Redesigning the organizations middle for a new innovation shape.

August 15, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
managers-choiceLet’s admit it, our middle management needs a radical makeover, a new fitness regime to make us far more innovation fit.
Most organizations do need to change their middle management structures as they are far from that necessary ‘fitness for 21st-century purpose’ in a constantly changing, challenging, more open innovating world.
The general argument goes and I relate to this, that the middle manager is so pressured to focus on the delivery of short-term results that all their efforts are centred far more on delivering ‘just’ an effective organization.
An organization that focuses on driving out any excess or leeway, reducing the variations, constantly dampening down potential risk and uncertainty.
Today much of this being ‘efficient and effective is in direct conflict with what innovation requires. A space for ‘cutting’ some slack, seeking differences, exploring what variances can provide, and encouraging a certain risk and uncertainty to allow for fresh thinking to emerge that leads to better things within the organization.
Yet the middle manager’s obsession with constantly chasing efficiencies alone, there is little ‘slack’ for innovation and new learning. Their measurement is often based on this efficiency and effectiveness emphasis and not on generating innovation.

Different perspectives of thinking can influence your innovating future

February 11, 2013Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Following on from the Innovation Futures project (www.innovation-futures.org) that I’ve been exploring recently, I would like to pick up on the way the authors clustered innovation into broad forms that give us different perspectives and thinking of innovation.

They felt these offered the major trends and innovation patterns and I felt are worth high-lightening here so we can begin to think through the different innovation options we have available to us.

So we can test innovations future within our own activities in a number of different ways.

The broad forms of ‘emerging’ innovation