the very system they impose of requiring KPIps by capturing and measuring what this means, so innovation struggles and often dumb-sized to meet arbitory measures, so it “fits” within the system..

This verbal remit never gets the underlying points to encourage those tasked with innovation to go and explore. This vagueness just further promotes uncertainly, delays any improved performance, and we end up with the same mediocre result, where safely has ‘ruled’ the day.

Organization layers grind against each other, like tectonic plates that force further disruption and upheaval.

Are we ever going to honestly face up to the forces that immobilize our organizations?

If we really want to work progressively towards an adaptive organization, we must stop the knee-jerking or react to short-term pressures. To bring a better level of clarity to the many left open, fuzzy, and still so unclear areas within organizations, leadership must find better ways to resist their impulses to constantly re-organize. Strengthening what they have, allowing the existing structures to expand outwardly, is sometimes better than to break them into different structures that reinforce new silo thinking.

We still seem to love the ‘carrot and stick’ approach.

In leaving so much open to even ignoring critical parts of a business’s performance or operating model allows leaders one minute, use outcomes as the ‘whipping boy’ for unfortunate or disappointing results and, in so doing, slowly immobilize those underneath, scared to make a mistake or be associated with failure.

Adaptation to short-term performance works both ways. To the shareholder demanding immediate results but also to the management to hide behind this to create unnatural built-in tensions and often create a shearing effect. Innovation gets caught up in this. It can’t solve complicated product design solutions in thirteen weeks.

It can show quarterly results of progress, but that is often for internal consumption only. Innovation becomes a catch-all phrase, so it gets dumbed down to reinforce “our organization” is constantly undertaking it.

Innovation gets caught up in the needs of the reporting requirement so it can fit an arbitrary and stupid timeline that is required to adapt to a financial calendar year. Forced by the “bean counter” to be broken down into reporting on a quarterly result, as that is required by the system. No wonder we have tensions between innovation and an organization geared to this financial numbers game.

Organization structure ‘grinds’ against each other, like tectonic plates that force further disruption and upheaval.

They ‘freezeout’ creativity unless it ‘arrives’ from the top of the organization, then it is often super-imposed, but is that optimized to get the best out of the creative or discovery process`? Eventually, the organization dies if it cannot allow the natural generating new forms of creativity from within, this has been hollowed out by this constant demanding and imposing from the top.

The organizational design needs to change to allow for creativity to flow back in.

We need to ensure creative knowledge flows up and down organizations. We need to change our thinking from layers into a network of connected parts that we keep small, flat, and focused but constantly aware their existence is dependent on others outside their mini-ecosystem. The “ebb and flow” of knowledge gain and interactions need to be allowed to evolve, not forced, or simply being reliant on machine learning or automating the process.

Today these different layers actually require several levels of reconfiguration designed into the organization. Creativity and innovation are primarily human endeavors. We add layers onto further layers, and each time we are constraining the organizations or the individuals to explore, they stay ‘trapped’ within their space if we superimpose on them. We progressively build up an unhealthy tension.

Imposing the killer effect of time just because of a financial calendar is stupid – it hurts innovation significantly

Just look at how organizations impose time on us. One really critical one to address and to ‘kill off’ is the pressure of time. Imposing time as a condition for innovation can be a real killer. Time horizons to achieve different tasks often cannot be ‘legislated’ or ‘dictated,’ but sadly, they are forced on reluctant innovators responsible for the delivery of new concepts.

We need to re-establish the difference between goals – within a specified period covered (one year), objectives – attained later but are progressed within the period and finally ideals– those unattainable but possible concepts that ‘advance’ at slower rates and go well beyond standard goals. Innovation works within this environment, actually it will thrive.

Not just the incremental, but the radical, disruptive, and breakthrough innovation craved for by the top management, can finally have a ‘decent’ time horizon to be managed through. Planning needs to account for all three horizons, and operating across these needs different mindsets, irrespective of the industry you are in, it does not matter if you are building planes or developing food products.

Managing innovation across the three horizon methodology helps reduce tensions, design innovations that can be more radical or breakthrough. The three horizon methodology spaces out the activity, thinking, and activity, it allows innovation to be defined and determined by its complexity and its time/value relationship in importance and complexity.

Tacking the incompatibles to ease the tensions

We really should stop pretending that innovation is not so hard and state it is often incompatible to much of what we perform on our daily business, it is really so often just incompatible, and we should recognize this.

The task of managing intangibles (unknowns) alongside the tangibles (known) needs a greater appreciation of their complexities and the difficulties of balancing the two for achieving a ‘decent’ result. The unknowns need far more investigation, relationship understanding, and evaluations to turn them from a possible discovery into a worthwhile one that can begin to be quantified.

In Leadership, I believe, would need to understand innovation far more in this demanding environment of inquiry. No wonder it is often ducked and just vaguely talked about as much of innovation understanding is still poorly understood in its impacts and effect. We do need to address this lack of acute innovation management within our organizations. It is not ‘business as usual.’ It is managing the process of unusual business inquiry.

Reducing activities and replacing these with outcome orientation

Innovation is no different from what we expect from efficiency or effectiveness; we want to see the outcomes, the results from all the investments, energy, and inputs.  Outcome orientation holds a precious key to think about far more.  We have struggled on many occasions to establish robust metrics for judging innovation. They seem to get lost within organizations’ obsession to judge the whole organization by the same KPI’s.

Often we find part of the innovation activities has been assigned to some other cost center, and organizations create cost center tensions in allocating resources or the necessary time. We should break activities down into outcome orientation ones. Were the activities contributing to efficiency accounting or actually progressing the innovation concept along? We need to judge these through the effectiveness of the outcome. Forget the allocation input, it is the successful innovation outcome.

Scott Anthony had pointed out in an old article “Negotiating Innovation and Control’ on the different ways to balance tension, there is one, in my opinion, that needs more in-depth investigation and development, and that is the ‘ambidextrous’ one. This makes distinctions but links the parts of the whole organization by developing competing frames, not competing forces.

Roger Martin suggests in one of his books, “The Opposable Mind,” that we need to establish “integrative thinking” as part of this need to change. The ability to understand the difference between exploring and exploiting is critical to how we manage innovation in its different needs of discovery and execution.

Innovation should be alongside as an equal partner to efficiency. It becomes efficient innovation and core to what you do and how you operate.

Seeking constant efficiencies is slowing down our organizations. We need to do the opposite, to speed them up and capitalize on finding innovation opportunities quickly and then knowing how to scale them equally fast. We need to do this by developing the competencies and understandings of experimentation, piloting, prototyping in fast, discreet and measured ways

The worrying thing is the slow components dominate any dynamics within the system, and the rapid aspects have to simply follow along. I see this an awful lot. In all organizations, it accommodates the slow, thereby reducing down the very effectiveness of the organization to adapt, respond, and grow to market changes. Slow holds everything back, and we can’t afford to keep waiting in a world where others are more adaptive or agile.

“Slow constrains quick, slow controls quick.”

The only way to ensure speeding up is to be coherent on purpose, clarify the bounds and governing principles that need to be enacted and evolve the organization design away from layers and hierarchy.

We need to build up a series of internal networks that depend on each other but continuously reach out to connect, share, and exchange but more within an organizational design that is flat but highly responsive and interdependent to work well. This needs orchestration, not a hierarchy in its managing. They need constant attention; they need to speed up, to be encouraged, and well-resourced.

We need to work a lot harder on all the dysfunction points in organizations

Only by consciously working on all the dysfunction points within an organization will undoubtedly reduce the tensions, reduce the ‘shearing effects.’ It allows the organization in all its layers, to ‘react’ by recognizing its tension points and set about addressing them, not allowing them to fester and continue.

Organizations somehow has to reflect far more on its continued lack of performance. It takes time to identify the ‘tension points’ and then to undertake the appropriate action to come back into a balance.

A balance where innovation sits equally alongside efficiency, especially if both focus on outcome orientation, and that certainly is not the current business way we often see today. We so often find much of the ‘tension’ is not favorable, it is debilitating.

The post Organizations suffer constantly from unhealthy Innovation tension first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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?

We do need to achieve a ‘reality’ check or we stay in a state of, forgive me, ignorance. We don’t see the possibilities we only see what we know and in today’s world that is a loser’s position. We need to push ourselves but before we do, we do need to know where we are, what is possible and what will give us a real advantage in the marketplace

Through my work on building the Innovation Fitness Landscapes I look for what is relevant to you today and then structuring the place you want to be or go, by starting to address the questions: are we focusing on the right ones to deliver on the challenges you are facing?”, “what can you do differently?” and “how can you identify those critical ones needed”? and “how can these be structured to clearly move you to the new capabilities that are required?”

My role here is to be the guide towards building improved innovation capabilities and capacity

My role is to help in this task by identifying the opportunity spaces on where you need to focus your efforts‐ and apply the appropriate understanding and identify what resources are needed, so my job is to help you to navigate the terrain. Here is my journey outline described as a typical story that we all need to envision and go through.

Through an innovation fitness landscape plan, you can access where you are and what needs to be achieved to get you to the desired point you see as to where you need to be.

We call this “mapping the terrain of where you would like to be.” Your preferred place after you have accessed the competitive situation and what needs to differentiate yourselves, by being realistic about your present operational performance and rigorous evaluation of how you can perform.

This is asking those searching questions around whether you have the commitment, resources, and determination to make a significant change in changing your capabilities or capacities to innovate. How are you both internally coping in an era of challenging technology change conditions but equally how you are seen to be externally coping with the pressures, rigors, and changes occurring in your marketplace.

You need to arrive at your preferred place after you have first accessed the competitive situation. These lead you to discover what you might have or need to differentiate yourselves. You can learn about how realistic your present operational performance is measuring up. By performing a rigorous evaluation of how you can perform, whether you have the commitment, resources, and determination to make a significant change, you begin to get into the ‘right’ shape to think innovatively.

You start asking how you are internally coping in your innovation performance but equally how you are seen to be externally coping in the marketplace where the actual pressures, rigors, and changes are occurring. You are facing, perhaps for the first time, a reality check. Knowing your positioning and abilities gives you a clearer understanding of the innovation landscape and, most importantly, the terrain you have to travel.

Arriving at a clear point of view

The intent is that we have to arrive at a clear “point of view” of both the reality of where you are and where you would like to be. These have to be explicit, to achieve a conscious awareness. I believe we have to go through some very specific and recognized steps, I outline the nine stages we need to work through the process here. These stages are a mixture of discussion, investigation and structured analysis and diagnostics.

This set of reality checks needs a clear, defining pathway in how the organization will need to change, a level of clarity of how you see your innovation capacity is not at the required level.

Then we identify and describe the required outcomes of ‘fitness need’ of the structured work to be undertaken through the different parts of the Innovation Fitness Landscape assessment, establishing those capabilities you are likely to need, the more innovation dynamic capabilities.

It is establishing these, that drive your innovation performance towards your stated needs and goals, ones to close the gap in present capabilities and required ones.

This moving from the present to the preferred requires this journey across the mapped terrain and the nature and character of that journey need to be clarified, on what is needed from you and all the people involved to achieve your (transformation) goals. Those growing innovation dynamic capabilities become part of the enduring strategy that informs all those involved and mobilizes all that is needed to get you into this new innovation position.

The greater innovation fitness you achieve equates to more value creation potential you can generate.

These are the search for your dynamic points for innovation. These are unique to you, they make you distinctive. They lead you to new growth, new creations, new opportunities to innovate. You evolve. You continuously look to combine in different ways to stay ‘dynamic’ and sustaining. We are setting about building your innovation capital.

If you would like to learn more, then please contact me, and we can set up a clarifying conversation to talk through this specifically related to your unique position.

The post Peeling away the layers of your innovation reality first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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. So here is a handy few to think about

1). A common language is essential

Any dynamics in the system need the ability for all to talk the same language, something that becomes common and embedded to support the routines and move quickly to the ideas, concepts, and solutions, as others can begin to ‘understand’ them and their connections as well. It is through working on the personal stories and appreciating the history, it is having an appreciation of events, good and bad, it is through local slogans, your jargon, and dialogues that bring people together. The power of storytelling helps gain adoption and identification of those needs for working on a common cause.

2). Creating constant opportunities for conversations

So many organizations don’t work on the ongoing discussions. They tend to dive straight into design workshops, build roadshows, and limit sessions that give everyone linkage and growing identification. You begin to identify your sense of purpose and value contribution if there is a consistent diffusion of messages, an on-going dialogue. By investing in lots of engagement, ones that should be initially lead from the top, then allowed to move up and down the organization, to allow for these ongoing conversations to build through growing confidence and trust.

3). Using the knowledge that resides

Organizations like to believe they are building domains of expertise, but often they are actually creating lots of individual silo’s to further restrict the flow of knowledge. Knowing where the right functional expertise lies, the relevant skills, experiences, or relevant insights ‘reside’ is increasingly important to throw open to all, to tap into, extract and contribute needs a well-designed knowledge sharing structure. This extracting expertise can help with not just our daily routines by offering different thoughts, ideas, and practices that may have a real impact on how you can change but as timely contributions into group activities.

4). Wrapping up intelligence to give it real value and knowledge understanding

The bundling of data is becoming critical. It needs to be increasingly shared across the organization at real-time speed. As we look increasingly outside our organizations, our focal markets, we need to gather a more exceptional ability for ‘sensing and seizing’ on the information. As we accumulate this and being able to connect it, to bundle it into knowledge that has potential application or relevance, allows for absorptive capacities to really come to life. By bringing into the organization the process of accessing, anchoring, and diffusing that external capacity for creating and exploiting new value.

5). Capturing and extracting tacit knowledge

Our ability to capture and access the tacit understanding that resides in all our employees is a critical issue to achieve new dynamic tension. How do we harness tacit knowledge, capture it, even recognize its value we need to encourage a continuous learning environment, we need to have clear organization learning strategies. Tacit knowledge helps us tackle the unknowns associated with discovery. The more we share, put effort into collaborative ventures, the more we learn. The more we engage with external experts, the more we should gain from these exchanges. Context becomes vital, as does striving for that common language and association.

6). Allowing time to explore and improve our human capital

Tacit knowledge as it becomes embedded in shared values, assumptions, and beliefs you can qualify and map tacit knowledge. Our tacit knowledge increases human capital. It can, through creative acts, give a strong feeling and provide a real sense of commitment. The more we explore, the more we ‘ignite our passions,’ We all need to consciously find the time to explore. It is by clearing the path to allow the absorbing to take place. As we set about to extract the knowledge, carefully, through putting any challenge into context, we are setting the basis for knowledge content to build by allowing time to access, anchor, and diffuse by validating back to our pre-determined setting.

The ability to harness our dynamics is vital

The ability to make our environments more dynamic means they become more engaging, more challenging. The dynamics offer far of a more a place to learn and contribute. It gives us greater potential for innovation and growth. As we build the dynamics of learning, there is a real growth potential for the organization and its people. The ability to set about making sure all the different intellectual capitals can combine. When you can connect those human capitals (knowledge, skills, and experiences), relationship ones (social and through our networks) or through the structural ones, (where you pool knowledge, use routines, and systems)you put into place a more abundant “stock” of innovation potential.

Proper use of our intellectual capitals and knowing what these are does allow for a greater unlocking of innovation value. The more we ‘work and encourage’ our learning capitals, combining the power that lies in the dynamic linkages we can forge, in the acquisition, in assimilation and then into eventual transformation then this allows known knowledge to become new wealth-generating innovation

By setting up your innovation environment before you jump into all those useful tools, techniques, and frameworks will give you such a good “heads start.”

The post Achieving a more dynamic innovating environment first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.