I completed a series of posts in April 2023, published on this posting site, on cross-sector needs when considering or working in innovation ecosystems.
To get to a good understanding of cross-sector innovation ecosystems collaborations, you need to take a very considered holistic view of what is needed in any collaboration, let alone cutting across sectors to generate a successful outcome. All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities, and behaviors are essential in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that need to be involved.
I have summarized the key points of these four posts; click on the links referred to. I have outlined the multiple needs to consider so you are more aware of the differences and needs of managing within an ecosystem of collaborators.
After a series of posts introducing and explaining the thinking and design behind the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework, I thought it would be a good idea to put this into a sequence of visuals that should take you through this to provide a decent understanding of its make-up and logic.
Organizations in today’s business environment need to adapt rapidly and dynamically, have the need to bring the innovation management process into a constant technological advancement, and be more tailored in its design by their own specific needs and not “offered” as a rigid set of solutions. We need to embrace a significant change in the way we “set about” innovation.
If you are interested in reading more in the series I have been posting then here are the links in the order of posting.
The importance here is recognizing the shift in mindset and thinking towards a Building Block approach to build up the Innovation Stacks. Each stack “sits” on a technology platform. Thinking through what this means requires understanding, relating, and putting a clear context of innovation, what you want to achieve, and how to set about this.
As I mentioned in a previous post, for any innovation enterprise change, I do not recommend a “big bang” solution; it should be phased to validate and grow to understand, build up validation, justify making the changes, bedding in the thinking needed and approaches to provide the level of returns and the growing understanding of cost/ benefit conversion.
The potential returns, including increased agility, improved innovation outcomes, enhanced collaboration, and long-term competitiveness, make this radical change worthwhile for organizations aspiring to thrive in today’s dynamic business environment. The ability to build the context and show its (ongoing) value makes the difference. You need a systematic approach and project staging plan.
The importance here is recognizing the shift in mindset and thinking towards a Building Block approach to build up the Innovation Stacks. Each stack “sits” on a technology platform. Thinking through what this means requires understanding, relating, and putting a clear context of innovation, what you want to achieve, and how to set about this.
How difficult would it be to embrace this Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework, as it is often argued that most people want to keep innovation management and its process simple? I wonder if that is the current incumbents, be these current innovation management software providers or individuals inside the organizations resisting change, as it brings significant uncertainty of change and disruption to the (inadequate) process, one that I feel is not fit for today’s and tomorrow’s innovation purpose.
So how to set about making this change and who should be involved as it is a more radical design of a holistic nature is what I am outlining in this post and the next one focuses more on the project organization needed.
Organizations in today’s business environment need to adapt rapidly and dynamically, the need to bring the innovation management process into a constant technological advancement, and more designed by their own specific needs and not “offered” as a rigid set of solutions. We need to embrace a significant change in the way we “set about” innovation.
It needs increased agility and looks to have innovation consistently redesigned to meet different challenges and needs. It needs a better set of flexible design elements and system thinking to gain from reuse and redesign rapidly. I like the term I saw the other day “systems of gravity” to get tasks completed faster than what is being offered today in innovating software solutions.
The need is to set about building a compelling business case to make the move to embrace this (radical) design change and its potential value in returns and flexibility. I want to begin to sketch out the pathway of change this might need. It will be hard work, but doing this in stages gives growing understanding and value, and I believe ultimately rewarding.
We cannot afford not to avoid changing our innovation processes as we deal with a far more complex and challenging world. We seem to be keeping innovation as a disappointing and often frustrating outcome for many leaders of organizations today, innovation needs to be top of mind and better equipped to deliver.
I proposed a new Framework for managing innovation this week, called the Final Perspective: A Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework. This is approaching innovation and its management in more of a holistic, technology-enabled way based on the use of a cloud-enabled Platform and Ecosystem thinking and design.
The thrust of the framework is “Organizations can create a more comprehensive and effective innovation ecosystem by utilizing building blocks as components of the innovation stack, guiding platform development using the innovation stack, and supporting the innovation stack with a platform. Equally, components are oriented towards learning, knowledge, creativity, design, and testing—essential tasks in the innovation process“.
I am suggesting a vertical and horizontal design applying innovation stack and building block approaches, which may be new concepts for many. Still, they do have value in enabling a more dynamic environment for innovation to connect to the potential it so often promises but fails to deliver upon.
Much stands in the way of taking an idea or concept and getting it to a successful launch, recognition, and, most importantly, adoption. Innovation management and its process need changing, seriously updating with more of an enterprise framework. I am proposing one.
I wrote a post “Building Up to the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework Validation“, providing the investigations and subsequent posts I provided to build the argument towards this solution. They are concise synopsises to get this base for my thinking and understanding of why innovation processes and their management need to change.
On Monday 12th June 2023 I made a proposal that innovation is in need of a radical redesign. The post was my “The Final Perspective: A Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework“. This recommendation had been built out over the past three months toward this final conclusion.
Here I want to summarize the posts that were part of this build-up, that build the compelling business case for the need to change our thinking about innovation.
I looked at the present limitations of existing innovation software, emphasizing the value and contribution that having more of an innovation ecosystem thinking and design and then introducing different more technology-related concepts such as building blocks, innovation stacks, and key component relationships built on a platform approach were highlighted and explained in these posts.
The “final perspective” post proposed the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework as a comprehensive approach to addressing today and the future complexities of innovation management.
In my view any new approach to innovation needs to aim to achieve interdependent and interlocking innovation, solving problems that have not been addressed before and offering sustainable value, impact, and returns to all involved or significantly improving on the existing solutions. Today we are missing a comprehensive structure or innovation process to achieve this, we need a radically different approach to managing innovation.
I am suggesting a vertical and horizontal design applying innovation stack and building block approaches, all “housed” on a technology platform. This post explains this thinking, and validation and provides the way I envisage this.
Nothing can work in isolation.
We need an Innovation Mandate calling for a Radical Re-design of how we undertake innovation management, it is needed to bring innovation management into the 21st century in design and approaches.
I believe today; the innovation management process requires this fresh mandate to drive change to bring the process into today’s more technical period where our systems need to operate seamlessly and flow across the organization and the entire innovation process.
Innovation is a complex process that requires effective connections and collaborations among individuals and teams.
Stepping back, I want to draw down on a series of perspectives I have found invaluable. A very inspirational article by Larry Schmitt on the Innovation Stack added to my thinking about innovation stacks. Then the depth of work Sangeet Paul Choudary has explored around Platforms and his Building Block Thesis is terrific.
Both of these contributions have helped me build further upon all the diverse viewpoints and strands of thoughts I have been researching for my solution framework, one of building out innovation stacks, building blocks, and the modular and component approaches for challenging the existing designs for any innovation management process.
My fun has been piecing these together to lead me to my suggested Vertical and Horizontal Framework for achieving a different innovation management design. I will go into the final proposed components in my next post. Here I offer a different perspective of innovation that leads to proposing such a change.
Introduction: Mapping out the relationships within an innovation management system is a challenging task. It requires understanding how individuals, data, and communications connect to contribute to innovation at every stage, from discovery to execution.
Regretfully today, many innovation management solutions, especially software solutions, have not successfully addressed this relationship problem across the full innovation management process.
In this post, I continue to explore the key components and relationships of innovation stacks and building blocks moving towards a solution that might address our current weaknesses in innovation management.
Developing the innovation stack takes the view that innovation is a series of building blocks stacked on top of each other with different layers to work through. These stacks follow an established logic, such as working through idea discovery, relating to given problems, exploring solutions, and determining the final model or design and the execution delivery to achieve this. Combining these “building blocks” modularly in innovation stacks creates a unique design that adapts to your specific needs and goals.
Today, innovation processes are partly designed this way but are more rigid and hold knowledge often as “islands” within a possible solution. We can mix and match different emerging or established innovation approaches but sometimes miss valuable points and due to this lack of “being connected up” we lose flexibility, sometimes meaning and miss some of the potential value as the parts are not as well interlinked or dynamic; we screen out more than we add-in. Our approach today is to reduce complexity as early as possible and make decisions perhaps too early; we often stop the additional learning by further probing and gathering.
I believe in approaching innovation differently by combining the ingenuity of human and artificial intelligence in a more modern way, through the application of building blocks delivering specific API solutions, and innovation stacks that connect it all up, based on a technology platform that flows across all our innovation processes.
