Business Ecosystems are the growing force to galvanize change and build a more collaborative culture, where the partners’ diversity enables solutions to be solving more complex and challenging problems we seem to be facing today.

When thinking about and designing business ecosystems, you must recognize that different ecosystems contribute, evolve, and determine their part in a “bigger” scheme of things. Recognizing that innovation, business, dynamic, and enterprise ecosystems through the design to be interconnected has evolved into the Interconnected Business Ecosystem framework.

Below in this post, I have clarified where the Dynamic Ecosystem fits and its significant contribution, influence, and impact on the health, dynamism, and future solution orientation we strive for in any new solutions. The C-level pitch sums it up well.

I have written extensively about “the dynamics within a system,” especially an innovation one, arguing that adaptation and resilience are consequences of practising “dynamics.” I got caught up in the importance of studying and recommending the need to build dynamic capabilities. More recently, I have written about the critically crucial dynamic ecosystem that “sits” in the interconnected business ecosystems of innovation, business, dynamics, and enterprise.

I will be honest I still can’t crack the complete dynamics code but I am trying hard as are many other people, it holds much of our future requirements. I developed an innovative fitness landscape methodology into a capability model based on dynamic capabilities, providing a nine-step approach.

I recently built out dynamic capabilities for Ecosystems, into a Journey in achieving a Dynamic Ecosystem in nine steps. My best mind maps were constructed around these dynamic capabilities to explain them and the interconnected parts required. It is a pity I can’t show them here.

Constantly extracting the essence of Dynamics in capabilities and ecosystems are the “essential oils” for ecosystems; they allow for rapid adaptability, continuous learning, extracting network effects, and greater decentralised decision-making and building resilience. Innovation thrives in an environment that recognizes dynamic ecosystems as the opposite of static, siloed systems. They constantly search for adapting, evolving and collaborating to thrive and grow.

Exploring the potential of adopting Dynamic Ecosystems

It is within the ability of organizations to integrate, reconfigure and build internal and external resources to respond to the often complex and challenging environmental changes and seize new opportunities but they need an organizing framework. The role of dynamic capabilities is to identify emerging trends, adapt strategies and allocate or re-order resources to meet those changes in rapid ways to capitalize within the organizing Dynamic Ecosystem.

I have written on “understanding Dynamic Ecosystems and why they should be different” emphasizing their unique characteristics and how and why they are different from other ecosystem models by adaptability, continuous learning, networking value and providing greater resilience to change.

Also, I have written on the “critical differences in understanding dynamic ecosystems” as this ecosystem actively supports other ecosystems to provide further impact and dynamism. They leverage, orchestrate and accelerate what is happening.

When I was working through my opening framework, published in January and February 2024, “Building the Case for The Hierarchy of Business Ecosystem Needs,” it was the dynamic layer that held my attention as the most exciting to recognise for its differences I was suggesting in Thriving in the Dynamic Ecosystems as a core post within the series. I put this down as a pivotal role as it can transform and challenge conventional business practices; it builds adaptability and resilience to navigate uncertainty, addressing this and not ignoring it, attempting to manage and mitigate risks.

Dynamic Ecosystems strives to be future-orientated, focusing on advancement and continuous learning, and delivers the primary drivers for economic advantage by proactively shaping market dynamics and positioning to spot and seize breaking opportunities, I call ecosystem sensing to stay ahead of the curve and gain those strategic edges.

The critical part of Dynamic Ecosystems is why they are so different, as outlined as the “pitch point” to C-levels to recognize their value.

“At the heart of this framework lies the Dynamic Ecosystem layer, a powerful engine designed to actively challenge assumptions, validate strategies, stress-test our adaptation and resilience capabilities, and provoke the re-imagination of our fundamental business models.

In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, complacency and rigid thinking can harm an organization’s long-term viability. The Dynamic Ecosystem layer serves as a contrarian force, a provocateur that continually questions our established norms and pushes us to explore alternative perspectives.

Imagine a dedicated team of visionaries, futurists, and disruptive thinkers whose sole purpose is to introduce dissenting voices, identify blindspots, and simulate contrarian scenarios we may have overlooked. This team would act as our internal “red team,” stress-testing our strategies against potential disruptions, Black Swan events, and alternative futures.

We cultivate a healthy debate and cognitive diversity culture by fostering an environment where dissenting opinions are tolerated and actively encouraged. This open discourse prevents groupthink and echo-chamber effects, ensuring that our strategies and business models are continuously refined and reinvented to stay ahead of the curve.”

The validation, foresight and power

“Moreover, the Dynamic Ecosystem layer would serve as a validation mechanism for our innovation pipelines, stress-testing new ideas and concepts against alternative scenarios before broader implementation. This iterative process mitigates risks and enhances the resilience and future-proofing of our innovations.

But the true power of this layer extends beyond challenging assumptions; it also empowers us to shape our destiny actively. We can anticipate and proactively position ourselves through ecosystem-sensing capabilities to capitalize on emerging trends, disruptive forces, and game-changing opportunities before our competitors.”

Imagine and embrace the distinct values of Dynamic Ecosystems

“Imagine having the foresight to navigate disruptions, mitigate risks, and seize strategic advantages by continuously adapting our strategies and business models in real-time, fueled by the insights and contrarian perspectives generated within the Dynamic Ecosystem layer.

This commitment to dynamic adaptation and resilience-building will permeate every layer of our Ecosystem Framework, from the Innovation Ecosystem, where we foster a culture of experimentation and agile development, to the Business Ecosystem, where we cultivate resilient partnerships and collaborative networks and, ultimately, to the Enterprise Ecosystem, where we instil a culture of adaptability and future-readiness throughout our entire organization.

By embracing the Dynamic Ecosystem layer, we are not merely reacting to change; we are proactively shaping our industry’s trajectory, turning disruptive forces into strategic growth opportunities, and fostering a mindset of continuous evolution that will propel our organization towards sustained excellence and collective prosperity.” (finish)

The influencing of the entire ecosystem design is the dynamics within the system.

So, let us embrace this contrarian force, this provocateur, and harness its power to challenge conventional wisdom, stress-test our resilience, and ignite a perpetual cycle of re-imagination and adaptation. Only through this relentless pursuit of evolution can we truly future-proof our organization and cement our position as industry leaders for years to come.

Dynamic ecosystems should be treated according to our ability to adapt and build resilience. We can measure dynamics in many ways, but firstly, we must open our minds to recognizing the Dynamic Ecosystem and its value in future business ecosystem design.

The post Dynamic Adaptation and Resilience in Interconnected Business Ecosystems first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have been struggling for quite some time with innovation’s increasing difficulties in influencing growth and achieving real impact.

I see many comments on the failure of innovation, in its inability to be at the core of an organization’s ambitions for growing and changing. Actually it is a long list of issues and concerns that we so often paper over and don’t fully address. There is a time for making a real change and I feel that could be now by shifting our thinking towards innovation ecosystems.

Let’s reflect first on the constraints or barriers that innovation faces, much self-imposed.

Innovation “fights” to attract resources, to gain management attention or to appreciate fully the difficulties and uncertainties in the time it takes, in its potential risks and its need often for a more ambitious and bold commitment of support and belief.

Our innovation processes stay locked in islands of knowledge, stubbornly not flowing across organizations, informing others and giving the right levels of insights, support, or collaboration needed. Innovation software management continues to be sold piecemeal, so often just bolted onto the other selected parts already in place, not being optimized.

The innovation process is often ignored or constantly adjusted to meet ad hoc requests or external pressures. The approach to innovation is often subject to the whims of the individual, accountability is reduced to a few ‘selected’ KPIs.

Innovation solutions are seen as limited, and the pressures often felt for giving straightforward immediate returns of value are often overriding the sustaining potential with more patience or investments in resources and time. Often innovation activity frustrates senior management. The work undertaken is often seen as a drain, not repeatable, and poor on the efficient definition of understanding we have in place today as the work undertaken, not yielding the returns if the concept is more radical due to time horizons or business model constraints..

The knowledge captured often doesn’t have integrating capabilities with other core enabling processes or is not seen as a building block to greater value. Innovation knowledge often simply dies or moves away with the person that gained from the time they spent focusing exclusively on innovation

We have the need to re-think innovation, we need a new level of innovation integration and optimization.

What we see increasingly is “innovation ecosystems.” Is this the potential answer to overcoming and giving innovation that chance to be more central to the core of the business? These are being built increasingly on digital platforms that seek to offer the technical and organisational context and knowledge, so a community of innovators or solution solvers can build out a wider community and begin to interact on a more shared purpose of common understanding.

For me, ecosystem thinking and design are accelerating mutual learning, and through this innovation, outcome potential for sharing and knowledge building. As we build an understanding of the power of digital platforms and ecosystem thinking, we can see gains and new values and realize different opportunities denied to us in the past by a lack of clarity, depth of understanding of what was in front of us but not appreciated, as we were looking at it differently and not seeing its potential in a combined value or bundling.

Firstly, we need to ask, “Why change the innovation narrative?“

Organizations today are no different from the past; they seek fresh growth and establish new competitive positions. The difference is the straight jacket they often “wore.” constrained them.

Today we live in a more connected world, technology has enabled this. We are becoming far more networked and have a growing awareness of hyper challenges that we are part of resolving and blurring boundaries across market positions, competitors and global trade. We are in a more complex world needing different approaches within business organizations.

We hold the promise of liberating potential in resolving wicked problems and opportunities, providing we embrace the potential to combine and share outside our organization and tap into the rich diversity of knowledge, equally keen to collaborate and cooperate to achieve a more cross-cutting innovation that provides solutions to these more complex problems.

The need for digital platforms and ecosystem designs has grown to achieve this collaborative environment. The ability to evolve enterprise capabilities is evaluating value webs, and artificial intelligence, pushing the need to reshape structures to be more outwardly facing, open to receiving new knowledge and prepared to share and exchange in return.

We are shifting critical capabilities that are growing the agility to trial, pilot and learn quickly as information flows in. We are achieving a faster adaptation and exploring mentality. The ability to combine data, and human knowledge is revealing this new collaborative potential and a new set of competitive opportunities.

The increased ability to deploy, activate and utilize resources and assets requires these digital platforms to constantly exploit latent potential through the network and relationship engagements that engage in mutual pursuit.

To achieve this, we do need a better conceptual innovation framework, this innovation ecosystem one.

What is needed is something more radical and cohesive than we presently have. Let’s call it a “co-evolutionary dynamic ecosystem.” It moves from systems to ecosystems of innovation activity. It is knowledge-based and well-grounded.

It needs much of what we have been arguing for over many years. Clear strategy leadership, a different organisational culture but with an emphasis more on partner engagement.

Organizations need to be well-equipped in supporting knowledge, data, insights and people in their data handling, its management, analysis sharing and processing.

To achieve this evolution, which has been called for over many years, is to facilitate and allow innovation to thrive and work. This means we do finally need to address controls, and provide different structures and emphasis by re-orienting at faster rates of learning on the reliance on the technical aspects.

Seeing the end result

The end result needs to be robust, dynamic and holistic in its dimensions, it has to be systematically designed and implemented, knowledge-driven by events and process design, and driven by dynamic interactions.

This call for a different end result does require this profound shift in the business landscape. Ecosystems and platforms become the core of any design. Ecosystems fundamentally challenge the way we currently are doing things (in isolated actions) and rearrange the way innovation is being managed today. It cannot work through stand-alone systems or software components it needs “digital platforms that offer the technical and organizational context soi a community can interact for a shared purpose” (adapted from Yochai Benkler)

It relies increasingly on a network of interconnected organizations organized around one or a few valuable focal points, firms that can contribute and on a shared platform that offers both producers of value but constantly engages with user-side participants helping to shape, offer and provide insights and criticism on what they see as value to them.

It is in this ecosystem design that organizations can act differently on strategies, business models, leadership commitment and encouragement, building out different capabilities to build collectively new value creation, breaking down previously complex or challenging problems by having in place capturing systems and organizational models that reflect a common ecosystem design thinking.

It is this recognition that today, innovation rarely succeeds in isolation to achieve real, lasting impact but needs this growing dependent type of complementary innovation that ecosystem design provides.

Any new narrative has many parts of a story to tell.

Those willing to listen and recognize a story that needs to be built out that they can identify with. My work over the past few years is gaining the experience and insights to attempt to tell this story of needed change.

I often speak of my innovation journey; I sometimes call myself the innovation journeyman. I recently wrote a post “innovation passion led me here“

My personal energy is drawn from all the challenges we face, looking to help find solutions.

We must promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for innovating purposes, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.

Transitions towards (real) innovation ecosystems

It is all about the translation points in innovation guidance and finding the time to engage with the external catalyst of innovation understanding. That is my place.

Relating and understanding the potential in adopting an innovation ecosystem design and thinking can potentially offer an exponential return to you, your team and your organization’s innovation activity. That is, of course, if you have the desire to build your innovation capabilities in new ways that are more based on “innovation ecosystems”.

For that, I need to change your innovation narrative. Have you the time? Contact me

The post Please, we need a different Innovation narrative first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

So many multiple strands constantly need to be pulled together to build a complete innovation picture.

We need to build theories, explore multiple connections, and build continuously on the patterns, the signals, and the interactions by extracting from all the different ‘cells’ of knowledge we all possess, which makes the application of innovation often highly unique to each of us.

Innovation ‘speaks to us all in different ways and has multiple meanings.

Then, when we grasp what we understand, we have to translate these thoughts into practical, workable solutions. By sharing, you learn and continue to build on this knowledge. You actually blend your own creation and learn from others, and that combination effect curates even greater knowledge and application.

To build a comprehensive view of any innovation built in a digital world needs is bringing together multiple strands of understanding, and that is tough, demanding and time-consuming.

Innovation needs to speak to us.

Innovation speaks to us in different ways and has multiple meanings, but it is the best pathway to any transition needed.

We can jump in and learn from experiments and straightforward learning, burning up our precious time and resource but can produce unexpected outcomes that translate into new and existing innovations. Or, we can step back just a little and try to absorb an understanding of innovation that builds our capability, capacity, and competence to innovate and try to piece together patterns and synergies.

I have always needed to share my journey.

I want to share my journey, its different experiences, and understanding points. From these “collective” thoughts, you might gain additional insight or understanding.

I hope what I write and offer my thoughts helps the reader to” connect innovation ” to make it powerful and personal. Innovation impacts new thinking, ideas, concepts, and ways to present something new.

The strands that give me my personal energy and passion lie in work around agility, energy, and digital transformations, the work-still-to-be-done, often termed the future of work, the need for us to promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for purpose.

I like to think of myself as an innovation journeyman.

I simply enjoy innovation in all its forms. I got ‘hooked’ twenty-plus years ago and since then have increasingly focused on innovation until it is the dominating force within my business thinking.

Today, the need to be highly adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times. It is not just seizing the day; it is spotting and seizing, exploring and exploiting opportunities and recognizing the need for constant renewal.

The fear of the unknown

This fear of the unknown and constant blocker of “not been tested in our environment” has significantly inhibited innovation adoption over the years. Equally, the nature of much of production has been designed “on the fly”, and the equally demanding job of connecting the whole process up in a new integrated, fully connected system meets enormous resistance.

Legacy systems plague the ability to break out of our present traps of silos. We are still struggling to solve these issues, machine by machine, process by process, incompatible software and hardware, piece by piece.

No magic bullets in innovation work

There is no one “magic” reference point,  simply one book to refer to, or certainly one visual that solves our needs.

We need to go on our personal innovation journey, one that is not constantly looking back in the rear-view mirror but taking a future forecasting approach. One that projects out in new, exciting, and different ways. To add new value, provide a more significant impact and make a difference in a world where we need to utilize finite resources and build on what we already have.

We need to be open and seek out and build our personal networks and relationships to support but equally gain from any interactions. Leveraging the available network and relationship effects can yield some exciting insights and concepts.

A journey that generates projects out of new, exciting, and different ways of discovery. We need to be open and seek out and build our personal networks and relationships to support but equally gain from any interactions.

My personal energy is drawn from all the challenges we face, looking to help find solutions.

We need to promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for purpose, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.

I suggested in this post that If you don’t have time, how can you learn?

It is all about the translation points in innovation guidance and finding the time to engage with the external catalyst of innovation understanding. That is my place. It can potentially offer an exponential return to you, your team and your organization’s innovation activity if you have the desire to build your innovation capabilities.

carpe-diem

It is not just seizing the day; it is spotting and sizing up concepts, exploring and exploiting opportunities and recognizing the need for constant renewal.

We all must appreciate a valuable pathway to building a more sustainable future by putting technology to a good purpose. It is innovation and the people involved that enable that.

My passion, desire and hope are that I can contribute and provide others with fresh insights and some great value from these collective thoughts. The passion still burns as innovation offers us the pathway to a new future.

The post Innovation Passion led me here first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have been asking myself how a combined effect of innovation and ecosystem design thinking will support the energy transition we are undertaking to give it additional traction and generation.

Let me share my thoughts and proposition here.

The vital “infusion” of innovation in thinking, approaching and building this into the front end of any energy transition provides a greater discovery structure and process that can greatly facilitate the changes, with more informed knowledge, insights and validation of a path to travel.

Finding fresh ideas and momentum

The energy transition needs a broad array of thinking; specialists, generalists, enthusiasts and passionate people that can move beyond their own view offering a “non-ideological confrontation” where solutions are both sustainable and accelerate a path to decarbonization and net-zero without any legacy or vested interest effect.

This innovator capacity that is needed to be ‘enforced’ requires greater insights and understanding of the alternatives, options, issues, and challenges.

There is a substantial role for me to play, I feel.

This is why I feel my multiplier approach offers a framework to help work this complexity through the energy transition in a supportive, systematic way; the combination gives momentum, traction and fresh energy.

For me, applying the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation accelerates the understanding of where the potential growth and impact points of a new business opportunity can occur.

As stated, my positioning is at the front end of the Energy Transition, building insights through the “eyes” of the strategic innovator.

I see the front end of energy as the critical feeding-in point for the energy transition. So what does this mean exactly?

• I provide evaluations and assessments of the front end of a transformation in discovery and validation that build understanding and fresh thinking.
• I offer advisory and supporting services in knowledge and insights provision on energy-related matters.
• I break my business out into dedicated focal topics in “big transforming” points of impact, applying understanding and insights that are, in my mind, complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections for growth potential that have impact and growth potential.
• The combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach supports the acceleration of the energy transition
• The combination capitalizes on the value points of data assets combined with knowledge insights and business-building experience. I believe it can offer a very different multiplier effect to idea generation and momentum building.

Explore Innovating the Energy Transition

Offering a given value in the proposition

I want to advance further what organizations or individuals responsible for leading the energy transition require to support and develop a more significant innovation and transformation understanding of energy transition options. To support them and build new competencies, clients achieve positive and sustaining results from these activities around the energy transition they intend to undertake.

The insights delivered aim to offer a unique view leading to a more balanced perspective, fresh inspiration and real alternatives to investigate and explore energy transitions.

Building a better discovery and validation portfolio

Extracting knowledge and applying application and practice gives clients the beginning of the “discovery and validation phase”, accelerating the client’s growth options in more structured ways, what is evolving and what impact and growth opportunities are on a business by taking the innovator’s perspective into assessing the need for a client’s energy transition.

By drawing on the external perspective, there is a significant saving in the amount of time in early resource investment. These insights and recommendations provide the triggering points for seeing fresh growth opportunities.

Does that make sense? It does to me but maybe I am a little biased here!

The post Gaining energy and idea generation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The level of interest in business platforms in the B2B space has rapidly grown. Platforms are more viable and relevant today than ever. The platform’s ability to offer multiple values will influence many of the client’s adoption decisions over the choices their business will engage with.

I wrote a recent article on my ecosystem and platform posting site, “Exploring points of value in adopting business platforms.”

I suggested in this post, “Platforms allow you the opportunity to innovate in very different ways. They can add value through collaborations that can add more to the internal efficiency options through learning and sharing. Platforms help manage the difficulties of transitions we are all undergoing and change how we see the world through a broader collaborative set of lenses.”

Recently in Stanford Social Innovation Review, an article on the “Adoption of Innovation” by Benjamin Kumpf & Emma Proud is well worth the read as adopting any innovation process is a tough, slow one.

They take a position on looking at behavioural approaches suggesting when behavioural insights have been adopted, innovation has ceased to be “innovative.” When a method, technology, or approach to a problem has moved from the experimental edges of an organization to the core of its work: no longer a novelty but something normal and institutionalized. My fear here is this becomes “static” and losses its dynamism.

So, I think their argument works if you take a standard way to design and implement programs. This means they suggest “that innovating is no longer a novelty requiring a burden of proof; adopted approaches become part of the organizational (repeating) toolbox. People know what they are, when and how to use them, and who to ask for help in doing so”, but I am uncomfortable with that.

Innovation needs to be constantly adapting, adjusting and reconfiguring. We have established structures and stages to go through in innovation of course, but suggesting “when behavioural insights have been adopted, innovation has ceased to be “innovative.” I question.

Maybe I got the gist of the article wrong.

I feel they miss the recognition of dealing with one of the worst obstacles for innovation to be understood: the constant “need to change“, the people managing innovation, the process of innovation discovery, or the metrics to judge success or failure. Innovation needs to function in a constant state of flux as what is going on impacts what is around them. This is constantly changing, being impacted by new technology, different combinations and ways to collaborate and innovate, new insights, knowledge and competitors.

We live in a world of relentless change, and adoption needs some really important “sticky” aspects to gain attention and be adopted. Also, in the world of business platforms, the mindset needs to be far more one of “achieving a level of fluidity.”

Adoption or even following a decision process is a really tough nut to crack.

The writers in this article suggest there are five adoption factors, which are establishing, a clear mandate, having in place a culture of collaboration and learning, having a clear context (my post on learning the mantra of context relates), collaboration through networks, and built-in capacity to explore and perform in innovation.

The Stanford Social Innovation review article really builds upon the amazing work of Everett Rogers on his Diffusion and Adoption theories for innovation with some fresh observations in their research.

For me, the work of Everett Rogers stands the test of time. I wrote the three-part series on “Exploring Diffusion and Adoption for Innovation (part one here, then read on if of interest.).

Innovation is undergoing a significant change; it has moved from within one company or institution to needing a network of relationships, today, this is highly reliant for success, and business platforms form the base to leverage all the connectors required. So figuring out the adoption process of business platforms becomes important.

Reading the article did trigger “adoption thinking.” and my need to apply this in the business platform adoption space.

I want to relate adoption back to business platforms and anchor it in the process.

Today business platform adoption is a struggle. It needs a clear revisiting of the theory of diffusion and adoption to extract the relevant points of necessary practice.

What is vitally needed is the recognition that deciding on adopting a business platform approach has five stages or decision points to go through.

So often, platform providers automatically go to the assumption that their platform will be adopted. It simply will not without working through and gaining confirmation the five stages of adoption are clarified. Again I reference Everett Rogers here as my base.

The five stages for business platform adoption.

Each of these needs a definitive engagement process by the business platform provider. Passing through the five stages of adoption needs relevance, identification and building out the relationship to pass through all these as distinct cascading steps.

Awareness and Knowledge – refer to a customer’s acknowledgement of the presence or existence of the new business platform and where they form a general perception of what it might entail. The intersection of need recognition often drives it through consistent education and marketing communications to show client value, not the platform provider’s prowess. This is the point of being inspired to find out more.

Persuasion and Interest – this occurs when a client processes the available information associated with the platform and considers the product or service’s appeal on this and its relevant value or potential to them Here, the client actively seeks out information and details and begins engagement. The critical point for any platform provider to manage well.

Decision and Assessment – Considering the persuasion factors, the client will decide whether to adopt, delay any decision, or reject the platform. Their activity in seeking advice, gathering data and comparing or making different assessments happen clearly here and need the contacted platform provider to understand the level of assessment and the issues. Here, costs begin to really kick in, considering the switching costs, and fresh investment needs and weighing the advantages up. This is the hardest stage to understand. The ability to build a solid business case at this point is essential. My recent post, “Exploring points of value in adopting business platforms,” has some relevancy here.

Implementation and Exploration – These are the series of activities to put the platform to use in exploring its (multiple) points of value and validating these. The client employs the platform to a varying learning degree. The usefulness, impacts, and costs are determined, and they may search for further support or relevance value about it. Here the business platform provider needs to be really “on the case” in strengthening the engagement and anchoring it into more of a forward-looking partnership but working in parallel on this learning path, as adoption is a gradual journey, yes, a behavioural one as suggested by the Stanford article if it is structured and follows.

Confirmation and Adoption– is mostly concerned with post-adoption behaviour exhibited by the adopter, reinforced by the platform’s actual delivery against the relative advantage ‘claims,’ its complexity and compatibility on their understandings. The individual finalizes their decision to continue using it and makes that ultimate investment in forming an ongoing, long-term partnership for extending its use to its full potential.

Develop this five stages  process of engagement in any adoption of business platforms

If these five stages are not followed in the business platform adoption process, then there is a higher probability of poor engagement, lost time in chasing leads and being distracted and not getting the end result intended or stated or offering (compelling) value.

So I would always recommend understanding the theory of diffusion and adoption offered by Everitt Rogers, it is as relevant for Business Platform adoption today as when he offered this for “straightforward” innovation.

The post Establishing an innovative business platform adoption approach first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

What has been changing in how we approach innovation, and have we taken the opportunity to radically revise the innovation system and process accordingly?

Many of our innovative approaches or systems are based on very often just an internal perspective, restricted in available resources and limited knowledge and insights, often constraining the evolving new solutions and then limiting the impact and outcome.

For many years open innovation has been encouraged to be adopted to break out of this very narrow internal focus. Having a real diversity of opinion with this greater access to different knowledge and experiences does open up our thinking, but it is, on its own, not enough to make a real difference, especially in times of acute change. We need to put to use a different innovation model or approach.

We are at the cusp or already into significant changes to how the world, society and we as individuals will manage or engage going into the future.

This is my second post discussing the belief that we are being to see a real contagion breaking down how we have been operating and living in the world.

We are facing the potential of unprecedented change, and we need to recognize how a different approach to innovation can help offset or mitigate many of the destabilizing aspects and provide a pathway to managing differently in a new environment that will inevitably come from this contagion.

In my first post.” the fear of business contagion required different innovation response.” I focused briefly on the four interlocking conditions.

These interlocking conditions are prompting this potential shift in our approaches to undertaking business, how we engage with government and institutions, our place in society and where we as individuals can adjust and thrive in a different environment we will be facing.

I argue how we undertake our innovation in this significant new set of conditions needs changing.

Our ability to perform differently will provide new avenues of innovation discovery and eventual value to offset or bridge the need to make a change we will be forced to make in these different market and society conditions.

The four interwoven catalysts to approaching innovation are discussed here.

These do not stand alone, they make up the new strength within the fabric of innovation management, hence my interwoven application.

The four interwoven catalysts are recognizing we are moving from complicated to complex; we have different collaboration tools to be more agile and adapt, we need to adopt a clearer mindset to working in innovation ecosystems, and we need to leverage the digital transformation we have been undertaking.

Let me explain these a little more for the remainder of this post.

Moving from complicated to complex.

We have seen, over time, that much of what seemed simply complicated has increasingly become complex. We need a new innovation approach, it is intrinsic to achieve and find solutions to these complex problems outside just what we know. There are so many connected parts that one individual person or entity simply cannot find the right answers; they need to seek out others to complete the map and connect the parts.

Recognizing complex acknowledges the volatility and disruptions that are constantly occurring. There are many interconnected (constantly moving) parts. We often need to approach change in a non-linear fashion as no recognized patterns or present system approaches or behaviours work. The need is for a very fluid, dynamic, constantly evolving approach to design and solutions. Knowledge flows are constantly changing and often surprise us and need adaption to what this means. Systems today need to be designed to be self-driven in design, which needs us to often simply let go but carefully orchestrate such an adaptive thinking approach.

Connecting up and Deploying Collaboration Tools

To achieve a fluid, dynamic design in any new innovation solution recognizes our growing reliance on different collaboration tools. These are known and adopted in many organizations today but must be valued as the backbone of any new innovation collaborative system. To apply these effectively across multiple organizations, we must talk the same common language of understanding and approach.

These tools are lean and agile, design thinking, rapid experimentation and prototyping approaches, accelerate and elevate innovation hacks, engagement in crowdsourcing approaches and deploying our limited resources in dedicated “living” labs that seek out partners that have a commonality and shared ethos to what innovation can provide in impact and value to challenges and complexities. It is the ability to “string together” and leverage the different collaboration tools to maximise innovation discovery and execution.

To break down the complexity, you need to be highly collaborative

Complex problems are typically defined as those that include the ability to approach them from multiple, sometimes competing, perspectives and which may have multiple possible solutions.

I suggest this as a way of thinking through the complexity as a building block*

Peter Sjulstad wrote this* to break down complex problems and offer a very extended version. I have taken my own simplified approach to his suggested ways to make complexity simpler.

• Understand the problem or build your understanding up of its often diverse parts. ..
• Break things apart to see what can work or connect to other complex parts..
• Break the problem into sub-problems or sub-systems so solutions can be scoped, validated and tested as contributions to a new solution. …
• Break the problem into requirements and allocate those out to the best possible providers of solution experts. ..
• Figure out what is known and what is unknown and keep working on appreciating the differences and moving the unknown, once discovered across into the known, to work upon new solutions. …
• Break it down into flows so the multiple parts can do exactly that, flow and fit together. …
• Break it into different places, so you leverage the diversity and environment that might have the best chance to tackle that part of the complexity. ..
• Break it into different people as diversity in experience, knowledge and expertise all bring different dimensions to finding the solutions.

Working in innovation ecosystems

Today we promote innovation ecosystems, they extend the open innovation thinking further. They coalesce across innovation partners and innovation centres and seek to work with start-ups and established companies, focusing on a market activity that provides insights and knowledge.

Ecosystems accelerate learning and innovation; the organisms associated influence each other and shape the terrain of discovery can combine to offer a profound shift in business landscape potential, attract further resources to tap into, and harness the creativity and intelligence of all within the ecosystem.

We need to question differently and often the “why change?” and “what can be gained?” and need to encourage activism to “collide and build”, to “network and engage”, and “relationship builds” around a common purpose and desire.

I wrote this, and it might have value to read: “are you ready to thrive in a world of innovation ecosystems?” I wrote in summary:

“Ecosystem thinking (combined with platform management) has a very transforming effect. It opens us up to a highly fluid, changing world of possibilities. It can help you match and possibly get ahead of all the volatility swirling around us. We can develop strategies and innovations that keep pace as we connect with a broader community.”

I believe ecosystems are the new organism of the business world. We need to explore these increasingly in their design and management potential through increased platform moanagement.

Digital transformation will keep pushing us to become more efficient and effective but also enable us to become more adroit and innovative. We will need to take a ‘dual’ mindset to constantly balance these often conflicting tensions to harness all the different power sources of digital and structure the business and organization accordingly.

Digital enables so much, but it can build the relationship mechanism with customers, which is vitally important in times of volatility.

We are all aware (or should be) that customers are increasingly choosing products and services based on the quality of the experiences they have with them; digital connections help inform and determine positioning and appeal.

The pressing need is to address a competitive risk if you are not mapping and understanding the channels, touchpoints and shifts taking place in technology solutions that capture, evaluate and determine customer experience. In any contagion environment, we need to know the points of value to bring new innovative solutions into the marketplace to overcome these shifts in behaviour and need.

You need to ask, can digital transformation help you meet your customer needs, do you fully understand their motivations and associated behaviours to design a better range of innovative solutions? It is through a digital transformation we can make the connections tangible, achieve relevancy and provide a new difference that is “seen” to bridge needs and gaps found in often rapidly changing market conditions.

Digital transformation can build all the connecting points in a value chain, deploy the technology needed (on platforms and through the ecosystem), and give what I call “the connected fitness”.  Data today is more relevant the closer it is to its point of creation.

A digital environment enables human and artificial intelligence to combine in new, exciting ways to give innovation a completely different dimension.

The journey of discovery is the digital transformation one we all are undertaking.

Digital transformation and maturity must be understood through the lens of business focus, prioritising investments and defining success. It knows what outcomes you wish to achieve will help enable that transformation process, but this is not a “static” process; it is dynamic, highly interactive, and our ability to listen intently, interpret and learn, so we all evolve along the journey of digital discovery is vital.

The four interwoven catalysts to approaching innovation are our way to deploy and offset business contagion through new innovative approaches.

As I said in opening this post, these four do not stand alone, they make up the new (underlying) strength within the fabric of innovation management, hence my interwoven application.

The four interwoven catalysts are recognizing we are moving from complicated to complex; we have different collaboration tools to be more agile and adapt, we need to adopt a clearer mindset to working in innovation ecosystems, and we need to leverage the digital transformation we have been undertaking.

As I opened in my first post: “the fear of business contagion requires different innovation response.”

In summary

We are presently facing a profound set of changes in the conditions that businesses operate within the immediate years ahead, that of the fear of business contagion; these will need a different set of innovation shifts and responses to counter this and seize new opportunities.

In these two posts together, I have offered my view of the four interlocking contagion points and the different four interwoven catalysts to approaching innovation differently in this changing and highly challenging environment that is ahead of us.

The post New innovation approaches to counter the fear of Business Contagion first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We are presently facing a profound set of changes in the conditions that businesses operate within the immediate years ahead, that of the fear of business contagion; these will need a different set of innovation shifts and responses to counter this and seize new opportunities.

Over two posts, I want to lay out the underlying concerns (here) and the new dynamics we can deploy by changing how we undertake innovation as my second post.

This first post discusses what is changing, and there is a growing argument in what I am seeing that we are facing one of those contagion periods where one set of conditions is triggering another, followed by another.

The four interlocking conditions

The economic and political conditions we seem to be facing of global uncertainties are triggering a profound shift in the social conditions and causing personal shifts we are all undertaking, and that will have an intense shift for business to adapt and react to.

Let’s take these separately and how these when combined, will require a very different innovation mindset in the coming months and years.

Economic and Political Conditions

The growing level of international tensions and global conflicts are already impacting our supply chains. The growing uncertainties are triggering the fears of global and local recessions and the spectre of rising inflation to levels not seen for many years and outside of many people’s personal experiences. The shifts will change how each country and company compete. Volatility and extremes will become more commonplace and require a different reaction time and response.

The ability to pass on inflation or be agile in supply response to sudden shortages will need very different agility than ever before. Decisions will need to be closer to the point of ‘conflict’ and certainly more local. Waiting for decisions will lead to lost opportunities. Adaptivity in changing conditions will increase rewards but bring more risk and exposure. This changing dynamic flows through into the other conditions.

Social conditions

The social conditions are pointing to rising levels of instability and unrest. As rising prices are seen not just in essentials (food, energy, stable items and services) but in items we have taken for granted (airfares, travel, well-being, clothing) and our accepted needs of everyday life (technology, fuel, water, heating), we become confronted and begin to react, in anger, despair and needed support. This presents a very different fluid environment and has a knock-on effect; we quickly relate and identify with others facing their changing conditions. We suddenly see very different “network effects” that have social consequences and impacts.

To counter this sudden shifting of social conditions, innovation needs to adopt a broader view of adapting to changing needs. Being agile and responsive becomes central to seeing opportunity gaps quicker and responding in socially aware ways. Rising demand for change becomes a new normal.

Personal Shifts

The “needs-driven” becomes dominant. Expectations rapidly change, and a new approach to governance and questioning takes place. In a world where the vast majority are always connected and aware of their immediate surroundings (at least), new skills and learning suddenly kick in.

Knowledge adoption and awareness become higher in personal needs. Innovation takes on new twists. It will utilise the digital tools we have at our disposal to shape our opinions, assumptions and attitudes to be highly aware and adaptive. Where is the job opportunity to seize, where do I go to save costs or reduce my money outlay, what decisions do I need to make to reduce my costs, adjust my living conditions and find different ways to extract value and achieve a return in a diminishing set of market conditions.

The profound shifts needed in business to adapt

Change brings complicated challenges. The more complex the business, in its hierarchy, making decisions, and managing its local and global network will lead to a different set of operational disruptions. Risk-taking rises in need. The need is to break out of past or present traditional boundaries and borders to capitalize on the new innovation potential of opportunity seizing.

The value of agility, flexibility, knowledge awareness and rapid diffusion of (new) solutions to meet these changing operating conditions and seize upon “breaking opportunities.” adds increased complexity, highly disruptive to today’s accepted view of “effectiveness and efficiency” but gets rewarded in this ability to perform differently, responding to changing market and societal needs.

All of these conditions are the triggers for wholesale change.

You simply adapt or die. Contagion, by definition here, is in its economics and financial effect. Contagion can be explained as a situation where a shock or series of shocks spreads out and affects others that trigger a crisis. We have built up such an interdependence; when contagion happens, it spreads quickly and unexpectedly.

The role of innovation suddenly changes.

I have written consistently about risk and innovation. We do need to revisit our appetite for risk, we need to reflect on a return differently. Perhaps this three-part primer on risk has value here to begin to rethink innovation and its need to be adapted and respond to a different world ahead of us.

In a three-part series, part one outlined the implicit need to align innovation to the corporate strategy, and through this, we can determine ‘acceptable risk’.

In part two, I offered numerous reasons why we should recognize and treat innovation risk differently to allow it to perform closer to its promise of driving growth and achieving real advantage.

In the third and last part, part three, where I lay out different mechanisms and framing of risk and innovation. These need to be evolved to fit your own risk appetite, not one size fits all. I hope it helps.

I believe we need to explore the new dynamics we can deploy by changing how we undertake innovation.

Moving from the triggering conditions, my next post explores the changes around innovation we can move towards to adapt to the new environment we face today and in the future. I have optimism that innovation can be an even greater catalyst in times of significant change.

I will be looking at issues such as moving from complicated to complex; we have different collaboration tools to be more agile and adapt, we need to adopt a clearer mindset to working in innovation ecosystems, and we need to leverage the digital transformation we have been undertaking.

It is our ability to perform differently has always been a high mark of innovation, often not well understood at senior management levels.

This very nature of leveraging the conditions needed for innovation across the organization can lead a business into a new era of innovation opportunity- that carpe diem instinct which is in all of us, I believe we will need to!

The post The fear of business contagion requires different innovation response first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

All companies talk about innovation and its growing importance, but why is it that still so few succeed in actually doing it on a repeatable scale?

What inhibits innovation? What would drive innovation success? What aspects of innovation are critical to achieving such innovative growth? Where should a company place its emphasis to gain both an improving impact on its performance and strengthen its innovation capabilities?

The difficulty for many is that innovation is a complex process that has many intangibles within the total mix to manage. Management today is far happier managing the ‘harder’ aspects of business, the current physical ones of everyday organization, not the ‘softer’ more intangible ones, where innovation often lies or emerges from.

There are many variables or factors for ‘innovation success’; organisations often suffer from the inability to sustain innovation over time. There is a failure to fully appreciate or recognize that many interdependencies surround innovation. Often, ‘selective’ activities only generate limited success but sustaining innovation is often elusive without a more comprehensive, holistic approach.

If we take the view: that “Innovation is holistic in nature, it needs to be addressed in this way. It covers the entire range of activities necessary to provide customer value and a satisfactory return to the business. Although innovation cannot be touched, heard, tasted or seen, it can be felt. It is probably best described as a pervasive attitude that allows businesses to see beyond the present and create the future. In short, innovation is the engine of change and in today’s fiercely competitive environment resisting change is dangerous.

The key driver of the organization’s ability to change is innovation. However, deciding that the organization has to be innovative is insufficient. That decision must be backed by actions that create an environment where people are so comfortable with innovation that they  are naturally looking to create it.”

There are so many challenges in managing innovation.

The key is knowing what are the critical factors for your innovation activities and their dependencies for sustaining innovation success? Identifying these is becoming a vital necessity to understand so an organization can place the appropriate resources behind them and continue to invest in the evolving aspects associated with these capabilities and competencies.

The question is, which are critical, which naturally occur when others begin to be put into place, and which seem to have limited or no real effect on changing the dynamics of innovation? Knowing these and having these clearer shown as a ‘return on impact/investment’ (ROII) has real business value.

Today, we lack a clear system model that brings the critical innovation factors out and gives them their appropriate values, and then can equally provide the ability to model different future states and conceive future scenarios through different impact investments.

Innovation is still not treated company-wide in a holistic way as recognising the dependencies is poorly understood. This is what needs to change.

It is the issue of ‘rapid change’ that calls for more dynamic capabilities

The world of innovation-based competition, price/performance rivalry, increasing returns, and the ‘creative destruction of existing competencies constitutes rapid change are all rapid and changing constantly, and we need the ability to respond, be agile and fluid to seize the new business opportunities that come with this evolving environment.

How do you sustain innovation, is it more through the structuring of everyday work, by creating a particular set of social rules and resources that foster specific routines or is it in creating greater specialization or competencies 100% dedicated to building a robust innovation system?

What are the firm-specific capabilities that can be sources of advantage, and how can combinations of competencies and resources be developed, deployed, nurtured and protected?  These need to be difficult-to-imitate combinations and integrative enough to give new sources of competitive advantage to stimulate new growth and financial return; we need a structured pathway.

So what are the challenges of the knowledge-driven economy that innovation needs to drive?

They are increasing new characteristics of markets that are constantly changing, product life cycles are shortening, and knowledge is consolidating, which leads to additional competitiveness from firms. We need to address:

1. New types of innovation are taking different forms to address these changing circumstances (product, technology-led, service, business model, process and operational driven, open, in design thinking, needs relating, research-driven and in marketing and extending existing products in different ways.
2. New needs of combining different stakeholders are pushing higher expectations to get winning products or services to market on time, which are exciting, new, engaging and often transformational. This calls for new ways of collaborative working.
3. New approaches to innovation management that encompass efficiently and continuously innovating working together have become the prime driver for achieving both top-line innovation growth and bottom-line efficiency, the two main challenges facing business today but needing this combining and blending of innovation and efficiency through new, effective ways.
4. New technology innovation is prompting firms to access and implement the most appropriate technology according to their need, often to simply keep competitive. There is this need to distinguish between sustaining and disruptive aspects as technology constantly changes.
5. Also, pressures from both customers and shareholders often influence where firms engage and with appropriate technology, but it is increasingly disruptive and disturbing to the existing structures and systems. Building a more responsive, adaptive organization open to exploration and adoption is critical to move towards.
6. A continuous need for switching and investing in different innovation management tools, not just technological ones but relational tools in the way of doing business and achieving insight. The important part of any adoption of new tools, techniques, methods or processes you need to understand the consequences and to do that, you need dedicated resources capable of interpreting the potential impact and value.

Shifting our thinking into a more dynamic frame becomes essential today

Innovation understanding and building strength in competencies and capabilities take an organization beyond the accepted norm of managing efficiency, quality, responsiveness, and speed- all challenging within themselves.

We need both the internal and external orientation to innovation and build a real “sense and respond” set of capabilities.

Innovation represents today’s competitive advantage statement that should be supported throughout the organization. The issue is knowing the valued dynamic capabilities needed to deliver innovation with real business value.

There are countless challenges to adapting and becoming fitter to innovate. Fitness comes from a deeper understanding of the parts that make innovation up. These are far from static; they are dynamic and constantly changing. You must provide an adaptive organization to manage these and many more than the abovementioned areas.

The emphasis points towards the need for defining the dynamic innovation capabilities required.

Dynamic capabilities emphasise management capabilities and the inimitable (unique) combinations of resources that are constantly at work across all functions to make them distinctive and valuable.

Distinguishing innovation capabilities that are relevant are based on the type of knowledge they contain.

Functional capabilities allow the development of technical, practical knowledge. Integrative capabilities allow firms to absorb knowledge from external sources, where absorptive capacity development comes in.

Innovation requires more of a higher-order integrated capability approach to constantly learn, develop, mould and manage multiple capabilities. This required the integration of critical capabilities to successfully stimulate innovation for effective and improving performance.

Innovation is core in any business that wants a future.

The important point, though, is successful innovation contains core elements and processes regardless of industry, form, or type of innovation we are pursuing.  Much of the difference, though, is in its varying degrees based on these core elements.

My search is to find those core elements to leverage and strengthen the dynamic capabilities within an organization’s capability to innovate continuously in a sustaining manner.

We as organizations strive to achieve a distinct competitive advantage, and innovation is one of those real contribution points this can achieve. The need is to make the innovation capabilities and capacities a distinctive, not easy to copy, unique set. These are shaped by the context and content of innovation, the organization’s position and its choice of evolutionary paths it has decided to take or needs to take.

So individual components on their own have limited effect, it is the combined effect that generates the improving performance. Equally, the needs do change over time, and you have to constantly ‘refresh, challenge and stimulate’ these otherwise, you can have core rigidly set in.

The solution, I firmly believe,  is a framework that shows the mutual dependencies, how the innovation ‘system’ behaves, what are its more important impact factors which are weaker and what should be considered in the ‘best’ innovation environment?

I will explore my suggested model in subsequent posts. This builds, as introduced here, a dynamic environment that responds and adapts to the required innovation needs.

The post Innovation requires a more dynamic systematic approach first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This needs to be complementary, synergistic, clarifying and building new intersections of opportunity

The value-adding impact and business model needs to be central

The need is the bringing together of many strands of thinking, ideally in a “living and dynamic” designed way”

Aspiring to achieve

*Innovation touch and value maps

*Evolving constantly over time in ecosystem design thinking

*Building out the dynamic environment

* Structuring the activities in a Landscape journey

*Making it a sustaining one

Until we understand the scope and impact of innovation, we can’t fully grasp the nature and the amount of change that innovation can unleash

@paul4innovating.

We need to cover the breadth,depth and scope of all innovation possibilities

It is the ability to seeing patterns, synergies and different connections that give us new avenues of convergence and value

We need a distributed, interconnected and networked environment

Agility Innovation

Recombining offers or concepts offers greater value creation in the short term but it is the ability to look out and see a different future will bring the higher value returns that innovation aspires too

We need to look to build Dynamic Innovation Ecosystems and radicially different Business Models to change the nature of innovation discovery, validation and implementation.

Paul Hobcraft

The post Positioning my innovating approach first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Applying the three horizon framework to innovation and change

I will always recommend this three horizon framework for shaping innovation. So much of our need to think about innovation is about managing differently the today, the tomorrow and the future, these need to be thought through in very distinct ways, to clarify the innovation levels of intensity, resources and outcomes required.

To explain the impacts of innovation and the change it creates, we’ll use an accepted framework (the Three Horizons) to consider the impact innovation has on change capabilities and business models.

Here we introduce the three horizon concept to better understand the range of innovation outcomes and the potential change requirements.

The three horizon framework has distinctive horizons for specific outcomes, management and approaching change

The three horizons framework provides distinct horizons, requiring different outcomes and approaching the scope of innovation in mindsets. Usually, it is represented by a typical XY plane, whereas Y is the amount of scope/need/value/change over x, the time each takes/seen/needed

What’s important to understand is that every innovation creates change, and the amount and impact of change scales out across each of these three horizons.  For greater clarity, let’s examine each of the three horizons in a bit more detail.

Defining Horizon One – Operating in the Now

Horizon One defines the portion of the potential innovation space that is most similar to existing services or solutions.  The typical innovation focus in Horizon One is on improving efficiency or cutting costs.

Innovators working within this space are typically creating small but useful changes to existing products and services, offering new solutions to existing customers and prospects.  The anticipated outcome is “incremental” change, easily adopted by existing customers and no real threat to the market, competitors or the industry.  This innovation is based on existing capabilities with the intent of maintaining or growing existing shares in the existing markets.  It relies on existing capabilities and emphasizes excellent operational execution, with less focus on new needs or expanding the competitive market space.

The internal change focus is on improving execution and increasing efficiency.  There’s little change required for external constituents.  Consumers are already familiar with the products and have some expectation of improvements or modifications.  Competitors and the industry at large aren’t significantly impacted by the innovation.

The vast majority of innovation activity is “incremental” innovation because the risks are low, and market knowledge is relatively high. 

Defining Horizon Two – Looking ahead, anticipating change

Horizon Two is the portion of the potential innovation space that focuses on extending existing capabilities into new markets or introducing new capabilities into existing markets.  Horizon Two is the mid-point between “incremental’ change in Horizon One and “disruptive” change in Horizon Three.

Companies innovating with this horizon anticipate “breakthrough” innovation, usually extending a known technology into a new market, or introducing new technologies or capabilities into the existing marketplace.  Breakthrough innovation often requires extending to new capabilities as well as building on existing capabilities, with the intent of expanding markets and the competitive space.

The innovation arising from the 2^nd horizon requires more experimenting than Horizon One innovation and often leads to some change for all three constituents.  Internal change in this horizon is focused on experimenting and extending capabilities. Consumers may experience change due to the introduction of new technologies or capabilities.  Competitors will experience change due to the broadening of industry definitions or modifications to industry or technology conventions.

Operating in Horizon Two the innovator begins to stretch its horizons, using either new technologies, extending or establishing new practices or capabilities as they explore and enter new markets or shape existing ones differently.

Horizon two is regarded as the zone of greater uncertainty

Defining Horizon Three- The future, defining change and transforming

Horizon three is the portion of the potential innovation space that seeks the most significant innovation change as the innovator seeks to create new markets or dramatically change or disrupt existing markets, or create completely new technologies or capabilities. 

When companies conduct “disruptive” innovation the anticipated result is market or technology disruption, creating new market dominance by upending existing products, technologies, capabilities or markets or creating entirely new products or markets.  Innovating in Horizon Three requires significant discovery and learning while building and adapting new capabilities.  Successful innovation will create disruption for all three constituents.  This is the space where the most change will occur.

Consumers will find a completely new, novel and valuable solution to an existing problem or challenge, and must change their actions or behaviour to adopt it.  Disruption of industry expectations and norms will force competitors to react and may cause so much change that they cannot respond to the speed and scope of the change.

The innovator themselves must change, in order to provide all of the features and capabilities the disruptive innovation requires in order to be adopted by consumers.  These internal changes will be based on exploring new technologies, evolving business models and expanding the definition of the market or solution.

Those attempting Horizon Three innovation are creating entirely new capabilities or technologies, creating new segments or markets, or both

Relating innovation and change within the three horizons

As we define each of the three horizons and the anticipated innovation outcome, we can begin to document the differences among the potential outcomes, in terms of approach, the leverage of new or existing capabilities, intent and strategy, and many other factors.

Understanding the decision making, strategy, intent and emphasis required for each horizon helps delineate the commitment, resources and effort involved, and begins to signal the scope and impact of potential innovation and the change the innovation can create, for customers, markets and the innovator.

These ideas culminate in a rather interesting conclusion, which is that any innovation, especially in horizon two or horizon three, regardless of its intended outcome (product, service, channel or business model) is also by definition the need to reflect on a business model innovation change.

Will the innovation significantly change the existing business model or distort or disrupt the model?  This means that innovators internal to the industry will be constantly evolving the model from within, questioning it, evaluating changes, and new entrants and disrupters will seek to change and challenge existing models from their external perspective.

Both of these facts lead us to the conclusion that good innovators must excel at sustained change and business model evaluation.

Most corporations don’t understand how much change is created by innovation.  A most important realisation 

Innovation in almost any form may require that the customer or market change.  It’s very likely that these innovations will require that the innovator change as well. We simply cannot expect to create change in the marketplace or in the customer base without also being expected to change as innovators.

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