The 3H methodology enables us to look out into the future, across three different horizons that can manage the transition between the short, medium and long term in our innovation activities, something often badly lacking in most organizations’ thinking.

It allows us to gauge the challenges, adding aspects we are beginning to gain a sense of, transitioning from one position to another. It allows us to deepen our evaluation of the innovation portfolio of activities, resources and skillsets across different delivery frames of the short, medium and longer term.

It is one that requires us to reflect and possibly make a change, then we can move forward to meet the new challenges, within this emerging vision of the possible future.

So 3H is a way of working with change, it offers us a foresight and framing tool for drawing out our often conflicting discussions and views of what all this potential change might mean, from our established patterns or approaches and those that are possibly emerging. The 3H supports innovation management very well.

Accepting everything has a finite life-cycle

From my perspective we see businesses littered with not wanting to make a change, rejecting the changes going on all around them. These are happening in changing technology, different business models, and threats from competitors coming into the market with different and often low-cost models.

Sometimes a concept or product has ‘run its course’ is seen as yesterday’s solution, or industry segments separated in the past are suddenly ‘fused’ together in new ways due to new technologies, or being purposefully designed, they begin to disrupt the existing.

We can’t afford to ignore the ‘call of change’, it places our business at significant risk. Recognizing the challenges life-cycle management can bring, does need careful managing within our innovation management.

We do need to recognize changing conditions and begin to plan out our responses, both short and longer-term through a well-crafted transformation road map. The 3H can underpin this.

So where are you viewing the world from?
Many of our organizations are viewing the world from where they are. This is often in the safety of their offices. They feel comfortable staying with what they know.

They only see change when something suddenly triggers their perception and the world alters, and it then gives way to a new horizon of sight. Often these can come far too late.

What needs to challenge this place of “the world of where we are” and prompt fresh thinking so we can allow one of emerging knowledge and insight to enter into.

One where perhaps we are blending our imaginations, with some envisioned destination, where change will likely alter today’s dominant position. We need to prepare for it as these insights can radically alter our present position. We become open to change, to think differently.

We need to see the clues all around us
We need to reflect and see how we can forge those new innovation patterns. A methodology that helps raises our future consciousness and moves us to build new competencies for future competitive advantage is surely valuable?

We cannot stay trapped in our offices, our constant need is to find all possible means to be fully engaged and well-connected to the changes taking place within and across the world.

Managing the present, moving towards the future

In any future thinking, there are numerous uncertainties, yet we also need to address the familiar “the way we (presently) do things around here”.

We need to grapple with “how can we ‘keep the lights on” but equally move towards a different horizon without “betting the shop” and totally disrupting all we have built up? This requires even deeper thinking.

Something that requires us to re-equip, challenge existing and entrenched ways of working, bring in and fuse new skills and capabilities, push experimentation and exploration far more, tolerate failures in new ways, keep shareholders happy, recognise the need to make change for a potential sustaining future. Possibilities of changes in our ways of working and approach begin to unlock and open up to different thinking.

The unlocking of the future is partly recognizing the future patterns, yet is equally releasing us from the dominance of old ways of working, systems and structures – ways we have been increasingly sensing are no longer truly working well for us.

We need to shape our future intentions
It is the second horizon; you can read a further post specifically on this 2nd horizon, “entering the zone of uncertainty”  within this framework, which is the hardest one to work through.

This is the transitory horizon, balancing today’s business with the investigations and new possibilities to lead towards a future.
Our abilities to manage this transitory zone (the 2h) is vital for our innovation management, it holds the key to staying locked in the present or moving towards a sustainable future built on different views and perspectives

For me the value of the 3H is in its use within innovation management.
The three horizon framework offers a map of transformational potential which allows us to move towards finding new skills, degrees of new freedoms and creativity, we are striving for a balance between existing and preferred, based on present-day understanding.

Scoping out the future needs for innovation to address needs different thinking. It needs foresight and exploration. It needs to allocate resources across the three different horizons and each of their respective challenges of the future needed from innovation.

This is why the 3H is, for me, a very valuable approach to managing innovation in the present and for the future.

The 3H framework prompts the need for transformational capacity.

I believe there is great value in exploring innovation possibilities through a framework that can support the often diverse management thinking, one that is far more strategic in its focus on exploring the options, working through different scenarios and mindsets, and then adjusting the resources accordingly, or identifying required new ones.

A framework that ‘sketches out’ that future promise can significantly improve strategic and innovation alignment, help set organizational direction and define and allocate resources appropriately.

It frames discussions, it is a navigational guide to allow for framing challenges and seeing perspectives in different frames so that they can be addressed. The 3H helps scope out the pathway of change from today’s existing innovation approaches.

It takes you through the key milestones to the future envisaged and allows you to distinguish different horizon challenges.

Working with the 3H approach can be a very powerful tool for managing our innovation future.

Any framework that draws out concerns, and differences of opinions and prompts transformational discussions, can be a very powerful management tool. If it provides the platform for framing and recognizing what needs to change.

If it can help to begin to flesh any capability gaps, stepping-stones to cross and if it can ‘point’ toward the action and activities that need to be put into place, so the organization can make their moves towards that different innovation future, then it has great value within any organization wanting to manage and structure its innovation activity.

I believe the three horizons approach can contribute significantly to this aim of managing innovation and giving organizations a sustainable future. I certainly recommend it.

The post Seeing Your Innovating Future Across Different Horizons first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

In this book, Bill outlines his distinct ways of creatively working through many of the unknowns, by framing and connecting through the Three Horizons, (3H) as his contribution to the patterning of hope for all our futures.

I draw out a lot from his thinking, experiences and approaches within the book. Some of these initial thoughts outlined here, re-affirm my own thinking and focus on the 3H, specifically for innovation and its management.

Here are some of the ‘triggers’ I connected with strongly from his book:

The three horizons does offer us much to frame the future

Firstly, the 3H is actually a simple framework, see my original opening post in 2010,on a quick explanation if you need it. The 3H allows us all to work with what we know, about today, and a method that allows us to engage creatively with what we don’t know. To look beyond the existing.

The 3H methodology enables us to look out into the future, across different horizons. It allows us to gauge the challenges, adding aspects we are beginning to gain a sense of, transitioning from one position to another. It is one that requires us to reflect and possibly make a change, then we can move forward to meet the new challenges, within this emerging vision of the possible future.

Tackling uncertain futures for transformational change
Bill asks the question in his book “How can people work together to create transformational change in the face of the uncertain future?”

He suggests we have choices, we continue the pattern of how we have been doing things today or we start a new pattern. What can be abandoned and let go, what can be adopted as new and how do we manage the transition.

Bill’s view is that transformation change comes about when we see that the way things are getting done now has its limits; we cannot get much beyond these limits however much we try to improve the existing system and we must face the reality create to create this new pattern for the future we need.

So it becomes clear the 3H is a way of working with change

The 3H offers us a foresight and framing tool for drawing out our often conflicting discussions and views of what all this potential change might mean, from our established patterns or approaches and those that are possibly emerging.

It provides for a transitory step in its second horizon, full of the challenges of wrestling with change, letting go of the present, holding onto essential aspects for the future, embracing often totally new concepts, skills or thinking through positions. You are intentionally drawing out diversity of opinion to improve the dialogue, narrow differences through pattern recognition. It can be tough work.

As Bill states “a lot of dynamics of change come into view quite naturally, and we are lead to explore them in terms of patterns of behavior of those (involved) who are maintaining or creating them”

We can explore the  possibilities found across the three different horizons

The intent of the 3H is to offer a way to look at the process of change, to view possibilities across three different horizons, that encourages us to look and question a little deeper, we make the future more accessible and relevant to us operating in the present, for future intent and action.

It brings out all the differences, often conflicting ‘voices’ and patterns, to challenge continuity. Then we need to figure out what needs to come into ‘play’ to help us understand those future patterns through these dialogues, so we can begin to determine what resources and emphasis to we place on them.

The 3H can help tackle complex problems or from my own focus, the future intent on innovation; in its planning, resource allocations and skill gap identification to build capabilities and capacities to be ‘future-ready. We need to map innovation across the three horizons.

The three voices that are to be hopefully found in the same room

The different voices involved can be highly engaged, as Bill suggests, you have the voice of today, more concerned with managing the existing, maximizing returns and keeping the organization going efficiently and effectively.

Then you have the second voice, the voice of the entrepreneur, the one eager to experiment, try out new things, explore and extend, accepting some aspects will not work

Then the third voice,  of the aspirant, who is looking to build a different vision, believing in different, more pioneering ways and visualizes things in their ‘mind’s eye’, far more aspirational, that can seem on first ‘take’ look to be totally incompatible to the reality of today.

The ability to draw out tensions, see emerging patterns and growing awareness

That tension between “our present circumstances and positioning” is full of possible future consequences and those patterns and indications that are stirring the ‘future consciousness.’ For some, this seems to be a little wacky, flaky, far too aspirational, surely inconceivable, incongruous and unthinkable.

The value of the 3H framing is to begin to make the connections, shifting individual thinking into team actions and decisions. The 3H connects the future for bringing strategy, vision and innovation into greater alignment of thinking through diverging and then converging.

Bridging often highly divergent differences that are causing a growing and deep set of tensions are in fact, in Bills words: “different perspectives on the future potential of the present moment”.

We are actually facing three different perspectives; those immersed in the dominant system of the present, with those that ‘sense’ the scope for new thinking and try something different, to those in the third domain of arguing for radical change or seeing things very differently.

The question for all to answer is “how the present might play out in the future?” The job of the 3H is to raise this in all the three opening and different thinking positions, to achieve a more united ‘future consciousness’.

The Three Horizons approach works well with complex issues

The value within Bill’s book is how he describes the three horizons in his experiences often working within complex societal areas:

“It offers a way to find and shape our own intentions more clearly, as we look over the first horizon of the known, towards the second and third horizons of innovation and transformation towards the future.
It transforms the potential of the present moment by revealing each horizon as a different quality of the future in the present, reflecting how we act differently to maintain the familiar or pioneer the new”.

I have found this book offered me a fresh perspective of the power of the 3H framework.
Bill Sharpe’s book does add some fresh and helpful thinking to working with the three horizon framework. It offers real, insightful ‘nuggets’ of an experienced practitioner, working constantly in future work, taking on problems that need fresh approaches and new concepts, rather than the application of routine methods.

Finally, as Bill suggests: “to shift from our simple, one-dimensional view of time stretching into the future and instead adopt a three-dimensional point of view in which we become aware of each horizon as a distinct quality of the relationship between the future and the present. We call the move into this multi-dimensional view, and the skill to work with it, the step into future consciousness”

Throughout this book, Bill provides his personal perspectives that have added real value to my own focus and understanding of how to apply the 3H to innovation. I highly recommend it.

The post Three Horizons – fields of future, full of foresight. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Our businesses are not adapting fast enough to changing conditions in the market, often lagging in the competitive race to update and keep relevant.

Businesses are struggling with conflicting knowledge flows and incoming intelligence, just simply managing their talent to keep them relevant, engaged and outwardly orientated.

They need to constantly adjust and adapt to the demands and challenges within the societal conditions, environments and markets, grappling with constant shifts in consumer demand and coping with the declining natural resources and what all of this might mean.

We are often short on foresight and certainly struggling with growing complexity.

Bill Sharpe and Tony Hodgson, along with Andrew Curry and Graham Leicester, have been working to bring the Three Horizons framework into a more widespread use .

Once I had ‘found them’ through the International Futures Forum they became the catalyst for my own perspective of exploring this framework and applying it specifically for innovation

Bill and Tony have recently provided a wonderfully descriptive view of valuing the Three Horizon Framework within a 3H slideshare deck I’d encourage you to work through. It frames and captures much that reflects the tensions and approaches to overcome these.

I’d also encourage you to go back and explore my different thoughts in this site by entering the search box: “three horizons”. My trilogy of blogs starting with “the Value of Managing Innovation Across the Three Horizons” I’d suggest is equally not a bad place to start for a clear background to this methodology.

Reflecting on a framework that can help frame those future discussions?

Let me reflect on some of the thinking around the 3H framework as I relate to it from my more dedicated focus, the innovation management perspective.

Why I so much like this 3H framework is in its value where you can construct distinctly different horizon focuses, based on the present, that allow a ‘growing future consciousness’

Our need is that we all must find ways to embrace the future, to not get simply caught up and washed away, because we were ‘just’ unable to move beyond the present, or simply stayed stuck in the past.

I think this 3H framework is very powerful to allow us to move beyond our existing framing, to map across different horizons

Often we are caught by surprise, ignoring many warning signs

With our lack of foresight and lack of actions we lose something that begins us to ‘walk the path towards decay.’ If we ignore ‘taking action’ long enough for a host of seemingly reasonable reasons when something occurs that simply confirms what we inwardly had felt for some time might possibly happen, it has already grown into a real problem.

By using our ability to use foresight; in seeing this possible set of events, different signals and warnings we have two choices. We could have chosen to continue to ignore it, or we start to make  ‘investments’ into building new defences, new capabilities, new stepping-stones to the future.

There is this powerful need to look toward the future

Based on what we know today and what we can set about building and exploring does hold the exciting promise of the future. Looking out of ourselves offers a more rewarding prospect.

A future held in our own hands then we can help shape it and integrate it into our daily lives or of course, we can simply ignore it and keep hunkered down in what we do, feeling we are comfortable and secure. I would argue we all need to embrace change, not avoid it, it never goes away, it is constantly tapping you on the shoulder.

We need to keep reflecting upon what is dominant, prevalent and pattern-changing, as these positions are constantly shifting. Scanning the horizons and what is simply all-around ‘us’ offers those ‘pockets of the future to invest in, explore and experiment, to be open to change.

Initially, these pockets of the future may seem a long way off, often just really weak signals, but are indicating different, perhaps far more radical and perhaps disruptive changes and our organizations need to constantly re-equip for these by building different capabilities and competencies.

Technology clearly comes to mind with wave upon wave of change, crashing against the established rocks, beginning to weaken the existing structures and form new ones.

Just remember the present is already in decline

It is the constant renewing, the transforming and capturing of these weak signals, today clearly seen as marginal to our business, that can permit us to explore and begin to re-equip ourselves for the changes that might happen. Small investments anticipating potential changes are highly valuable to consider.

We can choose to ignore these signals or poorly underfund them as they often seem vague, often unrelated to our existing practices. They are unsure in what they bring, mostly experimental in the early investigations, that ‘seemingly’ conflict, even drawing resources away from our existing model but at what risk to the future?

The ongoing dilemma we need to also revolve, is around multiple crossover points, between blending the existing with these possible futures, allowing time and resources to figure out and explore the options these might present as future options to the business.

Not enough time really does constraint and dominate

We never can find enough time to manage all that we would like to. We are forced to (eventually) make many rushed choices, often ill-judged or last-minute, reacting to changes being forced on us.

Our interests, values, and mindset all ‘kick in’ and when it comes to discussing the future, well often initial discussions begin to move into conflict, based on established positions, types of personality, vested interests or opinions.

Attitudes and judgement are either grounded in the present, with many executives fairly dismissive of the future, or those that are more future related become increasingly impatient in wanting to challenge and change the present.

We need to manage the tensions between the different views on managing the present and the future.

The rising way of change comes from different experiments and innovations

It is partly through the treatment of innovation, feeding into the system a rising wave of future innovations that alter positions. Staying stuck in ‘just’ incremental to serve the existing conditions in the market seriously constrains you for the future, you stop growing, exploring, being curious and experimental.

Encouraging separate and focused discussions on the future is increasingly essential

Discussions within the boardroom, within our R&D centre on the breadth and depth of the future portfolio and the allocation of resources for innovation, which needs to have different mindsets within the 3H approach.

There needs to be a framework to surface different assumptions, often conflicting and entrenched views to surface the potential pockets of the future as seen through different eyes.

If we can avoid those initial, often highly personal definitive judgements of the future, we can begin to map these conflicting thoughts back to our existing, to see different emerging patterns that meet many of these seemingly ‘conflicting voices’ and each begin to appreciate and see their role of moving the existing into these futures as they make sense to their lens or orientation.

You evaluate what initiatives are already under-way, that have a more future orientation and which seemed to be more sustaining for the present. We are looking to find ways for transformational change grounded partly in the present, partly based on clear movement detected.

We are moving the ‘grounded knowledge’ and assumptions into the potentials that are thought to be emerging, we see the role of the present in the future, we can see much can be ‘let go’ and allowed to be opened up and explored differently. We are beginning to adapt to the new environment. The future might be getting clearer.

We need to take care of any future discussions.

The three horizon methodology and how you frame each of the dialogue sessions do need care. You are not only dealing with present complexity but seeing future scope through emerging patterns and many weak signals; equally, we are often dealing with entrenched positions, insecurity and impatience.

It is the ability to step back, to travel in the ambiguous territory, challenge the safe bet of extending the old system, to release these deep tensions these conversations will reveal.

I would encourage adopting the three horizon methodology for innovation
We need to encourage a transformation in our capacities by developing a collective awareness of our ‘future consciousness’ that opens up greater freedom to act and move forward.

I believe the three horizon methodology becomes an essential framework for any organization wanting to determine its resources and evaluate its innovation pathways.

Exploring the field of futures and foresight as an emerging practice

In a future post, I’d planning to discuss part of a book that came out in late 2013 by Bill Sharpe. His book, or actually more a booklet, is called “Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope”, published by Triarchy Press.

In this book, Bill is outlining his distinct and even highly sensitive way of creatively working through many of the unknowns, by framing and connecting through the Three Horizons, offering his contribution to the patterning of hope for all our futures.

The post Reflecting on the Three Horizon Model for our Innovatation in the Future first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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

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

The Innovation Work Mat has seven components or domains

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

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

What was leading, what was lagging?

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

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

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

The tough sell of innovation

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

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

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

What was lagging in explanation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting the message out there for all to see

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later this month a book I have looked forward too, is finally being launched.

It is called “Innovation Governance: How Top Management Organizes and Mobilizes for Innovation” written by Jean-Philippe Deschamps & Beebe Nelson.  Jean-Philippe Deschamps is emeritus Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at IMD in Lausanne (Switzerland).

Innovation Governance is promising to provide a comprehensive framework to help top management develop the overarching values, policies and initiatives needed for a corporate innovation constitution.

The authors are providing a framework for encouraging and focusing innovation by explaining what innovation governance is, the various models for governance and their advantages and disadvantages, how to assess and improve governance practices, and behavioural tactics for maximizing the effectiveness of governance.

I think the book is timely, perhaps well overdue, and seeks to address one of those topics where you observe significant variance across organizations on governance. I’m looking forward to reading it when it is released on 24^th March 2014.

Governance is central too much of how we should go about innovation.

I’m not jumping ahead of this book, actually I’m catching up. Within the Executive Innovation Work Mat approach, Governance is one of the seven essential domains we ask senior executives to gather around. I’ve not posted on this apart from a short piece sometime back and wanted to make some amends to this oversight.

Also it will be interesting once I get my hands on this forthcoming book how it alters and extends my thinking on this important part of innovation management, I’m sure it will.

Let me start on opening up  on my thinking around Governance

• Innovation has moved well beyond a nice to have, it has become an essential to have. Our organizations are still failing to link this fully up in their strategic alignment, in their integrated thinking or breaking down innovation’s essential parts to build this into a core capability. Today innovation should be organized in a mature fashion, governance certainly helps on this.
• Establishing a formal innovation governance structure is in its ‘forming’ days for many organizations. They have parts of this well thought through and have left other essential parts with wide open gaps that those aware can drive a ‘coach and horse through’. Working on a more comprehensive innovation governance structure should move beyond something ‘we’ think we need, into that of a must have.
• Innovation is about risk, managing many unknowns and uncertainties, it often becomes hard to allocate a ROI when it is still passing through its different prototyping and learning stages. Organizations continue to demand ROI’s in all shapes and sizes and often this can kill off many promising ideas. A closer monitoring, measuring, refining and defining of innovation activities through better and more sensible governance guidelines would advance innovation well.
• If we continue to apply ‘little’ governance to innovation or allow ‘selective’ governance determined by individuals, we open up the tap for criticism, cynicism and favouritism. Establishing clear, robust, open and transparent governance systems and structures creates a far better atmosphere and understanding of how innovation is being judged.
• A well designed system of alignment to strategic goals, clear milestones that provide the flexibility any early stage discovery and piloting of a concept requires managing well. Building the confidence at the decision makers table for conveying trust and belief through imaginative milestone deliveries would make a huge difference to thinking innovation. Governance works both ways in its value and place. By having a good and imaginative one, you use it.
• Governance needs to resist the bureaucracy that can come with this task. Governance can resolve conflicts, it can aid allocation of resource issues, it can be a great early warning post for changing scope, adjusting ambition up or down and can be the ‘working group’ that alerts and informs besides supporting and encouraging.
• Governance should be a constant top management priority to have clear line of sight within the management of its total business, innovation by being drawn into governance can also give a ‘beating heart’ to innovation’s position and designing the process and its content make up.
• Innovation becomes highly valued by all those involved in its management, if it is managed well and thoughtfully. Those wanting to measure the innovation contribution and align these more to the top management’s desire for better innovation to deliver on their growth aspirations, then investing in good Governance structures will aid this. Innovation needs to be more central and Governance can help position it there.
• Of course, treat Governance like your innovation activities, often understaffed and under-resourced and what you get is what you often deserve, a poor result from your restricted efforts. Often with Governance constructed on the ‘fly’, simply allowed to be cobbled together you get a poor result. It does more damage to the climate for innovation.
• All good things need appropriate mechanism when you deal with scale. Governance needs proper funding mechanisms, scope definitions, appropriate targets, time frames, realistic and flexible measurements, a fair level of agility, a tight well-honed reporting and set of evaluation metrics. Innovation needs to be well designed and structured; Governance plays an important part in this.

I really hope this new book will deliver on Innovation’s Governance central place.

The value of the forthcoming book I think will address many of these issues and more. Governance of innovation in a comprehensive manner might have arrived, for it to significantly contribute to the momentum that well-designed innovation requires today, one that supports and meets the more complex and demanding challenges being faced in our organizations on managing within their innovation activities.

I’m looking forward to March 24^th and the book launch, as Governance for me and the Executive Innovation Work Mat does bring innovation into a more central position. Governance forms a core component for successful innovation engagement and the support it can give our senior managers to become more engaged in innovation.

Governance can give better mechanisms for managing the ‘line of sight’ required at the top of our organisations to give greater confidence in the decision-making that needs to take place. Good governance helps frame that decision-making process and our innovation activities sorely need this.

The post The Role of Governance needed in Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The collaborative work that Jeffrey Philips and I undertook has been a significant contributing factor, and I owe him a big thank you for being such a great collaborating partner.

Also during the year I have tried to keep a consistent update on the flow of this work through this blog: paul4innovating.com and wanted to keep publishing selected aspects in association with the recognized leaders in innovation knowledge.

I often like to think out loud and it is specifically motivating when others respond positively to what I’m thinking – thanks for that, it is motivating and encouraging.

You may not know but I work through two organizational structures, firstly www.agilityinnovation.com that is 100% focused on innovation and also www.hocaconsulting.com that works on subjects important to growing organization’s capability in today’s world but keeping innovation central to the framing solutions.

These combine and underpin my advisory, coaching and consulting work. These need more shaping but do have all the essential content, perhaps too much!
Recently I was outlining my thoughts on 2013 here and here

For me, last year the most important piece of work was around the Executive Innovation Work Mat. This was conceived and designed by Jeffrey and myself in 2012, to help assess the strengths and gaps that exist in an organizations innovation management process, and to deliver a formal “workout” methodology for those that holding senior positions. who are the biggest influences for innovation to be successful or not.

This work mat approach allows them, through its engagement process, to recognize their roles and all the necessary links within innovation they need to influence and think through.

This work mat provides the essential framing desired around innovation articulated by the senior team, so it then can be used as the mechanism to discuss and communicate this throughout the organization, so they can gather around it and relate their contributions into the innovation need.

The work mat forms a crucial part of the strategic innovation framework that becomes essential to understanding and then building a sustaining set of innovation competencies and capabilities, so as to deliver innovation required and aligned to the organizations strategy.

This work mat can then be used as the communicating framework to ‘cascade’ throughout the organization, with the aim to achieve engagement and be used as the founding ‘mechanism’ to align innovation activities to the strategic intent.

The concept of a Work mat is to ‘wrestle’ over it, to debate and then deliver a formal workout methodology that provides the essential framing desired to be understood throughout the organization to align the innovation activities as much as possible to the strategic direction and goals.

It provides the basis for a well-articulated innovation framework for the organization to work from.

Going beyond the Work Mat

Beyond the Executive Innovation Work Mat, I have equally been working on offering a cascading set of frameworks to help innovation executives and teams throughout their organizations to build the methods and structures for strong innovation functions and processes, understandings of cultures, environment and methods.

These are expressly established around strong innovation governance, a clarification and set of approaches to establishing different environment and cultural make ups, mostly through focusing on a fairly broad selection of capability and competency approaches, tools and methodologies.

I do believe the make-up of innovation services that are needed to be offered by external solution providers has to be broad ranging and robust. The range and scope can often be highly dependent on the level of executive understanding associated with innovation and the conditions imposed or set.

You can, as the external facilitator, be highly involved or fairly hands off, more a guide and mentor but this is determined through the conducting of a variety of assessments and audits, drawing down on different training programs and workshops and selecting within a toolbox the different methods and practices to satisfy the inquiring mind, rightly so.

I find a mix of advising, coaching and consulting as a real help. In initial discussions you can define the executive team’s role and create an environment where innovation can be sustained in taking this approach but it is demanding on everyone’s time in these early ‘storming and forming’ discussions.

Researching different aspects to underpin innovation  becomes critical, it provides the position and does validate each of the essential components that make up any approach to innovation. Within the frameworks Jeffrey and I developed it was absolutely necessary .

From this work you can provide a structured and measured process of the transfer of knowledge that can be assimilated and embedded, and then adapted to the unique circumstances you find in each organization. It all adds up to a lot of dedicated work but I believe worthwhile.

Exploring the Innovation Reference Framework

One layer further that Jeffrey and I went was within developing and structuring a comprehensive framework. This was through the application of our Innovation Reference Framework, which defines the different cascading activities toward building a robust innovation capability or discipline. It examines four key “layers” of innovation – strategy, people, process and types and delves into each one in considerable detail.

This Innovation Reference Framework is designed to ‘map’ back into this Senior Executive Innovation Work Mat to underpin it, with a set of robust approaches to structuring innovation, that enable innovation to be greatly enhanced and linked throughout the organization.

This offers a very useful way into establishing a common language and  you can see through the different modules within the  Innovation Reference Framework a clear understanding  of the essential of innovation. This provides a meeting point for organizational understanding, often missing due to this lack of structure taken here.

This can be viewed at:  http://cirf.pbwiki.com.

I do think this framework provides a reasonable, thoughtful approach to developing a robust innovation capability and ensures your team considers all the relevant aspects of an innovation discipline.

As organizations continue to turn more towards innovation to regain their growth and provide a more sustaining future the ability to ‘frame’ innovation in its entirety becomes critical.

Clearly building competencies and capabilities requires expertise, time and commitment. Having access into a toolkit of innovation solutions, along with access to a deep knowledge base, combined with cross industry experience does certainly offer a broad understanding of all the essential aspects needed for successful innovation, so it can fit together, but in each organizations unique way.

Innovation is presently gaining greater senior executive attention.
Organizations are beginning to engage in new, often different but exciting experiments to reinvent the way they firstly conceptualize then translate to see how they fit to create the future. There is growing recognition that the old business-as-usual approaches have not produced the desired results or has simply run their course in alternative productivity and efficiency approaches.

Innovation is at a point where it is becoming embedded as a transformation method for its sustaining value and potential for discovering and exploiting new growth. Many are being forced beyond taking just the incremental route within innovation.

Innovation is increasingly recognized as essential to establish in more formal, structured ways as it is the catalyst to provide both the broadest possible relevance to all our futures and the ability to manage the parts that we can specifically impact.

Impact comes from more breakthrough, disruptive and distinctive innovation and this needs careful managing and senior managers specific focus. I’m trying to be the equipment source and translation point for this.

Entering 2013 ready to do battle

I enter 2013 knowing it is going to be an extremely demanding year, to compete for attention, for funds, for gaining access and people’s time is not going to be easy.

Having the structure, processes and understanding of innovation to the level I have will help me justify and hopefully get me through the door but business development is never easy, is it?

The post Innovation and the Deepening Linkage first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I’m sure we all agree Innovation needs to be worked, it needs to be understood and often many people do get confused by not taking a more measured approach to the need to break innovation down into its manageable parts.

Innovation does not just have a time axis that the three horizons framework refers to but it has a complexity and scope axis in learning as well.

By taking a more systematic approach to any innovation you achieve a greater understanding over time of what is involved.

Firstly you have to ask what you are trying to achieve, is it incremental innovation, distinctive, disruptive or even radical white space innovation?

Do you approach innovation differently for each of these?

I would argue you need to learn and build from one to another as you learn on the way, this is my going up a curve that increases in complexity and its scope/ outcome.

How do we embed innovation in all its forms needs what I feel is a unique approach that I have called the Pathway Curve Methodology

Getting a thorough understanding of what it takes to move up what I call this Innovation curve, does takes time, and growing a deeper understanding of how one step is followed by another in experience and understanding needs working upon.

This is rarely understood and practiced in this structured way and that lack of understanding often creates the disappointment and frustrations that an organization is not achieving that innovation success they desire.

The more you move steadily up this curve the more you can explore the different types of innovation with growing confidence and success.

There are five separate curves of learning– 1) dealing systematically with obstacles, 2) building capability and capacity to move methodically up this curve, 3) the building and understanding of different approaches to innovation for growth building, 4) recognizing the organizational impact and knowledge needed and finally, 5) a discovery and transformation curve.

Let me illustrate one of these five learning curves to provide a little more of an understanding by taking the aspects of needed learning for organizational impact, gaining improved return (ROI), controlling of costs and increased visibility.

Recognizing and working upon the five learning curves together is important

You need to be very structured in this approach, it may look like a slow build but in any ‘fitness’ requirement you build in a methodical way. What is it to achieve, is it incremental, distinctive, radical, or disruptive and how do you manage this in a clear way to support any initiative.

Understanding your fitness, landscape and dynamics for innovation is essential

In future posts I will expand on the need to plot your Innovation Fitness Landscape and the ability to identify your organization’s Dynamics of Innovation.

Progressively we will be moving towards the DNA of Innovation much of the intent that this blog is all about.
Save

The post The Pathway Curve of Innovation Understanding first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.