Most of us are very aware that Innovation can be fairly complex in what needs to be pulled together to take an idea or concept into a finished product.. We are also aware innovation often ‘flies’ in contradiction to the normal organization’s ways and wishes, especially the emphasis on working in structured, efficient and productive ways. Innovation can often be rather chaotic and discovery driven, it often is seen as counter-productive to the orderly state our organizations wish to achieve.

Yet it is that randomness, that serendipity, that sudden discovery that needs a different way of thinking and organizing innovation. It can still be well-structured and effective but it needs the opportunity to allow in accidental discovery, by-chance conversation, fortuitous moments that just seem to happen and occur as you are “open” to them. You need to have both structure and unstructured aspects to allow innovation to happen, evolve and eventually shape towards an outcome that changes the current status quo. Innovation should always challenge and question this status quo.

One of the useful ideas of using an external resource is to put additional coordinates into your innovation world, they see contradictions in a different way. They can assist in working through the conflicting signals, so as to help align innovation in helpful and thoughtful ways. Certainly, the innovator’s role is not an easy one inside the structured world of larger business entities.

I like practical advice with evidence, it helps bridge misunderstanding. This can come through a variety of methods:  benchmarking, validating, frameworks and interpreting how innovation can fit with your current or future needs. Often the outside advice can place innovation into a greater context that can accelerate the outcomes you need to gain understanding and achieve increasing identification.

The value of the external  innovation specialist has great value in insights

It has a very powerful combination effect if the advice is right. In my case, I try to offer operational experience drawn from the client’s input and my own understandings of being involved in many different businesses, at varying management levels, in many markets and industries. As we combine experiences, we can open up our thinking. Shutting down someone else’s experience or thinking denies us the opportunity to learn and advance thinking. This is providing a cross-industry experience and gives sometimes detachment from your world. It becomes valuable to explore something different, to take time to compare and contrast, to arm you with greater insights so you can relate your innovation activity and maybe recognize being exposed to something outside your industry might give you a completely different insight to a problem you are working upon, by seeing solutions from another industry as close to the answer you were looking for, even more, it can become even more grounded or questioned. We are better at (pattern) recognition when we “see” something tangible. Often it is hard to visualize something.

The other main contribution comes from common sense and intuition.

Receiving thoughts that feed into your own instinct or conflict with it give a terrific and fast sounding board. It remains outside the politics and constraints of your organization. It gives a different sense of perspective and verification.

It does not matter if these are micro-learning moments (quick answers to immediate need) or those deeper more macro learning ones (to learn specifically a new subset of innovation), it is by having the opportunity to put different coordinates into your thinking that can be offered by the external advisor can bring significant value and save valuable time.

What slips under your personal radar can also partly be picked up

Not just in those moments of need but by having an ongoing relationship with an external coach, advisor or mentor you can benefit from critical updates and insights, that might have slipped under your radar dues to your focus on getting the work done. You can have set up interim reports that focus on a given theme or topic of interest that you don’t have the necessary time to investigate yourself, you can gain from field research, breaking innovation reports on topics of need and interest and you can encourage your team to equally tap into this innovation knowledge vault.

The recognition is in knowing and appreciating

It is recognizing the value of having someone just a call or email away who can provide backup value in insights or knowledge gives you a significant edge.

Why reinvent the wheel when others might already have your wheel size ready and waiting to fit?

Give me a call to see if this might be a valuable supporting service to you and what you are looking to achieve in innovation outcomes. Let me help.

** Originally published on my Advocating and Guiding Dedicated Posting Site

The post Building the Coordinates into your Innovation World first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We need to know how to unlock the real value of innovation both personally and within the organization, we work for. If we do not fully understand where the innovation capital comes from, how new capital and stock can be provided, innovation will remain tentative, always stuttering along.

Innovation will lack that essential organization innovation rhythm, and it will stay disconnected for many and will be frustrating your own evolution in understanding if it does not become an organizational learning need.

I’d like to offer a fresh view on building your own innovation capital.

There are different building blocks and types of capital. Let’s start with the vast knowledge inside the organization, as this forms learning capital. We’re all expected to combine our existing internal knowledge with the external knowledge that flows into the company these days, mostly intangible, searching for its relevancy and context. The stock we build in our use of this fresh knowledge so we can combine these into new insights that eventually create different sets of advantages – ones that foster value creation.

Then we have the opportunity to build Innovation Capital.

Key elements of innovation capital also, equally, consist of mostly non-technological intangibles, embodied in the organizational routines and employees’ mindset.  So, it is important also to understand the make-up of innovation capital, in its “stock” and these, can be clarified in the following ways:

• Innovation capital as renewal capabilities of our organizations in the form of producing intellectual properties that offer value and are increasingly being extracted from our intangible assets.
• Innovation capital possesses attributes that make it a “strategic” asset. The key to success lies in specifying the nature and application of these assets in relation to the new knowledge flowing into the organization. This generates and commercializes concepts and ideas into new forms of innovation value.
• Innovation capital is made up of the ongoing “dynamic interactions” between intangibles and tangibles. Built up from experience over time, they develop into mostly intangible assets, and eventually into valuable outcomes.
• It is the effective use of different kinds of intangibles that contribute to innovation capital. Only a few of them can be formally captured as they are built on interactions, relationships, applied experience, generally accepted understanding and based on pattern recognition and meaningfulness.
• As we grow our networks and relationships, we increase knowledge sharing. This promotes our understanding and provides increased intangibles inside the organization. As we deepen our knowledge, we gain experience and achieve higher “pattern recognition” and insight.

When we look around we are able to spot the enablers for innovation stock to grow, as they contribute into your experiences and exposure to general principles of understanding. See how you can learn from these:

These elements can be described as follows:

• Innovation strategy relates to strategic choices a firm makes regarding its innovation
• The selection of the type of innovation that fits best to the firm’s objectives and the allocation of resources to different types of innovations
• Innovation culture is a mixture of employees’ innovation-related attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and values
• The integrating function of environment, culture, and climates that stimulate innovation activities
• Innovation structures that are formed to make up the innovation process
• The approach to the organization and the way employees engage in innovation are grouped
• The employees’ knowledge (technological and non-technological) engaged in the innovation process
• The stock of knowledge can be increased by an organization’s internal and external learning

“Internal learning” refers to the creation of new knowledge within the enterprise, while “external learning” pertains to the integration of knowledge from outside. We can model innovation capital and apply different capital needs to different innovation challenges to leverage them in more dynamic ways.

The more we strengthen our knowledge and appreciate the value within our people, the more we can generate new knowledge, build greater narratives, deepen discussions, and establish better connections and interactions across growing communities. In this way, we can turn innovation capital into a highly dynamic and valuable asset, just as we treat financial capital today.

The more we discover, the more knowledge we gain

This enables better decision-making and fosters our value-creating potential. This will, in theory, give us greater confidence, both internally and externally, that today, our invested financial capital is in good hands. We are effectively applying innovation capital to value creation.

Our learning capital needs to emerge and dominate future discussions in improving it’s quality and value contribution. We need to increase incentives for organizations and their people to learn or update their existing knowledge.

The power lies in the linkages we can forge, in the acquisition, in assimilation, and eventually in a transformation that allows the known and the unknown building into new knowledge that fuels our wealth-generating innovation pipeline.

** Originally published on my Advocating and Guiding Dedicated Posting Site

The post Innovation Capital Lies Within Organizational Learning first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Nesta is an innovation foundation. They state: “For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality. It also means changing lives for the better. This is what keeps us awake at night and gets us out of bed in the morning” They work in areas where there are big challenges facing society, from the frontiers of personalized healthcare to stretched public services and a fast-changing jobs market. They cover a lot of ground and provide some very sound advice along the way.

One of their team, Bas Leurs, who is their head of learning experience design, has been working on “A Landscape of Innovation Approaches“. I read version one in February 2018 and did not pick up on version 2, published as a blog in December 2018. Hence, why I kicked myself.

Although this was built with government and civil servants in mind asking which tools and techniques they should use, this growing list of approaches to innovation is getting highly impressive and a terrific stimulus to any one of us working across innovation, to explore it and then see how and what might also be added, hence why I thought this needed sharing.

In the version 2 blog 

They climb into the tools and offer some great guidance and clarity to the links they have found, as their reference and introductory information. Just go and explore these, they are such a storehouse of innovation approaches. It clearly has that bias to government and the UK civil service but all innovators, irrespective, in the private or public sectors will extract good value out of this, I know.

Here is the landscape map again (as shown above)

Just stop and think of this, please

They have broken the tools and techniques in a really thoughtful way. It is how we should be thinking about undertaking innovation. Forget the advice offered in the past, based on the more traditional ways of establishing an innovation process, or much of the sage advice and reflect on this structure. It is a powerful way to construct your innovation toolbox.

This becomes the enabler space for innovation for thinking innovation in that wider context. This approach brings innovation far more up to date in how we should group it and build it for delivering the real understanding of innovation and what actually does make innovation up.

The four spaces are intelligence, solution, technology, and talent. Let me quote their brief descriptors of these and the one additional one of Intelligence- Solution crossover space.

Intelligence Space- understanding reality

These approaches help you make sense of reality, understand the causes and effects of issues, and identify opportunities. Activities are driven by an inquisitive and analytical mindset.

Solutions Space- shaping reality

These approaches help you test and develop solutions. Activities are driven by a generative and entrepreneurial mindset, aiming to shape reality.

Technology space- enabling action

Approaches and technology that enable action and change, such as digital tools and data-related methods (at the intersection with the intelligence space).

Talent Space- empowering people

Approaches focused on mobilizing talent, developing technical and leadership skills and increasing organizational readiness to make change happen

The Intelligence- Solutions Crossover space- using both mindsets

The crossover between the intelligence and solution space includes methods built on both mindsets. They aim to understand, as well as shape reality.

In summary, this map is still a work-in-progress as it gets others feeding in their ideas and giving feedback. I really think this “Landscape of Innovation Approaches” is a terrific source of reference for practitioners as well as theorists to work through.

I do recommend you take a look. Link here again and I certainly want to thank Nesta and especially Bas Leurs for the work that has gone into this and being shared with a wider audience.

*** Download this diagram as a PDF.

The post Nesta’s Landscape of Innovation Approaches first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Do you stop and reflect, do you “veg” out, do you seek alternative points of stimulus or find something completely different to go and do, read a book, listen to music, take a walk, climb a mountain or simply tune-out. We need a time out for reflection.

Well, I had a reflective moment on some points I consider within innovation that need re-emphasizing.

So my reflective points were these as we always should consider the whole connected system of innovation.

Extending innovations value – appreciating the whole system.

For me, innovation needs to be treated more like a complete interlinked value chain. We must step back and see the whole value chain system for innovation. It constantly loops back and feeds back-in to add increasing value and experience.  It has many connected parts that need to work together to deliver effectively and efficiently the new ideas and concepts being discovered through to final commercialization.

The innovation value chain needs the following, seemingly obvious but often missed points to consider:

1. An established system that is clearly repeatable to ‘push’ innovation through constantly
2. It needs to be able to scale, scope and quickly adjust according to the concepts being pushed or even pulled through, often by spotting unmet customer needs.
3. It needs flexibility, resilience, and adaptability that constantly adjusts and shaped accordingly and cannot be ‘fixed’, rigid and overly managed or controlled as many seem to try.
4. It needs to have breakpoints for considering the innovation options- carry on, kill off, spin out, send back to rethink, to allow to grow at a different pace, to accelerate more.
5. It needs to ‘capture’ the collective learning and experiences constantly gained from the past and build those into improving the process for future activities
6. The people who have ‘oversight’ need to have some form of option resolution built in for deciding resources, directions, allocations and investments. They need that responsibility.
7. All innovation ideas and concepts entering the extended tunnel need to align to the strategic direction, compliment or extend onto the platforms you are providing (core, adjacent or new) and feed the portfolio’s that drive the businesses growth aspirations.
8. They must have a clear ‘fit’ within the strategy needs and be resourced well.

Designing the innovation pathway- this, for me, is so important to visualize and conceptualize

To achieve increasing value in this, there is an innovation pathway you have to design and be ready to travel. It is highly dynamic and you, as the leader of the innovation activities, are required to constantly add the active innovation yeast by promoting the ‘fermentation’ needed for innovation to succeed, including:

1. Establishing and encouraging a robust set of innovation processes and technologies to support that constantly adapts and adjusts to the needs of the innovation concept, not the other way around.
2. The ability, energy, and commitment to drive maturing ideas and concepts to realization.
3. Create a powerful desire and motivation to innovate by encouraging the environment of what you do makes a contribution to our future.
4. As ideas and concepts mature, you constantly build and restate the business case, again and again, so it remains clear why this concept remains important.
5. You actively seek out the different and often diverse points of connectivity with all the stakeholders so they can engage, contribute and lend their support and commitment.
6. Constantly look for ways to empower individuals and groups to explore, challenge and improve constantly on what they know with what they need to find out and discover.
7. You have to work actively (hard) at clarifying constantly the links of the idea and concepts across the innovation process for all involved to stay committed to the ‘long run’ between idea to commercialization in times of uncertainty and flux.
8. Ensure you are actively working those networking, encouraging collaborating and building on the collective wisdom of many so that you are constantly exploring all the (emerging) options and expanding on the alternatives to extract maximum value.
9. Seek ways to always measure, evaluate and see return through progress and impact so everyone involved or viewing the efforts can constantly ‘see’ the value and where their contribution is helping, not simply once a year in those organized ways and events that fit the calendar or bean counter needs.
10. Strive for execution that builds from the best of the past by knowing what that is; remain open to what is all around you today in the wider world beyond your often more narrow confines and imagine what is really possible with that extra touch of imagination to ‘push’ by seeing beyond the known’s and traditionally accepted.

The concept-to-customer approach is an innovation pathway that constantly narrows down.

We do need a concept-to-customer approach across innovation. My 5C’s of capture, connect, convert, confirm and conclude shown in the extended innovation funnel can move this along.

Innovation is extremely strategic in what it contributes. We often to stop and consider its importance, we strip it of resources, we relegate it down the organization, we let it be subservient to our daily obsessions on efficiency and effectiveness, it should not, it should be constantly challenging and pushing these into new ways and thinking, we forget its value and purpose.

Innovation requires a more thoughtful understanding and we have to accommodate it within organizations by stating that it is often unpredictable, sometimes a chaotic process, it cannot be legislated or totally subscribed, thankfully certain significant parts can. It is by having this complete understanding of the entire innovation process so we can differentiate between the parts that can be made predictable and those that can’t.

We can also constantly work at making innovation more predictable, in managing its many parts by making them more efficient and effective wherever possible. The more the deeper in innovation insight and understanding, the more we are adding to the internal knowledge. By often allowing for as much flexibility and adaptability for ideas and concepts as possible to ‘travel down’ and consistently improve the narrowing innovation path, the more it is likely to emerge as the right end-result.

As we progress from discovery to execution we need to offer more guidance and encouragement than prescriptive methods, currently prescribed and handed out in ad hoc doses. We DO need to understand innovation well. We then can manage our core well, expand into any adjacent spaces that strategically fit more comfortably and organize the associated activities to push the right innovation through a pipeline towards a positive commercial outcome., i.e., improves on the existing

We will often have to go a lot nearer to the edge of uncertainty as we build this innovation path but knowing where these edges are is better than being constantly surprised. Innovation expertise inside an organization makes sound sense, it pushes the edges, it questions the core. Please see a previous post on some thoughts on this, for we still fail to connect everyone up to the same innovation cause http://bit.ly/fQW6Jq

One last thing here, we must also rather surprisingly, reduce the many existing tools and processes we try to fit around innovation that ‘stress’ the existing core infrastructure and are confusing us. This is the opposite of their intention, to make our lives easy, they often do the counter, they add more stress points within innovation. I think a further blog on this layering and its negative effect might be better, so that’s for another day.

Well, I just felt like having one of my reflective moments.

Keep innovating please in all you do!

The post Extending innovations value- appreciating the whole system. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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.

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.

Ralph and I exchange constantly and occasionally meet up together. Actually, we need another meeting Ralph to catch up and explore these mutual innovation value points.

Ralph in a reply to Jairo suggested this: “That’s why a portfolio approach is so important” – with his take here: bit.ly/1Rn5Svq  under his excellent Model for Integrative Innovation article.He ‘talks’ of cornerstones and offers different premises to anchor these a little more.

The different premise:  premise 1: Innovation management follows a balanced portfolio approach. The entire innovation portfolio is divided into exploitation-oriented and exploration-oriented innovation initiatives and premise 2: Senior management is committed to attributing equal importance to exploitation and exploration initiatives as both are vital for a company to thrive sustainably. Then premise 3: Exploitation- and exploration-oriented initiatives are separated in terms of organisational anchoring, governance and funding and finally premise 4: Fostering an innovation portfolio is enabled by a proper idea management system which allows to either assign an internal or external idea to the corresponding units or to reject it. Then he suggests the use of the three horizons as distinct playgrounds for innovation initiatives.

This brief summary does not do justice to Ralph’s thoughtful build up to this portfolio approach and use the three horizons as a framing for this.I do recommend reading this. The link again is here: bit.ly/1Rn5Svq 

Well Ralph’s article leads nicely into this visual I have used and I wanted to contribute further to this collective thinking around different approaches to planning out innovation and in particular in this brief exchange, we were recently having on twitter by giving it a little more context this through this visualisation.

This visual might help make a further contribution to the value and use of the three horizon methodology

I like this visual as it places the portfolio discussion into its degree of difficulty parts to build a portfolio up without assigning it to time at this stage. That comes next through the use of the three horizons where you are exploiting and exploring these opportunities over time.

Changing the annual plan thinking is critical to building a robust innovation portfolio.

The usual arguments of how do you fit these into an annual plan tend to reduce, you are focusing on the attractiveness of different opportunities and time becomes not the issue at this point, that can come back into the thinking later. As you evaluate the degree of difficulty you start assigning different resources and recognising a ‘span’ of different times to bring these idea concepts to realisation.

You will notice in the middle of this visual there is a key transforming point.

I believe if you are genuinely looking across different options and broader opportunities you can begin to see a transforming opportunity that has the potential to radically alter or drive your business in the future.

This sits in the middle as it becomes an emerging idea, that goes into the horizon two part. This needs really carefully handling and I have previously written about this horizon two specifically in an article here called Traversing across into horizon 2 for new breaking innovation.

Also, I would want you to go back and read two articles, firstly on why innovation needs a different time and thinking horizons and then drawing out the different voices within the three horizons methodology for innovation. That way I don’t need to repeat parts of them here.

Recognising our present day thinking are at odds with future thinking

So you get these clear sense that many are sceptical or pay lip service to the products or service offerings of the future as the thinking, judgement and value orientation are at such odds with the existing measures and metrics they apply to run today’s business and how they get judged.

We must move our thinking beyond the ‘here and now’ and push it into the future if we want to transform our innovation and that takes a very different mindset and where the three horizon framework can help significantly in balancing any innovation portfolio.

So to add to the short exchange on twitter I thought I’d share this visual that might help in plotting your balanced portfolio in a way that combines portfolio management and three horizon thinking for recognising time and allocating resource

The potential of using the three horizons to any blue sky thinking, or determine what makes up the portfolio, is a more classic positioning but why not, once you have determined your opportunities in the portfolio you place them back into the three horizons to manage them ‘going forward’.

Just an additional thought or two as you finish up here.

By the way in my insights and thinking tag on this site you have an extensive collection of thoughts around the three horizon methodology, including white papers and different ‘series’ collections to give you a fairly comprehensive view of this most valuable 3H methodology.

End note: Doug Collins has pointed out since this publication, that he was original source of this visual. I had lost this reference and I am happy to add it in. His original article adds well to this.

The post Applying innovation thinking in different horizons first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.