Today most executives seem to be time-starved. They are constantly reacting to daily events, to fix upon the focusing and fixing of short-term performance. This applies to the top executive down to the most junior. The sheer difficulty of having most, if not all of your colleagues working remotely is making it so much harder. Keeping the business simply going is hard, demanding work. What time is there left to think beyond the present?

How can you keep the engagement, how can you find an environment that is creative, stimulating and allows for innovation? Juggling so many crisis events in different ways is exhausting.

Who is encouraging your pause button to go on as we lose more of those relaxing moments to top up our stimulations, as we all continue to isolate, with our lack of socializing, travelling, being in each others company continues to leaves us so devoid of real human interactions, apart from countless Zoom, Skype, or Team meetings? We need to replace this “void” with better thinking time to re-stimulate our curiosity and logic senses.

It just seems to me they simply don’t have this luxury to think.

Technology is rapidly taking over this thinking role, we increasingly rely on searches to at least begin our thinking. Humans are becoming the 2nd class citizen for thinking.

We are getting increasingly unobservant unless it is coming from the screen in front of us. More of our information is coming to us in predictable and narrow ways, we are being cut off from alternatives.

We are being deluged by social media that constantly become smarter on your clicks to give you the information to help you in your daily lives. We are numbing our own instincts and relying on others. We are losing the world of “personal physical experience”, our own journey of being curious and replacing this with a “junkies” fix of being reliant on others to entertain us.

Sitting back simply becoming increasingly remote observers is not helping us too really think, we often are simply not connecting the dots, we are chasing the moving dots or just moving from one dot to another and never thinking about connecting them up.

We should think more about the gaps, the issues, and most importantly for us, the implications. The more we react and don’t think things through and apply them to our situation, our context, our situation, the more we are more than likely going to foul up somewhere along the way. Equally, the more you fail to project something into a situation you have observed, the more you ignore the opportunity for change or at least challenging a situation.

This time-starved environment has real implications for innovation.

If we don’t sit down and think through issues and implications of our present performance around innovation, how can we close the gaps and improve it? We just simply don’t seem to have a more systematic, connected roadmap within our thinking that points the way to the improving longer-term as we keep doing this ‘reacting’ only.

We have such a limited amount of time to pause, evaluate, or redesign. We equally don’t feel capable to simply assign this over, even to outsiders to help. We are far too challenged and driven, often far to inbreed into thinking “our solutions can only be the only solutions to our problems”.

Often I am caught in finding better solutions to this trap. As an external consultant or advisor, I see a mistake, upon mistake happening. It is not from a lack of trying or a lack of working within the abilities or situation, it is often that lack of alternatives that might be considered. We simply cannot get a different message through, those “in charge” press on regardless.

Tell me, does it really need to be like this?

Often there is no time for thoughtful analysis, a depth of thinking, a platform of knowledge and connectors to bounce this off. Yet there is a growing need to discuss this, the risk of wrongly innovating, of dealing with increased failures all seems to call for solutions to help but where? Where do I quickly go to gain some innovation knowledge or insight, as I simply have no time to sift through it all.

We are losing sight of time, a time where we stop talking, wanting to search for latest events, follow the latest trends, watch something on tik tok or youtube. We need to stop, switch off the distractions and simply learn how to think. To piece different strands of thinking together in new ways and understanding the implications of that. Instead, we push this thinking aside to go back and listen or read about the latest “breaking news”.

If we continue this way, human innovation will be dead in years to come. We will just sit back, explore the artificial intelligence sources we have and never be able to filter out the possible and not possible without the aid of technology as we will have lost our own skills and ability to observe the world, as our experiences get increasingly shut down, to what we are “feed”.

We are often faced with the death of a thousand cuts.

Often that precious lack of dedicated time to investigate, to question, to deepen understanding, simply to relate too and interpret innovation is a key missing ingredient. This is where the external perspective can fill critical gaps; it can become the extra resource, that runs in parallel.

I believe it is the time where the value of external, dedicated innovation thinking has a place within the time-starved innovators thinking, it might help provide more comprehensive delivery of innovation understanding and plugging individual gaps by delivering thinking that bridges many of those current gaps I seem to find. This comes from building up our own experiences, learning from our own failures and getting knocked back and most of all our abilities to create, build and influence others with innovations that are different, creative and have a positive impact on what we have.

Is there space for an “innovation thinking guru?” I believe so, do you? If so…………hello, invest some of your time in (quality) thinking time?

The post No thinking time left- help first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Last week, Siemens had a really valuable virtual event called their “Digital Enterprise SPS Dialog“. Those that missed it you can watch previous sessions on-demand at any time via “Recordings”. They provided an outstanding virtual showroom packed full of innovations, product presentations and use cases are exhibited in an exciting real 3D environment. The platform and all on-demand assets will be available until January 29th 2021.

The “Digital Enterprise SPS Dialog” had 56 3d-exhibits in 12 topic areas, more than 130 product presentations, 3 real factory showcases with 21 stage presentations involving over 38 speakers. By registering you can view “on-demand” selectively or watch the whole event, explore the showrooms and simply learn, evaluate and assess what these concepts would mean for you in your own Industry 4.0 journey, to a more highly automated and connected environment.

I said it at the time, and I repeat it: “The event was, for me, the best virtual event of this very strange and weird year we have all been caught up in“. For Siemens, they also commented this was quite a milestone to be achieved in the field of virtual events. It delivered a lot. My initial post “Siemens SPS Dialog.” might be worth also picking up upon.

By being virtual, the insights provided has advanced my understanding of what is being offered in Siemens Digital solutions significantly and would give any clients a terrific understanding of Siemens combined physical and digital offerings.

An event showcasing critical aspects of the factory of the future

It opened my eyes to the changes within factories that are being currently undergone to get to the factory of the future. I have been learning what has happened in the past 12 months to change our perception of Manufacturing and the factories we need in the future.

Siemens has been focusing on building their ecosystems consistently for years, and this exceptional focus on the connection needs to successfully deliver Industry 4.0 has been central in their Digital Enterprise solutions, consistently offering the solutions for making all things (IIoT) both digital and in the physical, building out on additive manufacturing, motion controls, artificial intelligence, flexible autonomous as well as their more known aspects of Siemens digital offerings of industrial IT as a service with Siemens Mindsphere, the role the Digital Twins are playing in designing, exploring and extending the physical world.

What comes across in the event by Siemens was how significantly the future of production is undergoing an extreme transformation in its combined physical and digital offering. Let’s take four.

• When we reflect on the recent events of the last twelve months, this has been highly disruptive but those industrial companies that had already started their Industry 4.0 journey were in such a better shape to step up to the challenge, they kept production running but is highly adaptable ways. This is where Siemens comes in in the solutions to allow this highly automated, flexible, digitally connected environment to work at all times.
• When we reflect on the remote work, rapid response and agility have all been tested in recent months. The factory that had digitalization and autonomy at its core made astonishing adjustments to its ability to be flexible and even “ramp up” or speedily adjust its production to demands that were unpredictable and requiring immediate decision making. The learning from these last nine to twelve months has been astonishing.
• The shifts from the predictable to managing in (total) uncertainty required a factory of significant flexibility in design understanding, digitally prepared and physically able to be reconfigured.
• The pressures have grown, shorter cycle runs are becoming more normal and necessary. Not just because of the rapidly changing customer demand but as past established supply chains have been disrupted or dramatically altered to adjust to different global circumstances, the shift has become one of production is entirely customer-focused.

Factories are undergoing massive change.

Sequential production has given way to a more autonomous manufacturing approach that has agility at its core. The system is becoming more based on modular, autonomous machines that continuously optimize themselves and operate extremely flexibly and efficiently.

These autonomous, decoupled manufacturing units quickly form new assembly cells and can produce constantly varying products without repeated manual engineering. Each machine is assigned skills based on the product ordered.

The manufacturing steps are engineered by an Autonomous Factory- the factory design of of the future

An AI-based system that performs a producibility check that determines whether all the necessary skills for manufacturing
the product are available in the factory. The requisite production steps are then combined in an optimal sequence, fully automatically and without reprogramming.

Artificial intelligence as the foundation of production. Autonomy in production is made possible by digitalization. Based on a digital twin of the product to be manufactured, AI algorithms enable the system to detect product variants, check material availability, and plan the steps necessary for manufacturing the product. AI also enables sensors and actuators to perform human-like actions like identifying parts and positions for gripping an object.

Production as a whole also makes its own decisions and organizes itself. Many assembly steps can be performed in any order. A central, AI-based system ensures the highest possible output and monitors optimal utilization and compliance with delivery deadlines. The system always knows the status of production at every workstation down to the smallest detail.

The Siemens “Digital Enterprise SPS Dialog” gives massive insights into what is currently being undertaken to connect factories and offer leading-edge solutions. To deliver Industry 4.0 gets a good reality check at this event of why Siemens are regarded as leaders in this evolution across all industries.

The ultimate goal is end-to-end consistency as the foundation of digitalization and physical being combined.

To quote from Siemens literature here:

“A big part of the needs of today’s factory environment is “Totally Integrated Automation (TIA)”. The world’s leading automation concept provides absolute end-to-end consistency in three dimensions.TIA enables seamless interaction between all automation components, the software involved, and higher-level systems and services Integration”

This capability is ensured by consistent data management, worldwide standards, uniform interfaces, and openness – from the field level to the company management level.

Siemens role is to lead tomorrow’s technologies by integrating all the parts today, step-by-step, for a secure investment and end-to-end capability.

This SPS Dialog provided significant insight into what is possible. To be at the cutting edge of so much innovation in product and digital solutions must be an exciting time. I got a (massive) dose of that Siemens Energy from this event. Take a little time to find out yourself is my recommendation.

A product brochure to support this event showcasing the innovations discussed and presented by Digital Enterprise at this event is available here. Here you can recap innovations, new products and exhibition highlights from #SPSDialog at a glance in this 56-page brochure about #simulation with #TIAPortal, #Mindsphere, #cloud connectivity of PLCs and much more.https://sie.ag/32RT3s8

For me, they got me hooked in so many of the sessions. Within my business, I attempt to combine Innovation, Ecosystems, IIoT and Energy as my core focus. An event like this one that compresses so much gave me such a lot of value into accelerating my own understanding of all that is ticking away under the Siemens Digital Enterprise bonnet.

The post Building our understanding of the factory of the future first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation. Atos employees 110,000 across 73 countries with annual revenue of Euro 12 billion.

Atos holds the number one position in European advisory companies in Cloud, Cybersecurity and high-performance computing that provides end-to-end solutions to Orchestrate a wide array of Digital Solutions.

Why do I single out Atos for a post? There are several good reasons:

Firstly, I like its stated purpose “to help design the future of the information space” and Atos looks to contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence.

Secondly, I have worked with, often exchanged views and shared from the work that a wonderfully knowledgeable person so often provides on such a diversity of subjects. I do recommend you should certainly follow Antonio Vieria Santos (@AkwyZ) who works within Atos in a roving, supportive role building community knowledge. We presently meet and participate in the Siemens #SIEx community together, and each time I find the opportunity to talk with him, I learn from him. He is a great teacher to engage with and passionate about diversity in opinion and knowledge sharing.

Thirdly, Atos has recently been ranked number 1 in sustainability performance within the IT services sector for the second year running, and they continue to push social responsibility, and this brings me to why I am writing this post.

Atos has made a significant commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emission for themselves by 2035, as have many others. Still, it is the leveraging of this sustainability journey of their clients towards decarbonization, security and digital inclusion that attracts me in a core purpose and need, that for me, makes for further investigation.

This commitment drew me in to investigate further.

I spent some time taking a deeper look at Atos and its positioning in the decarbonized digital services through its sustainability consulting capabilities. Atos recently completed the acquisition of EcoAct, a climate strategy consulting firm with a team of 160 climate experts. This acquisition further shapes a global Decarbonization Excellent Center to offer comprehensive delivery capabilities for clients and their climate ambitions.

My fourth reason came from my investigations and shared focus.

Fourthly Atos is looking to develop digital solutions to support decarbonization. They rightly state it becomes an important aspect is to challenge the existing and find new innovative ways to solve decarbonization issues across many tough areas. Atos decided this year on an IT challenge seeking out to develop digital solutions that will support multiple decarbonization initiatives to help companies and society as a whole tackle climate change.

I relate strongly to this as the #EnergyTransition is a core focus area for me, and I devote a significant part of my time researching, exploring and explaining this transition. If you are interested, go over to my dedicated posting site of www.innovating4energy.com – a transition in all of our lives. Increasingly our “collective” focus will be on this overarching need to decarbonize the planet.

My own views on the themes for Decarbonizing has been set in my agenda setting post if you care to read it.

Atos offers its first international student competition dedicated to technological innovation.

I really hope this is well supported, the challenge is vitally important to continue to accelerate the energy transition we are all undergoing. This is their first international student competition dedicated to technological innovation. Let me outline this here: Technological innovation to achieve decarbonization is vital.

The challenge closed for entry on 29th November 2020, so registration please go here

Background and challenge

The Paris Agreement sets out a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases, particularly Carbon Dioxide. This is especially true in the area of energy production and usage; by increasing the share of low-carbon energy sources, especially renewables, with a corresponding reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

They are asking students to develop a functioning application, mobile app, service or simulation to support industry, commerce or individuals in the drive for decarbonization. They are looking for interesting applications that could have immediate and impactful real-world applicability.

• In power generation and demand, how can we support a shift to nuclear, hydro, biofuels, geothermal, solar, wind and tidal forms of generation?
• In the area of power use and efficiency, perhaps local power generation, distribution, storage and community schemes can be investigated?
• In the production of steel and cement, which produces large emissions, are there ways that digital solutions can reduce or optimize the use of these materials?
• In agriculture and farming, we need to solve the large volumes of methane release. The use of inorganic fertilizers releases methane into the atmosphere. Additionally, livestock farming (particularly cattle) produces large volumes of methane. Can we reduce these emissions, or use digital technologies to make better use of waste methane?
• How can digital technology help to prevent the destruction of rainforests or aid in the recovery of deforested areas?
• In transport, how can digital technology support a shift from fossil fuels to electricity or hydrogen, maximise the use of public transport, car-sharing and rental schemes? Can this be extended to shipping or air travel?
• Can digital solutions aid the distribution and delivery networks supporting increased online product and grocery shopping, especially now that we’re living in a world so impacted by coronavirus?

The 2021 winning team will receive €10,000 to help them bring their app to the market and the two finalists respectively €5,000 and €3,000. Also The IT Challenge organizing committee will offer to all the members of the winning team and the two finalist teams the possibility of applying for an IT Challenge-fast track internship to work within Atos on subject areas relating to their projects.

You can follow the competition on Twitter at @atositchallenge

Finally a useful link to more on the competition: on More information about Atos decarbonization ambition

I can only wish Atos and those that take up this challenge good luck. The areas chosen are so vital to have all levels of innovative solutions. Finding imaginative digital solutions to decarbonization is so much part of our needs today in making this energy transition

The post Setting the right innovation challenge first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

 Reflecting on a rapidly changing business world.

The issue we must tackle today, is how we go about adapting to the changing world? One that will be able to take all the advantages of the changes all businesses are undergoing, how societies will be adjusting and responding. We are facing a time of unprecedented economic and social crisis but this is a time equally for seizing and sizing different opportunities.

We clearly need to find ways to navigate ourselves back into some (new) order; to stabilize the chaos we are in. What we first need to do is make sense of what is going on around us, we need to determine what actions to take and the level of action, resource and support each part needs. We are in a period of (great) change. How are we thinking about how to adjust, not just to the immediate challenges but the greater ones that are certainly heading our way.

Within business, the present crisis is offering a chance to make significant changes to how we operate in the future. I am not sure many of you feel the same, it seems disruption is in everything, in what we need to undertake, in what is coming towards us in change. We are challenged but we have ample signals to amplify and explore. 

Disruption actually has a common purpose, often far less sinister than promoted or we suspect, it requires us to re-equip and open up, as we learn to deal in this changing world where connections can emerge from anywhere at any time, offering a new ‘line of sight’ onto an existing problem to begin to break down the barriers and find new fresh ways forward.

These will be through different approaches to designing and extracting the potential value gained and these, in my opinion, will form around ecosystems and their management, through technology solutions provided by platform providers.

We need to respond quickly and in very different, highly collaborative ways. Digital offers unique, new ways to address many of our challenges everywhere. Our need is to explore and exploit, and we have to harness ourseleces, our organizations, through these new technologies and collaborative concepts to take advantage and leverage all that is possible.

 We need to engage in different ecosystems and participate in new platform learning to take advantage of the changes taking place all around us. To quote Chuck Robbins, the Cisco CEO and Chairman “We believe that no one company can deliver the full breadth of technology solutions that customers need at the pace the market requires”. It is through the increasing intensity of using data and a deep analysis where this growing need for broader collaborations becomes so essential.

Technology, innovation and digitalization are the combination effect that will move us forward in our changing business world. We can’t operate in isolation, we need to be far more highly collaborative.

Partnerships abound, not just within a specific industry but in cross-industry collaborations. Ecosystems need to form to take advantage of many rapidly emerging market opportunities. It is not just welcome to a world of ecosystems, it is learning to change from being exclusive owners into open collaborators, that build ‘greater value’ from the common need of working together, and many of these are increasingly cross-industry ecosystems.

Just recognize the changes we are undertaking in cross-industry collaborations are significant

If we recognize what it takes to build new transportation business models, it needs an ecosystem of public authorities, automakers, component suppliers, software providers and infrastructure builders to come together to make this happen

 The travel industry will emerge far differently in the months ahead, in its post-recovery from the ravages of Corvid-19. Within airports, train stations we are seeing a conscious integrating of all that makes up this travel hub, including connecting traffic updates, weather conditions, arrival and departures, airport shops, restaurants, hotels, parking terminals and flight or train understanding and on-line bookings. This will be rapidly advanced, integrated and providing a very different business model proposition. 

 Many of the changes that will emerge in the next twelve to twenty-four months will become more cross-industry and service ecosystems. The search is for synergies. It requires a host (platform provider), different apps, weblinks and consistent ways to integrate these so those using the airport or train station can navigate their way around their personal needs. It needs an ecosystem and platform management to bring this together.

We are increasingly expecting as consumers, uninterrupted connectivity, and virtual integration and that need for continued connectivitity will spur new value propositions for trechnology and AI to take over and manage more of your daily, repeative tasks . It is this constantly connecting-up that is constantly layering mini-ecosystems onto each other so experiences improve as these ecosystems connect and work out what is needed to be delivered.

If we look around we are seeing increasingly the cross-industry ecosystem exploding.  

We have new ecosystems that are building new value in offering mobile commerce, building digital into all that we undertake increasingly in retail, banking, and entertainment. We are seeing new energy solutions emerge in Agriculture, Energy, Utilities. We are seeing a ‘connected difference’ in the Automotive, Driving, linking to Postal services, electronic transfers, blockchain transactions, purchasing across most of our goods, both personal and in business and exploring concepts in Health solutions that require cross-industry collaborations.

We see electronic capital trading getting faster and faster by the application of data flows, analytics and software that automates the trading decision. We are connecting into Public Services to gain insight and seek new value. Manufacturing is connecting up through its Industry 4.0 drive. We have Artificial Intelligence increasingly working, either in the background or foreground for decision-making. We are building platforms and connecting up the individual ecosystems of (internal) knowledge into these new creators of value, based on collaboration, mutually shared interest and vision and in the co-operation that emerges around the extensive use of platforms and technology application.

The smartphone is to date, our greatest ecosystem, and platform, as individuals as it is all wrapped up into one personalized connected ecosystem and the phone is the platform. It is rapidly becoming the source of information, value generator and our personalized “dual world” as it learns what we need and is increasingly responding to mirror our world.

Just image the ecosystem of connectors we require within our daily lives, living in “smart” cities.

The opportunity to connect the providers of ‘hard’ services (energy, equipment, construction, utilities, etc) with our ‘soft’ needs (where to go, what we can do, order, where to park, what to do and see) requires huge collaborative efforts but the reward has significant benefits. Smart cities attract ‘smart’ people that attract ‘smart’ institutions and eventually ‘smarter’ business entities.

The connecting brainpower allows everything to manage their own personal speed of things, a flow that can potentially reduce redundancy and enhance engagement. The connections begin to reshape everything through the data; communications, public services, responses to crisis and opportunity, being aware. The smarter in the use gets increasingly channelled, as this increasing flow of data to analyze, target and coordinate life in the city, can allow for a better way for all to connect to that city and personally identify. It changes urban life as it involves citizens increasingly in shaping the future.A connected city.

This is a very different potential in the new business models for all involved. The period ahead is going to be hugh “reset” within ourselves, within the way we go about and organize work. A world built on increasing collaboration, cross-industry cooperations that has technology, digitalization and innovation at its core.

The post Adjusting to a changing world first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Connecting and collaborating opportunities for business seem to be really powerful networks of value-adding effect, for finding new economic opportunity. This calls for some radical rethinking of the existing business and deciding the design of the future business. We are at a critical point of change. Business needs to explore the future is far more highly collaborative ways.

This calls for thinking through a different designed structure for the business and different skills needed. The shifting from the current state to the future designed state is no easy task. It requires a radical redesign of the organization, as it significantly increases complexity and where any digital transformation has to center upon as the critical enabler to enable this shift.

Clarifying the new critical capabilities

It is identifying the critical capabilities and being adept and agile enough in learning from these, to embed them into the changing culture. There is a critical need to be technology savvy, digitally adroit, highly analytical, and fast to make the connections, to explore and exploit the ‘breaking’ opportunities. We are having to adjust our learning to have increased levels of higher human-centered approaches, through exploiting design thinking, to learn and adapt.

Design thinking can provide a different thinking-through perspective to manage in more complex environments, break down barriers, and overcome new hurdles to deliver new economic value. New economic value has to be ‘seen’ and believed in, so people can engage and work towards making the necessary changes. We are in need of exploring new ways to think, to empower, and explore. so as to push and extend the business ecosystem design. It needs to be both highly human and digital-centric.

We are attempting to integrate into new ways the increasing needs and capacities of people, to capitalize on a myriad of choices with technology options and find new ways for business success. The approach needs to work around that of being viable, desirable and feasible, as the new value combination for new innovation, one that design thinking contributes into. We are actually forging far more ‘upstream’ and trying to reverse the ‘downstream’ many of today’s business find themselves in, to regain real value propositions that can offer a more sustainable business future.

In the future, we need to build on different thinking: innovation ecosystem thinking

We have today built-in too many constraints. We are locked into an old model of building economic wealth. We need a new wealth-creating paradigm  Much of our present-day management is holding us back, it needs to radically rethink how it will organize and build its capabiities and capacity to evolve and collaborative.

Boards and Senior Management have a lack of time, as they are often too busy, focusing on the day-to-day they have precious little time to think about the future. They remain extremely nervous when they do not have clear lines of insight to make what they see as riskier decisions. Finally, they are struggling with their present organizational design to adjust and adapt to the changing external world, full of uncertainties. To dither, to put decisions off, to seek out more certainty is not a position of any strength, it is the catalyst to eventual destruction. We need to face these inbuilt constraints.We need to change our mindsets.

It is finding uniqueness that becomes increasingly important and comes from new knowledge, innovation investigation, validation, and outcomes and delivered in business ecosystems that offer new customer value, it builds greater value into capital. It is the amount of capital you invest that drives the potential and today, we are increasingly finding that Ecosystems and Platforms, formed around ideas that are often too complex to be developed by a single entity, are benefiting through collaborative endeavors.

Ecosystem thinking can have a very transforming effect. It opens us up to a highly fluid, changing world of possibilities full of interactions, sharing, and exchange. It can help allow you to match and possibly get ahead of all the volatility swirling around us. We can develop strategies built on emerging knowledge and innovations, that can grow out from a collaborating community.

The traditional confines of market boundaries are clearly breaking down and reforming around these ecosystems and platforms that connect partners and consumers in dramatically different. It is these Value-added ways, and that ‘intent’ is driving a radically different environment to manage within, one of building knowledge ecosystems, innovation ecosystems and business ecosystems that connect up and form the interconnected parts of the required ecosystem design.

Summary

What we all have to recognize is the value of breaking down long-standing boundaries is occurring with or without you. Yet we do need to consciously shape this in more collaborative ways. Barriers are needing breaking down, we need to recognize the need and value of coalescing around a networked ecosystem. The chances for greater, more radical innovation to grow the business comes from exploring mutual opportunities to capture new economic value.

As you open yourself up to collaborating you open yourself up for greater learning and from this you can reshape your business design to adjust to this changing reality we are finding within a business; the need for designing our separate entities of business into a connected set of business ecosystems, to offer greater growth.

The post We are searching for new pathways first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

“Innovation capital is the sum of all that promotes the development and changes required for achieving innovation outcomes, within one organization or its broader networked environment, for marketplace advantage.”

The capital of innovation has many moving parts.

“These are made up of the resources, processes, knowledge, and capabilities, that are constantly evolving and highly dynamic to build greater innovating capacity.”

“These build upon the capabilities of ‘sensing, seizing and transforming’ to build new capital that focuses more upon the dynamics within innovation, that provide the true value creation in successful outcomes in the final product, services or executing within business models.”

We need to value both “stocks and flows” in equal attention to build innovation capital.

The ‘stock’ of innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes, is a bundle of the firm’s resources/assets and holds the renewal capabilities and they possess attributes that make it a “strategic asset.”

Innovation capital is made up of many different assets that are often context-specific and interconnected, and this makes it hard to build without taking a broader, more holistic approach to developing your capabilities, capacities, and competencies to innovate. You ‘map’ and align these to fit your strategic goals and aspirations; these provide the basis for the “flows.”

Each company needs to build its own unique capital stock.

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital, and each organization has a unique bundle of the firm’s resources and assets.

It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew, and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities that build on a continuous basis the innovation capital.

This is one of my most important focus points to assist and aid organizations in their understanding “what makes up their unique innovation capital” and what needs to be added to deepen and strengthen this capital stock.

Building our stock then leads to the flow that then leads to building more stock. We need both stocks and flow.

Most of our capitals are learning capitals.

The more we strengthen our knowledge and value our people, the more we can generate new knowledge, build greater narratives, deepen discussions, make better connections, and build our interactions out across growing communities.

The more we discover, the more knowledge we gain and this leads up to determine potentially better decision-making that should, in theory, give greater confidence that our invested financial capital is in ‘good hands’. Our knowledge learning, the more dynamic, the more we search, absorb, called absorptive capacity and then diffuse, the more valuable it becomes.

The power lies in the linkages we can forge, in the acquisition, in assimilation and then into the eventual transformation that allows known knowledge to become new wealth-generating innovation.

My stated value position is…

I provide different framing techniques for helping to grow this necessary innovation capital and build the stock of the capabilities and capacities to enable and increase the dynamic flow of innovation activities.

I am a great believer in building the dynamics of innovation. when you appreciate what is dynamic you can really (finally) begin a journey that builds a far better sustaining future where growth and value creation become far more realizable.

Have you any idea of what makes up your innovation capital?

My reference site provides a basis for this to begin to explore and build a greater understanding of what makes up your innovation capital and its dynamic parts.

https://innovationfitnessdynamics.wordpress.com/

• Previously published or referred too on my associate innovation sites including this one on “innovation capital”

The post Defining Innovation Capital first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

To build a pathway to enabling more dynamic innovation capabilities needs to go through Nine Stages. These nine stages are, in my opinion, needed for developing an understanding of your innovation capabilities, so as to make them more dynamic and, as a result, to be at the top of your innovation game.

This “step process,” I believe, gets you to the point of understanding what innovation capabilities are a better ‘fit’ for the purpose, to deliver on your innovation needs on a consistent, repeatable, and evolving basis.

Building innovation capabilities take time; they are complex, highly structured, and multi-dimensional. Any structured approach to tackling innovation takes time and considerable commitment. Any learning involves sensing, seizing, and then transforming.

We are searching for what makes up the present system and what needs to be part of the future to create a ‘best’ innovation capability environment that is sustainable in the longer-term. Those that can be continually ‘orchestrated’ and constantly adapted to meet the strategic need.

We are striving towards a true ‘innovation coherency premium’ in design, knowing what makes up your core dynamic components. The outcomes are to know where to invest, what to dampen down and what aspects can evolve naturally and be ‘taken along’ as you focus upon the ones that are more dynamic and relevant to your innovation needs.

Each stage of this needs questioning and then answering as phases of the journey.

1. Getting Started – Understanding the Needs & Imperatives of Innovation Fitness

• Why we must travel this critical path for Innovation.
• The meaning of dynamic capabilities and innovation fitness landscapes
• Merging the theory with practical reality to produce new outcomes and positive results.
• Focusing on resources and performance – why is this important.
• The problem is knowing what we have and what we really need and seeing the differences.

2. The Fuel of Innovation Performance – the dynamics of innovation

• A sharper, clearer focus on innovation resources to meet the strategic need.
• What is known about resources to sustain, enhance performance?
• Knowing and aligning  your strategic criteria – for sound innovation approaches
• Getting innovation within the right context of your business
• Moving your resources in the right direction takes courage and decisive leadership.

3. Getting even more specific – quantification and qualification

• Recognizing the building of scale, change rates, and dynamics that happen over time and why we need to constantly build our innovation capabilities.
• Developing the resources to meet the need – structured, focused, clarified by bringing out the necessary discussion.
• An illustrative scenario for a directional innovation fitness landscape map
• Recognizing resources can come beyond the firm and then bringing these in successfully, in gradual steps. Managing within a more open environment.
• Achieving  mutual dependencies to support; recognizing the hindering ones
• Being aware of  the impact of different scenarios in the management of innovation allows for designing a flexible response capability.

4. Building the Innovation Fitness Machine – reinforcing feedback, identifying needs

• Recognizing the current status, spotting emerging patterns, seeing spaces and gaps, and identifying solutions.
• Beginning the ‘adaptive walk’ to get to higher fitness points needed to compete.
• Clarifying the complementary resources, looking to embed new routines quickly, and set up follow through approaches.
• Introducing natural tensions into the system to trigger ‘step change.’
• Resource dependence climate, culture, diversity, intensity, and uniqueness
• Reinforcing feedback – watching for dangers, managing the machine capacity, removing the brakes selectively
• Shifting your resources need not deplete or force other people to compete for them – working through the tensions within teams and silos.
• Matching resource dynamics with the innovation value chain & life cycle stages helps maintain momentum.
• Simulation modeling the ‘what ifs’ and ‘why.’

5. The Strategic Architecture – designing the system to perform as needed

• The step process for designing and executing the architecture design
• Diagnosing performance challenges and roadblocks – resolving, moving on
• Lining up the solutions is not a linear process and needs careful management.
• Addressing the effects of intangibles in the Strategic Architecture.

6. The Hard Face of Soft(er) factors – the hidden power of intangible resources

• Clarifying the impact of the intangibles and recognizing the time, climate, and conditions are significant contributors to innovation activities.
• The different rivalry types: internal and external, inter-department, inter projects, and working through resolutions to these.
• Reflecting feelings and expectations, addressing all the different needs
• Measuring the tougher parts of intellectual capital
• The real value of your intangible resources
• Recognizing the value of hidden innovation and spotting its occurrence

7. Entering into Competitive Battle – the Dynamics of Rivalry, the Uniqueness of You

• Recognizing, developing, capturing, transforming, avoiding, and outmaneuvering
• Your point of choosing what, where, how, and when to compete.
• Building capabilities that are unique to you and hard to replicate
• Building sustainability into the innovation equation as ongoing
• Extending the turf, exploiting the situation, pushing beyond, seeking partners.

8. Building and Testing Capabilities to Perform

• Measuring capabilities through different fitness levels and scale.
• Learning to build capabilities as ‘ongoing’ and evolving for changing needs
• Re-Structuring the process for dealing with the dynamics of change
• Knowing the points of impact on performance to enable recognition and reality
• Managing innovation performance progressively across the spectrum of business need through testing and extending capability learning.
• Building from personal to the team, to organizational learning, in measured steps
• Recognizing the role of leadership, achieving strategic alignment, and working on broadening out innovation competence at different organizational levels.

9. Keeping the innovation fitness wheels turning, keeping your eyes on the road

• Resolution of conflicting goals, control, and structure
• Dissecting conflicting positions, resolving the impasse
• Knowing the limits of human engagement
• Goals, controls, and measurements can dominate and strangle
• Keeping the measurements simple and clear
• Managing innovation as a critical strategic resource
• Merging the results into a greater alignment to Strategy and Approaches

The end result is looking to generate your innovation fitness landscape. If you need any coaching help, advice, or mentoring through this process, just get in touch

The post A pathway to building more dynamic innovation capabilities first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We first need to recognize that there are twin forces at work, feeding off each other. We are facing greater disruption and an increasing innovation pace.

These twin forces are constantly seeking out for combining, relentlessly adding the new shape to our future. We are caught up in a very revolutionary period. The prospect of new innovation potential will eventually work through into the world of Industry 4.0 as a major game-changer “.

Innovation is ready for those accelerating and being fully committed to their 4IR journey. Then innovation can finally play its true part in discovering, leveraging and delivering new value and impact.

We have to recognize the days of simple product innovation are dwindling. where technology, digital solutions, greater customer insights, where a new breed of designers, engineers, scientists, and software talent are combining built through a platform and new innovation ecosystems thinking, are all emerging.

Seeking out a highly collaborative approach

This highly collaborative approach is building greater complexity into our final innovation offerings, yet it is providing increased customer value that is incr4easingly expected and needed, it is combining up separate aspects of a customer journey or societal needs, providing solutions to problems that require this combined thinking as consumers expect a complete buying experience.

We need to recognize that we are increasingly becoming reliant on platforms, networks, greater connected relationships that are working collaboratively in ecosystems. The collaborators are seeing the combined value and individual gain in this more open approach.

One very positive result: one of the more radical aspects of open innovations, the final product or service design is capable of winning the hearts and minds of many consumers, who value this combined solution and often are prepared to pay a premium for this connected experience/solution.

Solutions that are increasingly more adaptable, adjustable to personalization, positioned to readily respond to rapid shifts in trends or new technology or improved solutions.

Solutions that are focused on solving a customer’s complex problems with imaginative solutions, some of them totally unseen at the time, in ways not possible without embracing and connecting in the digital world.

There is a certain realization, a sort of reality dawns

The customer is increasingly at the epicenter of the economy. The products and services are enhanced through the digital capabilities that boost their value and worth. Innovation is the unlocking mechanism

New materials are making our assets more durable and resilient, and data and analytics provide the valuable feedback needed to build even better services and performance in the future. All this connecting and reacting is requiring new forms of collaboration, and we are seeing new types of organizations emerging. They are far more dependent on platforms and ecosystems and looking to leverage a broader collaborative environment to provide this level of innovation design

Innovation is benefitting from the 4^th Industrial Revolution

There is a real value in recognizing and delivering on the fourth industrial revolution, we can start to think outside our classic product innovation boxes. We can shift our often-linear thinking as Industry 4.0 is the revolution that connects all the parts. We can loop, explore, connect, build scenarios, test assumptions, build digital twins to just the product and manufacturing impact.  Recognizing the transforming potential of having fully connected digital factories will revolutionize how we manage innovation going forward. It shifts our thinking and the management of innovation dramatically.

The ability to have a more “rapid response, adaptive designs and flexible manufacturing” can align more to market shifts earlier. We can begin to design products that are more “digitally connected” that can be updated in the consumer’s premise or hand. We can enhance “their” innovation by shortening the time-to-execution and extending the product life cycle, we can build new potential through greater innovation design, based on increasing insight and collaboration.

As we break down the organizational inertia that has been stopping innovation it is through the Industry 4.0 approaches that will realize radically different benefits and imaginative solutions.

There are so many opportunities for innovation well beyond products and services. We can open up so many new possibilities.

We can deploy new approaches, seek out new skills, engage different talent, and utilize design and digital capability to realize and leverage the power of connecting all those involved. coming from industry 4.0 deployments.

Having an integrated, connected ecosystem thiscan offer us, for the first time continuous learning, deploying AI and Human ingenuity , we can tap into a network of talent through ecosystems and platforms designed for greater collaboration and exchange. We can reach far more into underserved markets through greater customer connections and engagement, we can co-design with them.

We can, by embracing 4IR, have available far more predictive and evaluation tools to help improve processes, to reduce or test risk, to prototype and experiment, partly engaged with customers in learning and adjusting design and value. We can build and connect different supply chains that read and react, we can create new ecosystems where we share a common goal and value, we can enable more agile systems that can adapt and respond to changes in real-time to reconfigure the ‘connected factory’.

Innovation emerges out of the Industrial 4.0 initiative in radically different ways to explore and exploit.

We are waiting for the fully connected factory and process so we can apply a very different digital set of innovation tools. Until then we have innovation being managed the current linear, disconnected way.

We fail to have a seamless set of connections into our industrial process world, into our designers, engineers, research scientists and more importantly our customers. It only arrives when we have digital connecting.  Until we all get the same “line of sight” innovation stumbles along its familiar “guessing game” derived of insight and underlying knowledge.

The quicker we can connect and build the fourth industrial revolution we can explore, build, and redesign our whole innovation process in end-to-end ways, fully connected up, transparent and highly responsive.

We can look towards managing more radical innovation design in ecosystems and networks, seeking to push existing boundaries. We can envisage, and explore new technologies and materials, that all can combine into the Innovation Revolution that follows the Industrial Revolution.

We need to transform the relationships between people, objects, technology, exchange, and space and through deploying the industrial revolution solutions we enter the real age of innovation.

We can begin to move to more infinite possibilities and solutions through marrying and connecting data and design and employing our collective imaginations.

The post Innovation needs the power of completing the 4th Industrial Revolution first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We are on the brink of a transformation, a global one that connects us into information, knowledge, and insights in ever-powerful ways. thanks to the digital internet. We are also exploring the use of Artifical Intelligence (AI) more than ever.

BCG suggests that nine out of ten companies in their recent survey for the report “The Most Innovative Companies 2019” are investing in AI. BCG also suggests that 30% of those surveyed believe AI will have the greatest impact of any innovation area on their industry over the next three to five years.

We are also seeing the emergence of platforms and ecosystems radically changing how we collaborate and invent, design, solve issues from a changing shift in cooperation understanding. Platforms are fueling new business initiatives as they learn to engage across the whole value chain spectrum, from customer to delivering back the needs of that customer.

It is our technology being applied through new approaches that are galvanizing the new potential within innovation.

As we learn to orchestrate the underlying technologies, learn to build helpful applications, establish these software platforms this is beginning to become attractive as a new place for integrating, exchanging and collaborating. There is the talk of “the network effect” (Metcalfe’s Law) whereas more participants engage on platforms or in ecosystems and exchange, the more the value goes up and the community participating gets increasingly more out of the value of the “combined” thinking, data and insights. It has huge potential to generate new levels of innovation, ones that are more connected, more seamless and more what the customer wants.

So we come to CX + DX, it needs IX

Customer experience (CX) is driving change. The customer is expecting more value in the products or services they buy. They expect connected products, ones that are seemingly simple to then but highly complex to bring together. They will pay for this if the solutions offered are in their “sweet spot”.

To achieve this industry has to go through this digital transformation (DX) that is underway. Adapting a product to the need of one person’s preference has been pushing the final adaptation to that persons need up the chain in production. I wrote recently (here)

“This for me will center around developing the complete suite of transparency between product development and manufacturing and communicating this “connected” story. This is the connected need of IIoT to achieve. The information and knowledge source that connects the customer demand with the delivery of their need with their custom solution. This has been promoted as the new “experience economy”.by Dassault’s CEO Barnard Charles. He suggests this is “the new economy that drives the value of the usage first, as opposed to the value of the product or the things we produce, or even the services we provide” He feels the center of gravity in value creation is taking place to the emphasis on usage as paramount to serve. This makes sense to me.”

So we have the CX and DX being worked upon. What we need now is the Innovation Transformation (IX). I have written consistently on the need for the innovation to be re-equipped to deal with the digital changes coming towards us. Today this is utterly inadequate in dealing with all the change or transformation currently underway. Just, if you have time take a read of my post here of “We require a shift of Innovation Management Solution Providers” as to give you a more detailed background as to why there is such a need. We need ecosystems for innovation to thrive and prosper in faster ways.

I mentioned in that post “Innovation software is no different from the tides of change sweeping industries, digital transformation is opening up the connection possibilities outside single organizations. No one organization can keep pace, or has enough resources, or can cover off solutions that solve “universal” problems, or even ones in a diverse, huge Corporation collaborating across a global business, where functional groups involved are far more diverse than ever before”

This is becoming the nature of the present constraints. We need digital innovation

We can keep moving towards CX and apply DX but unless we recognize and make significant changes in IX we will fail to get the impact we are looking for or the customer is expecting. The flow of insights, of information and knowledge, gets caught up in such a log jam as the innovation system is not designed for such a force of “flow-through” or set up for such co-innovation needed. We lack many innovation open and interoperable tools or systems to speed up the creation process. We are caught in an age of the single solution struggling to make the connections to the new age of innovation.

Innovation actually needs to feed business systems and push all working within the design of solutions the ability to drive outcomes.  This is why the value of digital platforms and ecosystems will gain in the urgency of getting the whole innovation system fit for the 21st century, otherwise, innovation will remain stilted, disappointing and struggling to project what it stands for:  “advancing what we have with better solutions that solve customers problems”

We need this dynamic innovation process.

Otherwise, CX + DX sounds great but if it does not have IX the returns on investment or the growth rates required for this will never materialize. Let’s not forget this IX, it needs to be far more central in the equation today.

The post So CX + DX needs IX for the transformations we need first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I was really pleased to watch the official launch of the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) with its addition of the Prioritization Matrix at Hannover Messe on Monday 1^st April 2019.

This will become a very useful and relevant management planning tool to help manufacturers worldwide to determine and prioritize their necessary areas of focus with all the digital initiatives, based on an Industry 4.0 Maturity and their current performance.

This tool or readiness prioritization index has a real potential to finally bring organizational wide awareness and common language identification. It can help implementation in a number of significant ways.

This has been pioneered by The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), a very formidable Government entity within the development of Singapore over the years, and in consultation and growing support, from McKinsey & Co, SAP, Siemens, and TüV SüD.

The framework is a very systematic and I feel, a robust way, to focus on what matters to you in your own Industrial Revolution 4.0 journey (IR4). So often organizations do not have a clear vision, strategy or can develop a systematic roadmap for this form of transformation. It becomes overwhelming and a real challenge of where to start. Often the more you read, seek advice, the more you get confused.

I believe in this Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix you have a really useful framework that can give you the common language, understanding, and sense of direction, backed up with the why, where, what and when of managing out your own Industry 4.0 roadmap. The “how” comes from the advice you can then seek, armed with a greater holistic understanding of where you stand.

The Actual Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix

For me, it has the potential to be as catalytic as the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Aware that become such a movement behind quality that spurred in Europe The European Foundation for Quality Management (later to be renamed simply ‘EFQM‘)

Digital transformation is hugely complex. It is a transformation of epic portions. It is not one of those activities you can afford to leave to IT /OT or selected board members. This is requiring total company engagement as you transform your present physical world into a highly connected digital world, totally dependent on technology. It will have a social impact, significant shifts in talent needs and your workforce. It will require a very different strategy and a deep understanding and appreciation of technology.

Breaking complexity down

The changes will need to be new solution-driven ones, as much human-centric as ever, achieving increasing machine connection and offering a sustainable and inclusive approach as the final outcome. That makes this transformation the revolution it is seen to be, Industry Revolution 4.0. It has scale, scope, and complexity unlike what we have ever experienced before, as it requires us all to be more integrated and collaborative. To achieve this it is necessary to be all-embracing and comprehensive in our digital connecting up to leverage the gains this means.

The main effects of this IR4 are the shifts in customer expectations, on product enhancements, on collaborative innovation, and in different organizational forms. The merging of physical with digital will simply enhance value in some many different ways.

IR4 will have a huge impact but it needs framing and this is where the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritisation Matrix comes in.

Why I personally am relating to this framework and Singapore

Why do I see this Industry Readiness Matrix as important to put a significant level of support behind it?

Personally, a very strong identification. I lived in Singapore for 12 years followed by a further 3 years moving back and forth from Europe into Asia. I grew up in my consulting and advisory work on eight years of working with different Singapore Government Agencies and plenty of companies operating in Singapore and across S E Asia especially.

Singapore has a unique way to galvanize the resources and energy required to succeed. I worked with their EDB, MICA, MOE, Mindef, Spring, IE, the Prime Ministers PS21, often through the framework adopted to galvanize change and growth. These different frameworks included i-quality circles, scorecards, assessments, and audit approaches. They were based increasingly on the Business Excellence Assessment, I-Award for innovation.

That work of mine when in Singapore was also contributing to National Innovation Policy papers, building consortium studies, developing and contributing to different audit and public service innovation frameworks. I would certainly say “I cut my consulting and advisory teeth on innovation work” within Singapore and in S E Asia.

I really learned the value of organizing frameworks to help in this even when bureaucracy sometimes got in the way. You witness first hand how theses frames do truly galvanize change, as well as to allow you to benchmark, compare entities, their robustness and ambitions and then this gets others to relate.

A new initiative developed by the EDB, Singapore

So when you hear of the announcement of this Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix, as announced on Monday 1^st April 2019, you certainly sit up and become alert to what this can bring.

The smart part is how the Singapore EDB has drawn in and collaborated with McKinsey & Co, SAP, Siemens, and TüB SüD. This can have the real potential to go well beyond the borders of Singapore, through S E Asia and well beyond in its organizing framework to manage Industry 4.0. My respect for the EDB is significant, I kept approaching them constantly while I was in Singapore. I will always remember the Golden Egg, Buttons and Threads, but that story is for another day.

I have worked with SAP and am working with Siemens so this makes it even more compelling to understand and relate too. They are very serious to advance the Industry 4.0 revolution.

Siemens can leverage this framework in multiple ways

Siemens has made a massive investment in their Digital future and also has a dedicated business unit, effective 1^st April 2019, renamed Digital Industries. with about 78,000 employees worldwide and businesses generated revenue of around €14 billion within the Business Unit. They are firmly fixed on providing as many solutions towards Industry 4.0 as they can. Where they presently struggle is in its complexity, the ability to communicate this holistically for recognition and adoption at the client level, to what this change really does mean. This SIRI Prioritization matrix is a great place to start and engage with their clients.

They, Siemens are rapidly building use cases, have experienced technicians, engineers, and solutions to enable the client to relate too and argument their understanding of what needs to be in place and clearly, where Siemens can play a very active contribution in solutions.

Recently, Joe Kaeser, Siemens CEO, has been appointed recently as Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Association, the Asia-Pacific Conference of German Business (APK), the place where German and Asian business interests meet. I certainly believe this Industry Readiness Index would be one initiative that can eventually become “showcases” of member organizations to Asian companies, as a further collaborative space of the association as a value-add.

Relating South East Asia, Siemens and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

I recently wrote four articles for the internal Siemens Ingenuity Knowledge site focusing on different aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution specifically in S E Asia, although many of these can be universally applied. These were highlighting challenges, realities and the need to adapt differently. If you have a chance to read them I’d appreciate it.

The main question in these posts was this: Are South East Asia ready for the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Part 1: How big is the challenge really?

Part 2: The application of innovation, the Asian way

Part 3: What are the real opportunities to invest in S E Asia

Part 4: The Roadmap for the Digital Revolution

These posts give a greater outline of the challenges relating to companies in South East Asia. Putting to use the framework offered by the EDB and its partners. Actually they tie in fairly well,  it will help them considerably to manage the challenges and achieve a more collaborative environment where Government, Society, and other organizations work far more together in forming and exchanging on Industry 4.0 challenges.

The Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix is aimed to go global

I think the Prioritization Index will be highly welcome to organize around, for all organizations grappling with the complexities and challenges 4IR requires, not just in Asia but for all organizations anywhere in the world.

For example, Siemens have some incredibly talented engineers but the ability to communicate the Industry 4.0 story is one that needs to be communicated across an organization, that has the real need to resolve this global challenge.  I really believe this organizing framework significantly advances they story and positioning, if they fully take this on, in their own adoption services.

This framework, if seen in the way I see it, can become highly central to Siemens transformation story and association/collaboration and service provision into clients or potential ones. It gives a more holistic story across the organization. A common language and awareness frame.

The ability to assess manufacturers to focus areas of transformation and bring these four inputs yields an impact value which represents the relative benefit that a company will gain from progressing across the 16 index dimensions, by a single band of each dimension. Different bands will show different impact levels so the Manufacturer will be able to quantitatively identify the focus areas of prioritization they should take.

This Prioritization Matrix enhances the Index with a computational tool with many algorithm references of hundred of use case studies available. ones that help companies identify and recommend focus areas and digital initiatives to prioritize, based partly on their individual readiness score, and current financial performance, part of the SIRI tool.

So this collaboration of partners is coming together around the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix to enable customers to start their assessment, to identify gaps and where the opportunities are to work upon. It has both a technical and practical application.

What I like it does not prioritize on technology, a place a specialist would focus, it balances this out with Process the OT specialist with Organization. The three need to be recognized as the THREE core building blocks. It works on evaluating EIGHT pillars and SIXTEEN Dimensions.

In classic Singapore ways it suggests four pragmatic steps of 1) Learn key concepts and build a common language for alignment, 2) Evaluate the existing state and readiness level for Industry 4.0, 3) Architect the transformation strategy and implementation roadmap that works for you and finally 4) Deliver that is offering impact and sustaining transformative initiatives.

In Summar: Industry 4.0 has multiple challenges

I certainly believe this Smart Industry Readiness Index and its Prioritization Matrix provides an interesting management planning tool. In summary, it provides a real acceleration towards becoming IR4 ready. Including:

• Readiness, speed, the scope of technological and digital change will spur very different business models and opportunities within the Region.  Singapore through the EDB in promoting this initiative, does provide a really valuable contribution in a diagnostic tool, to the challenges of Industry 4.0, across the whole organization.
• There are layers of complexity that need peeling away and given more focused attention with so many challenging tasks in developing industrial enablement across the Region, that need to continue to promote productivity, growth, and inclusion. Through taking this SIRI approach of evaluating the different three Building Blocks, eight Pillars and sixteen Dimension approach, they help break down much of the complexity
• The “paradigm shifts” from the type of manufacturing of lower value add, to those that “add” and can be leveraged to build national capability is possible for many, through taking this combination route of industry 4.0, infrastructure enhancement, through digitalization and innovation means a well-structured and thought through the journey.
• If the framework delivers on its promise it stands Singapore and others in a strong forefront to deliver Industry 4.0 to gain a real competitive advantage and hopefully scale up in new ways.
• We have questions of scale and complexity but helping to construct a clear vision, strategy and a systematic roadmap reduce the challenges. This framework delivers the start point and quantifies impact and gaps.
• Knowing where to start, what to scale and be able to sustain are all great but to get a tool that can show you the impact on the bottom line and the effects this has on your profit makes it highly valuable and then having diagnostics that are pointing to the best positioning where this change progression needs to take place makes it exciting to determine
• For Siemens, and the other partners, it is to find the right balance for being a critical enabler of this transformation through providing their services, their vast insights to clients across the globe and a rapidly growing use case database will offer a powerful acceleration. To be a critical and essential partner in this transition and through this framework, they can play a significant part in accelerating Industry 4.0.

I think the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix can fundamentally change the “tipping point” in more rapid adoption and acceptance of the need to embrace and convert to Industry 4.0. It offers something highly valuable, I want to engage more with this as it evolves.

*****

The Prioritization Matrix is available to all manufacturing companies globally and interested parties should contact EDB or their respective parties t learn how to utilize the application for their facilities. A downloadable copy of the matrix can be found here.

The post Finally a framework to manage holistically Industrial Revolution 4.0 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.