Are we in a more Darwinian world perhaps?

I’d suggest that today innovation is caught up in the survival race, where the bolder ones are more innovation fit and pulling further ahead. We need many more organizations to get out of this survival trap and exploiting innovation in bolder ways, become fitter in their innovating purpose.

So much of what we do actually is ‘static’ work, activities that are simply repeating what we have done time and time again, gaining us little new knowledge and offering poor value creating worth. These activities on their own keep us happily ‘treading water’ and does the job of locking us comfortably into the ‘efficient and effectiveness clan mindset that most business organizations like to be ^keep us all constantly working within.

The harsh reality is this is becoming a very crowded, increasing uncomfortable place to be, as we reduce our capabilities to take a risk, too invest, to take those decisions that create more radical innovation. If we don’t offer value creation, we become increasingly unattractive and not regarded as essential, simply disposable. The more we play ‘safe’ the more we run the risk of being disrupted. We are failing to leverage much of the liberating power within innovation. Is our business world today is it so predictable?  No, it is well and truly ‘dynamic’ and evolving.

There is an awful lot of creative destruction going on and I’ve also written previously about the Innovation Era: Creative Destruction or Destructive Creation where the replacement rate is constantly speeding up, we are facing more uncertainty and incoherence than ever.

We need to place the emphasis back on the “creative” innovation part and not the ‘destructive’ nature we have been moving towards recently. To achieve this we need to understand innovation far better than we currently do. This is partly where my exploring the dynamics of innovation through fitness landscapes comes in.

What we do need to do is constantly evolve our innovation capabilities to perform in more dynamic and flexible ways. We need to acquire that consistent aim of achieving a more adaptable and adjusting approach to innovation in all its parts. We need to meet the changing circumstances and challenges we are all facing to regain the real growth needed from our economies and organizations, making what we do at the same time, more sustainable. Delivering better innovation outcomes is central to this task.

Knowing your innovation ‘stock’ and ‘capital’ potential

So what do we need to do?

We need to know our ‘innovation stock’, a large part of our wealth generating capital and where it can be best put to use. We are valuing the knowledge perspective far more and with this, we are increasingly recognizing the importance of the intellectual capital that makes up the organization.

We certainly need to re-think many of the old world value delivery systems to assess organizations and make much more of a concerted effort to make innovation that renders different, unique value outcomes, that keep pushing the boundaries of strategic advantage within any business.

We need to ‘master’ our understanding of the skills, processes, routines, organizational structure, and disciplines that enable firms to build, employ and orchestrate innovation as this is increasingly needed for participating in more complex open collaboration efforts. To achieve this, we first need to know ourselves and our capacity to innovate, both the strengths and weaknesses.

Each organization does need to know its innovation fitness to thrive in the future

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 into the longer-term. We need to find those capabilities that can be continually ‘orchestrated’ so they can be 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 and how to bring them together for greater value-generating productive use. The outcomes of knowing 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 are critical to understand and manage.

No journey is without pitfalls.

Finding the dynamic capabilities of innovation that ‘fit’ with the strategic needs of each organization will be different based on their own respective challenges and position. We need to stop simply copying others and create our own ‘dynamics’ to strengthen our own unique advantage points for sustaining our future. Do you want to become innovation fit?

The post Knowing where your innovation fitness comes from 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”

“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.

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 a 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.

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

Much of my focus within my work is to move organizations towards recognizing and expanding their innovation capital or stock.

The hard part for many organizations is that many of the key elements of innovation capital consist of many intangibles as well as tangibles and this needs deeper understanding and appreciation. These intangibles are in most cases non-technological and embodied in the organizational routines and thinking of the employees.

It is focusing on building the stock of this innovation capital as well as making the flow more dynamic, ever evolving, adapting and changing to the different conditions being presented to the company.

Some of the critical elements that need to be considered can be described as follows:

• Innovation strategy that relates to strategic choices a firm makes regarding its innovation
• The selection of the type of innovation that fits best the firm’s objectives and the allocation of resources to different types of innovations.
• Innovation culture that is the mixture of the innovation-related attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of the employees
• The integrating function of environment, culture and climates that stimulates innovation activities.
• Innovation structure that are formed to make up the innovation process, its governance and supporting intent
• The approach within the organization and the way the employees engaged in the innovation and how they are grouped and measured
• Knowledge (technological and non-technological) possessed by the employees engaged in the innovation process as much of the knowledge is tacit to varying degrees.
• The stock of knowledge can be increased by internal and external learning of an organization

It is the abilities of our internal learning as ongoing provides the creation for new knowledge within the enterprise.

Stocks and flows need 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 possesses attributes that make it a “strategic asset”

Innovation capital are made up of assets that are often context specific and interconnected and this makes it hard to build without a broad holistic approach

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital and each organization has a unique bundle of the firms resources and assets. It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities.

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.

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

The post Understanding that innovation capital becomes your new core first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We have to establish a way to map our ‘terrain of reality’ in not just how we are performing but what lost opportunities have slipped through, simply because we lacked the awareness to seize on these opportunities when we first spotted them.

We have significant gaps in our innovation capabilities and competencies. Have you ever really audited them? Taken them through a structured examination?

We do need to achieve a ‘reality’ check or we stay in a state of, forgive me, ignorance. We don’t see the possibilities we only see the possible and in today’s world that is a losers mentality. We need to push ourselves but before we do, we do need to know where we are.

Through my work on building the Innovation Fitness Landscapes that are relevant to you today and then structuring the place you want to be by starting to address the questions: are we focusing on the right ones to deliver on the challenges we are facing?”, “what can we do differently?” and “how can we identify those critical ones”? and “how can these be structured to clearly move us to the new capabilities we require?”

My role here is to be the guide towards building improved innovation capabilities and capacity

My role is to help in this task by identifying the opportunity spaces on where you need to focus your efforts‐ and apply the appropriate understanding and identify what resources are needed, so my job is to help you to navigate the terrain. Here is my journey outline described as a typical story that we all need envision and go through.

Through an innovation fitness landscape plan, you can access where you are and what needs to be achieved to get you to the desired point you see as where you need to be.

We call this “mapping the terrain of where you would like to be.” Your preferred place after you have accessed the competitive situation and what needs to differentiate yourselves, by being realistic about your present operational performance and a rigorous evaluation of how you can perform.

This is asking those searching questions around whether you have the commitment, resources, and determination to make a significant change in changing your capabilities or capacities to innovate. How are you both internally coping in an era of challenging technology change conditions but equally how you are seen to be externally coping with the pressures, rigors, and changes occurring in your marketplace.

You need to arrive at your preferred place after you have accessed the competitive situation and what needs to differentiate yourselves and being realistic about your present operational performance and a rigorous evaluation of how you can perform, whether you have the commitment, resources, and determination to make a significant change. How are you internally coping but equally how you are seen to be externally coping with the pressures, rigors, and changes occurring in your marketplace.

Arriving at a clear point of view

The intent is that we have to arrive at a clear “point of view” of both the reality of where you are and where you would like to be. These have to be explicit, to achieve a conscious awareness. I believe we have to go through some very specific and recognized steps, I outline the nine stages we need to work through the process here. These stages are a mixture of discussion, investigation and structured analysis and diagnostics.

This set of reality checks needs a clear, defining pathway in how the organization will need to change, a level of clarity of how you see your innovation capacity is not at the required level. Then we identify and describe the required outcomes of ‘fitness need’ of the structured work to be undertaken through the different parts of the Innovation Fitness Landscape assessment, establishing those capabilities you are likely to need, the more innovation dynamic capabilities. It is establishing these, that drive your innovation performance towards your stated needs and goals, ones to close the gap in present capabilities and required ones.

This moving from the present to the preferred requires this journey across the mapped terrain and the nature and character of that journey needs to be clarified, on what is needed from you and all the people involved to achieve your (transformation) goals. Those growing innovation dynamic capabilities become part of the enduring strategy that informs all those involved and mobilizes all that is needed to get you into this new innovation position.

The greater innovation fitness you achieve equates to more value creation potential you can generate.

These are the search for your dynamic points for innovation. These are unique to you, they make you distinctive. They lead you to new growth, new creations, new opportunities to innovate. You evolve. You constantly look to combine in different ways to stay ‘dynamic’ and sustaining. We are setting about building your innovation capital.

If you would like to learn more, then please contact me and we can set up a clarifying conversation to talk through this specifically, related to your unique position. Contact me at paul@agilityinnovation.com

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The post Peeling away the terrain of innovation reality 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 market place advantage”

“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 focus more upon the dynamics within innovation, that provide the true value creation in successful outcomes in 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 possesses 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.

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital and each organization has a unique bundle of the firms resources and assets. It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities that builds 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 a 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 acquisition, in assimilation and then into 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.

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

Much of my focus within my work is to move organizations towards recognizing and expanding their innovation capital or stock.

The hard part for many organizations is that many of the key elements of innovation capital consist of many intangibles as well as tangibles and this needs deeper understanding and appreciation. These intangibles are in most cases non-technological and embodied in the organizational routines and thinking of the employees.

It is focusing on building the stock of this innovation capital as well as making the flow more dynamic, ever evolving, adapting and changing to the different conditions being presented to the company.

Some of the critical elements that need to be considered can be described as follows:

• Innovation strategy that relates to strategic choices a firm makes regarding its innovation
• The selection of the type of innovation that fits best the firm’s objectives and the allocation of resources to different types of innovations.
• Innovation culture that is the mixture of the innovation-related attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of the employees
• The integrating function of environment, culture and climates that stimulates innovation activities.
• Innovation structure that are formed to make up the innovation process, its governance and supporting intent
• The approach within the organization and the way the employees engaged in the innovation and how they are grouped and measured
• Knowledge (technological and non-technological) possessed by the employees engaged in the innovation process as much of the knowledge is tacit to varying degrees.
• The stock of knowledge can be increased by internal and external learning of an organization

It is the abilities of our internal learning as ongoing provides the creation for new knowledge within the enterprise.

Stocks and flows need 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 possesses attributes that make it a “strategic asset”

Innovation capital are made up of assets that are often context specific and interconnected and this makes it hard to build without a broad holistic approach

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital and each organization has a unique bundle of the firms resources and assets. It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities.

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.

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

The post Understanding that innovation capital becomes your new core first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The work of David Teece is hugely influential on exploring dynamic capabilities.  It was my reading of one of his early papers, published in 1997 (with Gary Pisano and Amy Shuen) that got me started down the dynamics path and my quest to identify the innovation landscape required by each organization to become innovation fit.

Teece’s concept of dynamic capabilities is a theory about the source of corporate agility: the capacity (1) to sense and shape opportunities and threats, (2) to seize opportunities by mobilizing your resources to capture new value from those opportunities, and (3) to maintain competitiveness through enhancing, combining, protecting, and, when necessary, reconfiguring the business enterprise’s intangible and tangible assets by transforming them for continuous renewal. This makes organizations potentially dynamic.

Recognizing and adapting to today’s and tomorrows challenges.

The challenge is how to position or reposition today’s resources for tomorrow.

I focus on the three horizon framework as this points an organization towards a ‘possible’ tomorrow and then they have to position their resources to ‘ready’ themselves.

Today organizations need to (radically) break free from copying and evaluating to markets in similar ways to their competitors. The difficulties to make this change in thinking is caught up in existing practice, organizations are often ‘wedded’ to best practice, want to stick with the learnt practices that have served them well in delivering particular outcomes in the past.

Best practices are ordinary practices, they dampen down the uniqueness and difficult to imitate ones that have the real dynamic potential to set the organization apart, give them a possible distinct advantage.

Shifting the “way we do things around here” is really hard

We need to think differently, we need to build into the culture of our organizations a more “evolutionary fitness,” so as market conditions change, the capabilities adjust and adapt accordingly. This comes back to David Teece’s “sensing, seizing and transforming” of the managerial activities to accomplish this.

Analysing changes taking place and linking these to then adapting the resources has not been as well ‘connected’ in organizations as they should. I have argued often if we don’t align innovation and strategy, how can we build our capabilities? We fail to make many internal connections and this is where knowing the dynamics within the system will significantly help.

Are we protecting our critical resources of building ongoing capabilities?

It often surprises me about the sheer amount of effort put into capturing and protecting intellectual property. Of course any IP needs protecting but it allows you a limited position, in time, in market opportunity yet often it sparks off a second round of innovation to circumnavigate this by your competitors.

Much of your success to hold your position or to take your IP further is totally dependent on building your capabilities (to innovate). You need to actively work at building your internal propriety aspect, your internal or ecosystem capabilities. To do this they must become dynamic, ever evolving and adapting to changing conditions.

You have to invest to understand how the underlying system works

Innovation is different, it challenges much of the existing routines and systems. To integrate innovation into your systems and structures you should firstly map what you have, recognize what you don’t and seek ways to bridge any gaps. But you have to know what you are trying to achieve strategically through innovation and most do not.

This requires a fair amount of work. To do this you need to map your existing capabilities for innovation, and then explore the evolving landscape you think ‘makes up your future landscape of opportunities and then integrate the understanding of the changes taking place with the capabilities you require. You need to bridge those gaps.

To do this you need to have a sound intellectual structure of your innovation system and this needs to be dynamic not locked up in outdated best practices, mimicking your competitors, these need to be unique and difficult to imitate, forward-looking and highly adaptive to the change going on all around you constantly.

Redesigning your routines for innovation is essential

Are yours locked in routines that focus exclusively on efficiency and being effective? If so, you will continue to struggle with finding innovation that sets you apart as the dynamics and their routines that are needed for innovation to succeed and be embedded are different and not built on ordinary capabilities or existing practices.

Your search is for emerging practices and capabilities that you require to add to achieve more radical innovation outcomes that go beyond the incremental achievements that can be copied very fast by others.

You need to build your reflexes and innovation muscle differently and that requires exploring an innovation fitness regime to map these out and bring innovation closer in its alignment to the strategic needs facing our organizations today.

Setting yourselves truly apart

To set your organization apart, to make it unique and ready to apply innovation in evolutionary ways, it needs to be more responsive to this constant change going on in markets and adapting to new customer needs.

An organization has to be constantly sensing and searching, and then ready to seize and transform and this requires a highly adaptive and dynamic responsive to constant change, though managing the capabilities to deliver on this the innovation required.

Knowing your innovation fitness dynamics is critical within this.

The post Understanding the dynamics within your innovation system first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Are we in a more Darwinian world perhaps?

I’d suggest that today innovation is caught up in the survival race, where the bolder ones are more innovation fit and pulling further ahead. We need many more organizations to get out of this survival trap and exploiting innovation in bolder ways, become fitter in their innovating purpose.

So much of what we do actually is ‘static’ work, activities that are simply repeating what we have done time and time again, gaining us little new knowledge and offering poor value creating worth. These activities on their own keeps us happily ‘treading water’ and does the job of locking us comfortably into the ‘efficient and effectiveness clan mindset that most business organizations like to be ^keep us all constantly working within.

The harsh reality is this is becoming a very crowded, increasing uncomfortable place to be, as we reduce our capabilities to take risk, too invest, to take those decisions that create more radical innovation. If we don’t offer value creation, we become increasingly unattractive and not regarded as essential, simply disposable. The more we play ‘safe’ the more we run the risk of being disrupted. We are failing to leverage much of the liberating power within innovation. Is our business world today is it so predictable?  No, it is well and truly ‘dynamic’ and evolving.

There is an awful lot of creative destruction going on and I’ve also written previously about the Innovation Era: Creative Destruction or Destructive Creation where the replacement rate is constantly speeding up, we are facing more uncertainly and incoherence than ever.

We need to place the emphasis back on the “creative” innovation part and not the ‘destructive’ nature we have been moving towards recently. To achieve this we need to understand innovation far better than we currently do. This is partly where my exploring the dynamics of innovation through fitness landscapes comes in.

What we do need to do is constantly evolve our innovation capabilities to perform in more dynamic and flexible ways. We need to acquire that consistent aim of achieving a more adaptable and adjusting approach to innovation in all its parts. We need to meet the changing circumstances and challenges we are all facing to regain the real growth needed from our economies and organizations, making what we do at the same time, more sustainable. Delivering better innovation outcomes is central to this task.

Knowing your innovation ‘stock’ and ‘capital’ potential

So what do we need to do?

We need to know our ‘innovation stock’, a large part of our wealth generating capital and where it can be best put to use. We are valuing the knowledge perspective far more and with this we are increasingly recognizing the importance of the intellectual capital that makes up the organization.

We certainly need to re-think many of the old world value delivery systems to assess organizations and make much more of a concerted effort to make innovation that renders different, unique value outcomes, that keep pushing the boundaries of strategic advantage within any business.

We need to ‘master’ our understanding of the skills, processes, routines, organizational structure and disciplines that enable firms to build, employ and orchestrate innovation as this is increasingly needed for participating in more complex open collaboration efforts. To achieve this, we first need to know ourselves and our capability to innovate, both the strengths and weaknesses.

Each organization does needs to know its innovation fitness to thrive in the future

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 sustaining into the longer-term. We need to find those capabilities that can be continually ‘orchestrated’ so they can be 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 and how to bring them together for greater value-generating productive use. The outcomes of knowing 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 is critical to understand and manage.

No journey is without pitfalls.

Finding the dynamic capabilities of innovation that ‘fit’ with the strategic needs of each organization will be different based on their own respective challenges and position. We need to stop simply copying others and create our own ‘dynamics’ to strengthen our own unique advantage points for sustaining our future. Do you want to become innovation fit?

The post Knowing where your innovation fitness comes from first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.