Connecting innovation activities

Many organizations are struggling with their metrics and ways to measure the progress and success of their business, and from this writer’s point of view, their innovation, it gets caught up in plenty of unintended consequences, to put it mildly.

Firstly, we are still locked in the old paradigm of thinking this is an industrial economy where we set about measuring inputs to innovation (R&D expenditure, capital investment) and then focused on the intermediate step of throughput and then outputs (publications, patents, end products). We also perceive innovation as an activity within just one company – viewed as linear, with considerations for services more of an afterthought (like ‘bolt-ons’). Production systems remain the driving force.

Today, the world of innovation is completely different. We need a far more open set of resources (many outside our own company) to enable innovation.

Why is it we always seem to fail back into the same traps or pitfalls? Bad habits seem to always reoccur even when we work on trying to eradicate them.

For me, innovation has eight pitfalls or sinkholes that we need to consciously try to avoid. Some are in our hands, others are clearly out of our hands and all we can do is try to influence them as best we can, for what we believe is right and appropriate.

I always show a particular interest in statements claiming to have identified a relevant driver of innovation change, to think through and see if they are as applicable to my own situation. Often they are but the underlying force sometimes needs to be seen differently to incorporate this ‘driver’ into your innovation activities and thinking.

I try to constantly work around nine drivers of innovation change.

I periodically work through each of these and see if anything has changed or the fact I am focusing on this specific driver I can see a different angle or opportunity.

Let me share my nine drivers. If you think of any more ‘generic’ drivers let me know. These are my drivers for innovation change:

I would like to discuss the effect digital will be having on our innovation activities, be these presently opened or closed. The impact of digital innovation changes the paradigm.

Organizations can stay closed in their innovation activities but will move beyond simply themselves into a connected (closed) network, so the platform becomes the enabler and those that join share common ground but are pursuing separate value propositions. These provide a level of competitive advantage but these are increasingly transitory.

We will see a new wave of open digital innovation

So why do I say that? There are four aspects where technology will trend towards open (see more on that here: http://digitalsocial.eu/) so as to exploit our connected world to extract ever diminishing competitive advantage as the world just keeps speeding up, pushing us as technology continues to run ahead of our capacities to assimilate it.

Well, are you going all digital on me?

So there we all were, getting very comfortable in our open innovation activities, learning to collaborate and co-create outside our organizations. We had worked through some of the cultural stuff; we had established the process, practice, and tools. We even had our legal teams on board, helping sort out all the conflicting positions open can mean when it comes to dividing up the IP spoils and even had our leadership tuned in, singing our praises and even (heavens forbid) getting engaged in the process.

When the world shifts, we all need too.

Then suddenly the world shifts on its axis once again, everything seems to be digital. The buzz is big data, analytics, smart mobility, and social media, with lots of talk of interconnected devices giving us the next big paradigm in innovation growth.

There is a real need to think through the modern engagement platforms we require, both externally with our customers and other stakeholders, and also for our internal needs and this comes increasingly from technology solutions.

The effectiveness of our management to win the hearts and minds of our workforce is getting to a very serious crisis. A global Gallup State of the Global WorkPlace survey some time back suggests only 13% of employees are engaged in their jobs.

They are emotionally invested in and focused on creating value for the organization they work for on a daily basis. They are even outnumbered by those who are negative and even potentially hostile to the organization at a rate of 2:1. That really staggers me.

It seems so simple doesn’t it – “bringing final ideas to market”. So easy to say, yet it does seem so very hard to achieve. Everything we should be aiming at is ‘successful execution’, it’s the last, hard five yards of all the work that went into something, which can be finally realized and come to ‘commercial life’.

Here in Europe it is often suggested that “Europe is the cradle of creativity”, perhaps but I think the “United States is the crucible of innovation”, it forges ideas and takes them to market far better. In the US there is this powerful push to make money far more and to realize innovation, as clearly you must focus on the ‘making money part.’

Let’s admit it; our middle management needs a radical makeover, a new fitness regime to make us far more innovation fit. Most organizations do need to change their middles as they are far from that ‘fit for 21st-century purpose’ in a constantly changing, challenging, more open innovating world.

Here is a way to “flip” this around but lets first recognize the problem(s)

The general argument goes that the middle manager is so pressured to focus on the delivery of short-term results that all their efforts are centered far more on delivering ‘just’ an effective organization, one that focuses on driving out any excess or leeway, reduce the variations, constantly dampening down potential risk and uncertainty.