I have been struggling for quite some time with innovation’s increasing difficulties in influencing growth and achieving real impact.

I see many comments on the failure of innovation, in its inability to be at the core of an organization’s ambitions for growing and changing. Actually it is a long list of issues and concerns that we so often paper over and don’t fully address. There is a time for making a real change and I feel that could be now by shifting our thinking towards innovation ecosystems.

Let’s reflect first on the constraints or barriers that innovation faces, much self-imposed.

Innovation “fights” to attract resources, to gain management attention or to appreciate fully the difficulties and uncertainties in the time it takes, in its potential risks and its need often for a more ambitious and bold commitment of support and belief.

Our innovation processes stay locked in islands of knowledge, stubbornly not flowing across organizations, informing others and giving the right levels of insights, support, or collaboration needed. Innovation software management continues to be sold piecemeal, so often just bolted onto the other selected parts already in place, not being optimized.

The innovation process is often ignored or constantly adjusted to meet ad hoc requests or external pressures. The approach to innovation is often subject to the whims of the individual, accountability is reduced to a few ‘selected’ KPIs.

Innovation solutions are seen as limited, and the pressures often felt for giving straightforward immediate returns of value are often overriding the sustaining potential with more patience or investments in resources and time. Often innovation activity frustrates senior management. The work undertaken is often seen as a drain, not repeatable, and poor on the efficient definition of understanding we have in place today as the work undertaken, not yielding the returns if the concept is more radical due to time horizons or business model constraints..

The knowledge captured often doesn’t have integrating capabilities with other core enabling processes or is not seen as a building block to greater value. Innovation knowledge often simply dies or moves away with the person that gained from the time they spent focusing exclusively on innovation

We have the need to re-think innovation, we need a new level of innovation integration and optimization.

What we see increasingly is “innovation ecosystems.” Is this the potential answer to overcoming and giving innovation that chance to be more central to the core of the business? These are being built increasingly on digital platforms that seek to offer the technical and organisational context and knowledge, so a community of innovators or solution solvers can build out a wider community and begin to interact on a more shared purpose of common understanding.

For me, ecosystem thinking and design are accelerating mutual learning, and through this innovation, outcome potential for sharing and knowledge building. As we build an understanding of the power of digital platforms and ecosystem thinking, we can see gains and new values and realize different opportunities denied to us in the past by a lack of clarity, depth of understanding of what was in front of us but not appreciated, as we were looking at it differently and not seeing its potential in a combined value or bundling.

Firstly, we need to ask, “Why change the innovation narrative?“

Organizations today are no different from the past; they seek fresh growth and establish new competitive positions. The difference is the straight jacket they often “wore.” constrained them.

Today we live in a more connected world, technology has enabled this. We are becoming far more networked and have a growing awareness of hyper challenges that we are part of resolving and blurring boundaries across market positions, competitors and global trade. We are in a more complex world needing different approaches within business organizations.

We hold the promise of liberating potential in resolving wicked problems and opportunities, providing we embrace the potential to combine and share outside our organization and tap into the rich diversity of knowledge, equally keen to collaborate and cooperate to achieve a more cross-cutting innovation that provides solutions to these more complex problems.

The need for digital platforms and ecosystem designs has grown to achieve this collaborative environment. The ability to evolve enterprise capabilities is evaluating value webs, and artificial intelligence, pushing the need to reshape structures to be more outwardly facing, open to receiving new knowledge and prepared to share and exchange in return.

We are shifting critical capabilities that are growing the agility to trial, pilot and learn quickly as information flows in. We are achieving a faster adaptation and exploring mentality. The ability to combine data, and human knowledge is revealing this new collaborative potential and a new set of competitive opportunities.

The increased ability to deploy, activate and utilize resources and assets requires these digital platforms to constantly exploit latent potential through the network and relationship engagements that engage in mutual pursuit.

To achieve this, we do need a better conceptual innovation framework, this innovation ecosystem one.

What is needed is something more radical and cohesive than we presently have. Let’s call it a “co-evolutionary dynamic ecosystem.” It moves from systems to ecosystems of innovation activity. It is knowledge-based and well-grounded.

It needs much of what we have been arguing for over many years. Clear strategy leadership, a different organisational culture but with an emphasis more on partner engagement.

Organizations need to be well-equipped in supporting knowledge, data, insights and people in their data handling, its management, analysis sharing and processing.

To achieve this evolution, which has been called for over many years, is to facilitate and allow innovation to thrive and work. This means we do finally need to address controls, and provide different structures and emphasis by re-orienting at faster rates of learning on the reliance on the technical aspects.

Seeing the end result

The end result needs to be robust, dynamic and holistic in its dimensions, it has to be systematically designed and implemented, knowledge-driven by events and process design, and driven by dynamic interactions.

This call for a different end result does require this profound shift in the business landscape. Ecosystems and platforms become the core of any design. Ecosystems fundamentally challenge the way we currently are doing things (in isolated actions) and rearrange the way innovation is being managed today. It cannot work through stand-alone systems or software components it needs “digital platforms that offer the technical and organizational context soi a community can interact for a shared purpose” (adapted from Yochai Benkler)

It relies increasingly on a network of interconnected organizations organized around one or a few valuable focal points, firms that can contribute and on a shared platform that offers both producers of value but constantly engages with user-side participants helping to shape, offer and provide insights and criticism on what they see as value to them.

It is in this ecosystem design that organizations can act differently on strategies, business models, leadership commitment and encouragement, building out different capabilities to build collectively new value creation, breaking down previously complex or challenging problems by having in place capturing systems and organizational models that reflect a common ecosystem design thinking.

It is this recognition that today, innovation rarely succeeds in isolation to achieve real, lasting impact but needs this growing dependent type of complementary innovation that ecosystem design provides.

Any new narrative has many parts of a story to tell.

Those willing to listen and recognize a story that needs to be built out that they can identify with. My work over the past few years is gaining the experience and insights to attempt to tell this story of needed change.

I often speak of my innovation journey; I sometimes call myself the innovation journeyman. I recently wrote a post “innovation passion led me here“

My personal energy is drawn from all the challenges we face, looking to help find solutions.

We must promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for innovating purposes, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.

Transitions towards (real) innovation ecosystems

It is all about the translation points in innovation guidance and finding the time to engage with the external catalyst of innovation understanding. That is my place.

Relating and understanding the potential in adopting an innovation ecosystem design and thinking can potentially offer an exponential return to you, your team and your organization’s innovation activity. That is, of course, if you have the desire to build your innovation capabilities in new ways that are more based on “innovation ecosystems”.

For that, I need to change your innovation narrative. Have you the time? Contact me

The post Please, we need a different Innovation narrative first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

So many multiple strands constantly need to be pulled together to build a complete innovation picture.

We need to build theories, explore multiple connections, and build continuously on the patterns, the signals, and the interactions by extracting from all the different ‘cells’ of knowledge we all possess, which makes the application of innovation often highly unique to each of us.

Innovation ‘speaks to us all in different ways and has multiple meanings.

Then, when we grasp what we understand, we have to translate these thoughts into practical, workable solutions. By sharing, you learn and continue to build on this knowledge. You actually blend your own creation and learn from others, and that combination effect curates even greater knowledge and application.

To build a comprehensive view of any innovation built in a digital world needs is bringing together multiple strands of understanding, and that is tough, demanding and time-consuming.

Innovation needs to speak to us.

Innovation speaks to us in different ways and has multiple meanings, but it is the best pathway to any transition needed.

We can jump in and learn from experiments and straightforward learning, burning up our precious time and resource but can produce unexpected outcomes that translate into new and existing innovations. Or, we can step back just a little and try to absorb an understanding of innovation that builds our capability, capacity, and competence to innovate and try to piece together patterns and synergies.

I have always needed to share my journey.

I want to share my journey, its different experiences, and understanding points. From these “collective” thoughts, you might gain additional insight or understanding.

I hope what I write and offer my thoughts helps the reader to” connect innovation ” to make it powerful and personal. Innovation impacts new thinking, ideas, concepts, and ways to present something new.

The strands that give me my personal energy and passion lie in work around agility, energy, and digital transformations, the work-still-to-be-done, often termed the future of work, the need for us to promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for purpose.

I like to think of myself as an innovation journeyman.

I simply enjoy innovation in all its forms. I got ‘hooked’ twenty-plus years ago and since then have increasingly focused on innovation until it is the dominating force within my business thinking.

Today, the need to be highly adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times. It is not just seizing the day; it is spotting and seizing, exploring and exploiting opportunities and recognizing the need for constant renewal.

The fear of the unknown

This fear of the unknown and constant blocker of “not been tested in our environment” has significantly inhibited innovation adoption over the years. Equally, the nature of much of production has been designed “on the fly”, and the equally demanding job of connecting the whole process up in a new integrated, fully connected system meets enormous resistance.

Legacy systems plague the ability to break out of our present traps of silos. We are still struggling to solve these issues, machine by machine, process by process, incompatible software and hardware, piece by piece.

No magic bullets in innovation work

There is no one “magic” reference point,  simply one book to refer to, or certainly one visual that solves our needs.

We need to go on our personal innovation journey, one that is not constantly looking back in the rear-view mirror but taking a future forecasting approach. One that projects out in new, exciting, and different ways. To add new value, provide a more significant impact and make a difference in a world where we need to utilize finite resources and build on what we already have.

We need to be open and seek out and build our personal networks and relationships to support but equally gain from any interactions. Leveraging the available network and relationship effects can yield some exciting insights and concepts.

A journey that generates projects out of new, exciting, and different ways of discovery. We need to be open and seek out and build our personal networks and relationships to support but equally gain from any interactions.

My personal energy is drawn from all the challenges we face, looking to help find solutions.

We need to promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for purpose, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.

I suggested in this post that If you don’t have time, how can you learn?

It is all about the translation points in innovation guidance and finding the time to engage with the external catalyst of innovation understanding. That is my place. It can potentially offer an exponential return to you, your team and your organization’s innovation activity if you have the desire to build your innovation capabilities.

carpe-diem

It is not just seizing the day; it is spotting and sizing up concepts, exploring and exploiting opportunities and recognizing the need for constant renewal.

We all must appreciate a valuable pathway to building a more sustainable future by putting technology to a good purpose. It is innovation and the people involved that enable that.

My passion, desire and hope are that I can contribute and provide others with fresh insights and some great value from these collective thoughts. The passion still burns as innovation offers us the pathway to a new future.

The post Innovation Passion led me here first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have been asking myself how a combined effect of innovation and ecosystem design thinking will support the energy transition we are undertaking to give it additional traction and generation.

Let me share my thoughts and proposition here.

The vital “infusion” of innovation in thinking, approaching and building this into the front end of any energy transition provides a greater discovery structure and process that can greatly facilitate the changes, with more informed knowledge, insights and validation of a path to travel.

Finding fresh ideas and momentum

The energy transition needs a broad array of thinking; specialists, generalists, enthusiasts and passionate people that can move beyond their own view offering a “non-ideological confrontation” where solutions are both sustainable and accelerate a path to decarbonization and net-zero without any legacy or vested interest effect.

This innovator capacity that is needed to be ‘enforced’ requires greater insights and understanding of the alternatives, options, issues, and challenges.

There is a substantial role for me to play, I feel.

This is why I feel my multiplier approach offers a framework to help work this complexity through the energy transition in a supportive, systematic way; the combination gives momentum, traction and fresh energy.

For me, applying the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation accelerates the understanding of where the potential growth and impact points of a new business opportunity can occur.

As stated, my positioning is at the front end of the Energy Transition, building insights through the “eyes” of the strategic innovator.

I see the front end of energy as the critical feeding-in point for the energy transition. So what does this mean exactly?

• I provide evaluations and assessments of the front end of a transformation in discovery and validation that build understanding and fresh thinking.
• I offer advisory and supporting services in knowledge and insights provision on energy-related matters.
• I break my business out into dedicated focal topics in “big transforming” points of impact, applying understanding and insights that are, in my mind, complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections for growth potential that have impact and growth potential.
• The combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach supports the acceleration of the energy transition
• The combination capitalizes on the value points of data assets combined with knowledge insights and business-building experience. I believe it can offer a very different multiplier effect to idea generation and momentum building.

Explore Innovating the Energy Transition

Offering a given value in the proposition

I want to advance further what organizations or individuals responsible for leading the energy transition require to support and develop a more significant innovation and transformation understanding of energy transition options. To support them and build new competencies, clients achieve positive and sustaining results from these activities around the energy transition they intend to undertake.

The insights delivered aim to offer a unique view leading to a more balanced perspective, fresh inspiration and real alternatives to investigate and explore energy transitions.

Building a better discovery and validation portfolio

Extracting knowledge and applying application and practice gives clients the beginning of the “discovery and validation phase”, accelerating the client’s growth options in more structured ways, what is evolving and what impact and growth opportunities are on a business by taking the innovator’s perspective into assessing the need for a client’s energy transition.

By drawing on the external perspective, there is a significant saving in the amount of time in early resource investment. These insights and recommendations provide the triggering points for seeing fresh growth opportunities.

Does that make sense? It does to me but maybe I am a little biased here!

The post Gaining energy and idea generation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Today’s call is for more ‘search, scope, speed, stretch and scale’ irrespective of the challenge being worked upon. These are essential steps in any transformation work, in any innovation undertaken to take discovery through to commercialisation.

Applying the innovation lense to the energy transition requires a significant need for innovation in all it does to undertake the transformation needed. It needs to apply these five steps within any innovation thinking.

The five aspects of search, scope, speed, stretch and scale are highly relevant to the success of any innovation introduction.

So we need to think through the five essential needs within innovation when applying innovative thinking to the Energy Transition, a growing focal point of my work.

Firstly, we need to go through many essential steps to search for all the possibilities and triggers needed for sparking new ideas and concepts.

Secondly, we then need to scope the challenge or concept out and understand and appreciate what this might mean.

Thirdly any innovation needs the constant element of speed, partly to be first to market but recognizing that the freshness of the idea has a premium that needs this focused effort.

To me, the fourth one of Stretch is often not recognized as well as it should be.  We need to recognize stretch happens constantly, ideas stretch the thinking, resources need to create a stretched tension to generate the required energy and commitment, and as we think through a concept, we can begin to stretch it, either out of its original shape (intent) or
“push it” even further in its value or impact.

My fifth one is scale. To take any concept from a pilot or lab into a demonstration, validation and full commercialisation need to consider all aspects of scaling. In many ways, so many of our innovative ideas fail to scale or become constrained as a concept cannot move from this “great idea” into a product or service delivered at an economic level to make it commercially viable and provide a return on what has been invested.

The energy transition requires a significant need for innovation in all it does to undertake the transformation needed.

In my previous two posts, “I aim to put more innovation into the front end of Energy” and “My multipliers for innovation at the front end of energy”  I introduce where I believe my fit of innovation understanding can combine with the Energy Transition we are all undertaking.

The five aspects of search, scope, speed, stretch and scale are highly relevant to the success of any innovation introduction.

We are always in a constant need to answer questions that are hard without access to external insight and knowledge:

– The demand today of our innovation process is for a ‘faster and leaner’ approach, but we are still having so many difficulties executing this “learner thinking” really well- a speed of execution becomes essential.

– How can we accelerate, stimulate and coordinate within an increasingly complex environment? The discovery and validation stage becomes vital, and to get there, we need to search, relate and see new possibilities.

– Any innovation needs to be built on a structured, systematic process it needs clarity of direction and purpose- the vision, mission and purpose understanding. It needs a good scoping out that all involved can relate to the concept and gain their identification.

– What helps sequencing investigation and implementation of our innovations? A constant “mapping back” often facilitates progress and validates, even updates this scoping step.

– Where do you apply appropriate diagnostics to identify and fix ‘troubled’ spots? The building of capability, capacity and competency needs a depth of response understanding. They need scaling out and stretching.

– How do we apply and adopt different growth methodologies and practices across a diverse business? Often it is the channelling back into the foundation knowledge and insights that bring common purpose and understanding, it is this mutually building upon advances all those involved in their understanding stretches the thinking.

– What limits ‘scaling’ and what needs changing to allow this to work in different situations? Often if something has not been well (re) searched, and scoped or stretched it remains in pilot and not capable of scaling.

– What gives more ‘stretch’ for the investments we make, where will these come from? Knowing the limitations pushes boundaries.

– We stretch the minds to push something existing into something new in design, different materials, or a totally different experience previously unknown or yet to be conceived.-Establishing the new often means moving beyond experimenting with the untried, which needs constant challenging. Never be afraid to challenge the scope, innovation is a discovery process that evolves as you progress.

-We need to be always aware that there are often limitations in one aspect of any innovative concept that can radically be altered through discovery and validation.

-As we search, stretch and seek out avenues towards scale, concepts often need major overhaul and rethinking; they benefit from a new fresh set of insightful value.- Having different and fresh perspectives that are constantly intervening and improving can help in any validation. We need to seek these out.

The outsider offers a very different perspective

Can we help you think and work these “S” steps to resolve those tough questions organizations are seeking answers to? Innovation is vital to the discovery and validation process in the Energy Transition. As we adapt to a new way of thinking and understanding, we stretch our understanding and ‘advance’ in new ways.

It is often the outside perspective, where a different set of insights and knowledge combine with the internal outlook opens up the vista to new ideas. We need to consider this outside perspective in any scoping.

The need for search, scope, speed, stretch and scale have a vital role in any innovation journey, ones that push at the edges of discovery, validation and transformation.

Where else do these five essential aspects of innovation come into play?

The post The essential five sense-making steps in any innovative transition first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Following my last post, “I aim to put more innovation into the front end of Energy“, I want to outline why I am focusing increasingly on this front end of the energy transition (FEE) within my innovation work.

For me, it is the ability to apply the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation that accelerates the understanding of where the potential growth and impact points of a new business opportunity can occur.

Today, we are all trying to piece together the Energy Transition.

The claim is that there are solutions abound to move us towards the Energy Transition we all need of clean, reliable, energy built upon renewables, but I honestly don’t share that current optimism; we actuaölly have an awfully long way to go in discovery, application and adoption.

In my view, we are struggling to get the level of momentum we urgently need into this energy shift, away from fossil fuels into a renewable, clean energy system.

I content it is not just the need to have the engineer’s insight into solutions, even if they might be the final arbitrators “go-to choice.” Still, it is to forge a strategic one, evaluating innovative options to broaden understanding and provide that essential and different perspective.

We all have a certain bias, often beliefs are well-grounded in past experience and approaches that WERE successful. Any transition is exactly that, it needs a clear recognition that what was often successful in the past is not the pathway to the future.

The energy transition needs a broad array of thinking; specialists, generalists, enthusiasts and passionate people that can move beyond their own view offering a “non-ideological confrontation” where solutions are both sustainable and accelerate a path to decarbonization and net-zero without any legacy or vested interest effect.

This innovator capacity that is needed to be ‘enforced’ requires greater insights and understanding of the alternatives, options, issues, and challenges. This is why I feel my multiplier approach offers a framework to help work this complexity through the energy transition in a supportive, systematic way.

As stated, my positioning is at the front end of the Energy Transition, building insights through the “eyes” of the strategic innovator.

• I provide evaluations and assessments of the front end of a transformation in discovery and validation that provide dedicated advisory and supporting services in knowledge and insights provision on energy-related matters.
• I break my business out into dedicated focal topics in “big transforming” points of impact, applying understanding and insights that are in my mind complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections for growth potential that have impact and growth potential.
• The combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach has ‘arrived’ capitalizing on the value points of digitalisation combining with technology, both in the Industrial IoT world and finding a growing place and pace in the Energy Transition that is having, in my view, a very different combination effect.

Offering a given value in the proposition

• The aim is to support the individual, teams, and organisations in their innovation and transition activity around the energy transition they intend to undertake.
• The aim is to advance further what they have in place or develop more significant innovation and transformation understanding and competencies, resulting in clients achieving positive and sustaining results from these transformation activities.
• The value for the client, so often time-starved, is that they can rapidly understand the latest thinking relevant to their focus areas, in thoughts, and insights around innovation, ecosystem building, or how the energy transition impacts them to identify new growth options or radically different stances in business positioning in the future.

The return on the investments made.

• The insights delivered offer a radically different view leading to a more balanced perspective, drawing in the external perspective, saving a significant amount of time in early resource investment. These insights and recommendations provide the triggering points for seeing fresh opportunities in growth.
• This fresh focus enables a more substantial client resource focusing on highly relevant aspects of building out and validating their future interest and value in new business options and energy design solutions.
• The value of applying this approach is by having access to a  greater depth of research and alternative understanding.
• Extracting knowledge, applying application and practice, gives clients the beginning of the “discovery and validation phase”, accelerating the client’s growth options in more structured ways.

Seeking problem resolution through discoveries.

• Through my depth of research across the needs of the energy, transitions it underpins and supports the changing understanding that is necessary.
• I provide insights and knowledge to clarify and quantify answers to many issues that lead to growing awareness and clarification on multiple energy-related issues. If I can’t provide the answers then I seek out the expert opinions that can.
• This focused research is associated with innovation, ecosystems, and our energy systems and the changing landscapes that transform and energise the existing everyday business into future ones that scope, speed a and scale the transition required.

My role is at this front end of discovery and early validation

• These insights significantly underpin my supportive advisory & mentoring services to a client. This dynamic environment nurtures my understanding of what is evolving and what impact and growth opportunities on a business by taking the innovators perspective into the assessment of the need of a clients energy transition
• My primary role is advising and coaching within these areas. The principal focuses then is to help support and build internal capacity, competencies, and capabilities to undertake any transformation journey.

Recognizing the value within the knowledge service provider

So my role, through this work, is to build the context and provide the content in useful knowledge and actionable insights. These provide the building blocks of the transition narrative to galvanise and achieve a common understanding of the Energy Transition being undertaken.

Then to support and help bridge the gaps in capacity, competency and capability recognition of the needs of having the innovators mindset, to get the Energy Transition journey onto a stronger momentum pathway of common understanding and realization of the tasks and issues to tackle.

Aspects of my knowledge and thinking through focus

I am a fairly enthusiastic researcher and writer that supports my work as a transition advocate for innovation, ecosystems and sustainability, specifically focusing on the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and energy systems that are radically changing our world.

A different combination effect- my multiplier framework

I see a combined effect of innovation, ecosystem design thinking, IIOT and energy as my work-to-be-done through different channels and services to stimulate and catalyse the energy transition we are all undertaking.

The vital “infusion” of innovation in thinking, approach and building this into the front end of energy provides a greater discovery structure and process that can greatly facilitate the changes, with more informed knowledge, insights and validation of a path to travel.

If you would like to delve into this further then go to innovating4energy.website for more details.

*** FYI-  I discuss and investigate about #energy, #ecosystems, #industry4.0, #innovation, and #sustainability. My dedicted posting and website references, if you are interested, are shown in the about section

The post My multipliers for innovation at the Front End of Energy first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.