We are on the brink of a transformation, a global one that connects us into information, knowledge, and insights in ever-powerful ways. thanks to the digital internet. We are also exploring the use of Artifical Intelligence (AI) more than ever.

BCG suggests that nine out of ten companies in their recent survey for the report “The Most Innovative Companies 2019” are investing in AI. BCG also suggests that 30% of those surveyed believe AI will have the greatest impact of any innovation area on their industry over the next three to five years.

We are also seeing the emergence of platforms and ecosystems radically changing how we collaborate and invent, design, solve issues from a changing shift in cooperation understanding. Platforms are fueling new business initiatives as they learn to engage across the whole value chain spectrum, from customer to delivering back the needs of that customer.

It is our technology being applied through new approaches that are galvanizing the new potential within innovation.

As we learn to orchestrate the underlying technologies, learn to build helpful applications, establish these software platforms this is beginning to become attractive as a new place for integrating, exchanging and collaborating. There is the talk of “the network effect” (Metcalfe’s Law) whereas more participants engage on platforms or in ecosystems and exchange, the more the value goes up and the community participating gets increasingly more out of the value of the “combined” thinking, data and insights. It has huge potential to generate new levels of innovation, ones that are more connected, more seamless and more what the customer wants.

So we come to CX + DX, it needs IX

Customer experience (CX) is driving change. The customer is expecting more value in the products or services they buy. They expect connected products, ones that are seemingly simple to then but highly complex to bring together. They will pay for this if the solutions offered are in their “sweet spot”.

To achieve this industry has to go through this digital transformation (DX) that is underway. Adapting a product to the need of one person’s preference has been pushing the final adaptation to that persons need up the chain in production. I wrote recently (here)

“This for me will center around developing the complete suite of transparency between product development and manufacturing and communicating this “connected” story. This is the connected need of IIoT to achieve. The information and knowledge source that connects the customer demand with the delivery of their need with their custom solution. This has been promoted as the new “experience economy”.by Dassault’s CEO Barnard Charles. He suggests this is “the new economy that drives the value of the usage first, as opposed to the value of the product or the things we produce, or even the services we provide” He feels the center of gravity in value creation is taking place to the emphasis on usage as paramount to serve. This makes sense to me.”

So we have the CX and DX being worked upon. What we need now is the Innovation Transformation (IX). I have written consistently on the need for the innovation to be re-equipped to deal with the digital changes coming towards us. Today this is utterly inadequate in dealing with all the change or transformation currently underway. Just, if you have time take a read of my post here of “We require a shift of Innovation Management Solution Providers” as to give you a more detailed background as to why there is such a need. We need ecosystems for innovation to thrive and prosper in faster ways.

I mentioned in that post “Innovation software is no different from the tides of change sweeping industries, digital transformation is opening up the connection possibilities outside single organizations. No one organization can keep pace, or has enough resources, or can cover off solutions that solve “universal” problems, or even ones in a diverse, huge Corporation collaborating across a global business, where functional groups involved are far more diverse than ever before”

This is becoming the nature of the present constraints. We need digital innovation

We can keep moving towards CX and apply DX but unless we recognize and make significant changes in IX we will fail to get the impact we are looking for or the customer is expecting. The flow of insights, of information and knowledge, gets caught up in such a log jam as the innovation system is not designed for such a force of “flow-through” or set up for such co-innovation needed. We lack many innovation open and interoperable tools or systems to speed up the creation process. We are caught in an age of the single solution struggling to make the connections to the new age of innovation.

Innovation actually needs to feed business systems and push all working within the design of solutions the ability to drive outcomes.  This is why the value of digital platforms and ecosystems will gain in the urgency of getting the whole innovation system fit for the 21st century, otherwise, innovation will remain stilted, disappointing and struggling to project what it stands for:  “advancing what we have with better solutions that solve customers problems”

We need this dynamic innovation process.

Otherwise, CX + DX sounds great but if it does not have IX the returns on investment or the growth rates required for this will never materialize. Let’s not forget this IX, it needs to be far more central in the equation today.

The post So CX + DX needs IX for the transformations we need first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I was really pleased to watch the official launch of the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) with its addition of the Prioritization Matrix at Hannover Messe on Monday 1^st April 2019.

This will become a very useful and relevant management planning tool to help manufacturers worldwide to determine and prioritize their necessary areas of focus with all the digital initiatives, based on an Industry 4.0 Maturity and their current performance.

This tool or readiness prioritization index has a real potential to finally bring organizational wide awareness and common language identification. It can help implementation in a number of significant ways.

This has been pioneered by The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), a very formidable Government entity within the development of Singapore over the years, and in consultation and growing support, from McKinsey & Co, SAP, Siemens, and TüV SüD.

The framework is a very systematic and I feel, a robust way, to focus on what matters to you in your own Industrial Revolution 4.0 journey (IR4). So often organizations do not have a clear vision, strategy or can develop a systematic roadmap for this form of transformation. It becomes overwhelming and a real challenge of where to start. Often the more you read, seek advice, the more you get confused.

I believe in this Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix you have a really useful framework that can give you the common language, understanding, and sense of direction, backed up with the why, where, what and when of managing out your own Industry 4.0 roadmap. The “how” comes from the advice you can then seek, armed with a greater holistic understanding of where you stand.

The Actual Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix

For me, it has the potential to be as catalytic as the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Aware that become such a movement behind quality that spurred in Europe The European Foundation for Quality Management (later to be renamed simply ‘EFQM‘)

Digital transformation is hugely complex. It is a transformation of epic portions. It is not one of those activities you can afford to leave to IT /OT or selected board members. This is requiring total company engagement as you transform your present physical world into a highly connected digital world, totally dependent on technology. It will have a social impact, significant shifts in talent needs and your workforce. It will require a very different strategy and a deep understanding and appreciation of technology.

Breaking complexity down

The changes will need to be new solution-driven ones, as much human-centric as ever, achieving increasing machine connection and offering a sustainable and inclusive approach as the final outcome. That makes this transformation the revolution it is seen to be, Industry Revolution 4.0. It has scale, scope, and complexity unlike what we have ever experienced before, as it requires us all to be more integrated and collaborative. To achieve this it is necessary to be all-embracing and comprehensive in our digital connecting up to leverage the gains this means.

The main effects of this IR4 are the shifts in customer expectations, on product enhancements, on collaborative innovation, and in different organizational forms. The merging of physical with digital will simply enhance value in some many different ways.

IR4 will have a huge impact but it needs framing and this is where the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritisation Matrix comes in.

Why I personally am relating to this framework and Singapore

Why do I see this Industry Readiness Matrix as important to put a significant level of support behind it?

Personally, a very strong identification. I lived in Singapore for 12 years followed by a further 3 years moving back and forth from Europe into Asia. I grew up in my consulting and advisory work on eight years of working with different Singapore Government Agencies and plenty of companies operating in Singapore and across S E Asia especially.

Singapore has a unique way to galvanize the resources and energy required to succeed. I worked with their EDB, MICA, MOE, Mindef, Spring, IE, the Prime Ministers PS21, often through the framework adopted to galvanize change and growth. These different frameworks included i-quality circles, scorecards, assessments, and audit approaches. They were based increasingly on the Business Excellence Assessment, I-Award for innovation.

That work of mine when in Singapore was also contributing to National Innovation Policy papers, building consortium studies, developing and contributing to different audit and public service innovation frameworks. I would certainly say “I cut my consulting and advisory teeth on innovation work” within Singapore and in S E Asia.

I really learned the value of organizing frameworks to help in this even when bureaucracy sometimes got in the way. You witness first hand how theses frames do truly galvanize change, as well as to allow you to benchmark, compare entities, their robustness and ambitions and then this gets others to relate.

A new initiative developed by the EDB, Singapore

So when you hear of the announcement of this Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix, as announced on Monday 1^st April 2019, you certainly sit up and become alert to what this can bring.

The smart part is how the Singapore EDB has drawn in and collaborated with McKinsey & Co, SAP, Siemens, and TüB SüD. This can have the real potential to go well beyond the borders of Singapore, through S E Asia and well beyond in its organizing framework to manage Industry 4.0. My respect for the EDB is significant, I kept approaching them constantly while I was in Singapore. I will always remember the Golden Egg, Buttons and Threads, but that story is for another day.

I have worked with SAP and am working with Siemens so this makes it even more compelling to understand and relate too. They are very serious to advance the Industry 4.0 revolution.

Siemens can leverage this framework in multiple ways

Siemens has made a massive investment in their Digital future and also has a dedicated business unit, effective 1^st April 2019, renamed Digital Industries. with about 78,000 employees worldwide and businesses generated revenue of around €14 billion within the Business Unit. They are firmly fixed on providing as many solutions towards Industry 4.0 as they can. Where they presently struggle is in its complexity, the ability to communicate this holistically for recognition and adoption at the client level, to what this change really does mean. This SIRI Prioritization matrix is a great place to start and engage with their clients.

They, Siemens are rapidly building use cases, have experienced technicians, engineers, and solutions to enable the client to relate too and argument their understanding of what needs to be in place and clearly, where Siemens can play a very active contribution in solutions.

Recently, Joe Kaeser, Siemens CEO, has been appointed recently as Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Association, the Asia-Pacific Conference of German Business (APK), the place where German and Asian business interests meet. I certainly believe this Industry Readiness Index would be one initiative that can eventually become “showcases” of member organizations to Asian companies, as a further collaborative space of the association as a value-add.

Relating South East Asia, Siemens and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

I recently wrote four articles for the internal Siemens Ingenuity Knowledge site focusing on different aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution specifically in S E Asia, although many of these can be universally applied. These were highlighting challenges, realities and the need to adapt differently. If you have a chance to read them I’d appreciate it.

The main question in these posts was this: Are South East Asia ready for the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Part 1: How big is the challenge really?

Part 2: The application of innovation, the Asian way

Part 3: What are the real opportunities to invest in S E Asia

Part 4: The Roadmap for the Digital Revolution

These posts give a greater outline of the challenges relating to companies in South East Asia. Putting to use the framework offered by the EDB and its partners. Actually they tie in fairly well,  it will help them considerably to manage the challenges and achieve a more collaborative environment where Government, Society, and other organizations work far more together in forming and exchanging on Industry 4.0 challenges.

The Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix is aimed to go global

I think the Prioritization Index will be highly welcome to organize around, for all organizations grappling with the complexities and challenges 4IR requires, not just in Asia but for all organizations anywhere in the world.

For example, Siemens have some incredibly talented engineers but the ability to communicate the Industry 4.0 story is one that needs to be communicated across an organization, that has the real need to resolve this global challenge.  I really believe this organizing framework significantly advances they story and positioning, if they fully take this on, in their own adoption services.

This framework, if seen in the way I see it, can become highly central to Siemens transformation story and association/collaboration and service provision into clients or potential ones. It gives a more holistic story across the organization. A common language and awareness frame.

The ability to assess manufacturers to focus areas of transformation and bring these four inputs yields an impact value which represents the relative benefit that a company will gain from progressing across the 16 index dimensions, by a single band of each dimension. Different bands will show different impact levels so the Manufacturer will be able to quantitatively identify the focus areas of prioritization they should take.

This Prioritization Matrix enhances the Index with a computational tool with many algorithm references of hundred of use case studies available. ones that help companies identify and recommend focus areas and digital initiatives to prioritize, based partly on their individual readiness score, and current financial performance, part of the SIRI tool.

So this collaboration of partners is coming together around the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix to enable customers to start their assessment, to identify gaps and where the opportunities are to work upon. It has both a technical and practical application.

What I like it does not prioritize on technology, a place a specialist would focus, it balances this out with Process the OT specialist with Organization. The three need to be recognized as the THREE core building blocks. It works on evaluating EIGHT pillars and SIXTEEN Dimensions.

In classic Singapore ways it suggests four pragmatic steps of 1) Learn key concepts and build a common language for alignment, 2) Evaluate the existing state and readiness level for Industry 4.0, 3) Architect the transformation strategy and implementation roadmap that works for you and finally 4) Deliver that is offering impact and sustaining transformative initiatives.

In Summar: Industry 4.0 has multiple challenges

I certainly believe this Smart Industry Readiness Index and its Prioritization Matrix provides an interesting management planning tool. In summary, it provides a real acceleration towards becoming IR4 ready. Including:

• Readiness, speed, the scope of technological and digital change will spur very different business models and opportunities within the Region.  Singapore through the EDB in promoting this initiative, does provide a really valuable contribution in a diagnostic tool, to the challenges of Industry 4.0, across the whole organization.
• There are layers of complexity that need peeling away and given more focused attention with so many challenging tasks in developing industrial enablement across the Region, that need to continue to promote productivity, growth, and inclusion. Through taking this SIRI approach of evaluating the different three Building Blocks, eight Pillars and sixteen Dimension approach, they help break down much of the complexity
• The “paradigm shifts” from the type of manufacturing of lower value add, to those that “add” and can be leveraged to build national capability is possible for many, through taking this combination route of industry 4.0, infrastructure enhancement, through digitalization and innovation means a well-structured and thought through the journey.
• If the framework delivers on its promise it stands Singapore and others in a strong forefront to deliver Industry 4.0 to gain a real competitive advantage and hopefully scale up in new ways.
• We have questions of scale and complexity but helping to construct a clear vision, strategy and a systematic roadmap reduce the challenges. This framework delivers the start point and quantifies impact and gaps.
• Knowing where to start, what to scale and be able to sustain are all great but to get a tool that can show you the impact on the bottom line and the effects this has on your profit makes it highly valuable and then having diagnostics that are pointing to the best positioning where this change progression needs to take place makes it exciting to determine
• For Siemens, and the other partners, it is to find the right balance for being a critical enabler of this transformation through providing their services, their vast insights to clients across the globe and a rapidly growing use case database will offer a powerful acceleration. To be a critical and essential partner in this transition and through this framework, they can play a significant part in accelerating Industry 4.0.

I think the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix can fundamentally change the “tipping point” in more rapid adoption and acceptance of the need to embrace and convert to Industry 4.0. It offers something highly valuable, I want to engage more with this as it evolves.

*****

The Prioritization Matrix is available to all manufacturing companies globally and interested parties should contact EDB or their respective parties t learn how to utilize the application for their facilities. A downloadable copy of the matrix can be found here.

The post Finally a framework to manage holistically Industrial Revolution 4.0 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I think with the recognition that innovation occurs across the whole organization the innovation management (IM) providers have to radically alter their business model or recognize they need to broaden out their target market inside organizations.

Innovation is occurring in all corners of the organization today. Secondly, if open innovation has gone way beyond a one to many relationships into a many-to-many then does the reliance on single entity software provision makes sense, focusing on single point of entry into companies? No, we have to think total enterprise software for our innovation management solutions.

Far too much IM solution providers think their models, components, upgrades and yearly showcase upgrades, as the big event. No question any “staged” release is welcomed by clients as they either have been asking for it for long enough, or have been finding their own ways of completing “workarounds” to overcome gaps, then updates are always welcome, as long as they are relevant, not just cosmetic changes. So often client solutions and their needs have considerable lag.

Innovation software is no different from the tides of change sweeping industries, digital transformation is opening up the connected possibilities outside organizations. No one organization can keep pace, or has enough resources, or can cover off solutions that solve “universal” problems, or even ones in a diverse, huge Corporation collaborating across a global business, where functional groups involved are far more diverse than ever before.

The IM software market is stirring

I feel one IM software provider so far is making a well-considered move towards a change in their business model and that is Sopheon. Their enterprise software approach is moving the innovation management market in a very positive way, they are connecting it up progressively. They have taken the view of closing the strategy- execution gap. Their approach to solutions are designed to keep strategy visible and continuously aligned with operational execution, throughout the initiative life cycle and that makes total sense. In my opinion, that connecting up becomes vital so I hope they push this thinking as hard as they can. What they still seem to lack is their need to actually offer a more robust end-to-end innovation software solution as something of a real need. They might feel they have this, I don’t. The idea management side is still light.

Sopheon is delivering the right “on-market” message that they “provide support for speed, agility, and adaptability – all are critical enterprise capabilities in the digital era”. They are claiming they are actively building business partner ecosystems. They want to navigate the new world order of digital disruption. Sounds right.

For me, Sopheon has the right vision. They claim it is solid, I would say perhaps rigid and cautious might be the constraining factor for them. I think the execution is a carefully managed one as they do have a very small business base (revenue of $34million at the end of 2018) . Actually all honesty I think all specialised innovation management software providers, operating in the classic idea management and portfolio space of innovation software solutions do have limited size businesses. Why is that when innovation is occurring in all companies. Is it the business model, is it so much still reliant on spreadsheets and internally designed systems.  It is a very fragmented market, constrained by the existing designs in place and that is the option to grasp.

Can Sopheon break out of the pack or will others make the leap? They, Sopheon, have been generating good cash and have presently a net cash position of $16.7 million. Healthy to begin to accelerate and attract the traction necessary but will they? They are taking a creative lead but is it bold enough? How they accelerate in the coming 12 months will determine this. Platform solution is extremely expensive, building ecosystems equally complex, even in this world of Innovation.They seem not to have a scaling business model or enough representation and conversion appeal.

Here lies the “rub” for Sopheon and all other Innovation software providers “The majority of their license revenue continues to remain perpetual in nature” and that, alone, holds evolution back. It is a rapidly outdated model, it constrains not accelerates.All are very proud of who they hang onto as clients and offering solutions in the cloud, just might alter this model significantly. I think there is enough evidence to say that switching cost is as much as a barrier as the original “one time” purchase. The nature of the business model needs to change to get thid traction, that the markert needs to gain real open innovation exchanges and connectivity both inside and outside the single organization. There is this real need to master product complexity. Stand alone product is fading fast, we have service, digital and changing business models to consider when it comes to todays innovation. Customers are expectinig this within their solutions.

The nature of the present constraints

The whole evaluation of the Business model rests on the decisions in this area for “traditional” IM software providers needs challenging and changing!  In the PLM market they have been wrestling with this for some time and have made significant shifts in their revenue models. If you look at PTC or Aras for example you get a real sense of pre-occupation and effort they have invested in making significant business model changes towards a “pay as you go” model shifting their model from one focused on perpetual software licenses into a more “modern” cloud-focused subscription-based revenue model, in the hope of smoothing out their revenue model from a reliance on achieving constant “big wins” that are not as well understood by the investor, fixated on quarterly results.   I have written about the different changes occurring in PLM here “The Need for Digital Innovation“, here in “Can We Have One of These? A Product Innovation Platform”

The universal software market for innovation solutions is huge.

The part of the market that has significantly moved is in the PLM solution providers domain. The ability to connect, to share, to save and adopt and adjust drafts of complicated designs in digital ways significantly improves through the use of offering a platform solution.

The PLM part that has been connecting engineers, designers, researchers derived out of CAD where electronics, software, and machine or structure drawing needed to be undertaken. This whole area has been rapidly modernizing into a product innovation platforms to support key elements of sustainable solutions that maintain, adapt, upgrade, integrate and keep multiple systems of record for designs that due to the platform approach can be easily shared within, across and outside the old environment.

PLM is undergoing a real architecting of PLM enabling solutions that are flexible, adaptable and capable of working with other solutions that are forming into an Enterprise Application Environment. Take Aras and its solutions.[1]

The whole redesign to collaborate around a single set of processes spanning systems engineering, hardware and software development, variant and options management, part release, manufacturing planning, quality, technical documentation, program management, and more. It delivers end-to-end lifecycle management at the enterprise level, along with cross-functional collaboration capabilities and through-life configuration management.

Adjusting direction can be difficult for companies that are traditionally slow to change and reliant on legacy products that have historically been successful. Outdated enterprise solutions used to support engineering and manufacturing of these products further compounds this problem, holding back the innovation needed to develop the next generation of products required to keep pace with customers’ quickly changing needs.

There is a growing recognition of adapting different types of software that enables the ideation stage and can integrate into all the other parts of the innovation value chain. There is growing specialization and client need for tracking trends, exploring technology solutions, IP patent searches, road mapping, portfolio management, foresight and scouting, collaborative ideas management, crowdsourcing, simply collecting inspiration or market intelligence, scanning environments to detect opportunity. All these have been growing in their focused specialty.

We have to demand Innovation Management Software Providers make some bold decisions

It is time to pull together many different fragmented choices and draw in the many creative tools and methods to generate and help people to help sort and give relevancy.

To do this the move towards ecosystems and platforms, this is becoming essential. The need is for a deeper platform thinking as the first part of this. Designing for platforms around ecosystems is radically different from existing linear designs along the classic innovation process of development.

Innovation needs to help people connect with each other, with ideas out there, to form different associations and it needs to leverage technology in far greater ways than keep talking about the “on-premise only” within one company and those new license wins or renewals. That is so 20th century talk.  We are in a world where open innovation is in the ability to connect across to other organizations and in this mutual collaboration look to generate significant advancements on present generation products, offered by the single company

There is a time to change the metrics. These companies should not be “tapping into technology” in tentative fashion, they should be embracing it full on like the major PLM platform providers!

We need to put in place the solution set that can make that happen. Explicate in design and intention to evolve as the understanding is recognized. Each within an ecosystem can learn from each other, they can improve what they offer, they can form new relationships and learn from each other as ideas move to greater acceleration in action and impact.

The potential addressable market for this opportunity is very substantial but will anyone presently in the market be fully prepared to really break with the pack, in a race to the potential this market has? Let’s hope so, at least the market is finally stirring.

[1] https://community.aras.com/b/english/posts/a-product-innovation-platform-the-foundation-for-product-success

The post We Require A Shift of Innovation Management Solution Providers first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Now I am a terrific admirer of Steve and his thinking but he does, I feel, rush to an assumption to fit one specific problem area, most coming from the start-up world. I apply the three horizons from the more mature organizations perspective and in a much wider lens framing approach than clear he does.

Steve Blank, no less, wrote about the problems with applying the three horizons as his view recently. You can read it here. He changed the title from “the fatal flaw of the three horizon model” to “fast time in three horizon high” mainly due to the push back he received from one of the original creators of this framework. It got even further dampened down into a more observational under “McKinsey’s Three horizons Model defined Innovation for years. Here is Why It No Longer Applies” in a Harvard Business Review posting that digs him further into his specific business focus corner that little bit deeper, as his title assumes.

Steve, I have news for you, the three horizons frame is healthy and fit for use, maybe not in your specific application (although I know it can be) but in multiple applications. I am not sure he decided why he became so dismissive on the 3H. “Fatal flaw, fit for use” can confuse a wider audience, many living off his pronouncements, when the value of this 3H frame is even more compelling today than when it was first proposed. It has moved on, not regressed.

Actually, he is wrong again on that initial innovation positioning for the 3H. It was proposed by McKinsey for a growth strategy framework and then others then took its framing principles and applied them differently. The 3H can lend itself to innovation application in multiple ways really well. Not sure the changes in titles conveys his message better than his provocative one of “fatal flaw”, which has been challenged already, with due “diffidence”. The “fatal flaw” might be in his rigid application and not in the many ways you can apply the Three Horizons potential across a broad range of framing techniques.

Steve is absolutely right, speed has made such a difference for every organization to quicken their pace. Each of the horizons has for some come closer together, or as I recommend, need all working in parallel, not one following the other

Actually, I value the three horizons in analyzing a business, its position today and its stated position tomorrow and look for gaps or opportunities to work on the different horizons needs of supporting the present, building capabilities in the near term and exploring the future in imaginative ways. One of the outcomes is more than likely, in most cases, mean adding new competencies, capabilities, and capacity.

Also, the three horizons is a good dialoguing frame to allow each of the voices within an organization to have their opinion “aired” and then the combined voices determine the path forward. I’ve written on that here in a post “Drawing out the different voices within the three horizon methodology for Innovation” and here. “Are you engaging with all the different voices around you?

I also offered up a different perspective on using the Three Horizons as a Wire Frame” Applying the Three Horizon Thinking to a Fresh Perspective of Innovation Design”

Then I looked at how to manage our assets “The New Game Or Is It? Asset Orchestration” talking about modes of commitment to innovation as first suggested by Javier Busquets.

I can go on and on about the potential versatility of the three horizons, just put into search on this posting site “three horizons” you can view the different articles I’ve published on this, or equally you can download these within different summary series, within my “insights and thinking” page, under the three horizons. They do offer a detailed build on this framework to bring it all together.

Then to finish here in my push back to Steve and his (restricted) view of the three horizons, in one of my posts “The Compelling Value of the 3H for Innovation Management“

He can perhaps open up his thinking a little more on the 3H and its value?

I still think he fails to see this beyond his “relative delivery time” applied to each horizon. He is absolutely right that horizon three deliverables have sped up but I still believe he thinks outside big organizations (thankfully to get alternative thinking) and inside these, the three horizon framework is a great (initial) organizer, to break down the complexity of thinking, if you apply it with some different imaginative thinking.

It gives a portfolio thinking for setting different priories, revealing needs, and expertise to give the renewed intensity of purpose towards each horizon. It breaks down complexity and gives the actually greater intensity of purpose.

The three horizons can be in need updating from its original purpose but if you apply one definition you can miss the real power of its value, I see multiple applications.

I think Steve does a good job of challenging some of the shifts we are undergoing in thinking differently.

Sometimes he does like to sensationalize this but that is partly why he stands out in challenging much. He makes us sit up and listen. His lens, coming from the startup environment challenges many existing ones of the incumbent.  I am always really pleased to see it through his highly “entrepreneurial eyes”.

Today if you apply the three horizons as originally intended it certainly does not solve his basic argument of a speed of deployment and asymmetry but it gets the conversation framed in larger organizations in many imaginative ways if you are prepared to step outside the three horizons original constructs thinking.

Applying the three horizons to breaking down complexity in how we organize and manage and why it needs to be seen in different frames does not go away. It does a great initial job of recognition and allocation, to tackle different challenges of managing change in different ways.

Perhaps Steve is applying his own thinking too rigidly to the three horizons, he might want to open it up in its rich potential of the application. Sometimes leaders might miss the memo as he suggests but also those writing the memo miss important points to restrict and not open us up to alternatives.

Yet as we see business as ones framed in threats, disruption concerns, ways to deploy resources, allow a focus on where to place “thin” resources, apply different techniques for prototyping, minimum viable products, tackling legacy etc there is an amazing richness within this three horizon framework. They are under appreciated.

One day I want to find the opportunity to dig around the greater value than looking through his prism of the “start-up is eating the established business world”. He is totally right that incumbents are facing more challenges from new competitors that make the incumbents business model quicker to becoming obsolete.

If you apply time to the three horizons model you do get what he states but if you take the assigned horizon work and apply the principles of simultaneous working them, you get a level of clarity that most new entrants can never comprehend, as they often do not have the level of insights that the incumbent does.

We need to apply the concept of the three horizons in greater ways for the incumbent, not just as he suggests, through one lens that he seems constrained in this limited application.

The post How do you apply the three horizon framework in your thinking? Steve Blank you are limiting your thinking. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

They might be operating at the two ends of the current internet trading spectrum and are coming from different market maturity positions but it is the asset management that is becoming critical for delivering the profit or dragging performance.

Now Amazon is far from “asset heavy” when you compare them to the Industrial companies like GE but asset orchestration is seemingly getting far greater management time for all companies it seems. The lighter you are, the more likely you are to be more flexible and adaptive to respond to more disruptive challenges being faced by industries that are undergoing the shift to being more “digitally enabled”. Alibaba is very much a good asset orchestrator.

I wrote a post some time back called “Asset Orchestration is required for more Dynamic Innovation” and offered a thought (or two) such as “you must orchestrate the capabilities, to purposefully build what is needed to deliver the final result”. At the time I had been reading some work undertaken to frame this asset orchestration by Sirmon et al during 2007 and 2008 that focused on the different actions of the manager, or asset orchestrator.

In this research they (Sirmon et al) suggest there are three primary stages of structuring, bundling and leveraging resources for the purpose of creating new value for customers and gaining competitive advantages, however temporary in today’s world. It is why this needs to be dynamic, ever evolving, to keep orchestrating your assets continually and it was not until recently I made a further set of connections into asset orchestration. Let me repeat these as they are increasingly important in the world of platforms and ecosystems.

Let me repeat these as they are increasingly important in the world of platforms and ecosystems.

The three primary stages of asset orchestration can be broken down:

• Structuring involves acquiring, accumulating and divesting resources to form the organization’s resource portfolio.

• Bundling of integrating resources to form capabilities, that can stabilize or provide incremental improvements to existing capabilities, or that enrich and extend existing current capabilities and thirdly, pioneer, which creates new capabilities.

• Leveraging involves a sequence of processes to exploit the organization’s capabilities to take advantage of specific market opportunities. This includes mobilizing, offering a clear plan or vision of needed capabilities, coordinating for ways to integrate these necessary capabilities and finally, deploying to achieve a resource advantage (or gain) that promotes market opportunities and instills more entrepreneurial strategies to exploit new resource configurations

A new moment of recognition for me was tucked away in my past research

The catalyst to this recent light bulb moment (well for me) was a thesis written by Javier Busquets, while at the Copenhagen Business School. His paper was “Orchestrating Network Behavior for Innovation“, written in 2010 but becoming increasing relevant to today’s world of managing assets more lightly.

We are seeing a change taking place around the building of networks and the way organizations are forming coalitions through ecosystems and platforms and in combining new technologies and blending business fields. Again I think Alibaba is doing a really good job of that. They are deliberate orchestrators. They are agenda setting, mobilizing, consolidating and coordinating different points of emerging value.

Within the thesis of Javier Busquets, he evaluates much of the published literature that ties up with dynamic capabilities, the network effect and capacity building and the constant way these orchestrators keep extracting more value from the network, that continues to expand.

I have been building my own understanding of these in (yet another) dedicated posting site for building Innovation Fitness Landscape Capabilities into Organizations.  Orchestrators seemingly are keeping pushing the boundaries and moving their relationships into this constant dynamic evolution. Arguable orchestrating, as seen this way, sets a new innovation path we all need to understand and I keep pursuing.

I particularly valued Javier’s Chapter 3: “Orchestrating Network Behaviour for Innovation” as it connected again a part of separating out in the ecosystem and platform work Jeffrey Phillips and I are undertaking, the differences between old economies and new is increasingly coming up.

One highly relevant observation

One comment he made was “orchestrating is a function of (1) changing the rules of the game to keep the game alive and (2) avoiding disruptions, thus ensuring continuity through the connection between the old and the new, or between past behavior patterns and the present and future ones.”  It is balancing the difference forces coming into play increasingly in a world of ecosystems and platforms of leveraging external resources and keeping them highly dynamic.

Shaping new boundaries

So is asset orchestration becoming increasingly critical in the age of ecosystems, platforms and managing technology and data? As we build our understanding of the power of this connectivity we are constantly changing the rules. As Javier Busquet suggests, it is about “shaping new boundaries“, ones of opening up new space, opportunities and sources of innovation, to build new platforms for discovery and collaboration potential and build new, differentiating capabilities to innovate.

Combining views- the three horizons and modes of commitment to innovation

One visual got me excited. It just fitted with my extended view of how the three horizons can be taken out and extended further. In adapting his original diagram I have added this 3H view.

It takes the 3H framework into the very need of today, developing the thinking of each of the three horizons to work towards our transformation from the solo organization offering (disconnected) products and services into ones that connect technology by platform participation and ecosystem exploration for greater innovation. Here is my adapted visual and opens up my thinking even further.

In summary

So I do feel asset orchestration is rapidly becoming a critical management need to manage effectively. It is recognizing its potential in managing the asset dynamics to deliver innovation that stays ahead of the curve as we expand out and collaborate on a range of platforms and ecosystem engagements to navigate towards a different future.

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The post The New Game Or Is It? Asset Orchestration first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Yet we actually subvert the future to prolong the life of the existing. We need to frame our innovation needs differently for exploring and exploiting innovation across different time horizons to move beyond the usual.

Commonality within innovation is becoming increasingly important. We need to build clear common languages of innovation, frameworks, methods and approaches.

There is a pressing need to frame innovation in different ways, to meet change that lies in the future. We are in need to clarify our options and this requires multiple thinking horizons to work through to deliver a richer tapestry of innovation discovery.

Innovation is constantly facing disruption; it is constantly going through life cycles and new waves of different activities and we begin decay faster today than ever. We run an increasing risk that we begin to lose any dominance or competitive position increasingly. We need to innovate to sustain ourselves and maintain our market positions in a rapidly evolving world.

The key requires us to manage this transition, not let others manage it for us. We need a far more robust, well thought-through way to apply our innovation resources to meet and anticipate these changing events. It is how we manage this transition becomes so critical.

The three horizon framework needs to become the innovation space for dialogues, planning, portfolio debates, differentiating the distinctions between the three time line perspectives and generally arguing for inclusion, the value and importance of the thinking and then applying the appropriate resources needed in the management of innovation across these three different timelines.The 3H framework is a powerful enabler.

The value of the weak signals needs amplifying

We need to exploit developing trends that are emerging in the different but future horizons and begin to tune in and discover the emerging possible options in the future.

The discussions in any forecasting or futuristic planning often have conflicting views of the future, compared to the existing realities based on those products and services that are providing the returns for today’s business. Yet the future is also equally rooted in the present, often called ‘weak signals’

I am a great follower of Dave Snowden’s thinking and work over at www.cognitive-edge.com on “making sense of complexity in order to act” which includes SenseMaker® and the Cynefin Framework, which I have written upon in its value, in this post “use of the Cynefin model for innovation” ,and within his work equally are clear views of managing change.

Dave Snowden’s has a view that works for me in applying the thinking around the three horizons, this fits so well. He argues instead of trying to tackle the unknowable, as it is inherently unknowable, he rightly suggests 1) we fully explore the evolutionary potential of the present, 2) bring in as wide an engagement of views to find a more sustainable or resilient set of solutions to emerge and 3) in his view, and most probably the most important point, it is how you build the narrative and descriptors, as the danger becomes the more you attempt to predict and evaluate, the more you can close down options, some far too early.

He suggests the more you can hold onto this descriptive level, the longer you have in widening the range of intervention points as more knowledge becomes available. You spend less time on (predicting) outcomes and more time on measuring vectors (velocity, acceleration, magnitude, force of direction) which for me, allows the progressive build of the right future capabilities, in more evolving and evolutionary ways of learning from exploring and experimenting, the key transition point of Horizon 2 (h2).

Resisting the early decision.

It is often the cases we can detect change but we consciously ignore it or dismiss it out of hand. This is often the place where the disruptor is presently at work, both existing or new competitors, exploring or exploiting different options, working at displacing your products and market positions. The combinations of new technologies, concepts and business models are constantly emerging and we need to be pioneers these as well as detect them as they emerge, anticipating the change these might bring and focus on building the capacity and capabilities to advance on your own curve of understanding.

We need to separate and structure different mindsets to developing innovation capabilities to explore and prepare for the future, as well as deepen the exploration, to leverage the present. Structuring the approach, by looking across multiple horizons, allow you to evolve the entire innovation portfolio and begin to recognise the many gaps that exist within your thinking, within your capabilities and capacities to innovate.

Separating the horizon lenses

By looking at this through separate horizon lenses does equally assist you in allocating the appropriate but usually different resources that are needed to be applied, to each of the time horizons and challenges that are identified and lie within them.

The three horizon framework has the clear intent to grow awareness and offer a better understanding of how innovation works and fits, with also its great value for clarifying the structuring and allocation of innovation’s management. It can be used for portfolio alignment, resource structuring and the mechanism for broad dialogue of explaining decisions and describing the growing consensus of the future direction.

The three horizon framework  can offer a vital part within all the organisations thinking around working through its innovation ambitions, not just for the present but for the future and how these can transition, connecting the reality of the present with the concepts of the future.

The need is we all should make the case that different types of innovation operate and evolve over different time horizons and need thinking through differently.

The three horizon framework  goes well beyond simply a planning tool, it does provide a valuable evolutionary perspective that dialogues can be formed around, so decisions on where to focus and what resources need to be applied can be made for delivering a constantly evolving ‘state’ of innovation development. Dialogues that deliver that then get translated into more plausible and coherent set of activities, projected into the future, searching for emerging winners that can change and challenge your existing business.

The three horizon framework is about having strategic conversations about the future, that feeds the discussions about your innovation direction, shaping the longer-term portfolio and capability understandings. It is increasingly vital to understand all of its ways to contribute to your innovation developments and needs.

Its value – if well-managed – can offer a helpful way for a significant series of dialogues and tensions to surface, but through this engagement and respect for different positions, you can find mutual ways of connecting your innovation activities and resolve these different opinions, emerging over the different horizons and diverse thinking. You are managing uncertainty in better ways, as a team or organisation through this framing dialogue.

If you would like to explore all the different ways that give the three horizons framework a much richer return in its value and use, then let me know.

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The post Exploring the Rich Tapestry within the Three Horizon Framework first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

In recent years our innovation understanding and its management have significantly changed, due to numerous factors that have been happening. These have been advances in technology, methodology or design- thinking and we do need to stop and think about how we could do ‘things’ differently by asking “what is possible?” This should be asked not just on each occasion of an innovative concept design but within the total innovation system, we are presently operating under.

Perhaps by asking three critical questions on “what is possible?”  we might produce better innovative answers (and solutions) than simply not bothering to, at least, scope out the real possibilities, where we can miss so much.

The aim of asking is to reduce the constraints, free up resources, leverage the techniques available, and equally, push the boundaries of your thinking to want to generate “great” innovation, not just the mediocre, incremental stuff, so often produced and labelled “innovative” that we end up doing.

We often fail to ask three critical questions before we embark on innovation. They may not eventually fit or work together but they do enable you to see what is possible, what is desirable and what is then that certain dose of business reality we all need to work through.

Asking these questions offsets that attitude of simply accepting the established approach from the very beginning..Speed, scale and agility are required and many of our existing innovation practices do not adapt to these increasing demands.

Lets take a look at each of these three questions above.

What are we capable of?

With the incredible array of frameworks, solutions, technical applications and design options, we are becoming far more capable to innovate than ever before. How we engineer and design our solutions will determine much of the ‘ability to innovate’.

We are very capable to push our design thinking and quickly turn our conceptual blueprints into a reality, through the smart use of cloud technology alongside being selective in the enterprise software we need, and ensuring we have an innovation backbone of a clear process that can be adapted constantly to the ‘needs’ we require to achieve the best result.

Today nothing has to be rigid or protected, we have to encourage and find a certain freedom to adapt, adjust, pilot and experiment within our innovation ‘system’ as the very solutions we desire are in constant in need of adaption from fresh learning.

The ability to utilize the cloud, use the increasing range of rapid software prototyping, agile principles, and full stack, cloud based platforms we are getting closer to game-changing business technology solutions you are able to develop, build, test and iterate a solution.

For example IBM’s Bluemix provides the ideal DevOps environment (great link BTW) for rapid prototyping, then building, scaling and integrating apps. Bluemix lifts you out of the past practices of working through rather rigid Enterprise solutions and protocols, it rapidly speeds up your innovation search and discover, validate and learn environment and can also scale and integrate.

So we should be asking of ourselves “what are we capable of?” To stay incumbered with a rigid system is simply denying yourself all the possibilities that can be achieved by having a highly adaptive and flexible innovation system.

The innovation concepts you work upon are constantly evolving, then so should the systems that support it and this needs a far more ‘hybrid’ approach than ever before.

What is desirable?

“If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.” – Confucius

So do we ever ask ourselves what is truly desirable? So often we just accept compromise is inevitable and start with that position from the very beginning. I would argue strongly we don’t accept that. If we do we fail to ever achieve innovation that is truly a ‘breakthrough’ or ‘disruptive’.

We should have aspirations, as humans we need these. Innovation is no different. When we see a ‘real need’. either from the feed back from clients or spotted by ourselves in the market place or simply conceived in  your ‘minds eye’ we must fight to hold this in any innovation discussions that subsequently take place.

Being dogmatic is not the answer but bringing others to ‘seeing the same potential solution’ allows for advancing the initial idea into perhaps, an even greater solution

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

Normal Vincent Peale

I know, I’m offering a lot of moon and stars here but it is far better to open up our thinking, lift up our heads, out of immediate solutions and see the possibilities that can become more within our realm of possibility. To really spend some time on the desirable, that aspirational place is where innovation becomes great.

I think we should always seek out this desirable point, scope it and shoot for the potential it can offer. We as humans need to work on the aspirational aspects, besides maintaining the existing, it gives us a greater sense of identity, hope and fulfillment.

For instance the human centered design kit offered by Ideo although written principally for the social sector, is  a full-color, 192-page book, the Field Guide that comes with 57 design methods, the key mindsets that underpin how and why IDEO.org believes design can change lives. The concept of human-centered design sets out a counterbalance which puts the human and social imperatives first and foremost. It can help drive a customer focus deep within a corporation and make this focus the heart of value creation.

What is viable?

This is the tough ground to travel through and over. Each business has a need, to grow, to add value, to beat or at least equal competition, or should do. The tough part is we are never starting as equals.

Some have ‘abundance’, others have a ‘scarcity’ of resources, of ideas, of seemingly building innovation capabilities that ‘deliver’. We are often required to find (and fight) for the optimal ground for much of what we do and often end up with the imperfect solution from the compromises we have to make.

Innovation is imperfect, we start with certain ideas or concepts and these over time and discussion seem to change shape, sometimes way beyond their original  simplicity or need. We do like to overly complicate. The larger the organization, the more we have to seek out, exchange, find solutions in a very imperfect environment. We hit that ‘certain reality’.

There is a real hope this tough terrain can be traversed differently than in the past.

In the Lean Methodology we are discovering the MVP (minimum viable product) as the process to travel through as we “Build- Measure- Learn” as the feedback loop. The quicker we enter the build stage, designed with the minimum amount of effort and least amount of time, this approach allows us to build prototypes, quickly test them, gauge and learn from them, we can then hopefully pivot into something better.

The closer to the needs of the market or client the greater chance of innovation success. We are then moving back towards the desirable to then push harder for our ‘engineered’ solution.

There is equally a growing push to take the principles of minimum viable product (MVP) to a higher level, taking transformational ideas through the same core principles for minimum viable transformation (MVT) of validated learning, rapid prototyping, frugal creativity enabling often the business model to be equally redesigned.

The combined thinking of Eric Ries and his “Lean Start up thinking” and Deliottes “Minimum Viable Transformation” is giving us increasing scope to hypothesize, test, learn, adjust and transform.

So our “what is possible” becomes even more aligned

By asking ourselves “what are we capable of?“, alongside “what is desirable?” with the “what is viable” through this MVP / MVT approach I believe the business need have far greater chance of alignment far more with all the potential innovation available.

The “what is viable” becomes richer, more engaging and closer to the two other parts of a solution needed for greater innovation delivery. One where we are capable of designing and engineering far more so as to deliver and have a more desirable end.

By taking the rapid changes occurring in technology (cloud, agile) and design thinking and leveraging the human design and customer need we are bringing a changing business environment of rapid iteration, experiment and prototyping into the very core of our innovation thinking.

These examples are changes where we can be exploiting far more the changing business condition, so as to respond and deliver in better flexible innovating environments.

An end so much closer to client and market needs and that leads to a greater potential for growth, surely?

The post Innovating: So What Is Possible? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Following on from my suggested Common Language approach to the Three Horizons, I would like to outline here its significant value, within any innovation management thinking.

Clarifying our options requires multiple thinking horizons – seeing beyond for all possibilities by listening to the different voices

For me, the three horizons have great value to bring together and  map all the different thinking and possible innovation options over changing horizons.

You can frame innovation in alternative ways by using this approach. Innovation has multiple evolution points and working with this framework allows you to significantly improve all of your innovation contributions.

It goes well beyond the present value of ‘just’ fitting your existing innovation portfolio and directional management into a typical one-dimensional view of just working in the present.

By separating your thinking, appreciating that different voices are competing for attention provides a higher diversity of opinion, different perspectives for improving innovation’s eventual value. Those different voices involved can be highly engaged, all wanting to add their perspective:

• You have the voice of today operating in horizon one exploiting the core, the incumbent business. The manager(s) responsible are protecting, leveraging and delivering today’s result, very much focused on the operational and result orientated issues. Fully concerned with managing the existing business, maximizing returns and keeping the organization going efficiently and effectively, delivering on the needs of the short-term.

• Then you have the second voice, the voice of the entrepreneur, those more pushing into horizon two, the ones eager to experiment, to try out new things. They are wanting to push further, to explore and extend, accepting some aspects will not work but keen to investigate, search, experiment and learn from these discoveries. They are experimenting with the current business model but also wanting to push the boundaries to explore alternatives that might have a disruptive or radical aspect where they can begin to equip themselves to understand

• Last we have the third voice, the voice of the aspirant, who is looking to build a different vision, they operate mostly in horizon three, believing in different, more pioneering, perhaps radical solutions that seek to visualize things in their ‘ minds eye’. They are far more aspirational. They are looking to explore concepts that often can seemingly look on first ‘sight’ to be totally incompatible to the reality of today, even they can potentially challenge today’s existing core, perhaps cannibalize it or radically alter its very nature. Those operating within this horizon three are often picking up on ‘weak signals’ that are out there that signify a changing future that might impact their own and set about capturing all that can make this a significant game-changer.

It is the combination of these different three voices that need to come together and frame the innovation journey by using the three horizons framework.

Establishing a common understanding of operating in each horizon becomes critical

Innovation is constantly facing disruption; it is constantly going through life cycles and new waves of different activities. We need a far more robust, well thought-through way to apply our innovation resources to meet and anticipate these changing events and for this I always recommend the three horizons.

With the effective use of the three horizons you can see opportunities completely differently beyond the existing mindset and activities, it takes innovation from tactical to strategic, to foresight in your evaluations.

We need common ways to build a language around innovation and its management.

We need common ways to build a language around innovation and its management. As the three horizons can help frame the allocation of resources, determine the innovation road map and contribute to structuring the portfolio into its different parts, it can be essential to this building a common understanding and recognition of its organizing value

Appreciating its evolving value

If you can appreciate the value of the 3H frame in its potential, firstly to aid the mapping out of the present and the challenges the business can find itself in, it gives a common position for all to work through, to find common ground and focus on delivering on the understanding collectively.

The three horizons can help you move towards articulating the road map to the future and provide the encouragement to turn this into the ‘what, when, how and why’ that future innovation always needs figuring out the sorting of the essentials to ‘fuel it’.

It can assist in the evidence-based gathering to exploit (h1), extend or expand (h2) and to explore(h3) how the existing core will grow and be seeded or orientated in future ways. It can be a significant contributor to providing the vision, values and beliefs that an organization can orient towards and work towards.

It can help us break out of existing mindset traps through its evolutionary steps to clarify, explore and identify all the different voices and then explain the “how and where we move towards as our innovating future”.

The 3H is a frame that I genuinely believe is an essential management method for innovation’s good management practice.

In Summary its innovative value to you and your organization

I believe the 3H framing technique that can structure the evolution of the innovation needed within organizations.

It can be based on existing evidence or as we learn, building evidence-based change, so we can use its framing to adjust to new information and knowledge or be adjusted to the changes occurring, that happen in the years ahead, as the organizations move towards their innovating future. It can offer a solid structure to the (strategic) decisions that they have to be made.

Why can’t it additionally become an essential visualizing tool, no different from where the Business Model Canvas has established itself?

It is a frame that should be an essential management method or framing technique that can structure the evolution of the innovation needed, based on existing evidence or as we learn.

We use its framing to adjust to new learning or as changes are occurring in the years ahead and the 3H does give a very essential part of the narrative of innovation, something we often lack.

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Go to the “search” on this site and enter “three horizons” you can view the different articles I’ve published on this, or equally you can download these within different summary series, within my “insights and thinking” page, under the three horizons. They do offer a detailed build on this framework to bring it all together.

The post The Compelling Value of the 3H for Innovation Management first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

As you may know, I have been writing significantly around the Three Horizons in relationship to innovation.

Initially drawing on the foundation within the McKinsey initial papers, updated here under their enduring ideas, and in particular based on by its original authors of the book “The Alchemy of Growth” by Mehrdad Baghai, Steve Coley, David White and Stephen ColeyThen I discovered the work of the International Futures Forum, based in Scotland, where a group of members have extended the 3H significantly, well beyond McK’s initial work from my perspective, into a broader, more robust methodology tackling complex problems.

It was this IFF work that excited me, it opened up my thinking to find better ways to deepen the innovation connections and framing that could be suggested in the use of this three horizon frame in exploring and expanding different techniques and approaches.

Connecting the innovation thinking dots

I realized the significant role the three horizon framework could have within our innovative thinking that was still missing and decided to take this further, beyond the original authors view.

I have written about this since my first post “The three horizon approach to innovation” “in September 2010, after some initial prompting from Tim Kastelle who shares in its value and place in our innovation thinking.

Here I want to provide a common language and approach to the three horizons

I have continued to build my understanding in practice and in my research on the 3H and have published this thinking through a series of articles and posts found as a collection in my insights and thinking page, that focus specifically on relating the 3H to the innovation space for dialogues, planning, portfolio debates, differentiating the distinctions between the three and generally arguing for its value in the management of innovation.

This intent has been to grow awareness and offer a better understanding of how it works, fits and has this great value for innovation’s management that should be within all organizations thinking around working through its innovation ambitions for the future and relating these to the reality of the present.

Go to the “search” on this site and enter “three horizons” you can view the different articles I’ve published on this, or equally you can download these as summary series within my “insights and thinking” page under the three horizons. They do provide a detailed build on this frame.

Understanding the way to approach each of the horizons

I published in August 2011 a suggested: “emerging framework to help navigate across the three horizons” in a further blog which provides clarity of how to structure, frame and think in these different horizons. This is how:

Pushing this thinking further I felt we needed a common metric of understanding

Recently I have taken this further and felt there was a need to provide a common language and application for approaching the three horizons. We need to look beyond where we stand

 These common metrics of understanding I’m publishing for the first time here

I believe this can be adopted as a suggested approach to thinking about each horizon separately, covering this from the many different perspectives. I hope this provides for an even greater adoption of the innovative thinking we all need to have in our planning, discussions and management of innovation.

So each Horizon needs a different focus, a different management approach, different goals and different thinking.

If you would like a copy of this as a pdf or download Three Horizon Common Language Table

It would be great if these were further built upon and accepted, it would help in our management of innovation.

The post The Three Horizons – Providing a Common Language in its Innovation Use first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.