One of the implications is this growing recognition that innovation is rarely succeeding in isolation but it is growing on a more highly dependent type of complementary innovation, a collaborative network, working around this new emerging innovation to deliver a more connected, radical experience, requiring innovation ecosystem management.

This dramatic change we will all be undergoing will have a significant impact on organizations innovation management design and it requires new connecting’ thinking.

Here is my first view of the pieces that are forming around the new innovation approaches we need to consider

This is a visual of what I feel is forming to usher in new innovation. On first view, it looks overwhelming but I am not so sure when you explore each of the pieces.

Today we are seeing all the separate pieces being sketched out constantly by different parties, explored and explained as we are learning.  Some other parts are beginning to be established and understood by experimentation and different applications.

It is the piecing together that is stretching the mind at present or actually it is more the breaking of this map down, into first, second and third order relationships. My next task.

This new innovation thinking has distinct challenges and implications that need thinking through. Now it is the how this can be combined. The intersection of innovation ecosystems, platforms and customer experience are just beginning to be explored over at www.ecosystems4innovating.wordpress.com to be part of this new thinking in exploring essential parts yet as this is being discussed it seems to trigger much more, as I have attempted to capture in this above visual, a big challenge that does need this piecing together.

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The post Bringing New Innovation Together Is Stretching the Mind first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Here are some of my thoughts, some a little raw, others well-baked, even some half-baked!.

Running your own business is full of uncertainty, doubt and risk. Equally, though, you have a level of independence and this does permit you to respond quickly.

It can offer higher degrees of flexibility, allows you to pursue what you think clients really want, not what others above you are imposing as template solutions, or their personal views.

Finally, you can explore the options to deliver, as in my case,  services, in your own unique style that often work far better for clients needs.

You are not accountable to anyone, apart from the wife and the bank manager, always looking a little harder at you, that small business owner needing to deliver.

In between these two ends of independence and the uncertainty from the dependence a few clients you might be relient on constantly moving the goal posts, there are quite frankly, lots of raw emotions.

The best part, for me, is a growing confidence that I am operating many times in the ‘zone’ of client needs, that they require out of innovation.

The downside I have to admit is there is an awful lot of hard work that needs to go into this so as to get you there.

My Business Model gets a constant bashing.

I really believe in working the business model hard but as you initiate your execution, not only is it about “getting out of the office” (the Steve Blank cry) but trying to constantly work the relationships that are growing trying to understand what potential customers want. Equally you do need to look hard at what Steve suggests is the customer development manifesto .

Steve also suggests we can get caught up in the 9 deadliest start-up sins and although this is written specifically for start-ups I think many of theses can apply to all businesses. These ‘sage’ pieces of advice are not just for start-ups as I’m well beyond a start-up but I find them incredibly useful as critical reminders as I evolve and change my business model.

It is also about managing the incredible ‘flow’ of knowledge, insights and latest thinking that comes into you constantly every single day.  You struggle to read, absorb, relate too and translate these often breaking thoughts, into your own thinking and propositions.

Of course, much as you find out is not so much leading edge but simply a rehashing of existing ideas, yet still even in these, they have specific experiences attached to them and these are useful to learn from or be reminded.

The innovation forge to shape and form

I’ve been working in the innovation forge arena for fourteen or more years, designing, shaping and learning about innovation, trying to translate this into value for clients and their innovation challenges.

I seem to know where I want to go for my future innovation work but balancing the ‘inflow’ of knowledge with the necessary customer ‘insights’ is not easy, especially when you want to have as much paying work as you can.

No, running your own business is hard. The ‘fun’ is managing the inputs, working the absorption process, producing your own distinct outputs, let alone achieving the required outcomes you need through attracting  clients and achieving engagement.

Over the years my own business model has evolved

My business model has increasingly moved more towards a ‘trusted’ adviser, where I coach, council and mentor on innovation. I constantly look beyond today and work at identifying leading practice, methods and tools.

Of course pure consulting features but I genuinely believe working with a good counselor or confident have a vital roles to play for understanding the value generating and impact points.

This works towards addressing certain problems or challenges being individually faced, yet you are consciously seeking out the dynamic linkages within the broader innovation work.

This is to partly strengthen what is available and already in place, partly to accelerate resources into applying innovation knowledge, at a different, more organized, coherent level.

So I’m working far more towards a facilitator and adviser by design and choice to those responsible for building innovation capacities, so as to promote, stimulate and exchange thinking in innovation thinking and design.

The end result, is to contribute to exploring emerging and leading practice understanding for integration into an organizations thinking and innovation models.

To this end I have ‘contained’ my service offerings deliberately. These I can sum up this way, as:

Agility’s focus of innovation work (unpaid advert)

• I look to provide leading edge advice on the premise you want to improve your present innovation performance.
• The focus is all about bringing new forms of innovation competency or capability into the world of everyday thinking for clear impact and return on the investments made.
• The result is to deliver a more holistic, understanding of what is required in innovation, unique to each client & their challenges, tailored to their needs to accelerate performance
• These are based on finding solutions for the future, deliberately forward looking to overcome today’s challenges & supporting the future innovative growth, not looking to stay caught in a legacy of past, out of date design.

The pivoting we need in any emerging business model is really hard to do.

I often get caught in the customer segment pivot. You believe you have the solutions to solve real problems within innovation but actually identifying often the ‘hidden’ real customer that this is planned for, then getting them engaged is the hardest part.

As Eric Ries nicely puts it in his lean start up methodology, the hypotheses are confirmed but only partly, until you can find more of those often ‘hidden’ customers within the organizations, that are needing these solutions and applying them.

It does get frustrating when you believe you can make a positive contribution to many organizations, still struggling to articulate, frame and determine their needs and  understanding for innovation.

Applying a selection of solutions to one, does not mean it will be valid to another, as often the context is significantly different. It is a process of reiteration, of understanding the differences and reworking solutions, blending in and capitalizing on the DNA that reflect the uniqueness.

Searching for learning, growth and impact

Hence, well for me, the constant need is for exploring all the different streams of new understanding, these become essential, these become learning milestones and new building blocks.

These can also play mind games on you though, as they can  confuse me at times, on what is offering those real engines of growth, as I adjust to these new learning’s.

Clients have a growing need for ‘leading edge’ not old past ‘best practices’, that are often never really applicable to their circumstances anyway. I much prefer to focus on ’emerging’ practices’ as these tend to be more forward looking.

The growth comes from the need to reflect where the potential challenge is for the client but it also has to be more future-orientated enough to move challenges through to decent lasting solutions. Looking at solutions that are often not working for many others is not the answer.

This changing and building a new business model is no walk in the park, especially when you are in such a crowded competitive market space of consulting and advising on something like innovation as it is constantly evolving.

Actually I’ve found that the catalogue of pivots suggested by Eric Ries I must have somehow worked though most of his suggested pivots. It is no fun this pivoting lark! It often hurts when you want to push thinking and concepts that seem to be highly relevant and needed in the market place, pivoting and adjusting as solutions are nearly all unique.

I know I need more validation, more conversations, more observations to keep the engine humming well. Come on all you hidden innovators searching for a resolution to your current problems and barriers within innovation, show yourselves, I really think I can help!

So in moving forward I’ve been actively revamping my work

Today I have ‘settled’ for two business entities both relating around innovation advisory provision.

www.agilityinnovation.com – “the focus is upon bringing out the new forms of innovation competency or capability into clients work”.

www.hocaconsulting.com – a focus upon the Work to be done that is needed for our future growth and well-being to be derived through innovation activities.

My supporting activities are critically important

I complement these by what I discuss under this blog  www.paul4innovating.com  or have been able to get published on leading innovation sites. I want to explore and build the DNA of innovation as part of this need to understand innovation (my way) and offer a more (comprehensive) picture of what is needed for innovation to work well.

I have even gone off and created a dedicated website which is exclusive to my evolving ‘fitness dynamics for innovation’ as a theory I believe allows us to capture and relate to the capabilities and capacities needed to achieve innovation within each organizations unique ways to pursue innovation. This is under www.innovationfitnessdynamics.com  

To sum up

For me, establishing the ‘new’ often means moving beyond often the already ‘known’, it is to experiment with sometimes the untried, so as to learn, too achieve faster and improving results, too evolve. This needs fresh perspectives and dedicated innovation knowledge. I attempt to provide those insights and guidance in the emerging areas of innovation.

The issue is still the classical one of convincing clients to explore, to experiment and apply some of these, as they really need too get out of specific ‘ruts’. I think far too often innovation as they have designed it or managed it, is failing to deliver on its initial promise.  

Risk is the partner to innovation so I’d argue (as you would expect) that you need to push the existing boundaries a little more.

Yes, I’m aiming for transformational in results, from my own learning to relate into clients’ challenges and problems, yet I’ve often reminded this evolving practice of innovation is equally applying more and more to my own innovation design.

Innovation is an uncomfortable place to be yet it is exciting as it evolves and keeps pushing us towards the future.

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The post Finding our true purpose first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

It is often claimed that the middle manager seems to the ones holding back innovation. I tend to subscribe to this as well although I feel the circumstances and ‘blame’ might lie elsewhere, more than likely further up the organization. Irrespective of where the culpability lies we do need to change this perception through altering the current dynamics.

The general argument goes that the middle manager is so pressured to focus on the delivery of short-term results that all their efforts are centred far more on delivering ‘just’ an effective organization, that drives out any excess or leeway, reduces variation, constantly dampening down potential risk and uncertainty that is in direct conflict with what innovation required.

By the middle managers obsession with constantly chasing efficiencies alone, there is little ‘slack’ for innovation and new learning. Their measurement is often based on this efficiency and effectiveness emphasis and not on generating innovation.

Resources are often in conflict when it comes to innovation. They are being stretched far more, pushed hard on being involved in multiple tasks and with the prevailing mentality to keep their focus on generating the immediate short-term results.

This not only squashes out opportunity to explore, it is actually squeezing the middle managers ability to build a more flexible, responsive organization. Innovation is in direct ‘tension’ with much that is being undertaken at middle management level.

This does result in working towards a well-tuned and efficient operating system but it seems one that is not capable to allow innovation to move from a collection of ad hoc activities into one that builds progressively that more sustaining innovation structure, establishing a deepening set of capabilities that this requires.

Although organizations claim to be innovative often the very people that we are expecting to manage the ‘dynamics of innovation’ within organizations, the Middle Managers, are seeking the very opposite, doing everything possible to keep the environment as stable and consistent as it can be.

They are taking away the ‘vital essences’ that innovation needs – a fluid, agile, open, diverse and flexible environment and putting consistent constraints and barriers in the way in their pursuit of efficiency and predictable effectiveness.

So how can this change? How can we move the needle and tilt it more towards innovation becoming more central without inflicting a more radical overhaul, one that is unlikely to happen in most existing organizations.

Let’s turn the existing core competencies needed for middle managers on their head and offer a new mix of primary, critical and core capabilities that are the measuring point for the MM’s new core competency set that provides for a clearer  innovation focus as essential to master.

1.       Core competences need to be changed – we should flip the requirements

We all recognize that the dedicated middle manager holds the organization together. They are often the glue that connects the organization with the leadership and enable the ‘forces’ to flow, yet do they allow this for innovation?  In traditional Chinese culture qì (also chi or ch’i) is an active principle forming part of any living thing. Qi is frequently translated as “life energy”, “life force”, or the energy flow “and innovation is the same vital need within organizations.

Let’s flip the thinking

• ·         Primary becomes the base not the pinnacle. What they do in efficiency and effectiveness remains as their primary capability – you don’t alter this, it is too engrained. This can only change over time and through their inner awareness and recognition that innovation needs to be embedded, alongside the existing ‘fixation’ on efficiency and effectiveness. Don’t try to radically change, make progressive step changes. Efficiency and effectiveness clearly remains the inventory repertoire of solid capabilities so as you set about to build a new platform, based on innovation, it layers and interlocks

• ·         You target selected critical capabilities to learn and explore. You provide the MM a clarity of the new and emerging critical capabilities they need to build up. These are the capabilities that will provide the greatest impact for competitive advantage, not internal but external in all its orientation.

• ·         At the top of the pyramid is the core capabilities they need to have. This cluster of capabilities is centred on the critical capabilities to make innovation main stream, to be a daily part of their thinking, their make-up, their intent to ensure happens. These differ according to the role, area of focus and contribution.

2.  We need to focus the middle manager on different learning concepts

Peter Senge and his learning organisation concept is helpful in establishing an innovation learning organization. His five main characteristics are system thinking, personal mastery, mental models, a shared vision and team learning. In summary these are:

Systems thinking – the idea would be to introduce a distinct innovation system thinking approach that needs to be in place within their organization. Overtime it will help measure the performance of the organization as a whole, and of its various components, and the organization shifts in the very ground for middle managers has to manage within.

 Personal mastery – the commitment by an individual to the process of learning is known as personal mastery, so it is therefore important to develop a culture where personal mastery is practised in daily life, based on clear innovation capabilities and capacities needed to be practised.

Mental models – the assumptions held by individuals and organizations are called mental models and these are seemingly, stuck more in the efficiency and effectiveness ones at present. To become a learning organization, these models must be challenged.

Shared vision – the creation and constant development of a shared vision on innovation and its place within the organisations activities, to make it a core and so create that essential common identity and sense of purpose. This sharing and identity gives real focus and energy for learning and exploring what ‘makes up’ innovation.

 Team learning – the accumulation of individual learning constitutes the last aspect, into team learning. The value of the middle manager in bringing people and their contributions together is vital, this is done in innovation efficient and effective ways through increasing experimentation and shared learning to explore and understand the aspects that work and can be honed more.

The emphasis in learning needs a more radical shift in encouraging boundary crossing and openness and seeking out a more networked, relationship environment that draws in increasing external perspectives to compliment the internal knowledge already built up.

3. Then we need to work the innovation learning ‘muscles’ through the three learning loops

Reinforcing loops to strengthen the innovation change management  (Peter Senge)

So the middle manager has to begin to think through a new agenda for innovation change and the organization has to ‘fully’ provide the necessary support and structure for them to move towards this (radical) change in their managing within the middle.

The value is the middle becomes our connector for innovation

Middle managers tasks should increasingly become more about performing the role of connectors and facilitators, not the guardians and gatekeepers for the decision makers.  Their work should include the encouragement that everyone is engaged in innovation work, for each person to constantly go back and check against this integrated innovation framework to work out their place to relate to this and become aligned.

The middle manager carries through connection and identification. Making sure everyone has a ‘sight-line’ and identification into their contribution for any organizational innovation framework so they stay well-connected and engaged.

Communication and relationships becomes the key. We need to find that new high ground for middle managers to be seen as the real connectors and enablers and not the current view as more often than not the blockers on innovation.

All we need to do is convince the top they need to provide the Innovation framework for this to work and that can come through the form of the Executive Innovation Work Mat no less.

The post Seeking the middle management’s innovation perspective first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.