In the past we have often believed it is the genius laboring away in his lab that has made the discovery that has led to real breakthroughs in innovation.

So often in the past this lack of making the invention connection has often held many of us back to become engaged in discovery, ideas or contributions as we felt discouraged, as we had felt innovation can only happen in these ‘special’ places.

Most of us became disconnected with the early part of the discovery for innovation, we simply became just the implementors, pushing the innovation through the pipeline into its final execution. That can change if we are willing and able to challenge our past assumptions.

In many ways we have still not fully broken with this ‘mindset’ on innovation of being someone else’s need to identify and discover those new ways, new designs and solutions. Thankfully though that has been changing, as increasingly the message has been delivered that “innovation is all within our jobs, irrespective of what we do”

It has been the opening up of organization thinking through technology that has allowed for this innovation to flow, to be captured, absorbed, translated and delivered back out into the world. It is from this multiple and diverse difference of innovation understanding that can freely flow ideas and concepts that can evolve into new innovations that deliver better value than what was offered in the past.

We do need to find this “sweet spot” for encouraging more innovation

We live in a world where we are having greater connectivity than ever before. We are increasingly engaged in far greater interactivity with the easy and access to the social and organizational tools than ever before. We are encouraged to share what we know increasingly so others can built on this, or shape its original concept into a different value proposition simply by having that triggering idea and seeing the ‘possibilities’ to build upon it.

Perhaps we have a new innovation equation to explore and exploit more

It is the degree of connectivity times the degree of interactivity times the degree of sharing, that is within our growing community that enables the innovation to emerge.

We need to find the spaces to innovate. Where else in today’s more open world where technology allows us all higher degree’s of freedom, discovery and ability to make the innovation space a vibrant one. One where it is the collaborating we undertake, that leads us to breaking out of the existing, changing the known, investigating the unknown by the ‘degree’s of our willingness to explore and exploit all that is around us, if we only reach out and be open to new levels of thinking.

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I believe Innovation is becoming overwhelmed by all the changes we are applying into innovation activity and its management.

I would say the IM system is under even greater strain from the shifts coming from the multiple applications of technology, new approaches to design and modelling as well as all the necessary engagement and touchpoints.

Yet we are still expecting this deluge of change occurring to happily move our innovations through that past established, often manual processes, we have presently in place. I think not.  We are deluding ourselves, that all is well.
There are such changes occurring.
There is an increasing need for ecosystems, platforms, the greater use of analytics, big data and reliance on technology are all crowding in on innovation delivery.

The emphasis on thinking through new business models, combining design thinking, lean management, customer development, prototyping, experimenting outside the lab, collaborating with clients, finding different partners, the different exploitation of research techniques, are all breaking out in different forms and combinations, radically altering our approaches to innovation.

Also collaborating and networking are far more essential to innovation exchange, be this in the early idea forming stages but increasing in the development and execution of innovative solutions.

Partnerships are diverse, delivering on the need of the job-to-be-done. Orchestration is increasingly playing its part to manage all the assets and knowledge coming into play. There is a significant amount of change occurring around innovation and its management.

I have suggested in past posts that we all need to think differently, to act differently, to treat  innovation differently:

innovation is based on the thinking around the shift from products to solutions, from transactions to growing far more value-adding ongoing relationships, from a supplier of product services, into highly valued network partnerships, exploring innovation across all options, instead of delivering on discrete elements; this requires managing the whole ecosystem of the innovation design differently.

Can we continue in this “steady as she goes” by simply rearranging in this case the innovation portfolio to adjust to the latest insight, well no. I think we are simply just fiddling with the deckchairs, incremental changes as the innovation ‘ship’ plows on, into more treacherous water, underestimating the hidden icebergs that cannot be appreciated until something happens.

Overload, inadequate resources, systems and structures all lie under the surface but still, we press on regardless.

Innovation is heading for its own Titanic moment.
Are we addressing all the significant changes going around innovation?
It seems incredible to us today that anyone could believe that 70,000 tonnes of steel could be unsinkable.

Yet, when the New York office of the White Star Line was informed that Titanic was in trouble, White Star Line Vice President P.A.S. Franklin announced ” We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe the boat is unsinkable.”

I can hear the CEO of today making a similar comment “We place a lot of confidence in our innovation, it is critical in the way we will grow our business and take us forward, we are well-positioned to grow” I don’t share their (blind) faith.

Looking back, it was the beginning of the twentieth century and people had absolute faith in new science and technology. They believed that science in the twentieth century could and would provide answers to solve all problems.

The sinking of the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic shattered much confidence in science and made people more skeptical about such fantastic claims.

Does innovation sink under the weight of so much expectation

Are we going to sink innovation as the twenty-first century takes our beliefs in technology and science into new areas, without the necessary understanding of how to manage this, when so much of our understandings of how to physically manage this, are lagging?

I feel we can go on foolishly believing innovation will simply cope with all that is coming towards her?

It is perhaps “unthinkable” for most, our innovation will simply cope. Why not, I mean we have the technology and the internet to keep us caught up in the moment. Yet we are falling further behind on the people side of managing innovation and balancing risk and reward. Our processes, systems and structures are inadequate to deliver on the expected innovation promise.

Is the internet and our growing reliance on all our connections required for managing today’s business for innovation insights, services and understanding, we just might not be seeing the size of the ‘hidden’ icebergs?

Unless we change course and plot a new route for managing innovation we might have some very uncomfortable moments where we will simply sink, flounder or await rescue. Who is actually steaming to the rescue of our ‘creaking’ innovation systems?

*first published on LinkedIn

The post Sinking the unthinkable first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Then you read in one of the latest McKinsey Quarterly’s articles about “the global company’s challenge” (http://tinyurl.com/8yvwsrv) suggesting many issues are needed to be faced within large global organizations, you get even more of a confirmation that all is not well for innovation.

Innovation’s future seems to need some wholesale changes to take place and those innovation leaders are facing multiple dilemmas and choices that can’t be ignored for much longer.

The issue is “are the leaders of these organizations up to the challenges?”
According to McKinsey, through a fairly extensive survey overall, global organizations are struggling to adapt in many areas. A year ago, McKinsey uncovered a “globalization penalty”: high-performing global companies consistently scored lower than more locally focused ones on several dimensions of organizational health.

For example, the former were less effective at establishing a shared vision, encouraging innovation, executing “on the ground,” and building relationships with governments and business partners.

Also another section of the CEB report states clearly that “the past decade of economic uncertainty made executive teams risk averse—focusing on incremental innovation to improve existing products and ensure more predictable, near-term revenue. In effect, these firms have been trading larger, higher-impact (and riskier) ideas for a greater number of smaller, more manageable (and less risky) ideas, causing incremental and next generation initiatives to dominate most innovation portfolios.  Incremental innovation still accounts for more than 80% of funded innovation initiatives”

The CEB report further goes on “With weakened ideation networks, stretched management, and ineffective global working relationships, many companies are hard-pressed to restock their innovation pipeline with breakthrough ideas. Without re-establishing the necessary organizational capabilities, companies are unlikely to shift their innovation portfolio fast enough to compete and win in new markets”.

It does offer the following glimmer of hope “while daunting, the challenges are not insurmountable” but let’s think more radically in resolving these barriers.

I think we should stop the innovation bus and re-evaluate where large organizations are really going.

In both reports they indicate fundamental underlying weaknesses that are not being fully addressed that seems to me is a major constraint on innovation. Unless those on the ever-moving faster wheel don’t pause and reflect they are just going to run harder and harder for diminishing returns and growing frustration, then they are facing the road to nowhere.

I think it is time to get off the existing tread mill and really begin to think through a major re-engineering of innovation.

Four tensions need addressing but differently for each organization

In many ways I like the McKinsey suggested four tensions they put forward as needing to be addressed in their article to be overcome; in managing strategy, people, costs, and risk on a global scale.

The importance of each of these four tensions will vary from company to company, depending on its particular operating model, history, and global footprint. My approach to these:

• Firstly manage within the global innovation team differently than today. We need to bring back strategic confidence and put a different stretch into the structure that builds on trust, on exchanging, on collaborating and building a deeper ,a  more globally spread experience level that is both dispersed, yet still globally orchestrated and one that is simply not imposed and driven centrally.

• Make people more the central asset to your accelerating innovation. Place more trust in them. Not by simply dumping more work upon them and asking them to fill in more forms for a central repository on their progress. Or equally demanding a constant feeding back, often in one-way conversations but in permitting the unleashing of the talent that does reside within and across organizations, so often buried, by giving it a higher level of trust and self-determination.

This would mean a much more focused coordinating platform that exchanges on mutual respect and value for each person’s contribution and value-generating contribution. Balancing local insight, adapting global brands and tailoring the final offering to tap into local opportunities needs a different approach than we are seeing today. Stop imposing, start listening and adapting and adjusting more to what is needed in local markets not ‘driven’ from some distant point of reference that needs significant compromise to meet different market demands.

• The huge advantage global organizations should have is simply being eroded more and more. Not just by the local more nimble competitor but more importantly by the way organizations seem to be structured in recent years. The advantage of shared infrastructures that large organizations are supposedly meant to have, does seems to me, all but eroded. You see the duplication in the system as often staggering.

The myths of shared services can be often illusionary, as well as more and more complexity is layered in the system to offset and counter potential risk. The growing cost of compliance, seeking global standards and coordinating these needs constant re-evaluation, cross-validation and assessment is pushing out products by turning them into just safe innovation. Often we are seeing even longer delivery-to-market time horizons with all these internal exchanges .  There is a real pressing need to release this layering-on effect and find new and different ways to speed up and become more adept and agile.

• Reducing risk often seems the first overriding priority in many large matured organizations. Take all the risk out of innovation and all you end up with the incremental approaches we are seeing today, all too often touted as innovation breakthroughs, what rubbish. Can this change, I think it must do, as real growth demands different solutions than what is being offered today, otherwise we will just simply ‘bounce along’ in slow growth across many industries.

How to manage a more diverse business portfolio in global organizations needs a different hedging policy to rebalance the risk premium with more of an adventurous exploration of innovation bets. Re-balancing infrastructures and deciding where to locate skills to support both a global business but with a greater diversity of innovation within local operations and regions is a tough challenge. Managing mind-sets and embedded thinking calls for a more radical overhaul if more breakthrough thinking is called for.

Each of these four tension points needs to be re-balanced, to be re-engineered. Innovation needs some radical re-thinking, a more ruthless review of what is working, what is holding it back.

To achieve this I feel a complete re-engineering approach to innovation is called for. Large organizations are strangling great innovation ideas at birth and slowly to death through a heavily compromised pipeline

These are being replaced with lacklustre concepts that are often boring their customers and compelling them to question the value and look more and more elsewhere, for solutions that fit their needs and pockets.

Otherwise, global scale will simply not matter if organizations can’t leverage the people on the ground, so as to link more specifically to the customer needs in different regions and markets and provide them with what they want.

The urgent need is to improve the organizations abilities to connect locally and adapt globally, not the other way around.

Yes, you can call that reverse re-engineering in the way you are managing innovation.

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