In this post I wanted to explain my thinking through on this ability to be ‘ambidextrous’, knowing the difference of when to exploit and when to explore as essential to leveraging innovation, in all its forms and watching out for some of the traps in not managing this well.

Managing this, in all honesty, though, is hard to get the balance right but highly valuable if you do achieve it, it can transform the business. Many of our organisations struggle to manage both successfully as they tend to focus more on separation mostly in organisational structures alone as their attempt to become ambidextrous. It is far more than ‘just’ this.  Get the balance right across the organisation’s design and in its leadership management, it becomes a very powerful mechanism for accelerating performances by delivering significantly new innovation and equally sustaining and leveraging the core business you have today.

Recently I contributed a blog post over on the Hype Innovation Blog ” Balancing Exploitation & Exploration for Changing Performance” that opens up the subject but then extensively dives into three examples of Apple, GE and Google that are working in highly ambidextrous ways, pursuing exploiting and exploring in their own unique ways.

The important point is that the make-up of how, when, what and where to exploit and explore, can certainly be very different for each organisation, all dealing in their different contextual settings. You need to develop a “dual mentality” in managing and be watchful for dealing with this as it can create a real deep-lying set of tensions, yet it is within these tensions and how they are managed will determine eventual success of getting this balance right.

We often face conflicts on knowledge acquisition, absorption and translation

How do you switch from the pursuit of efficiencies, from what is often well-established, into the probing of the unknown or not easily quantifiable? We need to balance the interplay between the two.

As we pursue the alignment and adaptation of the two, this is where we get into a serious conflict by attempting to manage this in one fixed ‘state’ or the other. You start questioning, looking for synergies, searching (often by default) for the complementary, attempting definitions, drawing connotations and meaning from these far too early and this has consequences. You muddle your thinking between when to exploit and when to explore effectively. Management is often looking to close something down, to make a decision based on the present known facts, exploiting as quickly as possible what we do best, yet there are many occasions they should stay open, wait and allow time to explore more, to gain more insight. Knowing when to do one or the other is the judgement needed.

You can so easily get into further conflict as exploitation tends to be built on past knowledge, or pursuing and acquire new knowledge to build on existing knowledge. Whereas the kind of knowledge needed for exploration, is significant new knowledge acquisition and requires rapid absorption, and one might not be necessarily helpful to the other, as the purpose and need are sometimes radically different.

You struggle to find the consistency of purpose or even commonality when the type of knowledge that is required can be so starkly different, built either on the known or in pursuit of the unknown. This is why gaining an absorptive capacity understanding becomes important in the context of what you are attempting to do. Knowledge ‘feeds’ advancement and equally provides the ‘fuel’ for innovation but they mostly come at you differently to manage, absorb and translate into their meaning.

Managing exploit and explore depends on your situation

Unless you have a “guiding star” that comes partly from a vision market understanding and mission, that can help you decide the emphasis between these two, it makes managing these dual activities as simply difficult. Is it one that is focused on productivity, cutting costs, ensuring ongoing quality and building reputation, or one pushing out by experimenting, adapting constantly and searching for viability and its validation, how can you determine where you put your emphasis?

I would argue it really does depend on your orientation and what you want to achieve. It is where the organisational focus lies and the necessary defining conditions  and the market dynamics will mostly decide that? How volatile or challenging is the market, is it growing steadily or rapidly undergoing dynamic growth? Do we have to pursue a more radical agenda of innovation or can we evolve on a more incremental path? Do we place our emphasis on consolidating our core or searching for concepts that radically alter our position?

Are you in pursuit of a logical and hopefully, coherent business model, leveraging all the efficiencies which need to work in an orderly, functioning, well planned and managed ways, one where you are making sure your innovation activity is built into its well-established structures and processes? Or are you wanting to encourage a greater freedom for individuals to make personal decisions and encourage the taking of initiatives to be more radical and distinctive in their innovation approaches, deliberately introducing this into their work design, offering high levels of flexibility and self-organizing, allowing for an emerging model to emerge as against fitting into a well-established and often rigid model.

The case for clear separation

There is a number of highly respected people who suggest clear separation must occur. They pose the questions: “Are exploiting and exploring at two ends of a spectrum?” Are they not so different that they need clear separation? We need to separate out the present day-to-day work, with the innovation future work. This has merit.

I think if you foresee a radically different business emerging then this clear separation makes greater sense but how do you reconcile some of the underlying values? How important is the culture, the history, the brand or image, how do you rotate or attract the necessary talent. How do you fund the ’emerging’ business, does this existing business finance this and if so, will it constrain the new business in open or hidden ways? if you create distinct entities, giving them completely different operating environment, will they be capable of being merged back later?

In my examples I used on the Hype post, the one that is a real test of management is the Google decision to separate out its moonshot’s from its core, by creating a new holding company, Alphabet, to treat them distinctly differently. As the founders, their view has been: “the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands”, then separation becomes a clear decision. Yet it does seems there are some initial tensions occurring that will need well-managing and different management thinking to manage this transition, it will be an interesting one to watch how this evolves.

A dual management approach

The argument goes and it might surprise you, by supporting core businesses and new emerging innovation units actually requires leadership to be constantly inconsistent. They must totally live the dual agenda otherwise, it fails. It needs significant management attention to managing the tensions this duality brings. When leaders do take this ambidextrous approach, they are forcing change but it can be very demanding to get this exploit and explore balance right.

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The post So how do you manage exploiting and exploring for Innovation? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

If we ‘subject’ all of our innovation thinking to go through the same process we lose so much. How can you treat incremental innovation in the same way as radical or breakthrough innovation? You need to apply a completely different thinking and approach to the type of innovation you are thinking through. You must be prepared to abandon established thinking if it is not resolving the problems you are facing.

Beginning any journey is never easy, you stumble a little until you find a certain rhythm

I wanted to start somewhere and it is breaking our existing mentality of how we manage innovation as the first critical point to challenge. Due to this has become a much longer post than I would like and I apologize for that but I wanted to get the mentality issue well ‘aired’ and I needed to cover off a number of bases to frame this.

Funnily enough as I was thinking how to begin I came across two short verses from the Bible, both from Matthew 9.16 & 9.17. and wanting to start here on why we should be Shining a powerful innovation light into the Corporate Boardrooms. It might be a strange place to start for many, yet it somehow allows me to begin my journey.

“No one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.” – I believe we need to find a new framing position for innovation as the disruptive forces and challenges we face today are growing and call for new ways of managing.

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.” – We have been renovating our innovation process until it becomes unrecognizable by all the patches we have been applying and is it really providing the results we want?

Innovation today disappoints

We are not achieving the impact from all our innovation endeavors that we should. There is a time to radically redesign our innovation. We need to shift our thinking as innovation is providing disappointing returns and we are in urgent need to find a new re-framing position of the organization’s innovation engagement.

Innovation needs to become far more responsive and dynamic, to respond with imagination and intent of purpose. To achieve this innovation requires a greater organizational engagement than ever before. It needs mobilizing differently, in radically different ways; so as to capture different opportunities in more agile, adaptive and shaping ways

If we do need to re-present innovation to our corporate boards to engage in more, we need to offer them a compelling set of arguments on why innovation needs a fundamental rethink, a renewed focus on building the capabilities, competences and capacities that are possible if you engage in a comprehensive innovation management.

Shifting the innovation mindset, resolving a present day dilemma

I’ve written about this need for fluidity and taken this part to frame this post

“Stability and fluidity – how can both work alongside each other? They are opposites yet we need both to thrive in today’s world. Many theorists have suggested, of having in place the ‘ambidextrous organization.’ This would need organizations to design their organizations in their structures, people and processes to either be focused on ‘being efficient’ or being ‘change orientated’. An increased level of duality. The mindset of exploiting or exploring but can we have both, I certainly think so, it mostly depends on what we are about to do to get this mental picture of which frame of thinking should dominate but not be exclusive.

I have been drawn to this ‘dual’ system of ambidextrous as it helps resolve one of the consistent stumbling blocks for innovation to ‘take hold’ and evolve. Innovation is constantly fluid, needing to be adaptive as we learn and adjust to new learning and this is constantly requiring a very change orientated approach. Often innovation comes up against a rigid system and for many “just seems not to fit”

Innovation struggles as it often remains outside the prevailing system. Innovation constantly challenges against the dominant mindset within organizations, who like the idea of innovation but are mostly measured to drive efficiency and effectiveness, keeping highly focused on the short-term performance as their role, reward, advancement and key to ongoing career success, so innovation ‘sits outside’ their domain of focus”

Something needs to change if innovation is really important.

We innovators need a new model of change, for at least eight important reasons I can initially think of:

1. As innovators we aren’t simply responding to external change, we are creating change, both for customers and for our companies and markets. (inside, proactive change vs external, reactive).
2. External change is far more unpredictable, in global markets new threats emerge from anywhere, at any time and often delivered in totally unexpected ways, through new business models that totally cut through and disrupt the existing positions, they can render the existing obsolete in seemingly rapid time, irrespective of the efforts to respond as they have discovered the unmet need to deliver solutions to it.
3. The pace and nature of change isn’t slowing, but is accelerating and will continue to accelerate. (increasing pace, frequency and amplitude of change). Organizations need to pick up the pace, learn to accept a greater risk, experimentation and rapid adjustment on the new knowledge flowing in to build the final outcome to the needs of the market / customer.
4. Sudden evolving markets makes everything needing to be ‘super’ responsive by existing players, to the sudden realization they have missed opportunities, Many existing organizations cannot cope and alter with this demand for agility, flexibility and responsiveness. They need to (re)learn this and build it into their systems and often this realization comes too late. Some industries have been undertaking a responsive approach, for example in their supply chain thinking. Think Zara, the Spanish clothing retailer and how it changed the game.
5. As often demonstrated, most innovation has the potential to be business model innovation, which will require change. (As more innovation becomes focused on business model innovation, this will create even more change).
6. We recognize that change is no longer an occasional threat but a constant companion (shift from the idea of change as a threat to developing an ongoing change capacity as a competitive advantage).
7. The idea that companies can achieve a protected steady state where change won’t affect them doesn’t seem to apply anymore (long periods of stasis, or standing still are no longer possible. Must be able to change/evolve constantly).
8. We need to think of change as a capability that we constantly deploy, rather than a threat we typically avoid. (Need to develop change as a capability, to build skills, reduce barriers).

We need to ask of ourselves if we recognize our need to change

How can we establish Innovation as the vital link to a process of change and strategic direction options, that lifts the debates of managing today’s business by linking it into the future and then turning this thinking into a series of plausible and coherent set of activities?

How can we focus the energy around the boardroom table on to this linking the future work to the shape and the organization’s needs, making the growing innovation debate as strategic as it can be?

Four articles that help shape the change in mindset making it far more of a dual one.

For a start I would recommend you read the four articles I have summarized in my own way below,  to provide a greater depth of understanding in some of our starting points of changing the existing mindset within the boardroom. Here is my brief summaries of these, partly re-affirming but extending thinking to ’embrace’ these:

Two articles are from Scott Anthony or his Innosight team or in collaborations.

Firstly, Two Routes to Resilience

“Sooner or later, your company will probably need to transform itself in response to market shifts, ground breaking technologies, or disruptive start-ups”. Read about this here

“First, major transformations need to be two different efforts happening in parallel. “Transformation A” should re-position the core business, adapting its current business model to the altered marketplace. “Transformation B” should create a separate, disruptive business to develop the innovations that will become the source of future growth.

Second, the key to making both transformations work is to establish a new organizational process we call a “capabilities exchange,” through which the parallel efforts can share select resources without changing the mission or operations of either”

Dividing the effort in two allows leaders to develop a new strategy for the core that doesn’t need to make up for all the business lost to disruption”

Secondly, What Do You Really Mean by Business “Transformation”?

“When executives say transformation what do they really mean? Often, the word confuses three fundamentally different categories of effort”. Read the article here

“The first is operational, or doing what you are currently doing, better, faster, or cheaper. Many companies that are “going digital” fit in this category — they are using new technologies to solve old problems.

The next category of usage focuses on the operational model. Also called core transformation, this involves doing what you are currently doing in a fundamentally different way.

The final usage, and the one that has the most promise and peril, is strategic. This is transformation with a capital “T” because it involves changing the very essence of a company. Liquid to gas, lead to gold”

Defining what leaders mean when they drop the word transformation matters, because these different classes of efforts need to be measured and managed in vastly different ways.”

Two further articles are from Ralph-Christian Ohr

Ralph writes under his blog http://integrative-innovation.net/

The first is “A Model for Integrative Innovation Management”

In his view sustainable successful innovation management systems in organizations are required to be based on a couple of essential premises – all of which can be considered necessary conditions. Read his article here

Innovation management follows a balanced portfolio approach. The entire innovation portfolio is divided into exploitation-oriented and exploration-oriented innovation initiatives, where following characterizations hold:

Exploitation-oriented initiatives are related to running core business by executing and enhancing existing business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value capturing (commercialization). Examples: Product, service or process innovation, portfolio extension, innovation of selected business model components (e.g. channel or operations), market research.

Exploration-oriented initiatives are related to developing future business by searching for novel, and often disruptive, business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value creation (configuration). Examples: Business model development, platform/ecosystem innovation, basic technology research & development, startup engagement, innovation intelligence.

Ralph and I share the belief that the three horizons is a distinct playground for innovation initiatives

Exploration- and exploitation-oriented innovation initiatives can be assigned to three strategic horizons. As outlined below, the horizons address different proximity to the core business with regard to business model or technological capabilities – and therefore indirectly time scale. The horizons’ strategic objectives can be put in a nutshell:

H1 – Core: Optimization of existing business models and technologies, addressing of existing markets

H2 – Growth: Acceleration and scaling of new business models and technologies, adaptation of existing business models

H3 – Future: Discovery and validation of new business models and technologies, shaping of future markets

A lot of my own work goes into developing the understanding, usage and practice of working with the three horizon methodology. Ralph and I share a lot on this as core to a way forward. Here is my White Paper and short presentation opener to this 3H thinking to capture, translate and combine the innovation for today and leading towards the future.

Ralph’s second article is equally making the Case for Dual Innovation

This is revisiting the need for a higher level of organizational ambidexterity to be built into the organization. So often something is dismissed without it being fully worked through. Ralph puts up the case for revisiting “dual innovation” equally suggested within the Innosight articles. Read his article here.

“In the past, systematic dual innovation management approaches have often been discounted due to falling short of expectations or lacking prevalence across the sum of companies. Both reasons, however, don’t necessarily imply the basic concept is inappropriate or even wrong”

“Adequate buy-in on part of executive/senior management and proper implementation of these approaches are mandatory prerequisites in order to make them live up to their potential and – as a consequence – increasingly trusted and applied. The above studies clearly reveal: Organizational ambidexterity proves to be a necessary condition for outstanding corporate innovation capability. Company boards may ignore it at their peril.”

The need is for us to get thinking in ‘dual’ minds for ‘greater’ innovation delivery.

Exploitation  <=> core transformation, i.e. doing what you are currently doing in a fundamentally different way

Exploration <=> strategic transformation, i.e. changing the very essence of a company

The thinking in dual ways is a really important part of bringing innovation thinking into the boardroom, framing this through a three horizon approach that can provide a common language, a different thinking mindset and build future discussions in appropriate time horizons and impact assessments. Also take a read of “Mapping innovation across the three horizons” to link this powerful concept into any board rooms thinking over the present and future for placing different innovation activities.

Dogma, mindsets and conflicts often dominate our boardrooms

I wrote about Lingering dogma, fixed mindsets and conflicting needs and wrote at the end “I can’t promise it can stop all the unhealthy debates around innovation in the boardroom by adopting the Three Horizon framework. What it might change is the perspective of where to focus the expertise and energy to make innovation far more the strategic bedrock, that organizations are looking to achieve, the link towards a healthier future. It’s not personal any more, its considering options in a future-orientated way for their business, to find better ways to thrive not just survive”

In summary, as the first post of why innovation must reside in the boardroom

The first thinking ‘out loud’ ( a long one I must admit) of moving innovating thinking far more into the corporate boardroom comes from the need to establish a “thinking mindset” within our boardrooms, a duality of mindset. One where they ‘collectively’ within the boardroom needs to think in dual ways, exploring and exploiting, to establish distinct types of transformation efforts, and innovation initiatives, combined with the use and application of embracing the three horizons, this becomes the first group of thinking for “shining innovation into the corporate boardrooms”.

Footnote: Where I seem to be heading is in my intent of making innovation itself a transformational journey, perhaps even a “renaissance” as we all are facing and needing to tackle all the disruptive forces around us.

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We all sense this pressing need to react and become more responsive, becoming more adaptive to changing environments and business challenges, that are often unknown, unexpected, or not yet explored or exploited. The question is how much and how far can we go?

Organizations are facing increasing a dilemma in how they organize and manage within their systems and structures.They are being forced to deal in increasingly complexity and environmental turbulence and ‘adapting the appropriate response’ remains increasingly a difficult one to master, within the existing regime they have in place.

On the one hand the value in stability is still essential; working within specific routines and practices gives a clear ‘path dependence.’ This stability allows for efficiencies and effectiveness to be constantly at practice, constantly building the problem-solving processes, to master tasks in complex environments to resolve ‘known’ problems in ‘given’ ways but this relies on this stable flow and that is not the case of much of what we have to handle today.

We are being challenged more and more on this efficiency and effectiveness focus. It is often not working to deliver the results. We are missing a new way of working.

We increasingly have this dilemma of needing stability but trying to build increased fluidity.

Stability and fluidity- how can both work alongside each other? They are opposites yet we need both to thrive in today’s world. Many theorists have suggested, of having in place the ‘ambidextrous organization.’ This would need organizations to design their organizations in their structures, people and processes to either be focused on ‘being efficient’ or being ‘change orientated’. An increased level of duality. The mindset of exploiting or exploring but can we have both, I certainly think so, it mostly depends on what we are about to do to get this mental picture of which frame of thinking should dominate but not be exclusive.

I have been drawn to this ‘dual’ system of ambidextrous as it helps resolve one of the consistent stumbling blocks for innovation to ‘take hold’ and evolve. Innovation is constantly fluid, needing to be adaptive as we learn and adjust to new learning and this is constantly requiring a very change orientated approach. Often innovation comes up against a rigid system and for many “just seems not to fit”

Innovation struggles as it often remains outside the prevailing system. Innovation constantly challenges against the dominant mindset within organizations, who like the idea of innovation but are mostly measured to drive efficiency and effectiveness, keeping highly focused on the short-term performance as their role, reward, advancement and key to ongoing career success, so innovation ‘sits outside’ their domain of focus.

Something needs to change if innovation is really important.

Yet the very essence of our stability in organizations is under threat.

There is so much change being undertaken, the growing call for quick improvisation and ad hoc responses all needs to take us away from those rigid processes into open and far more fluids ones.

The solutions of fluid, agile and adaptive are aiming to develop highly flexible and responsive organizations as an attractive answer to manage in more uncertain times as the way to move forward. The ability to make this very defining and shaping move in any organizations does seem very fraught with risk.

We do need to extend our thinking about fluidity far more to see how we can evolve our thinking more towards this fluid state, within ourselves and our organizations design.

To achieve a more organic fluidity, moving from hierarchies to networks, from formal rules and high levels of coordination into far more spontaneous interactions, improvised processes that resolved specific issues is one huge challenge. It takes time to learn and adapt to this as we all are ‘stuck in our ways.

The appeal of us constantly forming and dissolving project teams where far more lateral organization-wide communications take place is a set of real challenges but so highly prized and will be of increasing value.

Everything seems to be flowing faster and we do have to respond

We are seeing far more fluidity in relationships where the knowledge is flowing within, across and between organizations. The boundaries are blurring, that increasing fuzziness needs shifting our style of decision-making and solution finding.

There is also this growing sense that innovation knowledge is endless, unrelenting in its flow into us, if we care to open ourselves up to it. It never stops but simply shifts from one stage to another, hopping from one idea to another, requiring us to loop back to be re-evaluated and think the implications through.

We are increasingly recognizing that the old linear processes are not working, the need for fast results gets stacked up in this type of process. Our reaction times need speeding up, our learning and adjusting is a constant, all along the pipeline development process and requires a higher level of fluidness to deal with it. We have to adjust to this increasing demand forced upon us.

We are still struggling with the dominant linear logic of much of what we do in organizations, and often this constrains innovation, restricts us to provide radically different business models and limits our abilities to change fast enough. We are learning to be far more adaptive in our learning but this is constantly meeting up with resistance of this linear logic.

There is this nagging feeling of relentless destruction or disturbance, the very opposite of the stable equilibrium we seemed to enjoy in the past. Those that become capable of managing the constant change and disequilibrium will thrive.

We must face this paradox of fluidity and stability.

Those growing conditions of uncertainty and complexity also need boundary building, identity formation and problem solving architectures that are stable and can provide replication of essential actions or activities. We need to seek out and maintain yet constantly challenge to “undo” and redesign.

So can we find competencies that would help embed a more fluid way of working?

We need to look for or deliberately design into our thinking the following:

We are all becoming far more digital, fluid and fast, we are absorbing and responding at faster rates and we are adapting to a constant, multifaceted world of connections, systems and knowledge that need piecing together, un-stitching and re-stiching to combine up into different ‘wholes’ and needs to solve specific issues and challenges. So what is needed?

• To get there we need to be far more nimble, we need to learn navigation skills far more, we are increasingly assignment driven, less exploratory in many things, and technology is taking on this role.

• We need to become increasing agile, iterative, be experimenting, and constantly determined to execute to drive our results and value-add.

• We need to seek empowerment, focus on delivery and collaboration outcomes far more resolutely.

• We need to grasp the make-up of value creation and why innovation is becoming new business models in its potential.

• We need to establish within ourselves and the working environment we work within, this sound conflict resolution pathway and strive for authenticity and trust within the ways we operate.

• Lastly here, a real willingness to seek out diversity, to be visible, and be wanting to have this constant entry and exit to project and challenges to drive our personal satisfaction and worth up.

Finally, we should examine characteristics or factors that create barriers for fluidity

Our over reliance on past models – when the near future closely resembles the recent past, relying on existing models to determine appropriate actions and investments is rational.  Instead companies must assess the amount of change and to recognize the need to ‘let go’ to reduce the reliance on existing models that are constraining future performance in a fluid world.

Change proficiency/capability – in most companies, people receive training and develop skills based on their specific roles and responsibilities, but rarely develop skills that actively encourage, enable or accelerate change without it being instigated form a higher level. We cannot expect companies and cultures to change frequently and capably if people don’t have the skills, capabilities or proficiency to change effectively and be empowered with the mandate to investigate and recommend.

Preferences for stability over change – people, organizations and cultures prefer stability to change. Change is uncertain and demands new learning and new expertise, while stability reinforces existing knowledge and skills. Over time, the desire for stability leads to inertia and active resistance to change. Companies must create a preference for more change, reducing inertia and building change capabilities. That “making change constant” needs enactment.

Focus on short-term profits rather than longer term viability – Since change is uncertain and distracts from efficient day-to-day operations, and there is an ever-increasing focus on short-term profitability, change always takes a back seat to efficient operations and short-term profits. Longer term viability suffers because of an over reliance on an increasingly out of date business model, infrequent innovation and a lack of change capacity. This shift in corporate mind-set and shareholder need is becoming an imperative to finally change. It is stopping long-term growth, mortgaging our futures.

In summary

We need to relentlessly challenge and push out our own boundaries and knowledge and adapt these to be designed to exploit constantly. We need to be increasingly fluid in how we ‘go about this.’

We need a new mantra of “adapting, exploring and simply responding to the need seen” in rapidly changing markets and across our customer base – past, present and future and within ourselves, on how to cope with this increasing need for agility and this fluidity we all need today.

The post Achieving a Level of Fluidity in Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

As we look to enter into 2016 what is top of mind for innovation to take hold and become the real core within our business organizations?

Some of my quick thoughts or repeating mantras, no apologies here:

• Innovation is not the preserve of the (selected) few but the domain of the community, it is encouraging our connections to actually connect and exchange mutual value and knowledge.
• Moving innovation from just being symbolic to essential. We must stop dipping our toes in the water, we need to just jump in and get wet. We need to get everyone involved and wanting to contribute engaged and  excited on where innovation can really take us
• Recognizing innovation is traversing functions, entities and boundaries faster than ever. Find ways to get out of the way to allow it to flow where the energy goes and then ‘attempt’ to capture it for the good of all.

• Keep opening the Enterprise to external knowledge. Keep breaking down those barriers of resistance to allow this openness to further take hold, expand and contribute into your everyday thinking. Make the “network effect” really mean something in results

• Collaboration is formed at the hip with Co-creation. Making sure you are extracting your fair share of value from all these exchanges.

• Design is increasing to the fore in many organizations. We don’t need to over work it or push it beyond its limit. We do need to blend it in and fuse it with other techniques, so to sort out where it fits within the innovation mix and valuing it for its ‘added’ worth to transform information into achieving tangible outcomes

• We need to explore, experiment, prototype, adapt, become more agile, keep it lean, pivot on new learning and anything else that helps us to speed up the process and keep learning and churning.

• The combining of great design and appropriate functionality is giving your customers what they need and feel good about, it is a powerful combination to achieve and never forget to aspire to achieve in all you offer.

• Platforms and ecosystems are emerging to manage complex innovation challenges and knowing where and how you can fit into these to extract more are essential but it is a learning game for most of us to explore. Do this with a real conscious effort to leverage its exciting promise.

• The bottom of the pyramid is a place we continue to forget and others learn to play in and master its needs. It is very relevant in today’s more cost-conscious market conditions and provides the emerging understanding of what helps resolve ‘jobs-to-be-done’ and deliver to different market needs.

• The power of social innovation and linking your product to societal needs Scaling becomes important to expand this out. We need to “reconnect to dominant economic activities of the larger society”, add a ‘higher’ purpose to our innovation activity.

• Reverse innovation and its ability to be re-scaled to adapt across different markets is equally a valuable source of growth within organizations. We do need to learn from not only others what is actually possible so a product can enter previously untapped markets but what we can do to reduce ‘’bloat and complexity within our own product offerings.

• We will continue to probe and search for a different organizational design, even further away from the linear process of cause and effect that has dominated much of the 20th-century thinking and how we can have a ‘dual’ thinking around exploitation and exploration. Innovation design needs both.

• Of course, the raw power of technology and all things digital with all the data flowing in continues to dominate much of our thinking presently, yet it continues to need a clear focus on its use and understanding, as well as having in place the systems and analytic capabilities we need internally to process these insights and extract the value.

Whatever is achieved to move the innovation needle in the year ahead, it is going to require focused leadership, a clear innovation alignment to the strategy being pursued, along with a climate and environment conducive to allowing the encouragement of ideas that can be translated into new commercial or social value, valued by customers or markets as solving their problems

We all need to ‘advance’ innovations position within our collective thinking, our growth and future well-being are increasingly reliant on it to deliver solutions to even more complex problems. or improve on the existing, ones in more imaginative and environmentally friendly ways.

Wishing you a cracking innovating time in 2016

Adapted from a post on LinkedIn on December 27th 2015.

The post Moving innovation even more in 2016 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Adapting always seems a work-in-progress, or it is often something where we are simply making little or no progress!

We often stay ‘stuck’ in the way we do ‘things’ around here, never seemed able to break out into something new or different.

To adapt we need to open ourselves up to learning and adjusting our organizational ‘form’ in new ways.

In business, there should be a constant battle to reconfigure the assets and extend the existing capabilities. Yet often these stay ‘static’ not learning or improving.

In our innovation activities, there is an even greater pressing need to build into our thinking the ability to find more dynamic capabilities. It is a constant innovator’s dilemma to think through and get right.

What might help?
Recognizing our need to think differently
Here I am wanting to outline some opening thoughts for you to consider in becoming a more adaptive organization.

There has been a lot of discussion about finding new organizational forms that need to somehow reflect on pushing out and developing around unique combinations building into our existing structures these four distinct ‘classification’ states: a) collaborative, b) learning, c) emergent and finally d) ambidextrous.

These ‘states’ are viewed to be really helpful in accelerating an organization’s growth potential and improving greatly on the innovation cycles.

Partly this is being driven by a recognition that we are becoming more dependent on a growing set of challenges that include: a) gathering and synthesizing far more knowledge than ever before, b) the fact we are increasingly becoming dependent on the performance of others, c) the assets that we simply own and have in place are just not good enough today and d) our abilities to “read, react and respond” to changes occurring that just seem to be constantly accelerating away are becoming more difficult to keep adjusting too in our present organizational structures.

Somehow we need to respond in more agile, fluid and adaptive ways. Roger Martin suggested some time back “that modern leaders need integrative thinking to embrace complexity, tolerate uncertainty and manage tension in searching for creating solutions to problems“. It is learning to make different choices in a far more creative process, often more disruptive to our established norms.

All these are challenging our existing organization’s systems, structures and processes and it is a growing process of understanding that will emerge to form these new ways of operating, far more reliant on technology, rapidly available and adaptive systems and flexible thinking and design.

The need to become bolder in our thinking

We need to encourage fresh and bolder investments in knowledge, in infrastructure, systems and in managing these. Ones that focus on activities that pursue new approaches that lead to exciting innovation, that really does spurs growth. These are about learning, searching and delivering the winning value on the new innovation value scale of ‘new generation activity’ from recognizing how we balance out exploitation (extending the life) and exploration (new understanding). We need to appreciate the separation effect for innovation.

Most of our organizations today struggle with applying the ‘appropriate’ resources into these two ‘dual’ approaches. Many try to separate them, often hiving off the more radical innovation development part to protect it from being overwhelmed by the often overbearing focus on the short-term and exploitation. Yet this is a real mistake, as they are necessary to be combined to improve what we have, as well as add in a significant change to keep the business healthy (efficient and effective) and equally growing (through innovation)

We are living in a world of apparent contradictions

We need to manage with one eye on austerity, the other on emphasizing the need for innovation. The popular ‘answer’ to this is simultaneously exploring and exploiting, yet these two organizing and managing styles are hard to find the right balance we need. We want to have a stable environment but we need to equally be dynamic, constantly improving and introducing new innovations.

These are a significant range of questions we have to consider before we decide to establish the ‘appropriate’ position of how much we need to emphasise on the exploit and explore, both needed to be balancing the stability and delivering the dynamic. Much is dependent on the diversity and dynamism of the business environment we are operating under, the resources we have available or can call upon, the market conditions we are facing, as well as predicting where all of it is heading. Easy huh!

Equally, it is dependent on what we are attempting to do.

Exploitation is the “refinement and extension of existing competencies, technologies and existing knowledge” whereas exploration is “our ability to experiment with new alternatives” and each is certainly built on our learning and accumulating experiences. Exploitation on its own, or if heavily emphasized to the exclusion of exploration, can eventually lead to failure, whereas too much exploring and experimentation can limit exploitation. Each can become a “failure trap”.

The “success trap” is when exploration leads to exploitation and exploitation to more exploration, a reinforcing cycle through clarity of mindset and managing between routines and experimentation. These can have very different activities to manage and are the cause of many of the tensions within the balance needed in organizations to innovate the new and manage the existing. Each is often competing for scarce resources, a constant interplay.

The argument for establishing an ambidextrous organization has proffered different opinions for pushing for variations based on: a) clear separation, b) developing the abilities to switch, c) become self-organizing or d) using an external ecosystem thinking to establish the right mix between exploit and explore. Each is determined by a unique mix of considerations.

The answer for each of us is that it really does depend. It has a paradox only you can solve in your unique situation. It comes down to trade-offs. So what do we need to consider? Do you tightly couple these or seek degrees of separation?

We need to seek balance, strive for dynamism and accelerate innovations
With this ever-increasing set of tensions, we are in real need to shape capabilities. It has been suggested * that we have to resolve four closely interrelated ‘tensions’ to help us in leading to understand what, where and how we design ambidexterity into our management within organizations.

We need to consider how we would balance these four tensions:

1. Differentiation and Integration. How do we separate our exploitative and exploratory activities into distinct organizational activities or units? Integration is deciding the mechanisms that can address these. This deciding point between these two will often boil down to the degree of importance placed on the need for exploitation and exploration; these should not become mutually exclusive positions.

We must balance in constantly adaptive ways this duality. It is the specific task or activity that can largely determine this but it needs a conscious designing in.

2. Individual or at the Organizational level. The ability to ‘fuse’ any approach across multiple levels of need at organizational design and the individual’s ability to explore and exploit together, or at separate times, needs resolving. Having different teams, one exploring, one exploiting or having individuals who have a higher propensity for one or the other, to be blended into a diverse team solving a complex challenge that needs this dual thinking purpose are some suggested approaches.

Again it comes back to the challenges that need to be addressed, as the management of contradictions and conflicts needs different alternatives, in our creative thinking. The orientation between the short-term and longer-term need equally to be well thought through. We need to fit innovation into its appropriate context, contributions and characteristics of the people working on this.

Finally, here, it is the diversity in knowledge coupled with experiences. that give us richer linkages for innovation. It is the working consciously on the alignment and adaptability within the mix and at these different levels required. There is a fluid need to move between these levels of design and need.

3. Static versus dynamic perspectives. We do need to find a way to simultaneously pursue the two activities of exploring and exploiting. We need to reduce the static and emphasis the dynamic, by constantly adopting ‘certain’ configurations to meet the innovation needs we are working towards. Achieving a sequential state or pushing for a simultaneous pursuit of the two becomes the key consideration.

The key is to repeatedly and intentionally orchestrate the firm resources; it is striving to gain interactions not separating them. Hiving exploring off into a discrete unit creates problems in any down the line handing off back to the operating unit responsible for the execution of innovation. There is this real need to think through a more comprehensive innovation life cycle here, as innovation is certainly far more dynamic (or should be)

4. Internal versus External Acquisition and Interplay. The need is to gain and utilize the knowledge and this ideally comes from both internal and external resources. The stronger we have in place alliances, outsourcing arrangements and partnerships, we are building our ‘combinative capabilities’ and how we can consciously apply a more absorptive capacity approach to synthesize, apply, acquire and absorb knowledge.

This allows us to develop a higher degree of knowledge flexibility across organizational boundaries and find different ways to integrate this into our innovation thinking. We are always in need of novel, diverse alternatives to any innovative thinking.

Knowledge diffusion becomes vital to manage the exploit and explore and this needs to flow across the organization, not stay limited within one part, reducing the opportunities to leverage this acquired knowledge. Here lies the seeding of corporate renewal.

Each of these interrelated tensions needs a high level of resolution.

The level of insights into the strategies, structures and processes that allow them to be in this ‘dynamic tension’ for innovation to occur, is one we must constantly strive towards a balance and harmonization between the two activities of exploitation and exploration. These tensions will actually require a high level of constant and often contradictory levels of requirements. How can we design this into the fabric of the organization?

This set of challenges does require this deeper thinking about the development of a more ambidextrous approach to innovation. How can the organization be designed in adaptive ways around this constantly evolving innovation need.

The real hard questions to answer will eventually lie in asking “what are the similarities, differences and interactions between the individuals, a group’s and an organization’s creative capacity, diffusion capacity, absorptive capacity for knowledge and risk-taking capacity”.

Where are the balances needed to be achieved in organizational adaptation, innovation need and learning? How can we design the type of dynamic environment that I believe can evolve by an appropriate design unique to you, one that I regard as requiring the understanding of building our innovation fitness landscapes

Building these changing landscapes to meet opportunities and situations to respond to, at you need to adapt,  manage and operate within; then determining what you need to have available, knowing the how to go about bridging the gaps, to arrive at a state of being constantly adaptable as your goals adjust and change?

It is certainly complex and we all need to learn, adapt and work through this balance in our exploitation and exploration needs. It is one critical part of future organizational design. It does need individually working through to meet your own specific needs for growth and protection.

It does mean that the level of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring is critical to work upon and that means it has to be highly dynamic, in building the dynamic capabilities required for innovating because nothing can be static for very long in today’s world.

The key reference used is drawn from the paper “Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance” written by Sebastian Rush, Julian Birkinshaw, Gilbert Probst and Michael Tushman. This paper has been at the core of the post.
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The new combination is the new connections through people and things (IoT) that we can achieve a new innovation potential.

We will obtain increasing more powerful insights that have the real potential of being turned into new innovation outcomes, through the connected businesses we are presently needing to build. This can generate new value and business propositions.

Today the virtual world of digital is moving much faster than the physical ‘enacted world,’ of turning insights into actual innovation activities, through the innovation pipeline. Our innovation systems are lagging significantly behind. We need to radically redesign them and bring them up to date, fit for managing innovation in the 21st century.

The whole discovery to final execution, is for most organizations still a very fragmented, often disconnected system. It is highly reliant on manual systems with people often disconnected from the real innovation engagement making decisions on inadequate data or insights.

We are failing to leverage all we have gained from our innovation understanding over the years. We have this ongoing inability to adapt, to connect the innovation system through the use of technology and growing value networks, so as to provide the integration, the dedicated resource and accountability to deliver successful innovation outcomes that our customers require.

Successful outcomes are certainly possible, from a well-designed innovation management system brought up to date, adaptive, flexible and responsive, if we apply the time and effort to conceive and construct it.

It is still managed mainly through a linear process of stage-gates and investigation / validation to decide to move on or not. I can’t see this continuing to work in any efficient or effective way in such a digital hyper connected world, where insights flood into the innovation engine room, expecting the same ‘hyper’ response and delivery outcome result.

We need to address this incompatibility, we need to integrate and harness the innovation management system and bring it completely up to date and integrated in design and function.

In a series of posts I have been arguing that innovation management needs to radically be redesigned, based on the thinking around the shift from products to solutions, from transactions to growing far more value-adding ongoing relationships, from a supplier of product services to highly valued network partnerships, exploring innovation across all options, instead of delivering on discrete elements; this requires managing the whole ecosystem of the innovation design differently through technology, driving the design and response capabilities where platforms dominate and transformation becomes an ongoing process, to constantly evolve the business model, so as to seek out constantly changing market opportunities, in agile, adaptive and fluid ways, for successful innovation outcomes that meet those real customer needs.

Mashing up for explosive change
I recall reading that up to now, each digital technology change was a separate era of change, to absorb and adapt towards, yet today we are facing something seemingly different, a collision, a whole mash-up of disparate technologies and systems, that seem to be heading for such an explosion of change, a post-digital transformation.

This merging of cloud, big data, social, and the internet of things is becoming the new system of discovery according to some. Others call it the crossroads where the post-digital reality of bringing together the cloud, mobile, interconnected devices, data analytics and embedded intelligence are pointing us to a hyper-connected world, less tomorrow, more speeding towards us in the here and now.

Digital matters, in its raw innovating power and its potential business impact

I think digital is clearly a transformational phenomena across much of today’s existing business. The unique combining of the cloud, big data, social streaming, the internet of things, mobility, the industrial internet, are all making this the time for new growth opportunities through this digital economy and the radical overhaul of the activities to realize the benefits.

The enterprise integration will need to be constantly evolving, adapting and become highly agile, it will totally redistributed, decision authority will move more rapidly towards evolving business models and distributive decision-making, to seize breaking opportunities far more quickly than in the past.

Business models will not stand alone, they will interlock in intelligent ways, to benefit from scale that becomes the essential need and greater appreciation of sharing services, jointly working towards common outcomes.

These strategic connections will open up different partnerships, opportunities for shared cost of new channel developments, separate value propositions driven through common back office services and increasing requiring a platform management to manage these.

We are transcending traditional industry and product boundaries
The dizzy array of strategic choices will totally disrupt existing business models if they are right in their design.

The whole world of communicating, transacting and designing all the different negotiations and products that meet the immediate needs of the customer makes this the “digital business era”, where constant redesigning and orchestrating the parts will keep it at the forefront by a constantly evolving set of combinations and leveraging a network of diverse capabilities.

It will be how and where a business or entities of business come together and see where ‘people, things and their business offering’ can come together for mutual value based on the unique combinations of the different technologies available.

There will be a constant evolving evaluation of the assets both internal and externally that make up this digital world (people, the business and things) that will take this out beyond the control of one company, into a system within a larger system to make it work at a constantly evolving speed and gain adoption. Innovation will certainly not get any easier; it will be faster, more demanding and a heck of a lot more risky.

Innovation is caught up in this transformational change.

To be an innovator, you are always restless but the present structures and frameworks that innovation operates within have been often highly constraining and heavily reliant on manual operations. Innovation as a system has often conflicted within the approaches taken by our organizations.

The quest is in finding different approaches to allow the human side to shape, interpret and extract the value not just in what they want to see but through different lenses

The balance in innovation activity is changing
What needs changing is the innovation process to accommodate these changes that are occurring all around us. We will need to transform much within our systems but more importantly to orientate our skills to receive, translate and diffuse new knowledge, in significantly different ways.

It is through this combination of people and ‘things’ connecting into our businesses that we will be able to extract new observations, to give us insights that can lead to completely different innovation opportunities.

Huge amounts of data can be interpreted through specific algorithms but these will have to have set very clear parameters set within them, for them to be of any worth on what we believe is needed by our customers, for delivering successful innovation outcomes.

The real need is delivering a new integrated innovation engagement platform

Without doubt digital and physical operate at really different speeds. We need not just a new innovation management system, we need a modern engagement platform. We need to integrate and sync so many transaction and stand-alone systems that have been allowed to proliferate over the years to meet specific business needs.

The growing pressure will be demanded to find solutions that provide a cohesive and business-focused approach to the new social enterprise where we seek engagement at scale into a multiple array of communities and advocates that has data and innovation as its core.

The Need to Automate the Innovation Process

We still are very reliant on stage gate intervention points, often more due to dogma and imposed oversight by committees occasionally meeting.

Decisions are determined by the human, based less on hard knowledge or dynamic intelligence, often these have tended to be thinner on the ground to validate concepts and judgement becomes highly personal and reliant on (past) experience.

What can we change within this? There are leading practices to compare and contrast with but we do need to push this automating the innovation process further, in different ways.

How can we connect, enable and deliver better innovative outcomes?

There is so much to be realized, connected and enabled for the higher scale, richer, more innovative business outcomes but it is a massive undertaking that is only just being ‘kicked off’ by the current internet of things. It will eventually become the integration of everything but the disruption and realization of what needs changing is only just dawning on many.
We need to review organizational engagement.

Much has to change, be uprooted and completely revisited to begin to design a new digital and physical integrated innovation system.

The need to respond quickly to new business objectives

We will need to adjust our thinking on risk. Technology insights can provide a better mitigate risk, it can equally fine tune innovation but it can equally make it far more complicated. Massive amounts of data can complicate decision-making, determining the right decisions and next steps.

Technology will require opening up the present risk mitigation process to capitalize on emerging opportunities at greater speed and higher levels of compromise, to meet that emerging opportunity ‘seen’ requiring it to be turned into commercial offering quickly, so competitive advantage can be gained.

Managing digital knowledge that adds value and growth

Digital technology is about to become the precursor for all the changes we have put off for years within our organizations. We need to radically improve our abilities to engage, relate and discover new innovation opportunities at a completely different level of faster performance.

There are many issues both strategic and tactical to work through, to extract the rich potential from any digital transformation for new innovation growth outcomes

Digital is presently moving way ahead for the systems our organizations have presently in place. What does need changing to ultimately yield the innovation returns we will be looking for?

Expectations and reality needs resetting, the hard work is not ‘just’ in connecting the technology, it is its impact that it will have across the organization to be able to ‘react, respond and reorganize’ in very different ways from today’s practices.

We are dealing with a completely different set of mindsets, skills, procedures, governance, processes and responsibilities. To gain from the digital evolution taking place we need a robust, comprehensive and radical overhaul of much of what is going on within our organizations.

We need to begin to really think though this as a complete redesign – achieving a clear engagement platform for all to gain from

So in our need to achieve a greater engagement from everyone within our organizations we need to recognize the importance of having a ‘modern’ engagement platform available, a central place for scalable learning to take place, so we can structure the new knowledge and insights that is coming into the organization and manage this through a well-designed innovation system into a final execution of successful innovations.

Moving from ad-hoc approaches to an integrated, synergistic and designed for each organizations unique state for the innovation management process to perform in today’s and tomorrow’s world on a sustaining basis. One where technology is central to its structure, highly connected, highly adaptive and totally fluid in its response to meet the constant array of innovation opportunities, looking to have solutions applied to them.

Is there not a mounting case for designing a new innovation management system?

I clearly am convinced there is and it certainly can be designed today in my opinion.

What is involved in plotting out a new innovation roadmap, who is the lead orchestrator or the navigator in this and can we structure this design accordingly, to bring it into our organization sustaining innovation?

One that offers a system that is fully integrated, connected and compatible with the needs of the business to grow and recognizes the need to build a sustainable innovation capability.

One that can to capitalize on the innovation opportunities being discovered in new and different ways that need connecting and accelerating, into commercial propositions that meet customers’ needs?

I want to look deeper into these in the coming weeks to add some thoughts to this new innovation system design and where and with whom it fits.
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I have recently been in some different discussions about the merits and balances required for the separation to manage incremental and radical innovation. Partly this is in preparation for a workshop later this month but partly from a conversation, I am having with a sizable, well-respected organization, with its head office based here in Europe.

In the conversation within the organization, we were discussing the breakdown in their treatment of incremental and radical and they suggested this was being managed within an “ambidextrous structure” yet I was not convinced. I have to point out this was only a part of a broader story on the difficulties of managing conflicting innovation demands that they were having.

One key constraint in their thinking I felt was not having distinct units as they were trying to manage incremental and radical through the same process and that, for me, is a basic mistake.

I feel to truly claim an ambidextrous organization you have to be working towards the conceptual model offered by Reilly and Tushman on the “Ambidextrous Organization”

Reilly and Tushman’s argument was to truly flourish, not only do you need to maintain a variety of innovation efforts but  it does need more of a recognition of the full organization to manage these differently, not in isolation or selected parts of your organization.

You need to consciously address the differences and build those into the twin process of managing incremental and radical. Let me offer my take on this.

Simultaneous the need is to manage the differences in Exploration & Exploitation.

I love how two words have such potential in their meaning and approach. It is the same as ‘divergence or convergence’. They clarify distinct differences, you don’t merge them, and you treat them as one leading into the other (divergence into convergence) or running in parallel (exploration & exploitation) for good reason.

Exploring and exploiting do need separation, at least in our thinking or applying. In organizations that practice ambidextrous design, they separate the new, exploratory units from their more traditional, exploitative ones, allowing for different processes, structures and cultures to emerge but it is at the senior management level they maintain tight links.

This way you can pioneer more breakthrough or even disruptive innovation while allowing the incremental gains to be focused, and optimized without this consistent set of  distractions of trying to balance the two within the same resource pool or trying to squeeze it through the same assessment and timeline process.

It is very different when you have to go on exploratory expeditions which are harder to determine and the last thing is having the constant pressure of balancing for time and between types of innovation. Exploration & Exploitation approaches need really different measuring metrics also.

It is at the senior leadership level any conflicts are managed not within the unit or organization department or even by a head of the unit if the organization does not manage in this ‘ambidextrous’ way. If you attempt to manage these together I think you don’t extract the full benefits you can gain from having this more dedicated focus, working on distinctly different innovation needs.

What does radical mean to you?

The other issue I have is the use of ‘radical’ within the discussion. This can create such different meaning for each of us and can certainly be preconceived, so it already becomes hard to let go or change.

Also ‘radical’ is often felt in larger organizations as something that simply does not fit as they are not a radical organization but a careful, often too cautious one.

So ‘breakthrough’ seems to be a more natural fit and sits opposite of ‘incremental’ far more in my mind and it seems most others, worried over the ‘radical’ label.

For incremental you exploit  through upgrading, adding more choice or building on what you presently offer, whereas you explore far more for breakthrough projects.

You can rightly point out there are numerous different type approaches and I recently wrote on what is the appropriate design within our organization (http://bit.ly/zdUhKp ) using radical I know. Your type is partly determined by your structure and its degree of optimization of its potential flexibility and what you need to achieve.

So what are differences to be recognized for Exploring and Exploiting?
The understanding has to come back to alignment, the alignment to strategic intent (of the innovation need) and the recognition of distinct differences in critical tasks.

It is defining the differences is the role of the leader, who is either managing incremental or breakthrough innovation,as they should focus on different competences, controls, rewards and the environment you are expected to work within, to deliver these as effectively as possible. It is difficult to ‘flip’ between the two as they call for distinct mindsets.

Again it is the power of the difference in thinking about these. Using the comparison of exploitative versus exploratory in this two-word comparison that I love, does give you the real differences in the focus that needs to be recognized and undertaken.

I’m sure you can extend this list even more but the point is that the difference in mindset is significantly opposite. Can you apply these within the same business group or unit? I seriously doubt it.

Eating from the same innovation stew pot everyday might not be the best solution.

As we think of innovation we have to be careful not to limit ourselves, not just in approach or types but in the way we set about and manage this.

Trying to bring all aspects of innovation activity into one ‘pot’ means you end up with an often underwhelming stew. It simply fails to really deliver, as you failed to do the necessary separating and distinctive preparations that all the parts needed to be achieved as your end result, to meet the different market needs that are around.

You need to separate, the innovation that sets about protecting the core, building and strengthening it and that that pushes and extends the business beyond.  These really require really different mindsets in approaching and managing across the organization.  Not just in  isolated pockets struggling to balance the different demands being placed on them.

Within these ‘collective’ silo’s they can’t differentiate distinctly enough and until this is fully understood it constrains and adds unnecessary pressures.

Unless you address this  it is never fully appreciated across the organization on what is needed to be going on and how you should support and measure it’s results. Bundled up it all becomes a compromise.

There needs to be this realization that incremental and breakthrough are so different in activities, processes, structure, cultures and metrics to attempt to achieve the optimized effect, you need this ‘dual effect’.

Having a clear separation in managing incremental and breakthrough innovations is more effective and efficient but please don’t tip them in in the same pot, but distinct and separate innovation ‘cooking’ mediums, to achieve a more outstanding and differentiated set of results where compromise was not down to being mixed into the same general approach.
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