The herculean task of integrating the impossible; in rules, regulations, attempting to reduce centuries of proud independence, individual cultures to be boiled down into the Super-European one. For me, it just can’t work.

I had an incredible 15 years living in Asia and came back to Europe some years ago and noticed a real difference, in many ways it has simply gotten worse, not better. Europe has been intent on institution building, forging an EU out of all the different countries that make up the European Union. In this “obsession” it has become very inward focused, the different leaders of the individual countries are battling to save their turf, yet the world continues to turn on different axes, that Europe seems not to have grasped.

This institutional building has forgotten the people-related building where aspiration, identification, inclusion makes the transformation happen or not. The EU has forgotten to translate all its work into true meaning for the people, believing in a worthwhile future. In Asia, you feel vibrancy, energy, opportunism, dynamism, that chance to get “part of the action”, here in Europe you sense a drifting, a separation, and growing fragmentation.

I certainly feel Europe is backward-facing, it is busy protecting individuals and (self-serving) countries focusing on grabbing their piece of the pie. They have such tension within the very institutions themselves, hanging on to noble causes with 20th values of out-of-date concepts. They at the European level are blocking mergers to build European champions, fining those that challenge the European status because they have different models of operating.

I continue to feel Europe is isolating itself in much of what it does, failing to really grasp the imperatives of real change needed in a connected world, to effectively compete. Yet we see growing polarization as people can’t see the future as the European leadership itself, bickers and argues. It is not a pretty picture of the future when you look at Europe.

I have read recent reports from the WEF, McKinsey, and Deliottes all coming to the defense of Europe.

They are defending, perhaps in the hope, something will finally change. Of course, the Brits are to blame! They want to leave the EU party and go their own ways. Regretfully that has been Shambolic to witness, a further symptom of our present-day Europe. For a nation that has a lot to offer, the UK process of exit has been agony to watch what is happening.

Yet in that separation, as hard as it comes, it might offer them the independence and some re-emergence of reconnecting to the world in their own ways of seeing things. You can re-ignite that sense of freedom, independence, and spirit of adventure if it can be seized. The United Kingdom is most probably better equipped than all other European countries to accelerate a digital future. What are Europeans loss, is the UK’s gain, in being unshackled from others, not just lagging behind in digital technology and innovation but many seemingly blocking progress, dragging others down to their level, all for the “collective union”.

Europe offers incredible history, the same as Asia.

The history is there, waiting for you to learn lessons, to draw insights. The difference is it is easy to look back, with the benefit of hindsight but when you are caught up on something as transforming as we are presently experiencing, a digital transforming world, you are just that, caught up. How do the Europeans understand they need to change, to understand digitally embracing might give them a better chance than holding onto old ways?

We are in a globalization revolution, one where the world continues to connect, to increasingly rely on the internet, to seize opportunities to transform business, form different society values and where the balance of power will eventually reside in those that dominate in technology dominance. At the moment Europe is so out of the race it begins to get frightening for those situated here.

The failure to embrace change happens universally. Yet in Europe we fail to grab change in ways that can transform, we settle for status quo unless it is forced by crisis.

Let me take my area of focus – Innovation and Digital Technology.

Europe is no different to many, they are enthralled by technology, they are clearly fixated on implementing all technology. Rightly so as there is a massive amount of implementing to do. Yet technology enablement needs the right people to understand it and the right organizational structures to capitalize on it. Europe seems to lag, some still call it an innovation powerhouse but they lose me just on that point alone, they have stopped taking risk.

Eight of the top innovation countries of the world are within Europe surprisingly (source the Global Innovation Index) with Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom being in the top five globally. Now how that is measured might be stacked again on historic measurements (Universities, patents) but does not address the phenomena of Digital Technology weighting or digital communications that will transform innovation and the countries that make deep investments in this. Innovation and Digital Technology are in the future so intertwined.

To emerge out as winners in a connected world, centred on digital, seeking new business models, experimenting, exploring and taking risk is essential. It is a world full of speed and opportunitiy. The EU seems the oppositie, holding (desperately) on to stop others from the disrupting of (their) industries, not wanting to redefine business or society.

This approach means you might be hanging on to a notion of being very innovative, in those selected measures, yet set in a previous time but in reality, you will face a very different future as you hold onto mistaken, outdated approaches.

We are caught in the wrong measures in a connected world, connecting ideas, value points, supply chains that are global, that crosses borders and challenges the very notion of national states, to measure progress. Silo’s do not just exist in ortganizations they exist in measuring one nation against the other on “selected” criteria that can be measured. Today it is the intangibles that give the value not the tangibles.

Europe is trapped in legacy.

They suffer high costs, aging workforces, very high social costs in most of their current ecosystems, designed for the 20th century. The rapid shifts towards the new triggers of innovation based on the underlying technology of AI, Blockchain, cloud, and cognitive computing, data analytics and the prevalence of IoT, are all changing innovation dramatically.

Deloitte had a report or survey that came out on 29th January 2019 called “Innovation in Europe“. It offers some excellent insights on the state of innovation but I loved their Executive Summary opening:

In many ways this sums Europe up. The issue what can be done about it?

Deloitte asked the question “what triggers innovation in your company?”

This list is universal in its challenges and recognition. Europe today is trapped in not fully recognizing and embracing technology, they do lack the “innovation dynamism effect” but they do recognize the triggers they need to respond too.

My view is they have not really tackled these from an innovation solution perspective, they just know them. The World Economic Forum in a report called Innovate Europe: Competing for Global Innovation Leadership rightly point the point “that in Europe they still have not identified Europe’s innovation model to compete with other pioneering regions“.

The problem in Europe is we are not facing up to Six of the Nine shown above. This is why I’m in the bleak camp. We know them but we are not resolving them

The three “taken care of” are our focus on cost efficiency, the fixation in the change in regulations and government incentives. As those three are imposed at levels so disconnected from the competitive forces at work globally, they are focused on, drawing away the forces needed to really tackle the more important value creating ones on this list.

The other six are where our troubles begin in Europe.

We focus on internal markets in Europe and mostly fail to make a more global connection. We know where we need to go but here in Europe can’t seem to translate these into the winning business models that are needed.

There is plenty of counter-arguments with this Deloitte report, they claim many assessments of Europe’s present position are excessively bleak. I sadly am still in the “bleak” camp but will come out and fight for the possibilities, as I believe there is a real future, if only we really can leapfrog and see many of the connecting points needed for this future.

My view is Europe will not progress and really compete without something radically happening.

The World Economic Forum in a report called “Innovate Europe: Competing for Global Innovation Leadership“ rightly point the point “that in Europe they still have not identified Europe’s innovation model to compete with other pioneering regions”. They are not in Europe overcoming the challenges,  as we continue to see Europe remains highly fragmented, firstly to complete the single market but with so much uneven investment in Innovation and digital solutions, it will remain a real laggard unless something changes.

I, for one, do not think any completing of a single market as being pursued in Brussels will make Europe competitive. The task is far too complex and counter-intuitive to Europe’s history.

What Deloitte’s Executive summary points out that there is still hope for Europe:

They (Deloitte) did present some positive thinking from their survey of 760 European companies in 16 European countries,. across 20 major business fields. These were top line and mostly give some hope but these need a very different “collective” whole and a greater dedicated push. Unfortuneatlythe issues have been identified but are they being worked upon, with the energy and force they should be?

• Innovation is a strategic priority – 88 percent want to increase budgets over the next two years.
• Technology is the main trigger for innovation in Europe. Ninety-two percent of businesses across Europe see advances in new technologies as the primary trigger behind innovation with new consumer expectations (86 percent) as the second most important.
•  Advanced technologies are not expected to destroy jobs.  Most companies (41 percent) expect full-time headcount to increase, while 29 percent expect it to remain the same
• Investment in data analytics and cloud computing is already advanced. Investments in data analytics (69 percent) and cloud computing (62 percent) are already well advanced, with another 26 percent of firms expecting to invest in data analytics in the next two years, and 29 percent in cloud computing. Artificial intelligence (AI) (43 percent), augmented and virtual reality (38 percent) and robotic process automation (RPA) (36 percent) will also be areas of focus over the next two years.
• Ecosystem innovation is not fully embraced by European companies. European companies do not seem to embrace the role of clusters and networks in dynamic innovation. The potential for collaboration with external partners to share knowledge, stay abreast of developments, expand market reach and provide complementary expertise appears underutilized
•  The biggest hurdles to innovation are cultural – and resistance to change is high. Cultural resistance is identified as the main obstacle to fostering innovation by 32 percent of companies. In addition, data security is seen as inhibiting data-driven innovation (30 percent).

So Deloitte’s summaries their report with the following – Innovation is far from dead in Europe.

There is no denying that Europe is feeling competitive pressure. European companies face the need to undertake substantial investment in digital infrastructure. They conclude the continent is neither poorly positioned nor lacks confidence in its ability to compete.

Do I see it differently?

There are a lot of clues within the Deloitte report that makes me feel Europe is missing the future as they are stuck in the traditional ways to innovate. Take a look at this visual from the Deloitte report. What is wrong and missing?

So at first glance, you think well these types of innovation being pursued is not wrong……..but they are.

They are primarily islands of pursuit. The value in the model is not in their individual pursuit it is finding new business models of growth by investing in as many combinations as possible, to explore and build innovation around. Innovation today is about multiples of combinations, not one rigid innovation approaches. It is not one business model it is about “multiple pursuits”.

We need flexibility, agility, rapid reaction and (real-time) understanding to deliver back what is needed in quicker ways, at a pace and intensity and capable of scaling when the market reacts in positive ways I still feel we focus on discreet pockets of innovation and never seek out ways to combine them in radical ways.

Let’s take the “classic” Doblin ten types of innovation. It is not the pursuit of one, the combination of two or three, it is seeking out innovation across all ten simultaneously and in constant making multiple combinations to extend your business model and options.

We MUST leverage all our assets, not just within one company but across an ecosystem of partners. Europe is very reluctant to embrace more collaborative partnerships, use platforms to exchange upon and build ecosystems to capture and leverage all the knowledge out there.

We need to really push open innovation through the use of this digital technology we have at our disposal. We need to learn how platforms will work for each of us, we need to understand ecosystems principles and its management, we need to work through open and collaborate in imaginative ways.

Then there is the notion of cross-sector innovation, one that can be realized through digital collaborations. Where is the engagement with start-ups, with Universities, these are still grossly undervalued and utilized in Europe Venturing is a powerful catalyst, not just for the start-up but for the large organizations yet Europe struggles to be offering new capital, it is constantly supporting old capital, why? We continue to lag other parts of the world in funding innovation as we are locked into a model of compromise to satisfy the uneven state of innovation development. Europe is channeling its capital to support those who are lagging, as against accelerating those that can seize the opportunity.

In Europe, we are around 50% of the US on digital ICT. We are struggling to embrace Big Data, we are piloting Robotics mostly, we are exploring far more tentatively than other regions of the world advanced neuronal machine learning, the effective use of AI tools, exploring algorithms and pushing outsmart workflows, cognitive agents, language processing (In Europe please).

Lastly here, Europe is still caught up in responding, as it is in a lagging position. We mimic competition or crave for it but cannot find that necessary appetite to understand how to compete in new digital and business models. Europe holds much back due to its regulations, its propensity to interfere or impose for the good of the greater community. Something really has to change. Where are those innovation sandboxes for experimentation, for supporting their evolution? So much gets caught up in internal fights and squabbles, in regulation or oversight.

We lack a vision in Europe that gives belief yet “we” have it in us.

The Brits have said “enough” and even as they leave the party in the same way as they entered it, reluctant and full of questioning, they might actually seize this European void on Innovation and Digital as they are chasing and investing. Maybe not in the same levels as China or the United States. Why? Well, the share of digitization potential realized by all countries is all to play for. The digitalization share in the US is 18%, the UK 17%, and Europe as a block 12%. So as the Brits seem set to leave, the Europeans have lost one of the leading powerhouses of innovation and digitalization.

Out of the top four in Europe, two seem to be at logger’s heads with the powers in Brussels, Switzerland and the UK. Others will follow unless Europe can find there own distinctive innovation model, based on digital technology enablers and solve so many of the internal problems bedeviling Europe.

The biggest challenge is getting identification and belief back into the people of Europe. Innovation for one, stands no chance within belief. All I hope is it does but on many days I am not optimistic. let’s say just perhaps hopeful.

Europe has its strengths, we need to learn to accelerate not pull back. We need to grasp the very essence of innovation, to explore and exploit experiments and breaking opportunities and bring back that sense of vibrancy, embracing the global forces at work to shape them, not constantly be defensive, adapting to outside influences.

The post Defending Europe, including the Brits, on innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

You can surround legacy but it diverts so much “spent energy”, it becomes the critical impediment to making that real change you so urgently require to compete in today’s’ world. We still struggle with resolving legacy in our systems, processes, factories so we lose the ability to really advance and gain true connectivity.

Why do I worry so much about legacy?  The more we hang on to legacies within our companies, the more we hold up the vital changes we need to manage in the 21st century.

Can you imagine how hard legacy systems are hard to replace? They make up vital business processes that were designed years ago but not for the technology onslaught  we are witnessing today or see in the future. They were designed on outdated technologies, designed in a world where data was recorded perhaps but not stored nor mined 24 x 7.

So much we have in place today, in our factories, in our processes, systems and ways of working have strong roots built up from individual moments of time, from decisions made that considered what was good for your one organization. They become standardized over time, they grew and they were seen as safe and secure because they were all internal. They did not need to become connected up beyond a specific need to achieve. These systems evolved slowly over time but were not designed for the world of the “Internet of Things”

The old era needs to give way to the new one of being completely connected

Systems such as ERP, CRM, and PLM were ours to evolve to meet our needs and pockets. Today we live in a completely different world. We combine the virtual world of data with the physical world of “things” and want to distribute, share, exchange, monitor in more “real time” and open ways with many others. Connections have moved out of being part of an assembly line but part of the need to connect up digital factories globally so the supply and demand get more closely aligned to react, exploit and capitalize on business opportunities.

The world of visualization, data analysis, and more holistic insights rules so we can optimize processes, utilize them in far more flexible, responsive ways and gain increased performance. That applies to our assets and our design and innovating capabilities. Speed and awareness are critical for us to react and respond, to take full advantage of “breaking” market opportunities. Data brings the potential for understanding and to achieve this we need to connect everything and every person up, to leverage this. The legacies that surround us are simply stopping that “optimizing” we so need today.

We have legacy systems that still hold far more critical day to day activities than we care to admit. We operate with legacy software that is highly vulnerable, written in another era where Cybersecurity was not appreciated or “attacks” on the system were not daily in seeking out weakness. Yet they still exist, still forming a culture of dependencies not wanted to be faced up too, as they are too hard, expensive and complicated to migrate.

Lastly here, they have such limited ability to adapt to change and drag down performance when you are at the point of time when you need to improve performance as your competitive landscape seems more threatened than ever.

I add this in here as it nicely summarizes the legacy issue in applications, those “ancient technologies” hindering us

We add more maintenance and support, just to keep them going. We often can’t push them, the business becomes dependant on them and is forced to adapt. Legacy systems have greater difficulty to integrate over time with new technologies. We spend more time on compliance. Old systems have greater vulnerability and are increasingly becomes the highest point of security breaches. Old code is becoming more compromised the longer we take the path of supporting the old and not replacing it with more resilient systems, more adaptable codes that can evolve.

Then just think of the increasing poor response times, the loss of not connecting up the customer touch points across your business, the growing loss of business opportunity as you do not have insight, based on bringing the complete picture into the one point of view, you keep silo’s of knowledge that risks fragmentation and incomplete understanding.

Not fully addressing the need to change actually does lead to poor decision making or the growing inability to tailor solutions to real needs not only knowing some or none of the real needs, from lack of a complete data picture. If we cannot connect up we lose the business opportunity and fresh insights. Then the last in a long list of legacy problems we never achieve the potential of organizational agility and efficiency. We constantly sub-optimize

Then we have the other types of legacy.

Enterprises that look well-run suddenly stubble or push their existing position a step too far. They allow bureaucracy to take over, they lose that entrepreneurial spark. They become arrogant rejecting younger thinking or simply alternative thinking believing their business model is the only one. The executives at the top or near enough to wait and “fill” others shoes stop pushing, they prefer safety first. Then we get the poor planning and thinking hard about “greater” consequences, we make the constant call of shareholder return on shorter and shorter time horizons keeping within the promise of delivering what we said, allowing performance to match this, we just don’t push anymore.

Those of us looking harder from the outside can spot the company is becoming less attractive to work for, the talent within starts to drift away and as those inside don’t push like they use too, skills and resource development sort of ossifies.

Usefulness is traded off constantly

We begin to see some of the traps Clayton Christensen wrote about in his “Innovators Dilemma” and follow-up books. The theory of disruptions raises itself. We get locked in the sustaining environment and not seeking out the positions that disrupt ourselves and push through all the challenges of legacy, those new forces at work, embracing new technologies and really attacking what we have, so as to equip ourselves in future looking ways.

The hard decisions to make radical changes gets caught. So often within legacy decisions, we have two choices. When we have the real need to replace the underlying infrastructure or technology the decisions become hard. You so often get caught inputting this off, you ‘dampen’ the compelling need to change and keep adding new additions to the existing system, adding even more complexity into the legacy problem. On the other hand the need for such a compelling business transformation then we see two pathways.

There are core legacy systems and non-core and we can manage them differently.

The core ones require migration at scale, performance, and managing often wicked and complex thinking through. They call for very well-thought-through planning and execution. I don’t want to go specifically there for this post but these are the real constraints on the business as discussed earlier

Then you have the non-core legacy. There is some good news here. Non-core systems today can be undertaken at the departmental level, and can “gather” business enablement, more local governance, and rules to be managed and designed and undertaken to make incremental to distinctive improvements.

Customer Engagement Apps are a good point in case. The movement to applying low-code solutions can bridge much. They tend to be built not on feeding the old system but sitting more in the cloud that can draw up required data, recombined and shared in ways that relate far more to “specific” applications and given functional needs. They become mission critical to tackling (near) real-time needs as they are built in radically different ways and offer a far greater engagement.

That need for customer engagement is actually in designing solutions that have the users involved by applying their user-centric understanding and work with design thinking environments alongside the application code writers. They work alongside each other, not one waiting for the other, then sending it back as poorly understood. The enablement of the business in the designs to ensure app usability serves the purpose is making legacy problems reduce down.

Applying the three horizons to legacy systems

We can begin to apply the three horizons thinking to legacy complexity.

If “we” all accept rapid disruption and speed of new solution deployment go hand in hand, then legacy becomes even more compelling to tackle. Perhaps we can apply the three horizons to legacy as well?

• Horizon one we can map out a plan to upgrade where it is possible. My example of low-code and discreet business functions works here.
• Horizon two is connecting the present with the future. The need to migrate the past, into the present to prepare for the future needs specifically tackling in this three horizon dialogue mapping. How, with what, the needs (resources, time, protecting and exploring)
• Then in horizon three, we build new systems, taking leading-edge technology or solutions and give the necessary assessment and exploiting confidence into practice. We experiment with overcoming legacy in contained situations to learn and inform, to then bring these back into horizon one

We are applying the basic principles of stretching in horizon one, building out bridges of understanding and solutions from the old to the new in horizon two and in horizon three, gaining insights and confidence to take legacy away in leading-edge thinking and development.

We need to always achieve top management attention to “enact” change and gain critical support. Knowing we have this support pushes us in our goals, performance and being judged. Using the three horizons to engage, to discuss the impact, and risk, on the changes within our legacy issues, helps the critical discussions we need to have around legacy. A framework like the three horizons provides a common point of understanding.

The failure to address our legacy issues

If we fail to address our legacy and not find solutions that can overcome the design flaw of equipment or systems that were not designed to communicate or be integrated; designed for a different era. A new era that connects all the necessary devices and systems, operating in more open environments so they can exchange and exploit opportunities in multiple ways.

Today we need to have connectivity, flexibility, scalability, in cost-effective ways to provide overall benefits to the enterprise not to a discreet department or a fixed time need as that was our calendar of (predictable) events. We live in a world full of unpredictability, the world of VUCA, used to describe situations or environments that engender high levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Being isolated means we are more vulnerable, being connected we can become more responsive. Legacy blocks this need for reaction, it denies us complete “line-of-sight”.

Why do we hold onto our legacy? Multiple reasons, sunk-costs, over-reliance, dependencies, fear of change. The list goes on but the significant roadblock of the legacy that surrounds us blocks us to fully participate in the connected world. Future-forward needs can never be realized, apart from being at higher costs, impacting profitability and diminishing competitiveness.

Everything slows down the longer we wait.

As other accelerate, respond and speed up, we try to follow. Our best knowledge and insights elude us. Innovation suffers, designs are caught up in workarounds and we trade off what the market wants or customers desire, and then offer solutions hobbled by the legacy that stays stubbornly resisting change and not allowing us seeking out a more complete picture. We can’t afford this, we must address it

In a current climate where the world economy seems to be slowing down, we will look yet again to extend the life of our plant, processes, and systems. We begin to put off new investment, perhaps it is the best time to address legacy not continue to push it into the future as we do need to vigorously address this legacy issue, wherever it resides.

If we can’t connect up to yield today’s critical need of “connected understanding” from having data flowing into a fully connected enterprise, we will fall further behind. We need to keep pace, position ourselves so as to leverage our competitive position alongside others, to scale to new, more complex challenges with its greater insights and growth potential. We must tackle legacy across our whole enterprise as a matter of urgency.

The post Legacy is all around us. Innovation and insights suffer greatly first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Often organizations are weighed down by legacy; it chokes off innovation and much of the potential creativity. This comes in many forms; in its culture, in its history, its core markets or products, in its systems, structures, and processes built around innovation practice.

Today, we are confronted with a very different global marketplace than in the last century. National borders and regulations built to protect those that are ‘within’ in the past have rapidly become a major part of the ‘containing- restraining’ factors that are rendering many previously well-respected organizations as heading towards being obsolete and not in tune with today’s different world where global sourcing determines much.

They are increasingly trapped in declining markets, starved of the new capabilities and capacities to grow a business beyond ‘traditional’ borders, so this means they are unable to take up the new challenges that are confronting them. They see themselves as reliant on hanging on to the existing situation as long as they can, often powerless to make the necessary shifts, failing to open up, finding it increasingly more than difficult to find the ways of letting go, of changing. They are trapped in legacy.

Legacy can choke an organization in so many ways to limit expansion. 

How can we break out of this and rethink? When we begin to investigate legacy to cut loose and design differently, it begins to infringe, it challenges, it simply attacks what has taken often years to build and those most involved become defensive and fit to hang onto what has been established, as it feels familiar.

It feels like ‘their’ legacy is being destroyed and what they have fought hard to gain now needs protecting. Most organizations never feel fully capable to address legacy, they even will deliberately design duplication into their operating model, they will recognize they are far from optimal and more often than not, live with the consequences. In today’s world, this is a real mistake.

The world is changing

You can’t afford to keep heads buried in the sand like an ostrich, although that’s actually a myth stating when ostriches are faced with an attack by predators they bury their heads. New global adversaries are altering our landscape and forcing us to become increasingly competitive, forcing us to often reluctantly alter our established ways.

We can’t afford not to refresh and renew on a constant basis. We need to not just adapt, become more agile but we must think through what, where and how we manage. We need to build a more dispersed network of innovation connections within and outside our organizations to gather and synthesize knowledge that has potential value and future worth.

To allow this to happen, for knowledge to flow into, within and across organizations we need to strip away many of the constraints built into our structure that are designed to ‘contain’ knowledge, whereas today we have to ‘spread’ knowledge far and wide, so we can make the new connections to build int this existing knowledge the  new value points where innovation resides.

Today we have solutions to make a real change and address those legacy systems.

Today we have a solution, we can migrate our current systems into the cloud, breaking them up and building some unique APIs that can ease the transition to cloud services by decoupling critical parts of a company’s cumbersome legacy infrastructure.. These become microservice architecture, providing modular and improved flexibility with the aim of decreasing time to market for example. Or building a suite of small services that allow more external people to contribute, a greater agility in response and build greater independence but can still be internally managed.

So we break down some of those legacy systems into vital chunks that can benefit from external partnering, so as to speed up innovation-to-market. These are driven far more by the business perspective not the technology aspect alone. You are looking to find increased business value by breaking out of some of your legacy problems.

Any journey starts with ‘letting go’

Control gives comfort; we constantly design this into the system. The larger we are, the greater the controls built into the system it seems but somehow, controlling for control sake, does need replacing; we need to let go of more than we realize to reduce the constraints placed on our business. We need to replace ‘command and control’ built up over numerous years with something different. The cloud offers a way forward by finding points of value that can be broken out to accelerate innovation performance.

We need to begin to ask a range of strategic questions that question our legacy so we can be released to move forward.

The post Organizational legacy so often chokes innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Often this reluctance to dispose of these old systems, processes and inadequate frameworks is holding innovation back.

I would argue that perhaps many of our current innovation practices are ‘frozen’ in past times and they significantly slow us down, in a world that is becoming one built increasing on speed, flexibility and adaptability.

We lose precious time as we should be forward looking. constantly learning and experimenting with new concepts and approaches to innovation and what and where these can bring in new growth, sustainability and value to our organisations.

Where does design thinking, lean management, the early thinking to focus more on changing the business model come in? These need to be deliberately designed into your innovation process, not used in a random, ad-hoc approach or as sideshows. They need designing into a new innovation system so they become commonplace and required.

Do innovation labs feature as part of the ongoing innovation development process and how are you building the customer experience? Are you approaching these in well-established structured ways as the defined innovation system or are you constantly refreshing and challenging the system by being adaptive, experimental and fluid in how you manage?

Often we don’t allow ourselves the time, presently seen as a luxury, to call for a comprehensive review of our innovation infrastructure, yet we ought to. Innovation thinking and its approach in design are constantly evolving and we should be keeping pace with these constant developments to realign the latest thinking and the internal processes.

We also should  expand out our thinking on innovation beyond the present, lessen the constant looking back and push it a little more towards having a greater emphasis on our future foresight, one that can deliver fresher vision, built on bolder and more rewarding challenges for the pursuit of different growth options .

We need to truly capitalise on the emerging practices of innovation, not just based only on yesterday’s experiments and successes or achieved through outdated past behaviours and thinking.

Where do we start?

Firstly you have to start out with why you feel a freshening up should be required, should this be radical, distinctive or incremental. Are you getting so caught up in analysing all the pieces, you are forgetting the bigger picture?

What do you actually want to achieve that takes you closer to your aspirations, not just immediate goals? Can the way you conduct innovation today meet that strategic challenge? Does it ‘advance’ on your current position? Are all business units working on the same system, are they all advancing at a steady speed to a greater maturity? If not, what is holding them back? Do we know, have we asked?

There is a host of reasons ‘renewal’ might be needed. Today, when markets are especially tough, looking long and hard at what you have and jettisoning what you don’t need becomes essential to re-position yourself as leaner and more flexible. There are many pressing needs why you have to ‘shape up’. Don’t ignore the need for renewal, it needs to be a constant in today’s rapidly changing and challenging times. So often when we have finally decided to establish a system of innovation it is already out of date. The use of technology is equally a curse as well as an enabler.

A need for a critical and fresh evaluation of your innovation process

There comes a time where any structure, process, culture or organisation needs a radical rethink and innovation is no different. Please don’t just simply bolt on the next bit, I would argue we need to reflect on this and think differently, re-equip ourselves to meet the present and future challenges and that needs stepping back often and with a fresh clarity of purpose as our markets, customers and innovation approaches are in such constant flux and change.

To achieve this more radical departure from your existing viewpoint, you do need to look at a more structured, methodical approach to your renewal of innovation. Constantly designing, adapting and redesigning into this processes and the required structures so you can keep a more sustaining evolution to your innovation practices. Renewal and legacy reduction become second nature, a constant in your life. Constant upgrades and jettisoning the old approaches as you learn and evolve.

Making the critical steps needs structuring.

Suggesting a structured approach to renewal is not an easy journey; it takes dedicated time and incredible strength of determination but it becoming critical to pursue. The rewards come through an organisation that emerges from today’s ‘uncertainly’ equipped to be more resistant, flexible and agile, so as to seize emerging opportunities quicker, at tomorrow’s new innovation speed, built on latest thinking, design and ‘bleeding edge’ tools and frameworks  .

An innovation guide in this is what I call the ‘sense of renewal’ framing, partly based on these suggestions mentioned in that post. It can often help you think through the options, evaluate the existing and compared with the preferred as it gets you closer to the need of your innovation design. So developing a basic problem recognition diagnostic tool that frames this thinking through can help.

A more structured and systematic approach must be taken

I would recommend for building a renewal programme that you can work through a step-by-step approach, enabling clarity and understanding as you go; so everyone involved can see the problems, challenges and then actively contribute to the solutions. This should be our goals always in renewal programmes, inclusion, be these to address societal or business challenges.

What this step-by-step programme does call for, is a very structured, comprehensive investigative approach across the organisation. firstly to build the momentum for recognising what a sense of renewal can bring as important for the future, and then secondly, seeing an emerging clarity for this future built upon a sustaining innovative culture that all contribute and become involved in.

The need for making the case for renewal and charting the path towards the solutions is no different from any other corporate initiative. Making the commitment and getting others to sign on is sometimes hard, but essential. Seeking out places of ‘duplication’ and latent redundancy is also necessary to build into any renewal programmes.

The post Dealing with the innovation legacy lying within your business. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Often organizations are weighed down by legacy; it chokes off innovation and much of the potential creativity. This comes in many forms; in its culture, in its history, its core markets or products, in its systems, structures and processes built around innovation practice.

Today, we are confronted with a very different global market place than in the last century. National borders and regulations built to protect those that are ‘within’ in the past have rapidly become a major part of the ‘containing- restraining’ factors that are rendering many previously well-respected organizations as heading towards being obsolete and not in tune with today’s different world where global sourcing determines much.

They are increasingly trapped in declining markets, starved of the new capabilities and capacities to grow a business beyond ‘traditional’ borders, so this means they are unable to take up the new challenges that are confronting them. They see themselves as reliant on hanging on to the existing situation as long as they can, often powerless to make the necessary shifts, failing to open up, finding it increasingly more than difficult to find the ways of letting go, of changing. They are trapped in legacy.

Legacy can choke an organization in so many ways to limit expansion. 

How can we break out of this and rethink? When we begin to investigate legacy to cut loose and design differently, it begins to infringe, it challenges, it simply attacks what has taken often years to build and those most involved become defensive and fit to hang onto what has been established, as it feels familiar.

It feels like ‘their’ legacy is being destroyed and what they have fought hard to gain now needs protecting. Most organizations never feel fully capable to address legacy, they even will deliberately design duplication into their operating model, they will recognize they are far from optimal and more often than not, live with the consequences. In today’s world this is a real mistake.

The world is changing; you can’t afford to keep heads buried in the sand like an ostrich, although that’s actually a myth stating when ostriches are faced with attack by predators they bury their heads. New global adversaries are altering our landscape and forcing us to become increasing competitive, forcing us to often reluctantly alter our established ways.

We can’t afford not to refresh and renew on a constant basis. We need to not just adapt, become more agile but we must think through what, where and how we manage. We need to build a more dispersed network of innovation connections within and outside our organizations to gather and synthesize knowledge that have potential value and future worth.

To allow this to happen, for knowledge to flow into, within and across organizations we need to strip away many of the constraints built into our structure that are designed to ‘contain’ knowledge, whereas today we have to ‘spread’ knowledge far and wide, so we can make the new connections to build int this existing knowledge the  new value points where innovation resides.

Any journey starts with ‘letting go’

Control gives comfort; we constantly design this into the system. The larger we are, the greater the controls built into the system it seems but somehow, controlling for control sake, does need replacing; we need to let go of more than we realize to reduce the constraints placed on our business. We need to replace ‘command and control’ built up over numerous years with something different.

We need to begin to ask a range of strategic questions that question our legacy, so we can be released to move forward.

The post Organizational legacy often chokes innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Today, we are confronted with a very different global marketplace than in the last century. National borders and regulations built to protect those that are ‘within’ in the past have rapidly become a major part of the ‘containing- restraining’ factors that are rendering many previously well-respected organizations as heading towards being obsolete and not in tune with today’s different world where global sourcing determines much.

They are increasingly trapped in declining markets, and starved of the new capabilities and capacities to grow a business beyond ‘traditional’ borders, so this means they are unable to take up the new challenges that are confronting them.

They see themselves as reliant on hanging on to the existing situation as long as they can, often powerless to make the necessary shifts, failing to open up, finding it increasingly more than difficult to find the ways of letting go, of changing. They are trapped in legacy.
Legacy can choke an organization in so many ways to limit expansion.

How can we break out of this and rethink? When we begin to investigate legacy to cut lose and design differently, it begins to infringe, it challenges, it simply attacks what has taken often years to build and those most involved become defensive and fit to hang onto what has been established, as it feels familiar.

It feels like ‘their’ legacy is being destroyed and what they have fought hard to gain know needs protecting. Most organizations never feel fully capable to address legacy, they even will deliberately design duplication into their operating model, they will recognize they are far from optimal and more often than not, live with the consequences. In today’s world this is a real mistake.

The world is changing; you can’t afford to keep heads buried in the sand like an ostrich, although that’s actually a myth of when ostriches are faced with attack by predators they bury their heads.

New global adversaries are altering our landscape and forcing us to become increasing competitive, forcing us to often reluctantly alter our established ways. We can’t afford not to refresh and renew on a constant basis. We need to not just adapt, become more agile but we must think through what, where and how we manage.

We need to build a more dispersed network of connections within our organizations to gather and synthesize knowledge that have potential value and future worth.

Today, innovations new knowledge lies elsewhere

Increasingly we need to open up our organizations to different learning, experiences and knowledge. The growth of open innovation has been part of that.

Equally we are recognizing increasingly, that basing everything in one central place is becoming severely limiting. We need to adopt a more genuine openness that increasingly relies on a collection of dispersing and gathering points, where knowledge obtained has been closer to its markets and customers to provide greater potential of discovering future value.

Places where you have been able to gather these understandings and begin to quickly ‘translate’ them across a dispersed, highly connected networks of expertise, that can work on transforming this knowledge into new revenue opportunities that meets that identified need before others do, often set in 24 x 7 time to achieve the result.

Any journey starts with ‘letting go’

Control gives comfort; we constantly design this into the system. The larger we are, the greater the controls built into the system it seems but somehow, controlling for control sake, does need replacing; we need to let go of more than we realize to reduce the constraints placed on our business. We need to replace ‘command and control’ built up over numerous years with something different.

We need to begin to ask a range of strategic questions that question our legacy, so we can be released to move forward.

So what do these strategic questions cover?

I can’t do justice to all the avenues of this strategic inquiry but I can offer some of the most critical that will inevitably fuel others in your own specific situation.

Taking as an example an existing organization, caught increasingly in declining or stagnating markets, who are forced to address many important issues in designing into the organization, new, more diverse capabilities, that have significant ‘legacy’ issues running through them, let’s take a look at some of the most important ones to address.

• Legacy issues must be a significant ‘part and parcel’ of what needs to go, separated out from what needs to be kept and modified, or simply kept in place as it is strategically essential to the well-being and functioning of the organization. Managing legacy out of the innovation system, can be highly liberating.
• Where do you hold your core knowledge? – Is this centrally, perhaps in a home market or do you reflect on how you are going to disperse this across more decentralized organizations. What has on-going value, what does not and can be dispensed with?
• What does it take to diversify your knowledge? Pushing knowledge to new centres needs carefully re-designing. You do not want to end up having even more islands or silos of knowledge; you need to think through carefully a more integrated (global) model. It needs to build in my 6F framework of formality, flexibility, facilitation, form, function and focus. You need to take out what is irrelevant.
• Taking any decision to ‘attract’ and ‘disperse’ knowledge you must set about building the competencies, confidences, trust and network to bring this together. This ‘gelling’ needs lots of communicating, collaborating, and consistent feedback mechanisms that are well-built into any new system. Don’t try and adapt old structures methodology to a radical change, it needs redesigning from the bottom up. Get rid of as much of the legacy as you can.
• Redesigning a new culture becomes essential. It needs to be an adapting one, one that places demands on all within the networked system, it needs an overarching set of innovation culture and environmental principles. It needs clear governance structures and well-thought-through innovation processes and systems that allow innovation knowledge to flow where it simply needs to go. Again absorptive capacity principles are important to design and build in here. Don’t overlay practices that were based on being closed for ‘command and control’, design new ones that allow knowledge to simply flow and open up, in structures that can ‘encourage and compliment’
• Any ‘system’ has constraints. As you rid yourself of some, others quickly fill the space. It is how you manage constraints will determine your ability to make transformational change. The devil they say always lies in the details, and as you configure and design a new integrated model you have to constantly examine these trade-offs. There is lots of divergences and then convergence needs to be within the thinking this system through. Taking a whole lot of old practices out of the system is essential as they have no value or place in any new dispersed network. It simply works differently.
• When you are integrating in new ways requires certain like-mindedness of the people within the dispersed network. Building new teams that are spread out is hard, dedicated work. Recruiting, retaining and reallocating can make or break any new initiative in how they work together. Working within dispersed teams is demanding due to the make-up of cultural, education and time differences. You need increasing reliance on collaborative technology, creating as many face-to-face opportunities as possible but more importantly having projects where it becomes the unifier and common identifier. This unifies far more the cultural differences and tensions by focusing on the project outcomes itself, personalities are supplanted by the higher goal and motivation of working on ‘meaningful’ work . Tough as it may seem, root out the blockers, and dispense with those not prepared to work in teams.
• Costs accrue for a fair time in any starting up and transferring of knowledge, before the benefits really ‘kick-in’ and accrue in greater innovation capability. The working through the design of a new integrated but dispersed structure, in its logic and its make-up of the parts that will contribute into building increased innovation capacity and capability all need to ‘add up’ to larger than within the existing design. Don’t delay this potential by weighing it down with inadequate commitments and lukewarm understanding. Commit to a radical redesign and be realistic on when the (higher) returns are likely.

Managing complex knowledge and dealing with codified knowledge
As you learn to manage increasingly outside one central resource, you quickly come up against one of the biggest challenges within ‘dispersed innovation’.

What is needed to be put in place for you to capture and translate knowledge that can give increased value and (eventual) commercial benefit. Clearly that is the goal of any significant change in design but acquiring, assimilating, transforming and exploiting knowledge comes in many different ways.

Partly this depends on your industry and how you have allowed knowledge capture to evolve.  Certain industries need to manage their knowledge differently.

For instance the chemical, automotive or electronics industry have built up over many years significant ‘codified knowledge’ that is simply necessary to have in place. Other industries like consumer goods, pharmaceutical or the healthcare find it much harder to codify as they have a much more complex knowledge that requires greater understanding of differences to exploit each market.

This is not universal in its practice but knowledge should be valued, recognized and treated, partly in traditional ways but I would argue, it can be broken down in radical new ways where old constraints (legacy again) can be challenged in light of advances in technology, regulation, protection, intellectual property reinforcement, than in the past.

There are huge implications in the managing of innovation knowledge. The incentive to learn, absorb and translate knowledge is its unique value to you for ‘new to the world’ outcomes.

The essential need is to design for agility, flexibility and leveraging.

There is a need in any framework design in building a new integrated innovation network that it needs to have agility and flexibility. It is more than likely that in the past design, the legacy within existing systems needs radically dismantling and redesigning to reflect the multitude of changes happening.

These need to account both internally, in making a new structure for crucial decisions, based on dispersion principles but also on the external, in how you will be reacting to competition and the challenges being presented in changing market conditions.

Increasing knowledge dispersion, shorter cycle times demanded to meet and respond to ‘breaking’ opportunities requires you to effectively manage these across your network in speedy response cycles, having in place a highly focused management and clarity of what is important and needing to worked upon.

Even harder strategic choices, evaluating what gaps are needed to be filled in capability constraints, the ability to project and build a new collaborative culture play significant roles in any design and managing across this network.

Any new design has to carefully reflect on overcoming existing obstacles as well as anticipating and  accounting (as best it can) new barriers. You consistently are working towards the maximisation and leverage of this new dispersed knowledge and what it can collectively bring  in its contribute into that ‘greater’ competitive advantage than the old system was able to achieve.
Balancing legacy and new designs

The whole legacy issue needs those certain degrees of reciprocity, a moving or paring back initially to then move (significantly) forward. If you can’t understand the clear reasons why it is crucial to change the organizations ability to innovate across a more diverse network then simply don’t do it.

To make such a commitment, to make this sort of move, to a dispersed integrated innovation network requires huge commitment, in its sustaining and management of a growing complexity. But it is often absolutely essential to make these commitments in rapidly changing circumstances and global challenges to seek out innovations potential that lies across the globe.

The more you are networked and closer to an emerging opportunities, the greater chance to translate this (quickly) into new innovation value to meet different  and common market needs.

We all have come to recognize today, that “all knowledge does not reside within one place” and how we set about dismantling and redesigning our organization for tapping into global innovation knowledge will determine our future place in any competitive race, the one we all are seemingly caught up in.

Don’t let legacy be the reason to hold you back.

The post Can we overturn built-in innovation legacy? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I gather in the months of May, June, July and August- the northern hemospheres (usually) warmer months- there is higher potential where algal blooms and also in European climate, some shellfish are less palatable as oysters, for example, are spawning at this time. This raises the risk that can spread toxins and lead to a possible poisoning.

Now you might be wondering what this has got to do with innovation? Well, I’m off to Singapore for ten days in early May and I certainly will be ‘hitting’ the shellfish buffet but really innovation is top of my agenda for this visit and one thing that I will remind people about is to focus on the “R” in innovation.

What do I mean by focusing on the “R” in innovation?
My three “R’s” are Revitalise, Renovate and Regenerate, all often ignored within innovation. How often do we push on regardless, ignoring a number of warning signs and don’t take the time to stop and take stock to see what we can shed and simply get rid of.

I wrote a piece early last year (http://bit.ly/eOuO82) about “Writing off legacy within your innovation systems” as we tend to layer on to existing systems and processes instead of taking the chance to step back and see things from the current or future perspective, we stay locked in our past learning and approaches.

Well I certainly feel we all need to re-think that for shedding legacy. We also need to find those three “R’s” hidden within innovation.

Revitalise
Firstly you need to challenge your vision and where innovation is required to fit. Often by simply resetting the vision and how innovation fits within your (evolving) strategy does make a difference to everyone’s understanding of the purpose and direct from their innovation efforts. We do need to constantly change, to challenge and to revitalise on a regular basis.

We need to redefine what we are wanting out of innovation and then take that fresh look at systems, processes, cultures and capabilities. We need to produce a revitalisation ‘action plan’ that restores and refreshes the ‘impact’ points that innovation can offer. Restoring the value of innovation needs to be constantly rethought at corporate and operational level.

Renovate
Organizations are constantly searching for continuous improvement; it often comes in many different guises. Innovation should equally have a clear renovation programme, no different from all the other organization activities that need improving. Putting in place a consistent industry or even cross-industry benchmarking programme, or focusing on more material enhancement, knowledge learning and seeking out changes makes significant difference in your performance, should all be part of this.

We often get ‘stuck’ in our own ways of doing things and often it is only when a crisis ‘hits’ we suddenly seek difference positions but that can often be too little, too late. I think there is a need to be constant on improving innovation, we need to renovate innovation continually or we risk the case of often missing out or letting our competitors slip away and move ahead in the lead.

The other part of the renovation is to review the ‘content and context’ of innovation. We need to update, modify, change, drop and merge these and that is an essential part of the renovation programme, to evaluate the content and the context constantly.

Regenerate
There are always design considerations within innovation. We need to constantly seek simplicity, motivation, involvement and improving the existing culture. We need to regenerate ourselves. Our people need to constantly upgrade their competencies and skills, they need to engage within teams, seek out diversity of opinion to stretch their own thinking and they need to form or generate new connections and deepen external relationships to learn more of what is going on in the world.

Those that stop learning are the losers and those around them feel the frustration of this. To regenerate constantly makes for a learning organization. We need to undergo spiritual, moral and physical renewal for improving our culture and climate to innovation so much more than we do, we often leave this to chance and not thoughtful design.

Innovation and Impunity

Each of the above “R’s” is vital to build into your innovation plans. So you need to make sure there is always an “R” in your innovation, not only will it be ensuring innovation remains fresher but it will also help rid you of those harmful toxins that can poison your best efforts if you did chose to ignore the “R” in innovation.

I loved one comment about eating shellfish “whether it is January or June, you can eat these plump beauties with impunity”.

So let’s hope the combination of (hopefully) fresh seafood in Singapore and my worries that so many organizations  may  have forgotten to heed the “R” in innovation, does get heard by everybody who cares to listen, and I don’t suffer any punishment or unpleasant set of consequences from this.

Believe me your innovation efforts do benefit by recognizing that these three “R’s” do need to be constantly at the forefront of your innovation eating thinking.

By the way, innovation with impunity sounds very intriguing.

The post Putting the “R” into Innovation to shed legacy first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Yet we still keep these organizational needs locked into those old structures, systems and processes that have been layered one on top of the other as we learnt about innovation over the years.

We often simply kept  adapting these (often badly) into the existing way we were managing innovation. Isn’t it time we addressed this growing issue of adapting, stopped the compromising and started redesigning our innovation systems from afresh with present-day leading innovation practice thinking?

Managing innovation as a system is no different from managing IT for example. You get to a given point where the costs of running innovations through your existing systems continue to rise. You begin to diminish your innovation performance.

Speed to market seems never to improve the way you want it too, and more importantly delivery against the identified market opportunity seemingly gets more and more compromised.

The risks of cutting corners seemingly grows every day, and you under-deliver on the opportunity first seen.  No wonder eventually leaders begin to question and lose confidence in their innovation abilities.

The results increasingly become suboptimal.
Is there an alternative?
I believe we need to re-engineer innovation differently and more radically.

Without doubt, we have all learnt enormously from the evolution of innovation and its management but there is a time to rethink the whole rationale behind innovation, its systems, structure and process.

Increasingly organizations are appreciating their unique but surprisingly precious few distinctive innovation capabilities that (can) set them apart. Understanding these does start giving the strategic perspective of what is core and to be protected and developed, that meet the strategic priorities, against what needs to be increasingly outsourced or relegated in management attention and support.

We need to challenge what we have in place and understand what needs renewing and what needs ‘letting go’. I have already written about a twelve step process for innovation renewal in an earlier blog (December 2010-  http://bit.ly/gvomnr) that offers a renewal step-by-step process.

Companies have hundreds of layered capabilities built-up within innovation.

What any review should account for is the capabilities that really matter, the ones that are or should be distinctive, that can set you apart in innovation. Not just those than simply keeping the innovation business engine running but the ones that extract the maximum toque out of innovation, from idea to implementation and delivery into the market.

We do need to totally redesign the innovation engine.

The best thing possible to do though is sitting down and totally redesigning a new innovation engine that few others can emulate, based on the capabilities identified as needed and core, mapped to strategic priorities. Out of this you will begin to identify your legacy systems, the layers of obsolesce within the system to innovate that should be challenged and replaced irrespective, and updated whatever way you eventually decide to approach your innovation renewal.

A tip here is those distinctive capabilities that do or can set you apart also need to be coherent across your whole organization. Everyone needs to contribute into changing those older habits and systems as a top priority for all functions, as the identified distinctive capabilities are providing the ways to distinguish you from others. T

hese might be based on speed and insight- to respond rapidly to changing consumer needs, translation of customer insight by meeting these specific need and ensuring delivery from idea to market is better than anyone else’s. Any redesign needs corporate backing and organisation identification.

Innovation is really the only game in town for value potential
Can we afford to keep our existing innovation ‘systems’ in place? How much longer can we keep denying to ourselves and admit that we do not have the best innovation systems in place?

Isn’t it time to retire older practices built up around innovation as they emerged in different ad hoc ways over the last few years and really redesign the innovation system, process and structures from top to bottom based on leading or emerging innovation practice?

Of course, there will be most certainly regular course directions based on changing innovation understanding and their seen value (eg, value of networks, collaborative enterprises etc).

So if they are based on rigorous value understanding, risk and market assessment of what is valued in innovation activity then consistent renewal is built into this work from the beginning, so ‘legacy drag’ is minimised.

It would be ideal if this was driven by a core group within an innovation unit. See my blog partly on this http://bit.ly/fQW6Jq

The need is for a high level of judgement and understanding of innovation.

Of course, any innovation redesign will need a high level of judgement.  There is a time when management not only should be demanding more speed, agility and effective delivery of innovation but must equally be prepared to provide the guidance and direction, so as to enable those distinct innovation capabilities to be well designed and optimized for the future delivery of the organization’s innovation needs.

Leadership needs to raise its own innovation bar, be prepared to junk the legacy that is built up around much of the existing practices around innovation today within the innovation systems and support and enable the organization to be able to deliver on speed, agility, effectively and on time on its core capabilities identified and agreed as critical.

There is certainly a right time to deal with the legacies within our innovation system.

Approaching this through more of an optimal fresher designing approach that builds around those distinct core innovation capabilities should become a necessary strategic requirement.

This is earlier than later, so organizations can match strategic desire with the ability to deliver on it through the latest practices, not old ones built on past habits and out of date understanding.

The post Writing off legacy within your innovation systems first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.