At present, you can download the report before it might slip behind a paywall at some later stage. I would take advantage while you can. The report provides insights from 270 innovation, R&D and strategy executives and considerable work on structuring the conclusions in highly thoughtful and valuable ways to the reader.

If you are not familiar with Innovation Leader, they were created to be a growing and essential resource for innovation, especially in the bigger organizations. It has a more specific focus on the US scene but much of what it has found is universal in my opinion. It’s editor and Co-Founder Scott Kirsner (editor@innovationleader.com) and his team are building a great point of reference and meeting point for innovators to exchange and learn from each other. Maybe you should join?

Why do I think the report is well worth you investing time to read? The report provides an excellent document that enables good discussions to be drawn from the benchmarking of many organization, to compare with your own organization. The report is laid out into four parts: 1. Creating Strategic Alignment, 2.Funding Innovation, 3 Delivering Impact and 4 Moving forward.

It offers up great suggestions on tactics, relationships and obstacles you can face in any sort of innovation program, be it an early forming one or at a more mature stage. It can allow you to communicate and suggest the needs for a new innovation approach where you need others involved but they would expect to see a validation. This report helps in all these and much more.

I am going to just focus on three parts that really caught my eye

These are 1 “Who Owns Innovation“, 2. “The Big Shift Occurring” and 3 “Obstacles to Innovation“. I have taken a visual from the report to support these focal points with permission, as this report is a copyright “2018 Innovation Leader LLC and KPMG LLP- all rights reserved report.”

Who Owns Innovation?

I pulled out this visual specifically on the transformation activity but as the whole report section on ownership of innovation discusses the differences, when it comes to breaking them down into incremental, adjacent and transformational innovation activities. Each has its own analysis. I chose the executing of transformational as it is the hardest but specifically to call attention to the array of groups working in this area.

We tend to focus on one group or another or hand it over to a separate innovation lab but here we actually see seven groups can be actively engaged in transformational innovation. This brings home the complexity of managing innovation, of aligning all of the different, sometimes conflicting activities and groups involved in innovation. Yet it is recognizing it is simply not “contained” to one specific group, even transformational innovation. I find that very valuable to be reminded about.

We are dealing with both internal and external groups that are more specialized and focused. Organizations are recognizing they can call upon different resources and dedicated groups to achieve transformational innovation.

The general Business Unit is less involved in transformation innovation but they will always have a key involvement and perhaps final say as they are more than likely going to promote or block the transforming ideas if they are not actively engaged.  The dedicated Innovation team on the visual shows the main ‘spike’ which tends to follow today’s trend, for achieving a specific innovation focus and not being distracted you provide space for dedicated teams in different formats that ‘fit’ for you..

The one that is interesting, is that outside resources do show up at this current level, does indicate the growing recognition of larger organizations recognizing increasingly that going outside to specialists offers a very distinct level of separation to achieve breakthrough innovation.  Outsiders offer a very different level of pairing, of business acumen and consumer empathy that is often not found in-house. This can give you a terrific access to different thinkers. draw in people with very different professional backgrounds that have design, engineering, and technology as their core.It really can transform thinking and product solutions.

It is good to see this outside engagement with specialist parties becoming an important part of any innovation transformational portfolio- the separation to focus in and providing a more diverse tapping into the outside resources that are available.

The Big Shift Occurring

Where do organizations focus their energy and resources? There has been this commonly offered guide that a 70-30-10 ratio recommending incremental should be at 70%, adjacent at 30% and finally transformational at 10%. I have really detested this broad recommendation, it is in my opinion simply bad advice, without some detailed understanding of your market condition, your competitors, the changes we are undergoing to even make a rule-of-thumb recommendation as most simply just copy this blindly. Can you imagine a tech company on these ratios? They are more likely to be 10- 20- 70 or a company in the middle of significant industry changes working on these ratios, incrementing themselves to death?

I would argue anyone trying to get out of the incremental trap needs to place increasing resource, energies, learning and funds towards adjacent and more specifically transformation. This is why I am glad this trend is underway and we see in this report nearly a 50- 25- 25 and that is really welcome. When we see a 35-30-35 as a recommendation I’ll be even happier but depending on your industries circumstances and need.

I was pleased to see this trend, it holds promise for the future of “better” innovation offerings that are more unique and radical. Do take a look at the industrial variations. The more we move towards transformational, the more we are thinking longer-term and that is a really important Big Shift.

Obstacles to Innovation

There is so much written about obstacles. It is placed at the leadership door, it is in the poor innovation culture, or a lack of budget, poor visions or alignment. The list does go on and on. Two that really stand out for me and confirm what so many working in innovation often say (often quietly) are “Politics and Turf Wars” and “Inability to Act on Critical Signals of Change.” Just take another look, if you stop and take your time on the visual above they are number one and number three as the real issues.

Now the fact they come out so high indicates a really good underscoring of this report getting closer to the heart of innovation. The report points out the larger an organization gets the more turf wars and politics “kick in” to become such obstacles. It does affect all, large and small, and this raises one of the biggest issues of how can these inside blockages be successfully eliminated? We need to reflect on these and offer some better, lasting, solutions. We often see conflicting priorities, calling in favors, those “pet” project of a senior leader all become caught up in this turf war and politics. How can we reduce these down?

I have suggested we need a greater alignment and along with Jeffrey Philips in some of our past work, we have suggested and constantly practice the Innovation Executive WorkMat methodology, where the central part is the communication, cascading and constantly build the common language and it this document becomes the central one for innovation to draw from. In this workmat approach, you have seven parts: Strategic alignment, Culture, Environment, Structure and Processes, Governance, Common Language and Communications and finally, Motivations and Metrics.

It is this combined workmat approach, owned throughout the organization, that can begin to break down politics, turf wars, lack of vision, poor executive support, or failing to pick up opportunities, and miss signals of change. It also looks to give collective ownership.

In the Innovation Leaders report, KPMG has a specific section on “acting on signals of change” that is worth reading. Again as a constant champion of the Three Horizons methodology, we can begin to pick up weak signals of change that are all around us today and build those into the framing and innovation activities of incremental (h1), adjacent (h2) and transformational (h3)

So for me or any other person involved in innovation, this report is a must go too.

It is full of terrific insights covering many essential aspects of innovation management. It has a handy “key questions” and points to some very useful “resources after each of the sections discussed.

Finally, the report outlines the hallmarks of a mature innovation program and equally for those launching an innovation program. Great insights and learning just within this section.

I strongly recommend it as a report you can’t afford to miss.

The post A really worthwhile report on Innovation not to be missed from Innovation Leader. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Breaking News

Year after year, this analysis has proven that those firms identified as being the most effective innovators consistently outperform their peers and the market.”

Now is that surprising?

It should not be but sadly for the vast majority of companies that do not treat innovation as seriously as they should, as the growth enabler, it keeps them in a constantly lagging position. It tells a very powerful message, one of investing in innovation seriously and in sustaining levels, you can grow well above others.

Points from this research

I’ve known Tim Jones for some time. Tim is certainly a recognized leader in innovation, growth and foresight – he has always been helping organizations grow and be ready for the future and does some terrific work.

He is a founder and programme director for different initiatives “housed” under 1) the innovation leaders org,- this is the research programme that identifies the world’s most effective innovators  2) the growth agenda org, – that sets about helping companies build new growth platforms and 3) the future agenda – the world’s largest open foresight initiative explores the key issues facing society over the next decade.

Recently Tim has been  announcing the results of the 2016/17 Innovation Leaders research that identifies the companies which achieve the most from their innovation activities and deliver tangible, sustained growth. Now in its 16th year, this annual analysis profiles the global leaders across 25 different sectors, (click this one to see who) highlighting the shifts taking place and identifying new achievements.

The 2016/7 analysis reveals three notable trends extracted from Tim’s supporting remarks from this recent report:

US Dominance in leading innovators

“After greater European and Asian presence over the past decade, this year 20 of the 25 leaders are US based organizations. This is the highest single country concentration since the research began in 2001 and reflects both the continued global dominance of the West Coast as a centre of innovation and its impact on other sectors across the country, some of which previously had a greater focus on M&A driven growth.

The remaining leading innovators are based in Denmark, Korea, Germany, Spain and the UK. The drop in European presence on the list, down 50% within a couple of years, should be raising some hard questions about the future of innovation across Europe”

My thoughts here: For me this does raise real concerns on innovation across Europe. It consistently is lagging and seemingly not catching up as it does not have all the levers to become more dynamic in growth as we are seeing in the tepid economic growth conditions seen in most European countries.

Partnerships at the Fore – the trend critical to finding new growth

“Although effective collaboration has been a key component of successful innovation for some sectors for some time, it is clear that, today, this is increasingly influential across the board. Organisation’s such as Accenture and Cisco and KT Corporation have positioned themselves specifically to help to drive customer innovation; companies like Adidas, Delta and LEGO are using partnerships to maximise brand impact; and firms including Boston Scientific, Dow Chemical and Lilly are all focused on collaboration across their respective ecosystems. Irrespective of sector, deeper partnership-driven innovation is very much at the fore. This does not suggest that the days of ‘going it alone’ are over, but highlights how, in an ever more interconnected world, delivering high impact change requires new alliances”.

My thoughts here: This is why I believe the power of platforms and working in ecosystems is certainly one of the key ways forward to “innovate for growth”

Big Bets

“While some companies such as FedEx, Inditex, PepsiCo and Reckitt Benckiser, continue to focus on delivering consistent incremental innovation, more radical breakthrough approaches are core to several organisations’ growth strategies. It is clear from both new product launches and underlying patent activity. Alongside Alphabet’s significant ‘Other Bets’ activities, Amazon’s strong moves into AI and Apple’s major R&D investments, others are also raising the stakes. Whether this is Bank of America’s proactive positioning on block-chain, Humana’s investments in digital, LEGO’s movie partnerships or Nvidia’s expansion from gaming into automotive, more established companies seem willing to explore and support a number of major intelligent future growth investments: Tesla’s bold moves continue to capture many headlines but others are not holding back”.

My thoughts here: The radical / transformation bets are beginning to take hold. More companies worried over their poor growth track records are looking to find “growth pathways” but struggle to find the ways to do this as they have failed to make the necessary, sustaining innovation capacity building investments.

About the Innovation Leaders Analysis

In order to gain an insightful and validated perspective on the true innovation leaders on a sector-by-sector basis, the annual Innovation Leaders analysis assesses the performance of 1,500 of the world’s top companies against a number of specific key parameters.

The individual innovation and growth performance of the top companies within each sector are compared against each other and additional research around the differences between the leading organisations is undertaken to ensure that the perspectives gained are fully up to date. This provides what we believe to be the most accurate picture of the companies that are the most effective innovators in each sector, and allows us to highlight the respective key competitive strengths.

The eight areas that we research and input into the assessments across different sectors are:

1      Organisational culture and supporting structure;

2      Strategic focus on innovation driving corporate growth;

3      New product launches and relative success ratios;

4      Growth in revenues, profits and market capitalisation;

5      Average revenue and margin per product or customer;

6      Investment in activities such as R&D and marketing;

7      Brand value and human capital growth; and

8      Peer review from within the sector.

For more information on this research please contact research@innovationleaders.org or to view the recent presentations.

So here is a link to the results of the 2016/17 Innovation Leaders research that identifies the companies and a link to their new website

I’d recommend exploring this as I picked this up on from Tim’s LinkedIn post, as it was only published today, 5th March 2017, and where I have drawn most of this ‘informing’ post.

Essential read for those wanting to build the business case for innovation and see who is leading in innovation and growth returns from their focus on this.

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The post Setting yourself apart through Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.