• a slightly different version was originally published on the Hype blog posting site.

The post Taking Final Ideas to Market is the Hardest Part first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Everything we should be aiming towards boils down to the judgement of a ‘successful execution’ or not.

It is this last, hard five yards of all the work that went into something, which can make or break so much of the efforts that have gone into this emerging ‘commercial life’ of our new innovation activities.

We should regard the back-end of innovation as the rugged part

I love the association of the “fuzzy front end” with ideas, brainstorming and all those creative energies bringing ideas to life, but sadly unless that final ‘rugged terrain’ at the back-end is not travelled we never see the innovation come to life in the market place.

To travel the final ‘rugged terrain’ of innovation execution I believe requires fortitude, stamina, belief, a healthy dose of courage and as much commitment from the whole organization engaged in the innovation process as any ‘front end’ or driving it through the pipeline, yet we often fail to recognize that.

Yet resources seem to be peeled away when we get to the final Execution
Resources get pulled away, repositioned back at the front or in the middle to push others through the pipeline, leaving a dwindling, sometimes scarce resource to push that last five yards.

The R&D group feel their role is complete, the new development team finalize the official ‘hand over’ and the leadership for development and growth begins to get distracted away to push more through the pipeline, taking experienced resources with them. Suddenly it is down to a small team to tackle this execution stage and all it means.

Dealing with many conflicting internal wants and needs is complex
When you get into the final stages you really have to take into account all the individual demands such as “why my country is special”, or “we can’t agree on the final selling price due to a different market (evolution)” or “our major client cycle for approval is not for another six months” or the final design disappoints when you are well passed the discussion stage, all can drive you ‘up the wall’ but need carefully handling. Effective execution gets very complicated and the skill of the project coordinator comes really to the fore.

You can suddenly you become ‘stretched’ in catering to those often conflicting needs if you have not constantly engaged or consulted. If you leave these essential conversations late in the development process as you look around for additional help there seems a lack of clear leadership on who determines final execution, it seems to have gone missing in action.

It becomes tough and complicated to execute well, you sense a feeling of growing exposure and increasing frustrations.The great idea within the product might remain but the execution pains undermine much of the pleasure or sense of satisfaction.

Engage early but be crystal clear on what can be accommodated and what can’t. Get all stakeholders involved but seek the clarity of the ‘red lines’ from the senior person responsible and be prepared to escalate issues up the decision chain for the earliest resolution as you can

So what is needed at the execution end?
There are a number of thoughts here but three big traits stand out for me:

1). An overriding bias for action, irrespective of the challenge, problem or issue to be resolved – don’t let it fester. Take them head-on. Keep the execution pedal flat to the floor, so others understand the sense of commitment and personal passion. Let it become infectious, in a positive way.

2) Really tap into all the knowledge out there in the market place, face the client, sell the product, explain the story, hone that value proposition and keep ‘pivoting’ until you get it right. You unblock the roadblocks, you unlock the mind, and you change the dynamics.

3) No pathway of execution is smooth; it is a rough and rugged road. Recognizing and valuing any breakthrough solutions to move them forward is critical. Forward momentum in any execution plan is essential; as issues come in (and sure they will) you will meet them with a commitment and passion to get them resolved. You offer the ‘waves of support’ to others.

Standing in the deployment zone focused simply on ‘executing away’

Offer true leadership that is leading from the front. Be ready to set and live the expectations; you define the critical deliverables, establish accountability and resolve the conflicts quickly. You influence and install the metrics that are execution specific.

You actively seek commitments from the wider team of stakeholders, vested in a good result. You never forget to share all the news, the good and the bad parts of the progress back into the organization.

You set out clearly to communicate accurately and frequently, keeping on top of issues, break down problems, reaching back into the organization for help when help is needed. You offer true execution leadership, from the front.

Just remember it is only realized when this innovation becomes the buyer’s choice to invest in.

Those known to be good execution people are a valuable resource, they bring the results in and that is highly prized as so few have the resolve or ability to do this.

Organizations are constantly lamenting their lack of implementation capabilities. Go blaze the path as you are actually making and leading the changes. It is how you set about the execution of innovation that will separate you from the pack but it

Remember new innovations replace something of the existing.

Innovation does not stop when it goes out of the organizations doors, it actually only just begins, and it has to prove itself, it needs to justify all the hard work that went into it. It got to here because it was seen as worthwhile, expected to make a contribution.

To make innovation work, it is only when it is in the marketplace – judged by customers sufficiently enough to stump up their cash – that we have a successful innovation.

To get there is often travelling over some rough, tough terrain and the more you are exposed, the more you learn. When you execute you need to deploy a significant skill set and dedicated resource to bring home the results.

******

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

The post The last five yards – the really hard part first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Working in most organizations you spend a disproportional amount of time on looking to achieve alignment. This can range from aligning your meeting schedules to the bigger strategic issues by gaining agreement on the way forward.

 I would bet you that working on alignment is certainly one of the main tasks that is sucking up a large part of your working day. Interesting enough the higher up in the organization you go, the more you have to seek alignment. Gaining alignment is actually very hard.

In corporate life we are constantly attempting to also link organizational goals with our own personal goals. To make this alignment, it requires the difficult aspect of achieving common understanding of all the parties for the specific purpose you are requiring, so as to achieve a consistency between ‘agreed’ objectives and the implementation of these across those involved.

In pursuit of alignment

We seek alignment to many things but three are critically important to us as individuals.

Firstly alignments from others to our creative activities, both in those that contribute to the strategic objectives and those personal ones in the work we do.

Secondly, we always need to work on how we set about the way we communicate if we want to achieve anything within a team or our organizations.

Thirdly, alignment becomes essential in how we execute, is it going to be heaven or hell or simply nicely in the middle, well done? We just can’t avoid alignment, yet we seem to do a poor job of this when you ask, why is that? We constantly talk more about misalignment.

Part of this reason we see more misalignment going on around us is the magnitude of this constant change that is swirling around us, coupled with the incessant pressure for new sources of  innovation is causing us increasing anxiety to work on the knowing/ doing gaps more and more. Alignment remains one of our best answers to communicate the ‘need to agree and do’.

Achieving alignment, arranging all those planets to be in line, can provide the much needed impact to a whole lot of what we do. Alignment also needs that other magic word of ‘objectives’, that specific need to always set clear objectives between ‘us’ to gain this essential alignment.

Understanding the complex linkages within alignment

To get closer to achieving alignment for innovation, as an example, we need an overarching strategic design, to reduce the ‘disconnects’. Innovation needs constant alignment. One essential need is to provide a well designed strategic plan that will allow the connections and  reconnects needed. so as to allow innovation that greater freedom and scope to contribute into the growth organizations leaders are demanding to keep us all ‘still on track’. We need to seek out alignment through clarification, through talking to each other, to working explicitly from the ‘same page.’

Yet good intent is not good enough as I have outlined before “However, even when executives understand the linkage, they may fail to understand how to ensure linkages between corporate strategy and innovation actually does lie with them to be communicated throughout the organization.  When executives simply request innovation and delegate the decisions and definitions to business line leaders or executives outside the boardroom they are delegating the growth and future of the organization to others”

We are constantly fighting the failures within organizations for achieving alignment

There are so many failure points. For instance how often do you see those failures to translate the strategy of the leadership’s thinking (often those vaulting high-level ambition ones) into offering the additional leadership guidance to achieve these? This lack of guidelines or framework reduces the potential for alignment, it stops turning ambitions into specific actions that allow these strategic objectives to be translated into specific realities, that others can really identify with.

We fail if we don’t have the abilities to translate and communicate those objectives throughout our organizations to gather around and work towards achieving makes significant difference. Leaders leave strategy far too much in the abstract. They need to consciously work on the design principles and downstream choices. I have offered the “choice / cascade integrated innovation model” to help in this.

We also fail to communicate when conditions in the market place show signs of real change, we stay aligned to old objectives, we don’t dynamically adapt our strategy and thinking. We allow it to remain static, locked into old, out of date thinking, missing the essentials of new knowledge to flow through adaptive learning.

Then we fail when we simply struggle within ourselves, we can’t personally or organizationally adjust quickly enough. We still find great difficulties to really learn how to pivot in larger organizations or in our personal learning, yet this is becoming essential in today’s world, to adopt to rapidly changing conditions. Take a read within Steve Blank’s postings on pivots, maybe as a start here on a critical aspect of managing today.

Then we can fail because we struggle to align organizational capabilities with our strategic and innovation growth objectives. We are constantly battling fatigue, resistance and ownership. We fail to often take the dedicated time and consistent focus to build our capabilities to establish new ways of working, to regain those creative energies.

We then really fail if we can’t convert strategic intent, this ‘strategic enthusiasm,’ into a clear translation of fresh but sustaining investments into those that can help change our organization capabilities to learn and deliver afresh but with renewed vigour . We need to align our desire with clear intent, purpose and objectives.

I’ve written about innovation failures before, it starts at the top, if you need further thinking in this area  take an additional  read but the critical point here, is recognize and then work actively on all the potential failure points that are stopping your aligning.

Once you recognize these and what they are potentially doing to you, you can address them and remove these blockages to regain the essential alignment necessary.

Overcoming potential failure, alignment might come through more dynamic linking.

To achieve a more dynamic linking we need to find new ways to translate strategic ambition into clearer downstream choices for our innovation activities. I believe we need to offer a more explicit design from the top of our organizations to guide and frame innovation, one that offers an outline of actionable design principles.

The design needs to be specific enough but without prescribing all the details. It is amazing on how much knowledge does reside within our organizations. If it doesn’t, well it is getting easier and easier to go specifically outside the organization where you will find more thoughts to stimulate the potential answers, but I’d tend to place the caveat, as long as you understand the context but these ‘answers’ can show up in so many totally unexpected places, particularly if you wear different inquiry lenses.

We need to translate the organizations innovation ambitions by providing adaptive frameworks to build within. Finally to sustain them there is the leadership need to provide all the necessary ‘capitals’ for building the required capabilities and the capacities to be understood and established, to achieve innovation alignment.

Putting together alignment and objectives needs a specific design

I’ve argued that the adoption of the Executive Innovation Work Mat does offer a terrific framework for achieving this triple alignment of 1) communicating strategic ambitions and goals, 2) aligning the conditions to allow innovation to be put to meaningful work and then 3) working towards building the necessary design of capabilities and capacities to execute around these plans.

By working through a better understanding of the innovation ‘parts’ that make the whole we can translate our executive intentions by engaging and then communicating through the work mat so innovation can become explicit to all. You come closer to organization and personal alignment. You create the conditions for more explicit outcomes, aligning activities within the overarching frame of a desired culture, environment, governance and processes that flows through specific contexts, better communicating channels and choices.

You move closer to alignment because you are all working within the same overarching innovation framework creating the common language, gaining the appropriate context and all communicating on this- you are moving closer to alignment.

The Executive Innovation Work Mat can be summarized as a place for real beneficial alignment

1. The framework can create cohesion and consistency of innovation purpose that will reduce many existing barriers and uncertainties around innovation
2. The framework itself will generate work flows that links, become more dynamic to explore and promote the holistic needs for innovation to work. In innovation skills, capabilities and competencies needed. They become more cohesive, coordinated and focused.
3. As the framework connects, in its understanding and as its impact grows, we certainly can ‘see and believe’, our confidence builds. Both formal and informal areas are addressed in parallel, growing all-round identification and alignment.
4. It can reduce present tensions and increase the dynamics within innovation in dialogues, framing and identifying with the organizations innovation goals
5. You can begin to align compensation and incentives into your abilities to generate the innovation activities that provide the impact the organization is looking for. You can understand and measure innovation impact far more through a well-designed framework

We do need a unified view of innovation design and I believe to ‘arrive’ closer to alignment there is a clear, perhaps a compelling value proposition that a well-designed innovation framework, like the Executive Innovation Work Mat does offer.

I certainly believe this can move you closer to spending less of your day working on the negatives of bad alignment into generating positive innovation outcomes, simply because you do have in place an aligning framework that works on dynamically linking all the parts, one you can gather around.

I can’t promise it might not make you business day any shorter but it might make it a far more positive experience,where you are aligning  your contributions and expertise into a specific innovation design, where innovation activities do link into organizations strategic that is needed and achieve this often elusive alignment we all are search for, far more than we want to acknowledge.

I’m more than happy to explain the approaches taken in the Work Mat methodology for Innovation’s overarching design, if interested.

The post Alignment is needed everywhere first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I think there is a neat four-box approach to this which hopefully you might see has value to your rating and judgements of the innovation opportunity.
The four framing criteria

•        Formulation Principles
•        Formulation Risks
•        Execution Principles
•        Execution Risks

So the need is to ask critical questions in given boxes of enquiry.

Short Descriptors of what makes up the questions within the different boxes

Let me provide a short description of each framing block briefly. I feel you can expand within these for your own four-framing approach.

Formulation Principles
These deal with a range of questions that should be asked at different stages of any innovation activity but are set out to establish the guiding approaches and scope.

1. The Boundaries– how often do we set the boundaries for the way innovation should proceed, this question seeks the potential scope that can be explored.
2. The Big Picture– often we miss the bigger picture as we delve straight into the problem or solution, having one can really help others see the potential and draw encouragement to expand on their ideas and contributions.
3. Existing Demand– questioning what is currently available, getting a feeling for its present demand and what additional demand will be gained by you participating if any
4. Sequence and Clarity– the understanding of the sequence that an innovation initiative should run through and providing the clarity as best as one can early make for a more effective project.

Formulation Risks
These deal with the different stages of risk investigation so it is better understood early enough.

1. Search Risk– the amount of time, energy and commitment needed to undertake any search
2. Plan for Risk– the robustness of risk, outlining the minimum and tolerant points of any risk
3. Scale Risk– addressing the additional cost of any subsequent scaling highlights issues early
4. Business Model Risk– what impact does it have on the existing business model, what might need to be changed and the effect this can have

Execution Principles
These deal with the execution of guiding structures and beliefs

1. Overcome Diverse Hurdles– within any innovation there is complexity and diversity and knowing the possible options available to you early on allows for structuring the rules and governance
2. Resolve Inhibitors– these need to address resources, time and clarify how the approach should be conducted
3. Clarify Fit– if we don’t know the potential fit then we can make some real mistakes in execution
4. Build execution into the thinking– knowing how you are likely going to execute can often determine the way you set about the task of innovating your solutions. Knowing the market capacity, channels, customer tolerances all come into play here

Execution Risks
These focus on the risks associated with the different aspects of execution

1. Organization Risks– the what are they as best as we can anticipate and ideally updated as we learn more.
2. Personal Risks– often we stick our necks out but it is sometimes wise to pause and reflect first
3. Combined Risks– be this with a team group in loss of time, energy, reputation or in the partners you want to engage with for developing any innovation
4. Lack of Uptake Risk– the downsides are often ignored as innovation is hyped up. Making a ‘reasonable; assessment of the risks of the effect of a poorer uptake and a range of scenarios’ allows for some deeper reflection and the need to attempt a better forecasting range early enough.

So within each of these frames, you are asking for clarity on different critical questions that need clear separation.

I think it makes sense to ‘frame’ your questions from these different perspectives. What do you think?

The post The four framing technique for critical innovation questions first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I certainly think these reflect the struggles within innovation that need working upon constantly, so it has a better chance to succeed.

This revised thinking I feel has upgraded my own focal points as areas I will be exploring even further in my work in the period ahead.

What do you think? Do you think the list is missing something?
My upgraded thinking on the 20 top innovation aspects to master and resolve.

1. There seems so much ongoing difficulty to identify the real opportunities for innovation as there is often no structured approach to this, or even worse a poor recognition of any well formulated strategy, so allowing so many opportunities to fall through the gaps.

2.   Not generating and managing ideas that deliver real growth, mostly due to a lack of any effective decision-making process, organised governance and structure to manage this.

3.   A on-going failure in not effectively seeking out external insights in clear ways and lacking a capturing structure to achieve this, so simply restricting the real awareness of the external environment to the necessary person internally within the organization.

4.   The inability to draw down from a diverse set of networks, partners, systems and people and then connecting them in a ecosystem to acquire, transform or exploit this new knowledge for new innovation.

5.   Not setting the appropriate focus on innovation activities for value creation and making those critical points explicit enough within and across the organization, so leaving it too open to personal interpretation and fuzzyness, resulting in often disappointing end results.

6.   Not having a clear alignment to the Corporate Strategy for innovation, often missing the connections between formal and informal mechanisms needed for managing innovation.

7.   Having poor implementation that fails expectations as the ‘need’ of the end result was left far too vague or compromised somewhere between discovery and delivery.(see 5 also)

8.   Failing to recognize and build innovation capabilities across the organisation that deliver the appropriate mix of skills and experience by often not appreciating the significant differences between the types of innovation necessary and their unique characteristics to execute through these.

9.   Building the competencies to further strengthen change is based far to much on existing organizational cultures that focus on effectiveness and efficiency, failing to recognize this is often in conflict with innovation, that is requiring a far more open ended, adaptive approach.

10. Having different expectations and behaviours across the organisation, divergent opinions and significant disconnects of self-interest and petty politics that override innovation intent.

11. Continually having changing priorities and conflicting responsibilities by not successfully managing the conflict between short and long term needs that are required to be managed in a more structured, thoughtful way.

12. A lack of concerted effort to encourage collaboration across and outside the organization I would suggest is limiting organization design in flows and effectiveness for innovation success.

13. Diverse systems that restrict the flow of knowledge sharing and don’t capture and share those aspects that would, if overcome, would trigger fresh insight and growing awareness of valuable alternatives.

14. Inadequate understanding of consumer and customer needs as the front line engagement process is not alert enough or trained to discover these, or often don’t have a system in place to report these back in the knowledge and incentive that these are seen as important by the customer.

15. Localised innovation that does not engage the whole organisation and continues on a silo basis, pushed by local managers as their pet projects, starving more critical ones and not being well picked up due to a lack of a comprehensive innovation portfolio management system.

16. Largely being reactive to competition and not being proactive, due to this constant struggle to fully understand the external environment and failing to anticipate those future trends and where they fit in their implications for the organization and its innovation focus.

17. Lacking a leadership perspective of the “ideal” culture and climate to inspire innovation and really appreciating what real differences do motivate people at the different levels for them to participate and actively engage in innovation activity or simply not.

18. Not having enough time, resource and resolve to grow innovation activity, as innovation and its appropriate management has not been fully designated as a clear function, with designated accountability, well resourced and integrated within and across the organization.

19. Failure to exploit the know-how and IP within the organisation and explore its potential with partners, so its potential can be fully exploited and commercialised instead of often just left ‘gathering dust’ as simply a protected patent not being exploited.

20. No clear and distinct measures and metrics to drive the innovation process effectively across the organisation and for the individual to relate to, that align the efforts with promoting and exploiting innovation as part of everyone’s responsibility.

The implication of this list or even simply parts of it

The effective tasking of innovation activities today cannot be left to chance; it has to be designed into the organization from top to bottom. By not having designated people fully involved and accountable for innovation is likely to inhibit growth. Having a well-designed innovation structure and governance is essential but still not well understood

Having an honest conversation at the board level is a good starting point.
Reflecting on these twenty points alone and being open enough in addressing them can make a dramatic difference between success and ongoing disappointment.

Leaders or those tasked with innovation need to have this honest conversation, if they come up short then they need to ‘reach out’ and seek fresh external advice on how to resolve these gaps so as they can quickly understand their gaps.

Gaining a deeper understanding does make a real difference
I would argue executives should not be afraid to ask. Having a deeper understanding can often come from a dedicated focus often not possible within the confines of one organization.

The external advice offered can help move them towards a more successful innovation management structure to succeed in those innovation efforts and go closer to match their desires and growth goals from innovation.

Sometimes it is well worth reaching out for fresh perspectives and even, a dose of reality.

The post Twenty critical questions on innovation to be resolved for succeeding first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

How many times have you felt that ‘wave’ of oppression when one colleague looks nervously at his boss just sitting across from him in the same workshop or conference, hoping to gain some new, fresh glimmer of hope?

None comes, just a stony, empty blank face staring straight back.

It is really sad but with all that is written about innovation, discussed, offered as leading, best or emergent practice, the majority still simply don’t get it and if they do, they often are forced to keep quiet about it. It can be depressing to witness.

Often you get that feeling the different (and latest) innovation message simply rolls over, a little like the mist rolling in off the sea on a foggy wet day, slowly clawing itself up over a wet rock to suddenly stop and hang there, waiting for something to change.

Will getting it changed for the many or does this resigned feeling wait upon the boss suddenly waking up and getting innovation, so it all suddenly changes and the innovative sunshine comes out. Empowerment needs enactment

Why is it so?
Here’s a vital question to answer:  who is the most important person when it comes to innovation?  Many people will argue it is the person with the best idea.  Others will argue that it is the person who can make the idea a reality.

We believe the CEO or another senior executive is the most important person since they have the ability to:

• link innovation to strategy,
• direct funds and resources to good innovation programs, and
• accelerate good ideas to market as new products and services.

In mid-sized and large companies, CEOs and senior executives are vital to innovation success.  What’s more, these leaders want innovation to happen.

“Hope springs eternal” perhaps?

    “Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

– Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Jeffrey Phillips and I have been working on a collaborative ‘white paper’ on this real leadership gap when it comes to innovation. We are still moving this back and forth between us but it does seem from these exchanges from our own independent experiences we have one awful yawning gap to plug before we get that groundswell of innovation empowerment.

More will emerge in the weeks and months ahead to get the message of hope out.

If we cannot get this vital message out to the one person that matters for making innovation happen then we will continue to look out and see this sea of faces, who are really wanting to engage. Deep down they do know the problem but can’t seem to influence the way innovation is managed.

Just simply knowing that yet they are not in the position to change it. It can’t be ‘released’ until they have been given permission which so often seemingly falls only at the highest levels within the organization, so they wait.

They wait so they can safely extract from all the environment and tools that can be easily available to make it happen if they have this feeling of confidence and are given belief and lasting support.

How can we bring “innovation into every person’s life?  Jeffrey and I are trying to construct some different ways to get the message out there and make a more meaningful connection to the leaders than can ‘allow’ empowerment.

Wrapped in a belief helps me

All I know is that ‘relief’ when you come back in from that walk on the cliffs, you shudder from that damp cold and are just grateful you can feel the sunshine just beginning to clear away that mist. We need to organize the winds of innovation change at this leadership level.

We simply need to find ways to unlock and unleash that incredible latent energy waiting to come out of many organizations, locked in their yoke of innovation oppression.

Empowerment should not be so elusive, it needs to be demanded, so innovation can really change our lives and allow “great things to happen” that we can all find hidden within ourselves.

In the US, they are entering the political season again but I feel we should offer “the yes we can” one up for innovation this time as a movement of change, as it offers the pathway towards real engagement and growth, surely that is empowering for us all, leaders especially.

The post Innovation Empowerment Is So Elusive first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

For many, it seems, execution or final delivery of the innovation is simply not given enough attention inside many organizations and that needs to certainly change and not just left to chance or delegated out as the less important stage.

For me, clarifying and committing resources on the innovation delivery part is a critical task to get right. I’ve discussed that elsewhere, but if your final delivery is wrong then all your preparation and effort simply ‘goes out the window.’

It is like a restaurant kitchen- correct delivery of the item makes or breaks all the hard work beforehand and if the final garnish or sauces are wrongly executed, the meal itself fails and leaves the customer dissatisfied, irrespective of the original efforts put in.

To avoid this in innovation delivery you must have a full ‘convergence’ where you have aligned within your innovation process the organization, knowledge, technology, resources, concept and performance to bring this all into your go-to-market plans.

As you consider what is  involved for effective innovation delivery you might want to reflect upon the following within your sauce:

1. Mapping and planning this delivery completely- execution planning needs dedicated focus, a robust plan that has clear objectives but not overly complicated or excessive in detail.
2. Building and editing based on changing insights- keeping fluid and agile to changes and adapting the plans where necessary but crucially keeping everyone in the ‘loop’ so all news, good and bad, gets ‘aired’ and seen.
3. Project management and planning- adapting a disciplined approach to tackling the execution part: setting milestones, tracking changes, informing and pushing for commitments to be delivered upon.
4. Aligning and influencing multiple ‘vested’ interests- nothing beats communication, seeking opinion and knowing where you can accomodate or not. Be clear on what is important, what can be ‘worked around’ but draw all ‘voices’ into the process but take responsibility and decide- don’t let issues ‘hang’.
5. Collaborating with external stakeholders- knowing and valuing their place within the execution process is important to always have in mind. Engage with them constantly.
6. Ensure you have diversity in the team to promote and challenge constantly, seek to encourage and  engage in this often consuming participation as it will ‘alert’ you far earlier to problems than pressing on regardless, not wanting to listen to those signals.

A Go-2-Market plan covers the who, what, where and when and must include:

• Clarifying the needs and wants of customers in this launch- know these early.
• Attributes of success, a winning proposition articulated and constantly reviewed.
• Ensuring innovation delivery is tightly linked across the whole innovation process
• Scope, timeline and approach to market strategy is well thought through and updated.
• Definition of risks, economic, competitive and internal positions that are honest.
• Alignment capabilities and techniques and knowing the gaps to bridge realistically
• Definition and clarity of the relevant value to the different parties and the final customer
• Differentiation that is being provided by the new innovation that is clearly spelt out in a clear Value Proposition that keeps being referred too and evaluated.
• Outline of the appropriate proof-of-innovation delivery concept (based on research, concept work, piloting, customer engagement etc)
• Plan to acknowledge and cultivate the critical relationships involved and make sure all parties are kept in the loop, compromises only made to resolve impasse.
• Have clear ways to measure the results, impact and success of any delivery.
• Provision of feedback and enhancement opportunities/ needs to all relevant parties, even back to the front end of idea creation to provide improved clarity and definition that helps
• The clear accountability clarification of who does what well stated and well managed.

Achieving correct, effective innovation delivery does provide the chances of achieving greater commercialised success than simply allowing implementation to just happen as an afterthought.

The value of providing the appropriate resources to the final delivery end of innovation are sometimes the critical difference between why certain companies are just so much better at ‘delivering’ their innovation.

They ruthlessly execution to a well-thought-through plan that has learnt its secret sauce and constantly refined it.

The post Preparing the secret sauce for innovation delivery. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Why does innovation present such a stark choice, often fraught with difficulties for many, yet so simple and successful for the few? Innovation delivery is one of those differentiation points.

Let me suggest here nine points needing your consideration when it comes to thinking through the innovation back end delivery part.

Execution as I have outlined in a previous post is the final rugged frontier– the tough one to truly master as it is so variable in its makeup. Just consider:
Point one: the key to successful innovation is not idea generation or putting all your creative efforts into the front end of innovation, ideas are always plentiful; it is turning this myriad of ideas into market or customer changing outcomes that successfully deliver based on understanding the customer’s needs.

Point two: There are no silver bullets for execution that is simply a fact. For any established business it is striving to perform above known standards. The ability to sustain leadership in the market is not just about the new product but about the execution and delivery of this. Executing well you have to be ruthless as the market is unrelenting, so you must make designated people accountable to meeting or exceeding standards. Normally innovation delivery needs a highly engaged executive involvement. The innovation delivery part cannot be devolved; it has to be well orchestrated.

Point three: Innovation is always swimming in uncertain waters. As uncertainty rises, the value of a well-thought-out strategy actually drops. There are constantly arising critical unknowns and sometimes all you are left with as your innovation emerges is actually a starting point, a launching point that needs rapid understanding and interpretation to build quickly upon, to yet fully capitalise upon in suddenly hitting a ‘rich vein’ of untapped need.

Point four : So you really do have to be ready to adapt, be agile, be ready to experiment, explore and learn, hence why execution is actually the harder end of the innovation process to get right. Everything hangs off a hypothesis, a set of assumptions, a ‘germ’ of an idea and needs to be proven in its delivery. When innovation is at the heart of your strategy, you need to zero in to the best possible execution strategy and constantly review this as successful delivery provides the validation. What you learn has to be feed back fast into the organization so you need to make sure the listening and responding parts are switched on to ‘receive’ this new information.

Point five: Often the lack of a clear formalised decision making process for commercialization and going-to-market is not present. Corporate leadership often leaves this to lower levels to execute, yet those ‘responsible’ struggle due to a lack of fact-based safety nets, managing the levels of uncertainly that innovation has and the often reluctant to seek out leadership engagement to resolve conflicts.

Point six: Far too often senior executives are engaged elsewhere and those left in charge of the execution process lack the courage to make often tough and game changing decisions. This often damages optimal innovation delivery as teams often adopt safety first principles.

Point seven: The ability to move an idea to implementation- with increasing agility– is what will distinguish the successful organization from the less successful. The ability to execute well remains a critical gap of performance. Innovation requires a deeply imbedded set of capabilities. Innovation is high maintenance but also offers high reward.

Point eight: The increasing complexity within markets, the global pressures of consistent breakthrough or disruptive innovation happening consistently all around us is making successful innovation harder.  The increased emphasis on new business models are causing escalating problems as well, changing approaches to market or challenging core offerings that were previously accepted. Complexity at the innovation delivery stage calls also has no different a need for a higher level of getting organized, keeping discipline and executing effectively. Staying alert to the rapid changes occuring daily.

Point nine: Innovation delivery requires having the right capacity in place, at the right time, to drive execution through to its identified end points. Innovation delivery is where many decisions are often muddled through. Market ‘alertness’ and fast reaction times is becoming more crucial than ever. This needs building into your delivery part- adaptive alertness.

The relationship between innovation efforts and their success lies increasingly in understanding the “go-to-market phase- executing the innovation delivery based on understanding clearly the customer and market needs.

Innovation should not be a mystery but it is hard to go from end to end without a real recognition that focused effort on the back end delivery part is a relevant, extremely important part of the innovation process.

That more detailed focus for achieving the return expected from all the total efforts that go into it from that original idea so often pays off and makes a real lasting difference.

The post Mission Critical for Innovation – Final Delivery first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This is the end where the ‘last five yards’ separate the winners from the losers.

The race before then has been made up of often huge quantities of stamina, fortitude, planning, exploration and getting into that necessary innovation rhythm to get yourself within sight of the finishing line, the point when the product, service or business model has one final gasp and passes over that internal finishing line.

The critical passing-through and launch phase where the finished concept goes through that clear defining moment, out into judgement day, where we enter that hostile environment, the marketplace, sometimes too loud cheers, sometimes to defining silence.

Welcome to the real world of judgement where those experienced enough in frontier-ship knows the terrain they are passing over, certainly not for the first time and can manage this again to have a further final successful outcome- better sales!

Hitching your wagons and moving out for the first time.
Discovering any innovation is hard work. What we all want to do is provide something new, an advancement on something that is already there, or it is simply not really innovation.

We search hard for making those breakthrough moments when you hit on that undiscovered ‘unmet need’ and the marketplace just loves it.

Getting to this point you need to recognise all the core needs of making this journey. You need plenty of innovation capabilities to overcome many hitches in the journey of marketplace acceptance. Here are four:

• Innovation execution is not a smooth process, you often have no control over making your innovation activity a steady process, it is full of surprises. It is how you manage these that will determine winners from losers.
• Innovation is serendipitous, full of fortunate discoveries, often you stumble across something that takes it further forward. Often you cannot even replicate that moment. Other times it is simply elusive until by accident and through patience, you get there. You resolve the obstacle, you overcome the objection, and you move on.
• Often innovation is often less than spectacular. You get to the moment of rolling drums and voila, whipping back the covers you cry “there you have it!” You offer something less than spectacular, it is so boringly such a ‘duh’ moment, you are ready to crawl back under the rock.
• Your innovation execution lacks momentum. Even with lots of initial enthusiasm and best intentions, suddenly all that necessary energy dissipates and falls away. What started as a bang ended with a whimper and a desperate need to finish this off and move on to the next thing.

Why is this?

What separates successful execution innovators from the rest of the pack?

Innovation needs to be a clear discipline; there really is no getting away from it. Innovation needs to be integrated from idea to execution, to full end-market delivery.

It often boils down to discrete and manageable tasks well managed, well orchestrated and planned, well supported with all the best resources available to make a success of innovations implementation.

Execution, that final all-important phase needs leadership. Leadership sets the tone and communication of what is important and is always ready and able to help the implementation team succeed as best they can.

These leaders need three traits- 1) a bias for action irrespective of the problem, 2) knowledge and contacts in the marketplace themselves to gauge quickly issues and roadblocks,3) they incentivise the execution team for providing breakthrough solutions and moving them forward quickly.

How many times though does leadership seem to slip away at the moment of execution? They feel the hard ‘yards’ have already been covered, the innovation is ready to go and they commit a series of execution sins.

They extract critical resources at the wrong time and work them back into the organization far too early. The research group have moved on, the product manager has been re-assigned, the research didn’t cover that last concept change to check its value in the market, the final packaging design was subjected to last-minute economies and runs the risk of compromising the final delivery of the product. This sin list could run on and on, you know these as they constantly happen.

The leadership had the pedal pressed to the floor so hard to get the product ready for launch, they just took their foot off this pedal at the crucial moment and the product goes ‘sliding’ out the door and simply crashes into that first formidable barrier, customer rejection and you were not ready for it. So much becomes “at-risk” if you have not given the right execution focus.

Leadership needs to be immersed in the deployment zone
Leadership needs to be as much in their ‘deployment zone’ as the team assigned the job.

They set and live the expectations, they define the critical deliverables, establish accountability and resolve the conflicts quickly, they install metrics that are execution specific, they actively seek commitments from the team, share in achieving them from their customers and they share the good and bad parts of the progress back into the organization.

They communicate accurately and frequently, keeping on top of issues, breaking down problems, and reaching back into the organization for help when help is needed. They offer true leadership, from the front.

Execution through this commitment has become mission-critical and all need to see this. It becomes, over time, the force for perpetual execution. Inertia is not spoken of ever!

The sustaining execution machine

Four attributes that need constantly developing well at the execution stage

• Agility – that ability to simply move quickly and be adaptable. To grasp the problem, move on it and constantly explore all the different angles that will resolve the issue and keep execution plans on track.
• Seek healthy debate – asking, probing, and showing a constant interest in what is going on, what resolved any issues, simply having that cultural bias of ‘qualified’ risk-taking and openness, discussing and learning so you are building up always knowledge and experience.
• Effective communication– ensuring there are the mechanisms in place to ‘flag’, to help, to reach out and ask for help. Use communication not to hide issues but to seek out other ways to break down the barriers.
• Provide appropriate resources – the need to provide the same energy and resource commitment, skills and experience that went into the discovery and development of innovation and ensure equal ‘vested’ interest from all is there in achieving the concept aims at the execution time; at the moment of customer experience. Gather the resources quickly, learn fast if it doesn’t and work to find solutions that can resolve it, so it does.

The five phases of execution adventure – just keep those wagons rolling!
The ‘innovation execution emotional wave’ makes it hard ground to travel.

I was reading recently about Gartner’s hype cycle, and one article written by Graham Horton gave me a thought for this piece. The hype cycle was developed to visualise the media coverage of new technology and it goes through five distinct phases.

Actually, I really think one version of this applies, with adaptation (and due acknowledgement to them) for the ongoing journey we often face in the execution of a product once it has entered the marketplace- that hostile terrain I spoke about. We go through a real ’emotional wave’ of innovation execution.

• Trigger:  in this case is our execution or launch. When the product is launched and comes up against customer comment, reaction and acceptance/ rejection
• Inflated expectations: the over-enthusiasm and expectations of the innovation meet the reality of the market place.
• Disillusionment: Either the innovation fails to make the changes it was expected so the company needs to begin a rapid re-think or the market response has been less than overwhelmed. Enthusiasm diminishes rapidly and action needs to be taken
• Enlightenment: The innovation on hand begins to be understood, to be adopted, to be adapted and fits within the needs of the final consumer. Sometimes this comes from heavy advertising, repackaging, repositioning or simply listening to the issues and rapidly making the necessary adjustments to match needs
• Productivity: The adjustments have been resolved, the peaks and troughs have been worked through, and it becomes appropriate to the customers’ needs. This might have needed second and third generation modification and upgrade but it does the job it was conceived to do.

Bringing the innovation execution wagon train home is hard.
I do think new products and services do go through this ‘emotional execution wave’. Execution is hard; it is not simply the ‘last five yards’ it goes well beyond the internal finishing line. Innovation does not stop when it goes out of the organization’s doors, it actually only just begins, and it has to prove itself.

To make innovation work, it is only when it is in the marketplace, judged by customers sufficiently enough to stump up their cash we have a successful innovation. To get there is often travelling over some rough, tough terrain and the more you are exposed, the more you learn. When you execute you need to deploy a significant skill set and dedicated resource to bring home the results.

Fuzzy front ends, huh! Markets have these tasty morsels for breakfast if they, firstly, have not listened to the market needs in the first place but more importantly, have not been executed correctly.

The back end, execution, is certainly rugged terrain, that final frontier to travel that is for sure.

The post The rugged final frontier of innovation – Execution. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.