Dynamics of innovation - Smart Agility Intelligence

An opening CSF for innovation

A brief overview of critical success factors for innovation to check against.

The organization: structure of innovation processes to be explicit by treating innovation as a systematic process and continued ongoing process
Keep innovation separate from daily work routine, remove barriers, give accoutability
Set ambitious goals and a vision and combine these with small attainable steps
Focus on results, doing things for clear results, satisfying evaluation criteria
Learn from the innovation process for courage, acknowledge mistakes, continuous
Create a climate for creativity- trust, openness
Foster values that enhance innovation- core ideology, values, diversity
Break patterns, abandon accepeted truths and historical myths, contrarian thinking
Motivate personnel- good ideas, risks and achievements rewarded and recognised
Make people central to it all- the real power of innovation
Communicate about innovation- positive signals, setting example, commitment, faith.
Involve the top directly- word and deed, setting the example, protective shield
Search for and make use of opportunities- systematic inside and outside
Be customer-orientated- use as a source, the ‘burning platform’
The use and involvement of multiple stakeholders- open and flowing
Define the context, the clarity and prespective of the problem faced
Search to obtain the experience with the subject on hand
Pursue a range of paths and solutions
Evaluate problems, trigger ideas and access success
Commit sufficient resources, time and space.

All organizations talk about innovation, but so what?

All organizations talk about innovation and its growing importance but few succeed in actually doing it on a repeatable scale. So what does inhibit innovation? What would drive innovation success? What aspects of innovation are critical to have so innovative growth can be achieved?

Where should a company place its emphasis to gain both an improving impact on its performance and strengthen its innovation capabilities? There are countless questions that need asking but more importantly answering.

Innovation is complex and demanding

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 more established, the more traditional ones that can be managed in efficient and effective ways to reduce complexity.

Continue reading “All organizations talk about innovation, but so what?”

The Vital Attributes for an Innovation Organization

Understanding what is needed for innovation- unlocking the mysteries

* Innovation organizations tend to be more decentralized, more informal, minimally stratified or layered and more generalist than specialized.

* They have cultures that value independent thinking, risk taking and ongoing learning.

* They are tolerant of failure and they value diversity.

* Open communication is reinforced and there is a high degree of trust and respect between individuals that collaborate.

These attributes should include, but not limited too:

Organizations have a clear vision
Innovative organizations change because they see a better way and not because they have to change
Innovation organizations are always on the lookout for new products, new markets and new ways of doing things
Innovation organizations value substance over form- putting the ideas to work
They build creatively and innovation into the fabric of the company
They have organizational structures that are more often team-based than hierarchical
Innovation organizations tend to operate through open communications rather than through formal processes
Innovation organisations do not personalize conflict
Innovation organizations focus on who you know as well as on what you know
Innovation organizations appreciate individuality and diversity
Innovation organizations encourage fun at work- engaged, enlivened, fully participative and empowered
They reward curiosity and working smarter
Innovation organizations do not believe in the answer and allows space for wondering, thinking and reflection and numerous ways to get to a solution
Innovation organizations encourage people to bend the rules, being different and having pride if they emerge with adding new value to the organization.
Innovation organizations tolerate errors and avoid punishment where creativity is appreciated
Innovation organizations finally encourage behaviours that allow for thought, time for incubation, openness to wonder and sometimes irreverence that can elicit different, creative reasoning that wants to be measured on creativity and innovativeness.

Adapting fitness landscapes with your innovation objectives

There are a number of aspects we can look at initially.

This is helping us to shape the journey, to place it in context. It lays out the theory to the journey we are about to undertake.

Continue reading “Adapting fitness landscapes with your innovation objectives”

Our Challenge is the need to build diverse innovation capability

Knowing what are the critical factors and there dependences for sustaining innovation success is vital to understand so an organization can place the appropriate resources behind them. The question is, which are critical, which naturally occur when others begin to be put into place, 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.

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

Continue reading “Our Challenge is the need to build diverse innovation capability”

Moving Up the Path Towards Innovation Fitness

So how do we become innovation fit?

Can you imagine standing on top of a mountain, looking out across a vast expanse of nothing but mountains and valleys stretching out before you. If you squint hard enough you can just make out that somewhere in the hazy distance, the end point of your travels, towards that much needed innovation understanding, made up of many different dynamics that make you and your organization that much fitter to compete in today’s challenging world.

Clearly while you are on top of this mountain you feel exhilarated to have even got up to this point. To even get to this point you have already made a decision that you and your organization would become an innovation one and needs to look beyond what you have to what is possible.

Continue reading “Moving Up the Path Towards Innovation Fitness”

Orchestrating the new dynamics of innovation fitness

In my work investigating different aspects of innovation activity, one thought tends to dominate my thinking and that is orchestrating the dynamics within innovation: “How do we achieve a better understanding of the dynamics of innovation within our capabilities to be more successful?”

I’ve already written in previous blogs about the need of “constantly checking for the pulse of innovation” ( http://bit.ly/c3G0Ta) and suggesting the way to “open up your thinking to dynamic capabilities for innovation success” ( http://bit.ly/bxTeYO).

I’d like to take this one step further in this blog and outline my thinking on innovative fitness landscapes and why they are essential to understand.

Each organization needs to know its Innovation Fitness Landscape- why?

There is a pressing need for a firm is to consistently build and reconfigure internal and external competencies and capabilities to address rapidly changing environments.

It is the mastering of this ability to achieve new, more innovative forms in rapid changing market conditions that will enable certain organizations to emerge as the winners of the innovation race.

This view requires a more ‘dynamic’ set of capabilities. Often the question becomes one of “which are the critical ones to focus upon to improve the chance of greater success?
Continue reading “Orchestrating the new dynamics of innovation fitness”

Thinking over dynamic capabilities for innovation success

The innovation fitness dynamics for innovating capabilities

As someone who runs a small, independent consulting and research business that is 100% focused on innovation, the focus has to be on capabilities so I am always grateful for the continued involvement of the bigger consulting companies in producing sound, relevant and topical research issues on innovation and the building out greater, well-researched understanding.

Large consulting organizations ‘stoke the innovation fire within’, they confirm what you felt you knew but needed it to be validated. These great sources include McKinsey, Bain & Co, Booz & Co, Monitor, BCG, ADL and to a lesser degree Accenture for innovation research.

There are others but the ability to have access to C-Level thinking is this groups real strength and so they come more immediate to mind.

The emphasis is on distinct capabilities for innovation success.
Continue reading “Thinking over dynamic capabilities for innovation success”

The Pathway Curve of Innovation Understanding

The pathway curve methodology is a well structured way to move up in innovation understanding.

One of my recent articles outlined a three horizon framework for innovation, let me extend this a little further into a pathway of innovation understanding.

I’m sure we all agree Innovation needs to be worked, it needs to be understood and often many people do get confused by not taking a more measured approach to the need to break innovation down into its manageable parts.

Innovation does not just have a time axis that the three horizons framework refers to but it has a complexity and scope axis in learning as well.

By taking a more systematic approach to any innovation you achieve a greater understanding over time of what is involved. Continue reading “The Pathway Curve of Innovation Understanding”