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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission, I have this added to my own site

The post Sorting through our Innovation Management Tools first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The post Deeper read or quick summary? Depends on the time we have. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Deloitte has set up different thinking tanks. An exceptional one is Deloitte University Press who publishes some really good original articles, reports, and periodicals that provide insights for businesses, the public sector, and NGOs. They break down their topics into these:

The post Finding knowledge and research to help you learn and adapt first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

One of my favorite books is “Dealing with Darwin– how great companies innovate at every phase of their evolution” written by Geoffrey Moore. It is well worth a read.

When you work through his other books and connect thinking of “Crossing the Chasm” and “Inside the Tornado” you really appreciate the learning stories coming out of Roger Moore’s studies of the Technology Adoption Life-Cycle.

We all need to rethink a lot as the new challenges come rushing towards us.

In his work, Geoffrey Moore talks about ‘traction’ and I think this is a great word for thinking about how to gain diffusion and adoption in product, service or business models, to gain market and customer acceptance.
Over three posts I am looking at different aspects of “diffusion and adoption”

The first post outlined the different theories and establish their value in our thinking.

The second post relates these theories into their to achieve success in penetrations of our target markets and increasing sales through growing adoption.

This is the third and final post in this series, it looks at how Rogers’ theories relate to us in today’s connected world, and in particular with reference to Apple and finally offers up some of the reasons why diffusion can fail to occur.

Seeking even more than ever, the One-2-One (1to1) of many
Marketing departments talk penetration, “message penetration, market penetration” and so often ‘force’ customers to become aware and then buy. Does this really work today? I doubt it.

Also many organizations hang on to old media ways to get their message across when the use of technology, the internet and social engagement may seem harder but I believe is far more rewarding to engage with the customer on a more personalized basis. I regard this as 1 to 1 of many.

Today we are in an ever-faster world

Connectivity is driving the diffusion rates of nearly everything. Just take a look at the following table:

Even this table is already out of date on the speed to reach critical mass. Companies are not just setting hurdle rates on launch dates but demanding innovations that have critical mass in revenue and when they achieve critical mass.

It is not unusual to set 18 months to achieve critical mass from the inception to settling on the critical factors that make a value proposition to drive penetration. This can only come through engagement and that comes through technology making the connection to the user.

Just study how Apple manages its diffusion and adoption cycle

There are lessons for us all to learn here. Apple has not been the first in markets, they are a classic fast learner and follower.

Yet they master the convergence of ‘breaking’ technology, design, user experience, pushing materials used and providing ease of use within the make-up of the product, and deliver this ‘bundle’ through the sheer generation of excitement and buzz.

The huge difference is their deep understanding of what can be put together that achieves this diffusion and adoption. What can others learn from this integrated approach to product and people?

Take the iPod for example

The first digital music player entered the US market in 1998 and it was not until 2001 Apple released the iPod.

The market had already shown signs of plateauing at the time of Apple’s launch, which must have been worrying.

Yet it was the unique factors of Steve Job’s clear vision of what a musical experience should have, Apple’s superb understanding of design and usage of materials, and its building upon the growing brand recognition and reputation as front edge.

Yet Apple also benefited from previous product releases because the behaviours and expectancies were being understood and were able to be articulated far more to validate and confirm Steve Jobs emerging view on what customers actually wanted- their own unique choice of music in the palm of their hand.

Steve Job’s innate sense of driving a solution to a winning value proposition by demanding all the parts to be incorporated, often taking uncompromising positions, was the additional factor. For example, being determined to offer a progressively growing store of downloadable music provided that incredible ‘complete’ usage experience. It met an un-articulated need but saw the different signals in its convergence of a total package.

Apple gave everyone in the adoption curve something that set their imagination alight.

Recommendations compounded so even late majorities and laggards felt compelled to buy, and the sales simply exploded.
The basic criteria with the theories of Roger’s Diffusion and Adoption were met.

Then look at the Apple iMac

For the consumer, Apple took away complexity. The learning gap became dramatically reduced.

It was quickly understood you took your computer out of the box and plugged it in.

The complexity of most of our past experiences in complicated set ups, the need to download and fiddle with conflicting software, had been taken away.

Apple set about integrating the system and providing a better user experience. It did away with proprietary connections, set USB and CD-Rom drives as their standard, dragging along most in the industry. It again focused on pushing to the maximum from Rogers characteristics of innovation.

The iMac proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 139 days. It’s translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and later various additional colors, is considered an industrial design landmark of the late 1990s.

Again design, attention to details, focusing on user needs to reduce complexity, offer relative advantage, make the way forward as compatible and integrated, allowing a fast set up to gain immediate experience and a great design or observability ticked all the boxes of Rogers Five Factors.

Then we get to the iPad

Where do you start? The iPad had built-in Wi-Fi and, on some models, cellular connectivity.

An iPad can shoot video, take photos, play music, and perform Internet functions such as web-browsing and emailing.

Other functions—games, reference, GPS navigation, social networking, etc.—can be enabled by downloading and installing apps. As of October 2013, the App Store has more than 475,000 native apps by Apple and third parties.

There have been five versions of the iPad. The first generation established design precedents, such as the 9.7-inch screen size and button placement, that have persisted through all models.

The iPad second generation  added a dual core Apple A5 processor and VGA front-facing and 720p rear-facing cameras designed for FaceTime video calling.

The third generation added a Retina Display, the new Apple A5X processor with a quad-coregraphics processor, a 5-megapixel camera, HD 1080p video recording, voice dictation, and 4G (LTE).

The fourth generation added the Apple A6X processor and replaces the 30-pin connector with an all-digital Lightning connector.

The iPad Air added the Apple A7 processor, the Apple M7 motion coprocessor and reduced the form factor for the first time since the iPad 2. iOS 5.1 added Siri to the third and fourth generations and the iPad Mini.

There have been two versions of the iPad Mini.

Apple were delivering wave upon wave of new technology in a rapidly accepted format.

A story of design, combining technology, understanding the unmet needs of the market, combining revolutionary materials. It filled a need, and it ticked all the boxes again of Rogers Five Factors of Product.

Yet we had by this time the real effect of the People Difference.
Apple have such a powerful body of innovators and early adopters creating such a pre-launch noise, it draws in early and late majorities.

Apple has been a fashion ‘must have’ statement.

Demonstration of products in Apple stores are ready to be put to any user test, the staff are providing you a ‘user experience’ and support structure that understands our needs and provide all your personal reasons to adopt.

The advocates of Apple products are phenomenal. They are nurtured, engaged with and pampered, as they generate such chatter and noise it can’t be ignored. It delivers the powerful messages Apple want to get out there for accelerating sales at mind-boggling speed.

Apple has institutionalized its product and people diffusion, and adoption process – can you?

We can all take away some powerful learning from this by aligning the theories of Rogers, articulated originally in 1962 and see how they seem highly relevant to Apple’s approach to its thinking.

They have added triggering (conversations, user experiences) with contagion and have been working the different tipping points to gain market traction, penetration and constant appeal to stay up to date and in tune with the latest and greatest.

Lastly let’s remind ourselves why diffusion often fails to occur

1. Getting the price wrong and staying stubbornly rigid with it
2. The wrong identification of the target markets
3. The poor selection of channels often because they are known, and they’re the sales forces’ most comfortable point of contact
4. A really poor communication of the product or service benefits
5. The unique attributes are over-hyped and quickly not seen
6. The new product really does not give many benefits over existing products
7. It simply has no innovative advantage, it was more of a cost-reduction exercise
8. The ease of access to the relevant information about the product is complex, difficult, time-consuming and unclear. It becomes complex
9. The real needs and expectations of the consumer were actually ignored, never discovered or just not met
10. The product or service offers no really clear value proposition to switch and buy.
I’m sure you could add a few more but I leave those to you.

The principles of diffusion and adoption I believe are both important in innovation.

Working the diffusion and adoption theories and putting these into your practice is something that needs an integrated approach, it might develop over time, perhaps through serendipity but knowing its principles helps you begin to map out the pathway.

This is the third and final post within the discussion on exploring diffusion and adoption for innovation.

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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide-ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, its well worth the visit.

The post Exploring Diffusion and Adoption for Innovation – Part 3 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The future within our engagements will determine diffusion and adoption

It is all about letting go but also grabbing more at the same time, and then finding ‘it’.

Technology has opened up the door to both scale and fragmentation and social business is the one pushing through this open door.

We are increasingly facing the Collaborative Economy everywhere we turn. Social business is becoming the denominator of success or failure.

We are needing to confront the new questions that are emerging
New rules are emerging – you could say new theories – and where are these fitting within the corporate mindset?
The shift of what our customer means to us, are we still competing with them, pushing them to accept a value proposition that forces them to begin to look elsewhere?

Are we still determined to hang onto control, in the (mistaken) belief we know what is best for our customers?

Are we really bothering to learn the power of networks, cultivating communities, fostering co-creation and optimizing shared value, instead of just creating and selling things?

Are our structures and processes still stuck in the past or are you transitioning to managing a more social business that operates in more dynamic ways?

There are a huge number of new rules and ways to manage. It is the ones that master these that will succeed in diffusion and adoption at very different speeds than we can imagine today.

In three posts I am discussing different aspects and challenges within diffusion and adoption for innovation

The first post outlines the different theories and establish their value in our thinking.

The second post, this one, relates these theories into their to achieve success in penetrations of our target markets and increase sales through growing adoption.

The third and final post in this series looks at how Rogers’ theories relate to us in today’s connected world, and in particular with reference to Apple and finally offers up some of the reasons why diffusion can fail to occur.
Back to this blog……..

We are all in need of answering numerous questions and finding our way.

Social media is for many business organizations, the new kid on the block

It is relentlessly chipping away at the fabric of how organizations have been organized. In less than half a decade societal and cultural shifts through technology, the transfer to global open digital networks have taken us way beyond “just the internet” for connecting.

We are in need to engage in totally different ways. It is really not good enough to sell just products and services anymore. These are basic value propositions. Customers are looking on how these are connected into different “bigger pictures”. 

The questions of your sustainability approaches, environmentalism, corporate social good and responsibility and a growing interest in governance are shifting their thinking.

Your customers are wanting to connect and establish a different level of trust than simply those invested in a brand name, that is becoming table stakes or even irrelevant.

We are moving into a very different territory. Grasping the changes to your business are highly challenging.

Large organizations are being challenged by the sudden rise of self-organizing communities where people come together online and create shared value that often forms an immediate organization to challenge the existing. Traditional business models need to learn to adopt in different ways themselves.

In an era of high-velocity online start-ups, where the next generation of digital businesses are taking up the space as they focus increasingly on the dynamics of social business where does this leave our existing organizations?

Everything has sped up, we diffuse and adapt in seconds

There is an urgent need to “letting go and grabbing more”. Traditionally “we” provide products and services and many of our existing organizations are slowly coming to grips with providing on-line services.

The belief is this is enough to satisfy customers, keep them buying and using the product or service. Is it?

The social connected economy has reversed the relationship. Consumers just want to use and have provided product and services on ‘their’ demand and seek increasingly the platforms where they can easily go to find out and then use the required products and services. Often they don’t want to buy these, they just want to rent them to do the appropriate job.

The whole movement of jobs-to-be-done, identifying customer needs is yet again a place of increased focus. The larger organization still struggles with this as it wants to fit this ‘seen’ need into their structure and system.

They are spending growing time adapting while others are pivoting quickly to capture this fluidness in need.

In many ways diffusion and adoption lies more in the organizations inabilities than the customers. Perhaps the theories of Rogers have reversed.

It is the power of people and how organizations react and determine differences that will determine diffusion and adoption, as explained by Everett Rogers. Dion Hinchcliffe, an expert on next-generation enterprises suggests an Engagement Fabric.

Are we in a reverse situation for diffusion and adoption?

Consumers race to diffuse and adopt, it seems our larger business organizations struggle. The organizations are the ‘laggards’.

We need to think about the organizations ability to engage at scale. Perhaps we need a further theory to add to Rogers ones. The interpretation of the Engagement Fabric goes like this for aiding diffusion and adoption:

The organization as one does need to engage to any, not many. It is the ability to allow information to flow; we learn to aggregate stories or decipher trends to engage back to new groups of audiences that see your diffusion as valuable to their adoption.

The organization continues to throw open its store. The ability to engage and promote self-organizing communities to exchange and extend around our product and services and keep them as engaged stakeholders who you work to keep involved in the evolution that triggers better innovations.

Simultaneous engagement that is constantly synchronized with the evolving story, built more on business and social value, less on your product or service. Constant insights and thinking get captured for its ongoing community value and ability to keep improving on the product or service offered.

Making the space highly visible and user-friendly. By ensuring ‘ease of access to knowledge you are allowing conversations to build and become increasingly valuable to all involved in the community.

The ability to analyse, interpret and filter. Offer the place that captures the many good insights so as to set about the continued building of value into your products and services.

So we need to transform our own internal design to better diffuse and gain increasing adoption

To quote from Dion Hinchcliffe whose future thinking I have drawn heavily upon for this post makes this comment:

We need to rapidly move to an engagement platform

Diffusion and Adoption are even more of a business organization’s challenge to adapt to the most significant set of changes since the internet.

It is the power of all the disruptive technologies, the power of social business and the incredible impact of all the connected networks are accelerating acceptance or rejection.

Diffusion and Adoption is so far more complex but the principles of Rogers theories, offered nearly fifty years ago, can help to understand a single innovation perhaps.

It is today the way you build your platform for engagement which will determine where you stand in any adoption race for the health of your business and its model in the future.
It is the business organization that is in its race for adoption.

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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, its well worth the visit.

The post Exploring Diffusion and Adoption of Innovation – Part 2 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

According to Professor Clayton Christensen and drawn from his book “Seeing What’s Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change”, by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, and Erik A. Roth published by Harvard Business School Press, the only way to look into the future is to use theories.

“The best way to make accurate sense of the present, and the best way to look into the future, is through the lens of theory.” The theory of innovation helps to understand the forces that shape the context and influence natural decisions.

This might not be fashionable for many because as soon as you introduce “theory” into the discussion for many of my practical colleagues they want to dismiss it.

Going back to Christensen “good theory provides a robust way to understand important developments, even when the data is limited. “Theory helps to block out the noise and to amplify the signal”.

Diffusion of Innovation Theory is important for our innovation understanding
One set of theories I believe we simply cannot ignore even more today lies around the work of Everett. M. Rogers where he outlined his thinking in his book Diffusion of Innovations the first edition was published in 1962.

The fifth edition (2003, with Nancy Singer Olaguera) addresses the spread of the Internet, and how it has transformed the way human beings communicate and adopt new ideas.

Over three posts I will look at different aspects of “diffusion and adoption”

The first post, this one, outlined the different theories and establish their value in our thinking.

The second post, relates these theories into their to achieve success in penetrations of our target markets and increase sales through growing adoption.

The third and final post in this series looks at how Rogers’ theories relate to us in today’s connected world, and in particular with reference to Apple and finally offers up some of the reasons why diffusion can fail to occur.

First we need to have a clear grounding or reminder within the theories
By developing our understanding of why some products seem easier to diffuse while others can take longer or often fail, innovators can improve their likelihood of understanding the differences through exploring these different diffusion and adoption theories.

Besides the classic “S-shaped curve” associated with diffusion, it is useful to also reflect on this tougher curve to manage from its development costs into profit requires a greater focus on the commercialization stages.

Product and People determine diffusion and adoption
According to Rogers, the rate of diffusion can be attributed to a combination of “product differences” and “people differences”

Product differences
Research suggests that up to 87 per cent of the variance in an innovation rate of diffusion can be attributed to the following five product characteristics. These are known as Rogers’s Five –characteristics of Innovation.

Relative advantage refers to the degree perceived to be better than the product (or service) it replaces.

Compatibility is the extent to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the values, past experiences and needs of potential adopters.

Complexity is the degree to which the new innovation is perceived as being difficult to understand or use.

Trialability is the degree to which the new innovation can be experimented with, piloted and used on a limited basis.

Observability is the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible, observed and communicated to others and where the rate of adoption can often be determined.

People differences
Once the product’s position in relation to the Rogers Five Factors is known, the diffusion process is best managed by focusing on the people’s difference.

The classic bell curve is broken down in the five categories of adopters. 

It is from this initial work of Rogers we then got Geoffrey Moore’s classic on “Crossing the Chasm” which recently has been significantly updated in a recently released book around the Technology Adoption Lifecycle.

The chasm can happen throughout the early adopter’s phase, you have to be alert and responsive enough to find solutions quickly enough to bridge this and ‘cross that chasm.’ Pivoting on the parts that are good, exploring the parts that are needed.

The five adopter categories are:

Innovators– venturesome, risk-taking, information seeking, early seeking status and very experimental, enjoy the degree of early challenge or even uncertainty involved.

Early adopters– Often respected opinion leaders within their social groups, seen often as role models for others.

Early majority – more deliberate before adopting new ideas; interact frequently with peers and trendsetters. They like to merely stay ahead within the curve from that more informed decision-making.

Late majority – Tend to be sceptical, cautious to adopt but ‘feel’ pressure of peers to adopt, tend to need intervention strategies to overcome barriers and see their ‘needs’ resolved by the innovation

Laggards – Traditional , last in the social system, often they pay little attention to opinions of others, they have more a clear point of reference in the past to overcome, are often suspicious of new innovations and their decision process is often lengthy.

Then we have the decision process or stages of adoption:

Awareness and Knowledge – refers to a customer’s acknowledgement of the presence or existence of the new innovation and where they form a general perception of what it might entail and is often driven by the intersection of need recognition through marketing communications. This is the point of being inspired to find out more.

Persuasion and Interest – this occurs when a consumer processes the available information associated with the innovation and considers the product or service’s appeal on this. This positive or negative attitude tends to be based on the five characteristics mentioned above. Here the consumer actively seeks out information and details.

Decision and Assessment – Having considered the persuasion factors the consumer will come to a decision about whether to adopt or reject the innovation. Their activity in seeking out advice, data gathering, comparing or making different assessments happen clearly here. They consider the switching costs and weigh the advantages up. This is the hardest stage to understand.

Implementation and Exploration – These are the series of activities to put the innovation to use. The consumer employs the innovation to a varying learning degree. The usefulness is determined and they may search for further information about it.

Confirmation and Adoption– is mostly concerned with post-adoption behaviour exhibited by the adopter, reinforced by the innovation’s actual delivery against the relative advantage ‘claims,’ its complexity and compatibility on their understandings. The individual finalizes their decision to continue using it or searches for extending its use to its full potential.

So in summary for this opening post:
Diffusion is the manner in which innovation spreads. It is the degree how we facilitate, accelerate, and sustain it.

There are constant difficulties in exploiting these different theories within organizations, the questions are where to place the emphasis and the means of communicating these. The process is contingent upon the structural, cultural and size and scope considerations.

You have to watch for that constantly changing the implementation requirements and lack of sufficient resources or application, as they considerable constrain the innovation outcomes and often you don’t spot these until it is too late

The execution or commercialization stage of any new innovation often fails to address the theories offered by Rogers adequately enough, then organizations often suffer poor diffusion and adoption rates, unaware of the considerable efforts this stage of understanding diffusion and adoption needs to address.

The second part of this post will deal with….

My second post in this diffusion and adoption discussion will deal with managing within a far more fluid set of conditions than we have seen to be facing previously.

The combination of technology, social media and the internet gained a ‘closer’ relationship with final consumers encouraging engagement and feedback has introduced a far more dynamic environment.

Innovation adoption or rejection is getting riskier, and far more complex and we need to bridge the learning gaps far better and smarter. Are Roger’s theories still relevant or even more so today and in the future?

Then the third post provides different examples of diffusion and adoption and offers a starters list of why diffusion can often fail to occur.

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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission, I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide-ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, it’s well worth the visit.

The post Exploring Diffusion and Adoption for Innovation – Part 1 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

It now needs a deeper understanding than ever. Are we achieving that?

My viewpoint on observing different innovation dilemmas:

• Innovation used to be about product, technology and R&D but it is far more now about value and anything that carries value. It is about creativity and entrepreneurship and it is even more tied to a clear vision today than ever, so it does become a vital part of the culture of the company.
• Innovation and its potential value generation have certainly broadened out in options and needs even more to be tightly integrated with the strategy- how different types of innovation are aligned is really critical. I think many organizations are failing badly on this alignment recognition.

• The growing appreciation that richer opportunities are to be found across the entire value chain by how we manage and view this. Making the strategic choice of what should remain in house as a contributor to the core and which can be outsourced to specialists better equipped and more focused on that part.
• This is making innovation far more complex and will challenge everyone but it can be very liberating and more rewarding providing the value can be recognized and leveraged effectively …in faster and more relevant innovations that deliver from the core or adjacencies or through others better equipped to add their value. The key to outsourcing is resolving the questions of can this be effectively coordinated on who manages what, and who owns what, and how it is exploited, for the added value and impact this can offer each party.

• There is a clear recognition that defining real value lies more at the customer point and not within an organization in the R&D lab, as has been the past practice. Getting the customer involved as early as you can from discovery to delivery- the end to end of innovation- extracts greater potential value.
• There has been a growing shift for innovations to meet exact customer needs and also discover their unmet needs and then working back to developing the solutions. This increased customer focus will continue by making them more central in any web of co-creators and co-creation activities that needs to be undertaken around innovation discovery and its final delivery.

• External parties are seeking more involvement in a ‘joint’ innovation processes and the development process as early as they can. Partners are becoming increasingly reliant on each other to become a critical contributor or component provider to resolve more complex problems. Understanding these mutual dependencies is important to be recognized and actively managed in new collaborative ways.

• We have seen some really dramatic shifts in research techniques to know more of what ‘pulls’ and ‘connects’ with consumers. Customers are also looking to become more engaged and involved in their products and services, in what they expect and wish to be associated with. Managing these dynamics and often the emotional mix is hard and often frustratingly complex, to decipher and interpret.
• The new work is to be positioned as the ‘orchestrator’ of these dialogues across the organization and in drawing in through collaboration with the partners, by constructing the conduits and business platforms where the flow of exchanges takes place where new concepts evolve.

• The shift in emphasis to the customer makes a really compelling case for increased emphasis to be made on trend spotting, scouting, aligning and recognizing behavioural changes so as to make insights a real core of your business, more the source of those ideas than leaving ideas simply emerging from within an organization.
• Stringing together an often diverse set of signals calls for higher capability in pattern recognition and appreciating more about complex adaptive systems and the part they play. These are where dynamic networks of interactions and relationships merge and adapt differently, so individual and collective behaviour changes as a result of the experience, leading to emerging new opportunities to explore.

• There is an increasing need to manage a diverse group of collaborators across a common process. Often these parties might not want or need the same end-result but do need each other to ‘combine’ for a given result. This will benefit their individual businesses and add new dimensions in this collaboration space, to then deliver different outcomes than the existing solutions in place today fail to do.
• There is a real value of combining and working through a common business platform, to achieve individual and collective aims and equally, enhance the total delivery experience (Delivering Applications around Android are a good example here or Apples developer platform). Platforms bring together developers, providers and customers that can scale or contract accordingly and if well managed can drive business strategy in dramatically new ways.

• Building a more robust ‘activity system’ into managing innovation, beyond just simply pipelines and portfolio’s needs thinking through. It requires a more open logic model to be articulated and built around so as to allow for more early ‘open’ thinking, exploring and investigating multiple options.
• Far too often an idea is screened out far to early and not explored in a wider context of ‘seeing things differently’. Equally the lack of flexibility of concepts simply moving through the innovation system with a one dimensional end result of ‘just’ product without exploring the value of services, or even combining them, can miss huge growth opportunities .

• The value and growing appreciation about exploring different Business Models has increasing value. Providing the necessary space to explore emerging opportunities with new business models is becoming a must for accelerating growth through innovation and experimentation. Showing that increased willingness to separate and develop more ‘spin offs to encourage the concepts to flourish is more frequent from larger organizations that will increasingly challenge the young upstarts.
• Showing more commitment to separating off exciting new concepts to bear fruit quickly and to be allowed to more highly focused, so as to deliver the ‘seen’ result will allow larger organizations to be more nimble and responsive than in the past. This growing willingness is altering the competitive landscape even more.

• The constant ’quest for growth’ will need an even deeper connection between Marketing and Innovation as they will continue to be two ‘twins’ as the strongest drivers of margin and revenue growth. What is required is to re-equip marketing executives with new skills in design appreciation, research expertise, deeper customer engagements and an even stronger voice at the C-level to drive innovation through its different avenues of opportunity (service, product, social, business model generation).
• Innovation needs to be a core capability within Marketing, not just given a cursory understanding or working through a narrow view, it needs deep appreciation of what and where it can provide this growth.

• The recognition that adopting someone else’s best practice is not the ideal way to go, it has been the ‘lazy man’s’ solution for far too long and really does need even more rigorously challenging. Defining your specific emergent or good practices that fit your culture and context are clearly better, adopting blindly others is not, yet still far too many do this.
• Your context, your culture, your resources are uniquely different and other peoples ‘best practice’ is not the right starting point. Somehow best practice needs a radical overhaul in what it provides and what it can inhibit. Far too often adopting best practice can be a disaster. Emergent practice should be the watch world.

• The art of spending wisely today is even more vital. The choices between experimentation, trial and error internally and learning from external expertise for understanding innovation needs to be worked upon. There needs to be a better appreciate of each other’s contribution. It still seems not be well managed, far to ad hoc and not well thought through.
• Admittedly external expertise has often failed to provide innovation leadership and the deeper thinking that internal expertise on its own simply cannot deliver. External advisors simply took over and then left at the end of their consulting engagements, leaving much simply not embedded within the organization.

• Contracting hands-on consultants should be seen differently from using external knowledge providers-they offer a distinctly different service and for me, the difference between consulting and advising. With growing complexity innovation specialization has increasing value, often this is not sitting on the teams bench, it needs bringing in and being valued for what this can give in greater appreciation. Greater external expertise needs to be injected into the innovation equation of many organizations for deepening individuals, teams and organizational understanding of what innovation can provide in its different potential.
• There is today even more of a business case for a deep innovation dive with external facilitation to graps new understanding and latest developments from a party that is 100% focused on the subject. The internal executive is often left badly equipped to recognise innovation’s complexities as it seemingly doesn’t fit their lens of the world and due to this organizations can discount much to their peril in the longer term.

There is a lot evolving in the name of innovation, all very healthy but all very challenging. Innovation needs to be treated as a critical discipline, to be built up, to be called upon where necessary.

It is often not as well understood as it should be, on how it often works but it needs establishing far more within the fabric of each organization. It should be treated no different than the IT specialist, the accounting specialist, the strategic advisor, PhD researcher or sales specialist, innovation has a critical place and needs clear representation at the top table.

Place more trust in the specialists that have innovation as their expertise, internally and externally but give this the necessary ‘head room’ to be understood.

It is time innovation as a recognized discipline should be fully embraced, ambiguities and all! There is a new wave of emerging innovation practice going on.

The post Clear trends are shaping the future of innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.