I’ve had one of those weeks where a certain realization took hold, something that had been nagging away at you suddenly surfaces and slaps you in the face. Ouch!

I have just completed my own gap analysis on how I have explained the Executive Innovation Work Mat methodology and its value.  It actually was a bit of an eye-opener. I was surprised in this audit of all associated posts, articles and papers written by myself or in collaboration with Jeffrey Phillips, that there were some very glaring gaps in my posts on explaining this methodology.

The Innovation Work Mat has seven components or domains

What was crazy here is the fact I have the research, the component parts all worked through, structured and being used in actual engagements to prompt the essential discussions, yet I had not been publishing these enough through my posts to underpin the methodology.

I had been missing essential domain component messages that are the very essence of why you need to work around the entire work mat as essential. I was missing the opportunity to publically talk about ALL the parts as it is the combining of these that does provide its value as an integrated approach to innovation that can cascade throughout the organization.

What was leading, what was lagging?

It reminded me on how important it is to do an audit of your inventory, where you have moved in ‘given’ directions, what you either forget or become blindsided too and what was ‘leading and lagging’ and recognize (eventually) you were missing important associated work mat branding messages that validated its real value.

My work mat messaging had been aimed more at the top of organizations and not across the organization’s working need for this work mat. I was not delivering the value of the work mat to the whole audience that requires understanding and identification for building a comprehensive innovation infrastructure.

I was focusing less on delivering the relevant messages to the very people working in the innovation space, those needing this strategic guidance and support, wanting association and the feeling of total organization engagement. That was for me a big “ah-hah” moment. I needed to broaden out my message explaining the work mat components.

The tough sell of innovation

In truth, it is a hard sell to the top in organizations on innovation, they believe simply by appointing a Chief Innovation Officer and letting them get on with the job, then the board has done enough to make innovation work. Wrong!

Then they believe they can simply turn their attention to other businesses, still not figuring out why they are not growing enough or why they are running behind their competitors in the global marketplace yet they are demanding innovation!

Innovation needs the board levels explicit focus on making innovation a core within the organization.

What was lagging in explanation?

I need to gain the essential identification those that are working in innovating need to ‘spread the word’ within their organization on ALL of what needs to combine and then fit together to allow innovation to really work.

The place to start is the value of the Executive Innovation Work Mat and the Role Senior Executives must play in innovation’s success.

So I am starting to address these individual component parts. I started last week on Governance and innovation. There is a need to give each of the seven components further dedicated and explicit posts too.

I want to take each component and outline the reasons on its importance on why we must ask and explore the different questions raised by all the parts that make up innovation.

So I will explore the need for creating the right Environment for Innovation and why it is so critical. Then I felt I should be providing a greater examination of the make-up of all the aspects within Recognizing the Conditions for the Culture and Climate, so essential to stimulating the right conditions for innovation

Then I realized that all the collective material I had not focused on was a more exclusive post around the thorny subject of Metrics and Motivations to Innovate – a place of much anguish!  Then I was lacking this broader exploration of our central component of Common Language, Context and Communications to achieve the deepening of innovation within organizations, although I had touched on this here.

The final part I want to explore more is Function, Structure, Process and Design  as this needs some specific prompters and clarifier’s as well. Then a final summary of the Organizations Innovation’s Dilemma completes this series on the makeup of the components within the Innovation Work Mat.

The seven components that make up the Executive Innovation Work Mat have been extensively researched and structured for client engagements. All the components and rationale had all been covered in the initial white paper or the subsequent follow-up articles but some of these had been allowed to lie a little too fallow in offering the component rationale and updating the understanding deriving from the ongoing work.

Getting the message out there for all to see

The public side of the work mat had been a little neglected; it needed some re-work beyond a lick of paint. So I thought this is the right time to resolve this and target the broader innovation audience, those that get ongoing identification and value out of having this innovation work mat in place.

So I want to ‘set about’ correcting this and bring the Work Mat message back on track in recognizing the seven components that make it up are integrated and equally important.

I do need to provide the probing and prompting that lies behind the ‘promise’ by applying the work mat methodology.

I need to offer far more on what does actually makes up the content and knowledge sitting behind this work mat approach.  I only trust you see the value as much as others do, once you become fully engaged in all the parts of the Executive Innovation Work Mat.

Over the coming weeks, a series of posts will emerge to address this set of oversights.

****This post has been** Updated** with the actual links into the posts that followed this intent to broaden out and share the thinking behind this integrated innovation work mat.

The post Correcting an innovation oversight sometimes hits you hard! first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

For many, it seems, execution or final delivery of the innovation is simply not given enough attention inside many organizations and that needs to certainly change and not just left to chance or delegated out as the less important stage.

For me, clarifying and committing resources on the innovation delivery part is a critical task to get right. I’ve discussed that elsewhere, but if your final delivery is wrong then all your preparation and effort simply ‘goes out the window.’

It is like a restaurant kitchen- correct delivery of the item makes or breaks all the hard work beforehand and if the final garnish or sauces are wrongly executed, the meal itself fails and leaves the customer dissatisfied, irrespective of the original efforts put in.

To avoid this in innovation delivery you must have a full ‘convergence’ where you have aligned within your innovation process the organization, knowledge, technology, resources, concept and performance to bring this all into your go-to-market plans.

As you consider what is  involved for effective innovation delivery you might want to reflect upon the following within your sauce:

1. Mapping and planning this delivery completely- execution planning needs dedicated focus, a robust plan that has clear objectives but not overly complicated or excessive in detail.
2. Building and editing based on changing insights- keeping fluid and agile to changes and adapting the plans where necessary but crucially keeping everyone in the ‘loop’ so all news, good and bad, gets ‘aired’ and seen.
3. Project management and planning- adapting a disciplined approach to tackling the execution part: setting milestones, tracking changes, informing and pushing for commitments to be delivered upon.
4. Aligning and influencing multiple ‘vested’ interests- nothing beats communication, seeking opinion and knowing where you can accomodate or not. Be clear on what is important, what can be ‘worked around’ but draw all ‘voices’ into the process but take responsibility and decide- don’t let issues ‘hang’.
5. Collaborating with external stakeholders- knowing and valuing their place within the execution process is important to always have in mind. Engage with them constantly.
6. Ensure you have diversity in the team to promote and challenge constantly, seek to encourage and  engage in this often consuming participation as it will ‘alert’ you far earlier to problems than pressing on regardless, not wanting to listen to those signals.

A Go-2-Market plan covers the who, what, where and when and must include:

• Clarifying the needs and wants of customers in this launch- know these early.
• Attributes of success, a winning proposition articulated and constantly reviewed.
• Ensuring innovation delivery is tightly linked across the whole innovation process
• Scope, timeline and approach to market strategy is well thought through and updated.
• Definition of risks, economic, competitive and internal positions that are honest.
• Alignment capabilities and techniques and knowing the gaps to bridge realistically
• Definition and clarity of the relevant value to the different parties and the final customer
• Differentiation that is being provided by the new innovation that is clearly spelt out in a clear Value Proposition that keeps being referred too and evaluated.
• Outline of the appropriate proof-of-innovation delivery concept (based on research, concept work, piloting, customer engagement etc)
• Plan to acknowledge and cultivate the critical relationships involved and make sure all parties are kept in the loop, compromises only made to resolve impasse.
• Have clear ways to measure the results, impact and success of any delivery.
• Provision of feedback and enhancement opportunities/ needs to all relevant parties, even back to the front end of idea creation to provide improved clarity and definition that helps
• The clear accountability clarification of who does what well stated and well managed.

Achieving correct, effective innovation delivery does provide the chances of achieving greater commercialised success than simply allowing implementation to just happen as an afterthought.

The value of providing the appropriate resources to the final delivery end of innovation are sometimes the critical difference between why certain companies are just so much better at ‘delivering’ their innovation.

They ruthlessly execution to a well-thought-through plan that has learnt its secret sauce and constantly refined it.

The post Preparing the secret sauce for innovation delivery. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Why does innovation present such a stark choice, often fraught with difficulties for many, yet so simple and successful for the few? Innovation delivery is one of those differentiation points.

Let me suggest here nine points needing your consideration when it comes to thinking through the innovation back end delivery part.

Execution as I have outlined in a previous post is the final rugged frontier– the tough one to truly master as it is so variable in its makeup. Just consider:
Point one: the key to successful innovation is not idea generation or putting all your creative efforts into the front end of innovation, ideas are always plentiful; it is turning this myriad of ideas into market or customer changing outcomes that successfully deliver based on understanding the customer’s needs.

Point two: There are no silver bullets for execution that is simply a fact. For any established business it is striving to perform above known standards. The ability to sustain leadership in the market is not just about the new product but about the execution and delivery of this. Executing well you have to be ruthless as the market is unrelenting, so you must make designated people accountable to meeting or exceeding standards. Normally innovation delivery needs a highly engaged executive involvement. The innovation delivery part cannot be devolved; it has to be well orchestrated.

Point three: Innovation is always swimming in uncertain waters. As uncertainty rises, the value of a well-thought-out strategy actually drops. There are constantly arising critical unknowns and sometimes all you are left with as your innovation emerges is actually a starting point, a launching point that needs rapid understanding and interpretation to build quickly upon, to yet fully capitalise upon in suddenly hitting a ‘rich vein’ of untapped need.

Point four : So you really do have to be ready to adapt, be agile, be ready to experiment, explore and learn, hence why execution is actually the harder end of the innovation process to get right. Everything hangs off a hypothesis, a set of assumptions, a ‘germ’ of an idea and needs to be proven in its delivery. When innovation is at the heart of your strategy, you need to zero in to the best possible execution strategy and constantly review this as successful delivery provides the validation. What you learn has to be feed back fast into the organization so you need to make sure the listening and responding parts are switched on to ‘receive’ this new information.

Point five: Often the lack of a clear formalised decision making process for commercialization and going-to-market is not present. Corporate leadership often leaves this to lower levels to execute, yet those ‘responsible’ struggle due to a lack of fact-based safety nets, managing the levels of uncertainly that innovation has and the often reluctant to seek out leadership engagement to resolve conflicts.

Point six: Far too often senior executives are engaged elsewhere and those left in charge of the execution process lack the courage to make often tough and game changing decisions. This often damages optimal innovation delivery as teams often adopt safety first principles.

Point seven: The ability to move an idea to implementation- with increasing agility– is what will distinguish the successful organization from the less successful. The ability to execute well remains a critical gap of performance. Innovation requires a deeply imbedded set of capabilities. Innovation is high maintenance but also offers high reward.

Point eight: The increasing complexity within markets, the global pressures of consistent breakthrough or disruptive innovation happening consistently all around us is making successful innovation harder.  The increased emphasis on new business models are causing escalating problems as well, changing approaches to market or challenging core offerings that were previously accepted. Complexity at the innovation delivery stage calls also has no different a need for a higher level of getting organized, keeping discipline and executing effectively. Staying alert to the rapid changes occuring daily.

Point nine: Innovation delivery requires having the right capacity in place, at the right time, to drive execution through to its identified end points. Innovation delivery is where many decisions are often muddled through. Market ‘alertness’ and fast reaction times is becoming more crucial than ever. This needs building into your delivery part- adaptive alertness.

The relationship between innovation efforts and their success lies increasingly in understanding the “go-to-market phase- executing the innovation delivery based on understanding clearly the customer and market needs.

Innovation should not be a mystery but it is hard to go from end to end without a real recognition that focused effort on the back end delivery part is a relevant, extremely important part of the innovation process.

That more detailed focus for achieving the return expected from all the total efforts that go into it from that original idea so often pays off and makes a real lasting difference.

The post Mission Critical for Innovation – Final Delivery first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This is the end where the ‘last five yards’ separate the winners from the losers.

The race before then has been made up of often huge quantities of stamina, fortitude, planning, exploration and getting into that necessary innovation rhythm to get yourself within sight of the finishing line, the point when the product, service or business model has one final gasp and passes over that internal finishing line.

The critical passing-through and launch phase where the finished concept goes through that clear defining moment, out into judgement day, where we enter that hostile environment, the marketplace, sometimes too loud cheers, sometimes to defining silence.

Welcome to the real world of judgement where those experienced enough in frontier-ship knows the terrain they are passing over, certainly not for the first time and can manage this again to have a further final successful outcome- better sales!

Hitching your wagons and moving out for the first time.
Discovering any innovation is hard work. What we all want to do is provide something new, an advancement on something that is already there, or it is simply not really innovation.

We search hard for making those breakthrough moments when you hit on that undiscovered ‘unmet need’ and the marketplace just loves it.

Getting to this point you need to recognise all the core needs of making this journey. You need plenty of innovation capabilities to overcome many hitches in the journey of marketplace acceptance. Here are four:

• Innovation execution is not a smooth process, you often have no control over making your innovation activity a steady process, it is full of surprises. It is how you manage these that will determine winners from losers.
• Innovation is serendipitous, full of fortunate discoveries, often you stumble across something that takes it further forward. Often you cannot even replicate that moment. Other times it is simply elusive until by accident and through patience, you get there. You resolve the obstacle, you overcome the objection, and you move on.
• Often innovation is often less than spectacular. You get to the moment of rolling drums and voila, whipping back the covers you cry “there you have it!” You offer something less than spectacular, it is so boringly such a ‘duh’ moment, you are ready to crawl back under the rock.
• Your innovation execution lacks momentum. Even with lots of initial enthusiasm and best intentions, suddenly all that necessary energy dissipates and falls away. What started as a bang ended with a whimper and a desperate need to finish this off and move on to the next thing.

Why is this?

What separates successful execution innovators from the rest of the pack?

Innovation needs to be a clear discipline; there really is no getting away from it. Innovation needs to be integrated from idea to execution, to full end-market delivery.

It often boils down to discrete and manageable tasks well managed, well orchestrated and planned, well supported with all the best resources available to make a success of innovations implementation.

Execution, that final all-important phase needs leadership. Leadership sets the tone and communication of what is important and is always ready and able to help the implementation team succeed as best they can.

These leaders need three traits- 1) a bias for action irrespective of the problem, 2) knowledge and contacts in the marketplace themselves to gauge quickly issues and roadblocks,3) they incentivise the execution team for providing breakthrough solutions and moving them forward quickly.

How many times though does leadership seem to slip away at the moment of execution? They feel the hard ‘yards’ have already been covered, the innovation is ready to go and they commit a series of execution sins.

They extract critical resources at the wrong time and work them back into the organization far too early. The research group have moved on, the product manager has been re-assigned, the research didn’t cover that last concept change to check its value in the market, the final packaging design was subjected to last-minute economies and runs the risk of compromising the final delivery of the product. This sin list could run on and on, you know these as they constantly happen.

The leadership had the pedal pressed to the floor so hard to get the product ready for launch, they just took their foot off this pedal at the crucial moment and the product goes ‘sliding’ out the door and simply crashes into that first formidable barrier, customer rejection and you were not ready for it. So much becomes “at-risk” if you have not given the right execution focus.

Leadership needs to be immersed in the deployment zone
Leadership needs to be as much in their ‘deployment zone’ as the team assigned the job.

They set and live the expectations, they define the critical deliverables, establish accountability and resolve the conflicts quickly, they install metrics that are execution specific, they actively seek commitments from the team, share in achieving them from their customers and they share the good and bad parts of the progress back into the organization.

They communicate accurately and frequently, keeping on top of issues, breaking down problems, and reaching back into the organization for help when help is needed. They offer true leadership, from the front.

Execution through this commitment has become mission-critical and all need to see this. It becomes, over time, the force for perpetual execution. Inertia is not spoken of ever!

The sustaining execution machine

Four attributes that need constantly developing well at the execution stage

• Agility – that ability to simply move quickly and be adaptable. To grasp the problem, move on it and constantly explore all the different angles that will resolve the issue and keep execution plans on track.
• Seek healthy debate – asking, probing, and showing a constant interest in what is going on, what resolved any issues, simply having that cultural bias of ‘qualified’ risk-taking and openness, discussing and learning so you are building up always knowledge and experience.
• Effective communication– ensuring there are the mechanisms in place to ‘flag’, to help, to reach out and ask for help. Use communication not to hide issues but to seek out other ways to break down the barriers.
• Provide appropriate resources – the need to provide the same energy and resource commitment, skills and experience that went into the discovery and development of innovation and ensure equal ‘vested’ interest from all is there in achieving the concept aims at the execution time; at the moment of customer experience. Gather the resources quickly, learn fast if it doesn’t and work to find solutions that can resolve it, so it does.

The five phases of execution adventure – just keep those wagons rolling!
The ‘innovation execution emotional wave’ makes it hard ground to travel.

I was reading recently about Gartner’s hype cycle, and one article written by Graham Horton gave me a thought for this piece. The hype cycle was developed to visualise the media coverage of new technology and it goes through five distinct phases.

Actually, I really think one version of this applies, with adaptation (and due acknowledgement to them) for the ongoing journey we often face in the execution of a product once it has entered the marketplace- that hostile terrain I spoke about. We go through a real ’emotional wave’ of innovation execution.

• Trigger:  in this case is our execution or launch. When the product is launched and comes up against customer comment, reaction and acceptance/ rejection
• Inflated expectations: the over-enthusiasm and expectations of the innovation meet the reality of the market place.
• Disillusionment: Either the innovation fails to make the changes it was expected so the company needs to begin a rapid re-think or the market response has been less than overwhelmed. Enthusiasm diminishes rapidly and action needs to be taken
• Enlightenment: The innovation on hand begins to be understood, to be adopted, to be adapted and fits within the needs of the final consumer. Sometimes this comes from heavy advertising, repackaging, repositioning or simply listening to the issues and rapidly making the necessary adjustments to match needs
• Productivity: The adjustments have been resolved, the peaks and troughs have been worked through, and it becomes appropriate to the customers’ needs. This might have needed second and third generation modification and upgrade but it does the job it was conceived to do.

Bringing the innovation execution wagon train home is hard.
I do think new products and services do go through this ‘emotional execution wave’. Execution is hard; it is not simply the ‘last five yards’ it goes well beyond the internal finishing line. Innovation does not stop when it goes out of the organization’s doors, it actually only just begins, and it has to prove itself.

To make innovation work, it is only when it is in the marketplace, judged by customers sufficiently enough to stump up their cash we have a successful innovation. To get there is often travelling over some rough, tough terrain and the more you are exposed, the more you learn. When you execute you need to deploy a significant skill set and dedicated resource to bring home the results.

Fuzzy front ends, huh! Markets have these tasty morsels for breakfast if they, firstly, have not listened to the market needs in the first place but more importantly, have not been executed correctly.

The back end, execution, is certainly rugged terrain, that final frontier to travel that is for sure.

The post The rugged final frontier of innovation – Execution. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.