I believe Innovation is becoming overwhelmed by all the changes we are applying into innovation activity and its management.

I would say the IM system is under even greater strain from the shifts coming from the multiple applications of technology, new approaches to design and modelling as well as all the necessary engagement and touchpoints.

Yet we are still expecting this deluge of change occurring to happily move our innovations through that past established, often manual processes, we have presently in place. I think not.  We are deluding ourselves, that all is well.
There are such changes occurring.
There is an increasing need for ecosystems, platforms, the greater use of analytics, big data and reliance on technology are all crowding in on innovation delivery.

The emphasis on thinking through new business models, combining design thinking, lean management, customer development, prototyping, experimenting outside the lab, collaborating with clients, finding different partners, the different exploitation of research techniques, are all breaking out in different forms and combinations, radically altering our approaches to innovation.

Also collaborating and networking are far more essential to innovation exchange, be this in the early idea forming stages but increasing in the development and execution of innovative solutions.

Partnerships are diverse, delivering on the need of the job-to-be-done. Orchestration is increasingly playing its part to manage all the assets and knowledge coming into play. There is a significant amount of change occurring around innovation and its management.

I have suggested in past posts that we all need to think differently, to act differently, to treat  innovation differently:

innovation is based on the thinking around the shift from products to solutions, from transactions to growing far more value-adding ongoing relationships, from a supplier of product services, into highly valued network partnerships, exploring innovation across all options, instead of delivering on discrete elements; this requires managing the whole ecosystem of the innovation design differently.

Can we continue in this “steady as she goes” by simply rearranging in this case the innovation portfolio to adjust to the latest insight, well no. I think we are simply just fiddling with the deckchairs, incremental changes as the innovation ‘ship’ plows on, into more treacherous water, underestimating the hidden icebergs that cannot be appreciated until something happens.

Overload, inadequate resources, systems and structures all lie under the surface but still, we press on regardless.

Innovation is heading for its own Titanic moment.
Are we addressing all the significant changes going around innovation?
It seems incredible to us today that anyone could believe that 70,000 tonnes of steel could be unsinkable.

Yet, when the New York office of the White Star Line was informed that Titanic was in trouble, White Star Line Vice President P.A.S. Franklin announced ” We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe the boat is unsinkable.”

I can hear the CEO of today making a similar comment “We place a lot of confidence in our innovation, it is critical in the way we will grow our business and take us forward, we are well-positioned to grow” I don’t share their (blind) faith.

Looking back, it was the beginning of the twentieth century and people had absolute faith in new science and technology. They believed that science in the twentieth century could and would provide answers to solve all problems.

The sinking of the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic shattered much confidence in science and made people more skeptical about such fantastic claims.

Does innovation sink under the weight of so much expectation

Are we going to sink innovation as the twenty-first century takes our beliefs in technology and science into new areas, without the necessary understanding of how to manage this, when so much of our understandings of how to physically manage this, are lagging?

I feel we can go on foolishly believing innovation will simply cope with all that is coming towards her?

It is perhaps “unthinkable” for most, our innovation will simply cope. Why not, I mean we have the technology and the internet to keep us caught up in the moment. Yet we are falling further behind on the people side of managing innovation and balancing risk and reward. Our processes, systems and structures are inadequate to deliver on the expected innovation promise.

Is the internet and our growing reliance on all our connections required for managing today’s business for innovation insights, services and understanding, we just might not be seeing the size of the ‘hidden’ icebergs?

Unless we change course and plot a new route for managing innovation we might have some very uncomfortable moments where we will simply sink, flounder or await rescue. Who is actually steaming to the rescue of our ‘creaking’ innovation systems?

*first published on LinkedIn

The post Sinking the unthinkable first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I really think we should bring it up to date.

There has been such a considerable change taking place in many of the parts of innovation management, I think we need to replace the existing fuzzy front end, the pipeline and portfolio stage followed by execution with something far more reflective of how we think and what we deploy today as tools, methods and frameworks to deliver innovation.

The ‘old approach’ just does not calibrate anymore for me with where we have been heading, or more importantly in how we are attempting to manage innovation within our organizations.

So I feel we need to determine a new innovation value chain and would like to make the first attempt

Firstly we need to group the tools, methods or focus activities within the three heading I tend to feel are emerging as the ‘three stages’ of innovation.

The three stages of innovation are

1) Business Opportunity Identification. The search for business ideas that seem to offer opportunity, in its design, need and insight identification

2) The Testing, Exploring, Advancing and Learning stage. How we turn ideas and opportunities as quickly as we can into workable prototypes and where we can test the hypothesis in a direct understanding of their value in the marketplace. These will continue to be looped back from these iterations into more viable offerings (products, services, business concepts) that continue to show commercial promise as they progress through evaluations.

3) Capturing, Scaling, Executing and Delivering. Through the planning out of the portfolio, an increasing clarity emerges of its positioning. you are increasingly able to define its business model position, its strategic design, validation and re-tune its final value proposition from the customer engagement and increasing diffusion. You scale, execute and deliver accordingly on its perceived value and value creation impact.

This is my first attempt at recognizing the changing innovation value chain and what makes up its component parts for managing innovation.

These stages are not linear and sequential but loopback when they need to, so I have not put them, certainly at this time, not in a linear visual but as the phases that we need to work through in our innovation thinking and the management of the process.

I believe we do need to have a radical redesign of the innovation management process, partly to reflect the changes that have been occurring.

We are moving increasingly from products to solutions, from transactions to growing far more value-adding ongoing relationships, from a supplier of product services into highly valued network partnerships, exploring innovation across all options, instead of delivering on discrete elements. Innovation is becoming more complex, and multi-dimensional but lending itself to change.

We need a innovation process that is fully integrated, connected and compatible and can flow across our activities. with the objectives s of the business to grow and recognizes that there is the need to build a sustainable innovation capability going forward.

We are pioneering, experimenting and validating in new and very different ways into identifying different business opportunities, by testing, exploring, advancing and learning so we can deliver those that have been tested so as to be moved into more scalable, commercial propositions that meet customers needs?

Does this grouping and what each ‘houses makes sense? As I state, it is a work- in-progress and I am looking for reactions and more importantly contributions but without doubt we DO have to change the way we depict the innovation process.

We do need to bring it far more up to date and in tune with what organizations are attempting to set about for their innovation management. Any additional thoughts or views on this?

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