Innovation is often being pushed down the organization for others to interpret and offer their answers. This lack of alignment and top leadership engagement is one of the main causes why many organizations seem to just simply ‘limp’ along in their innovation activity.

Then those in leadership positions start expressing their disappointment over final innovation results, yet the answers simply lies more often than not as in their hands to resolve. Top leadership in organizations needs to shape innovation and be more involved in its strategic design.

We need to resolve this innovation leadership gap of misunderstanding. We need to explain what their essential place is and provide the strategic frame to allow it to be understood. Then the contribution for innovation might be ‘allowed’ to deliver far more on its potential as it achieves that greater strategic alignment.
The absolute need is for leadership to lay in the guiding principles for innovation, to make it a more explicit innovation strategy and framework. This then does not stop at this alone, it then requires a consistent re-enforcing through policy-shaping, strategic guidance and the operational documents to support this. Innovation requires ongoing leadership engagement.

As you might already be aware, I have suggested the Senior Executive Innovation Work Mat as a framing document to provide this leadership dialogue for that essential organization engagement. This simply gives a much-needed focus, many of the strategic delivery points, structures and guidance for managing innovation.

A strategic framework to moderate and accelerate meaningful innovation
The framework or work mat moderates innovation and goes much towards reducing the multiple interpretations and the variety of initiatives often described or justified as innovative but significantly missing the strategic mark.

I would argue that most within the organization and those partnering with them, would appreciate a greater understanding of the core concepts, principles and direction that their innovation activity should take.

To understand what is valued, essential to defend, promote and improve. To clarify what is highly strategic to describe and ‘form’ around helps innovation to perform its required task of delivering new growth that aligns with the strategic needs.

By having this work mat approach you can frame a formal set of mechanisms and principles for innovation to rise in quality. For instance in articulating that the selection of high potential concepts is highly valued and prized,  and will certainly get a certain ring-fencing and special dedicated attention, does radically alter the innovation work-to-be-done within any organization.

Equally, many within organizations where innovation is left more ‘open’ do run the risk that there is an over-emphasis on idea generation. By placing the emphasis point further along the innovation value chain that it is the exploring the benefits that flow from ideas, not the ideas alone, can make a significant difference in improving the quality of innovation and reducing the belief that quantity was the important aspect.

If the leadership could provide a more comprehensive innovation framework it would make such a difference. If this could cover the guiding principles, the mechanisms and ways the top leadership views innovation for its contribution to the organization’s strategy, it would certainly offer a clear statement of innovation’s importance.

This view can then ‘cascade’ throughout the organization, searching out its connecting points, proving the essential value, the debates required and facilitating the contributions, so innovation activities can relate far more to achieving the strategic growth goals.

Outlining the strategic principles of the innovation activity is vital.

Any strategic innovation framework needs to move well beyond offering just a set of indicators, it needs a far clearer articulation of what is valued, needed and will be well supported. For example by pushing and encouraging for the delivery of a few big bets shifts thinking radically away from incremental into more breakthrough in designs and concepts.

By offering a set of formal mechanisms for this selection of high potential concepts to be assessed, supported and effectively resourced would make a radical difference for many to make that mental shift in their innovative thinking. It prompts and provides the necessary stimulus.

Today many organizations presently find themselves locked in the innovation incremental trap. Real growth needs a more radical approach from innovation. Incremental innovation often gives a very limited degree of security as others quickly copy or push this just a little bit further, so you are ending up chasing instead of making those leaps that give clear competitive space where that ‘advantage’ can become a sustaining one.

Most of your innovation resources equally become locked within this incremental race, sucking up the innovation energies that should be ‘directed’ elsewhere. It is for the leadership to manage the risks of de-emphasizing that just simply competing within the incremental race is not good enough. They provide the conditions that places a far higher emphasis on seeking out those innovation activities that will simply alter the race, radically.

Signalling a more innovation-orientated organization changes the dynamic forces within.

By having this more strategic and systematic approach does give a clear ‘signal’ that we need to be more of an innovation-orientated organization.

A framework that is offering  the signposts and path finding points in vision, in proving the mechanisms for a whole innovation system transformation, in documentation, by engaging in constant discussions about innovation and its alignment to strategy, you move from ‘aspiration’ into gaining that ‘attraction power.’ You offer a fresh dynamic stock for innovation to feed from.

That would be for many, a strategy that is innovative itself. The frames intent, it’s very nature, is that it promotes excitement, growing identification, the chance to debate and offers that clarification so it can significantly provide the support to the people involved in innovating the ability to execute in a cohesive way their innovation activity.

It provides the framing opportunity for that elusive alignment that is often missing in today’s organizations.

Achieving innovation alignment to strategic goals should be our aim in 2013

If we can achieve this innovation strategic alignment in what we do in 2013, we have significantly advanced innovation’s performance for leading us onto a greater growth track than where we find ourselves at the end of 2102.

Perhaps that place where we are doing the disrupting and not simply reacting to be the ones always being disrupted is not a bad place to go, but it does need leadership and framing.

The post The weak influence of strategy over our innovation activities first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

When it comes to fostering innovation we do get more into the fuzzy part that for many is made up of more the intangibles that covers culture, climate and conditions to innovate. These increasingly make up the environment for innovation.

There is another side of the equation, less fuzzy if you determine its parts well, and that is its governance.

For me, the environment and governance make up the formal and informal part of fostering innovation. I’d like to touch on both here in this blog.

There are clear correlations between having formalized innovation governance and structuring your environment both well and thoughtfully. Then you perhaps don’t need to rely on  miracles

There is, I feel, much to be gained by managing both sides of a formal and informal set of innovation approaches, made of both offering guidance and setting the tone and atmosphere that make up the environment and governance of innovation.

One side is more specified, considered and driving innovation, the other is more articulating, nurturing and encouraging.

The Environment for Innovation
There is always far more written about the culture of innovation than the environment for it. Why is that?

The fostering of the environment to pursue innovation means different things to different people. An innovation environment is made up of creating the atmosphere to encourage and nurture, it needs a vision which totally connects innovation in people’s minds.

It could translate in its meaning for many just being in ‘an amazing place to work’ or it means creating and encouraging new spaces to stimulate different thinking. It might encourage through simply providing the space to stimulate; the generation of ideas, a place that fosters interaction and collaboration.

The environment offers the place and space to chase after those challenges, to be somewhere that inspires, to be pushed and stretched, both in minds and bodies, to achieve new and great innovation.

Changing the environment by encouraging certain attributes does change people’s behaviour and beliefs. In thinking through the environment you wish to achieve, you are just not looking to sow the seeds for the new that is about to happen but to harvest the crop that is often simply residing.

You want the current box to get bigger and  you seek others to push out its sides but in realistic and managed ways, that meet the organizations objectives but give them growing pride and satisfaction.

To achieve this you need to link this and communicate it in ways that resonate, that become the common language of the organization and this also partly comes through the other side, the Governance of Innovation.

This needs thinking through well, articulating and ensuring it is in place, each day on a consistent basis. Getting the right environment in place for innovation needs to be pursued and worked upon at all levels but the leadership must set the tone, the vision and provide the means to achieve this.

The Governance for Innovation
Governance sets out different procedures to capture and translate an array of diverse thinking and interactions, to make innovation effective in providing that right environment.

Establishing a more formal innovation governance structure that deals with issues surrounding funding, balancing short and long-term objectives, seeking alignment and allocating clear responsibilities all can fall under this. It can also be the decision-making point of reference.

Recently there has been a great series on Governance by Jean-Philippe Deschamps, professor of technology and innovation management at IMD Lausanne, Switzerland. the first in a series of articles is here  http://tinyurl.com/d698jd5

Governance is often about struggling to obtain consistency, to balance demands; the environment is about pushing the bounds of stimulating and promoting fresh thinking. This stimulating environment needs its evaluation and how it sets about how ‘it’ fosters interactions and collaboration.

It is the atmosphere and conditions put in place as the environment that seeks to achieve out of the ordinary, great innovation, it is the governance that tries to make this orderly and fitting. This is a constant ‘dance’ and you need the environment and governance to tango to make this happen.

Complexity in Degrees

As innovation increases in complexity, you can get a decrease in the effectiveness of the innovation function. You need to constantly balance between freedom to explore and experiment and achieving accountability and control.

This is the ‘dance’ between managing the environment for allowing innovation to flourish with the guidelines to shape this.

Managing both does take a certain amount of creativity, especially when you are working on those big bets. As you work across functions, across boundaries and sometimes across known, established categories you need that governance to revert too.

If you don’t have clear governance you can quickly poison the atmosphere and create a negative environment.

Within this balance you do need to seek alignment to have available intervention tools but keep checking against innovation ambitions. If you don’t know what the environmental conditions should be and how people should behave and you fail to provide the formal mechanisms you can end up with a unhealthy innovation environment, even though some of the other innovation factors are in place.

The Meeting in the Middle

To orchestrate both a thriving environment for innovation and being able to provide the guidelines of the governance, needs to meet in the middle. The two sides within this equation need to find common cause, a common language, develop the protocols and appropriate communication methods.

Openness and trust fosters innovation and the environment so that can have a consistent flow of internal communications across the organization that promotes. Putting openness and trust into the heart of innovation you encourage and infuse the environment and in so doing, help the governance.

“Working innovation well” needs a focus on relationships so each person can relate to each other and seek other out in a collaborating atmosphere built on trust and openness.  It needs constant information sharing in feedback and more structured ways. It needs clear decision-making, built up around ground rules that are both formal and informal that sets the tone but does not suppress innovation.

Finally, you need innovation leadership effectiveness that encourages certain behaviours, sets the standards and norms and constantly talks about the vision and mission that innovation is set around.

Achieving Balance

Balancing the two sides, of building the environment to promote innovation and the governance to formulate and guide you, enable you to get far closer to successful work execution.

By setting about in constructing the rules, offering guidelines, promoting norms and values, along with encouraging openness and trust you can transform your innovation efforts.

By supporting and promoting certain behaviours and skills that build upon knowing what capabilities and competencies can promote innovation, you do actually get a lot closer to the contextualize of the innovation framework in all these combined efforts.

This more integrated approach gives organizational intent, commitment and growing fit.

To offer both clear boundaries and freedom needs the environment and governance to dance in tandem for great innovation. Are you taking innovation dancing lessons?

The post Two sides of an equation for shaping innovation. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.