I am reading a lot about the concept of value creation recently, it answers everything but tells us so often nothing about how it is made up or it is truly present. It seems to have that same ‘heady vaulted position’ as innovation in that we all talk far more about the ‘promise’ of it, we want it but still are not prepared to put the real effort into it to make it happen.

So let me try and explain my thoughts on value creation. So what is behind value creation? What drives it? What will tell us this is an organization where value creation seems to well invest in, nurtured, built and protected?

So what is value creation?

Value creation is highly dynamic, it is going on all the time and can increase, decrease or transform, in different ways, when you exploit your different capitals that will be in constant change and adjusting to reflect your organization’s business activities and eventual outputs. This is when you can begin to see the value created by the use of deploying all the capitals to build new growth and what I call “stock” that along with “flow”. I loved this explaination of the two.

Value is not just from within, it is the links our organizations are constantly making with others, in the interactions, relationships and the combining of the activities. The important need is to manage the stocks and flows of the capitals

The role of all the capitals is crucial to understand, they create or destroy value. It is the constant flow between all the capitals deployed that makes up the value creation process.

Our management within our organizations needs to know where this real value creation resides.

Understanding all the makeup of capitals needs to be approached in practical ways.

The place to focus is on recognizing the material components of what is making up the specific value creation aspects that will provide benefits that have been captured, understood, maintained and then enhanced for the additional value creation

Clearly, the ultimate objective is to enhance the organization’s abilities in the longer-term to appreciate the growth strategy. The more we know as outsiders of the value creation process the more likely this will attract greater investment. Often this is determined by the final product, service or business model outcome.

Today we lack the measures to judge longer-term adequately, that this is enough in organizations. We are judging them on their innovation activity going through the immediate pipeline and that judgment often lacks the real makeup of the application of the different capitals, invested in the knowledge that can provide the sustaining growth- today we are far too geared on immediate expectations and those are locked up in the short-term.

It is becoming critical to understand our sources of knowledge, it gives us the unique capital that differentiates one Enterprise from another. The intangibles today are up to 80% of the value assigned to the (market value) worth. Managing these intangibles is critical to our future. Yet, we still have a very poor grasp of how to capture these and drive this knowledge capital. That needs to change.

It is the Knowledge and Innovation combined that make the firm competitive. There is this positive correlation between these two. One amplifies the other, one deepens the other in the connected understanding. The basis for this comes from both human and artificial intelligence. As we learn to capture from both we build our capital base and strengthen our future potential. We make ourselves more sustainable as well as increasingly adaptive.

The greater the stock of knowledge understanding will increase the potential flows of innovation and this “powers” the future value creation.

Greater engagement or not?

We can leave this knowledge building to the management, just sit back as investors or consumers and simply expect increased dividends and new products. We actually need to dig a little deeper and push management to inform us we will not enjoy many of those nasty surprises when the results fail to materialize. The argument is that the investors, the stakeholders within a business, need to understand the business logic far more, to make a more informed decision to continue to invest or partner with a particular organization. That logic comes partly from the abilities to create value

Knowing the successful generation of all the intangible values and their transformation into tangible forms and how this is systematically being harnessed tends to confirm the realization of the business goals or what the possible risks are.

Organizations are certainly fairly reluctant to discuss these except behind closed doors to selected investment parties in their investor’s briefings. Making these more visible leads to greater accountability and to be ‘accountable’ you need to understand the makeup of your capitals.

The present incentive for business organizations to become more vocal in explaining their business models, their process for value creation and offering more insight on all their capitals is their need to grow and that comes from investors wanting to invest and customers wanted to buy something that has a sustaining future!

 Exposing the softer side of value creation is the key.

The need is to understand value creation is often coming from the ‘softer’ side, those often intangibles that remain hidden for the real value enhancing aspects of a business but are constantly at work, generating knowledge, understanding and new thinking. These need drawing out more.

The real capital that contributes to value creation is coming from knowing answers to these questions offered below.

Many of these can be reported upon and that would enhance the understanding and attract investment. By thoughtfully measuring and reporting upon these builds that external confidence that the business is focusing on the sustaining values relevant to its goals and growth objectives.

Just work through this list of aspects of value creation that we should be gaining insight into:

* The ways an organization is setting about combining and utilizing networks and relationships

* How are they actively advancing their creative and innovation capabilities and competencies? Are there specific frameworks and approaches.

* The ways they are actually seeking out in explicit ways that deepening of customer understanding

* The purposeful ways that reputation is being protected, quality is being enhanced

* How are the brands protected, enhanced and improved to add increasing value

* How they are capturing new knowledge internally and the ways this flows and gets translated into new value through specific value enhancing stores

* How the focusing on social issues and values is contributing to society and equally underpinning their value into both local and global communities

* What are the plans and intent to link social, environment and harness the intellectual capitals, to enhance and strengthen society and the organization’s linkage, and the outcomes being achieved?

* Where they are recognizing, strengthening and exploiting the value chain linkages

* Providing a greater depth of explaining and extending the organizations skills and capacities to learn and absorb, through advancing specific capabilities, and deepening capacities.

* How they continue to build loyalty and trust and what aspects need repairing or renewing due to difficult decisions or changing circumstances, showing a clear pathway of achieving this responsiveness and flexibility.

* How and where does innovation fit, for achieving the growth perspectives and discussing any shortfalls, through prescribed or alternative actions? Are you building a common sense of innovation purpose?

* Are there explicit innovation competencies, processes, and governance actively being managed, that provide support to the activities being undertaken and being consistently risk assessed?

* What is the risk appetite for innovations? How is this managed? How is this explained and celebrated?

* Lastly, what they are exploring in the different forms of evaluation, experimentation and ongoing assessment to ‘measure’ the real underlying asset wealth of the organization.

This is their learning journey and its growing value to all associated with this to achieve that better visibility into our organizations, Better outcomes and a greater relationship between investors and the organization needs to be achieved. I think it is possible but it is a journey many are reluctant to travel. Value often gets locked up, caught in the internal world of the one organization and so often never becomes value creation.

We need to talk about what makes up “value creation”.

Value Creation is really important to know about. Where is it coming from, what is being put into place to nurture, develop and allow its creation to evolve and spread, so it has the ability to attract more understanding for value and creation? The more we open up our thinking and ideas the more we can build from this. That openness offers so much more value creation possibility yet we don’t talk about it, we simply generalize it like a “buzz word”

There is a growing need to know where the value creation is coming from and what the management of our organizations is doing to protect and enhance it. Knowing the makeup of the material capitals that form into a value creation is so important to this. We should talk of value creation in specific and detailed ways. That gives those listening confidence it is being taken seriously and not just given lip service.

The post Recognizing it is all about Value Creation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Most of us are very aware that Innovation can be fairly complex in what needs to be pulled together to take an idea or concept into a finished product.. We are also aware innovation often ‘flies’ in contradiction to the normal organization’s ways and wishes, especially the emphasis on working in structured, efficient and productive ways. Innovation can often be rather chaotic and discovery driven, it often is seen as counter-productive to the orderly state our organizations wish to achieve.

Yet it is that randomness, that serendipity, that sudden discovery that needs a different way of thinking and organizing innovation. It can still be well-structured and effective but it needs the opportunity to allow in accidental discovery, by-chance conversation, fortuitous moments that just seem to happen and occur as you are “open” to them. You need to have both structure and unstructured aspects to allow innovation to happen, evolve and eventually shape towards an outcome that changes the current status quo. Innovation should always challenge and question this status quo.

One of the useful ideas of using an external resource is to put additional coordinates into your innovation world, they see contradictions in a different way. They can assist in working through the conflicting signals, so as to help align innovation in helpful and thoughtful ways. Certainly, the innovator’s role is not an easy one inside the structured world of larger business entities.

I like practical advice with evidence, it helps bridge misunderstanding. This can come through a variety of methods:  benchmarking, validating, frameworks and interpreting how innovation can fit with your current or future needs. Often the outside advice can place innovation into a greater context that can accelerate the outcomes you need to gain understanding and achieve increasing identification.

The value of the external  innovation specialist has great value in insights

It has a very powerful combination effect if the advice is right. In my case, I try to offer operational experience drawn from the client’s input and my own understandings of being involved in many different businesses, at varying management levels, in many markets and industries. As we combine experiences, we can open up our thinking. Shutting down someone else’s experience or thinking denies us the opportunity to learn and advance thinking. This is providing a cross-industry experience and gives sometimes detachment from your world. It becomes valuable to explore something different, to take time to compare and contrast, to arm you with greater insights so you can relate your innovation activity and maybe recognize being exposed to something outside your industry might give you a completely different insight to a problem you are working upon, by seeing solutions from another industry as close to the answer you were looking for, even more, it can become even more grounded or questioned. We are better at (pattern) recognition when we “see” something tangible. Often it is hard to visualize something.

The other main contribution comes from common sense and intuition.

Receiving thoughts that feed into your own instinct or conflict with it give a terrific and fast sounding board. It remains outside the politics and constraints of your organization. It gives a different sense of perspective and verification.

It does not matter if these are micro-learning moments (quick answers to immediate need) or those deeper more macro learning ones (to learn specifically a new subset of innovation), it is by having the opportunity to put different coordinates into your thinking that can be offered by the external advisor can bring significant value and save valuable time.

What slips under your personal radar can also partly be picked up

Not just in those moments of need but by having an ongoing relationship with an external coach, advisor or mentor you can benefit from critical updates and insights, that might have slipped under your radar dues to your focus on getting the work done. You can have set up interim reports that focus on a given theme or topic of interest that you don’t have the necessary time to investigate yourself, you can gain from field research, breaking innovation reports on topics of need and interest and you can encourage your team to equally tap into this innovation knowledge vault.

The recognition is in knowing and appreciating

It is recognizing the value of having someone just a call or email away who can provide backup value in insights or knowledge gives you a significant edge.

Why reinvent the wheel when others might already have your wheel size ready and waiting to fit?

Give me a call to see if this might be a valuable supporting service to you and what you are looking to achieve in innovation outcomes. Let me help.

** Originally published on my Advocating and Guiding Dedicated Posting Site

The post Building the Coordinates into your Innovation World first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We need to know how to unlock the real value of innovation both personally and within the organization, we work for. If we do not fully understand where the innovation capital comes from, how new capital and stock can be provided, innovation will remain tentative, always stuttering along.

Innovation will lack that essential organization innovation rhythm, and it will stay disconnected for many and will be frustrating your own evolution in understanding if it does not become an organizational learning need.

I’d like to offer a fresh view on building your own innovation capital.

There are different building blocks and types of capital. Let’s start with the vast knowledge inside the organization, as this forms learning capital. We’re all expected to combine our existing internal knowledge with the external knowledge that flows into the company these days, mostly intangible, searching for its relevancy and context. The stock we build in our use of this fresh knowledge so we can combine these into new insights that eventually create different sets of advantages – ones that foster value creation.

Then we have the opportunity to build Innovation Capital.

Key elements of innovation capital also, equally, consist of mostly non-technological intangibles, embodied in the organizational routines and employees’ mindset.  So, it is important also to understand the make-up of innovation capital, in its “stock” and these, can be clarified in the following ways:

• Innovation capital as renewal capabilities of our organizations in the form of producing intellectual properties that offer value and are increasingly being extracted from our intangible assets.
• Innovation capital possesses attributes that make it a “strategic” asset. The key to success lies in specifying the nature and application of these assets in relation to the new knowledge flowing into the organization. This generates and commercializes concepts and ideas into new forms of innovation value.
• Innovation capital is made up of the ongoing “dynamic interactions” between intangibles and tangibles. Built up from experience over time, they develop into mostly intangible assets, and eventually into valuable outcomes.
• It is the effective use of different kinds of intangibles that contribute to innovation capital. Only a few of them can be formally captured as they are built on interactions, relationships, applied experience, generally accepted understanding and based on pattern recognition and meaningfulness.
• As we grow our networks and relationships, we increase knowledge sharing. This promotes our understanding and provides increased intangibles inside the organization. As we deepen our knowledge, we gain experience and achieve higher “pattern recognition” and insight.

When we look around we are able to spot the enablers for innovation stock to grow, as they contribute into your experiences and exposure to general principles of understanding. See how you can learn from these:

These elements can be described as follows:

• Innovation strategy relates to strategic choices a firm makes regarding its innovation
• The selection of the type of innovation that fits best to the firm’s objectives and the allocation of resources to different types of innovations
• Innovation culture is a mixture of employees’ innovation-related attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and values
• The integrating function of environment, culture, and climates that stimulate innovation activities
• Innovation structures that are formed to make up the innovation process
• The approach to the organization and the way employees engage in innovation are grouped
• The employees’ knowledge (technological and non-technological) engaged in the innovation process
• The stock of knowledge can be increased by an organization’s internal and external learning

“Internal learning” refers to the creation of new knowledge within the enterprise, while “external learning” pertains to the integration of knowledge from outside. We can model innovation capital and apply different capital needs to different innovation challenges to leverage them in more dynamic ways.

The more we strengthen our knowledge and appreciate the value within our people, the more we can generate new knowledge, build greater narratives, deepen discussions, and establish better connections and interactions across growing communities. In this way, we can turn innovation capital into a highly dynamic and valuable asset, just as we treat financial capital today.

The more we discover, the more knowledge we gain

This enables better decision-making and fosters our value-creating potential. This will, in theory, give us greater confidence, both internally and externally, that today, our invested financial capital is in good hands. We are effectively applying innovation capital to value creation.

Our learning capital needs to emerge and dominate future discussions in improving it’s quality and value contribution. We need to increase incentives for organizations and their people to learn or update their existing knowledge.

The power lies in the linkages we can forge, in the acquisition, in assimilation, and eventually in a transformation that allows the known and the unknown building into new knowledge that fuels our wealth-generating innovation pipeline.

** Originally published on my Advocating and Guiding Dedicated Posting Site

The post Innovation Capital Lies Within Organizational Learning first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Nesta is an innovation foundation. They state: “For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality. It also means changing lives for the better. This is what keeps us awake at night and gets us out of bed in the morning” They work in areas where there are big challenges facing society, from the frontiers of personalized healthcare to stretched public services and a fast-changing jobs market. They cover a lot of ground and provide some very sound advice along the way.

One of their team, Bas Leurs, who is their head of learning experience design, has been working on “A Landscape of Innovation Approaches“. I read version one in February 2018 and did not pick up on version 2, published as a blog in December 2018. Hence, why I kicked myself.

Although this was built with government and civil servants in mind asking which tools and techniques they should use, this growing list of approaches to innovation is getting highly impressive and a terrific stimulus to any one of us working across innovation, to explore it and then see how and what might also be added, hence why I thought this needed sharing.

In the version 2 blog 

They climb into the tools and offer some great guidance and clarity to the links they have found, as their reference and introductory information. Just go and explore these, they are such a storehouse of innovation approaches. It clearly has that bias to government and the UK civil service but all innovators, irrespective, in the private or public sectors will extract good value out of this, I know.

Here is the landscape map again (as shown above)

Just stop and think of this, please

They have broken the tools and techniques in a really thoughtful way. It is how we should be thinking about undertaking innovation. Forget the advice offered in the past, based on the more traditional ways of establishing an innovation process, or much of the sage advice and reflect on this structure. It is a powerful way to construct your innovation toolbox.

This becomes the enabler space for innovation for thinking innovation in that wider context. This approach brings innovation far more up to date in how we should group it and build it for delivering the real understanding of innovation and what actually does make innovation up.

The four spaces are intelligence, solution, technology, and talent. Let me quote their brief descriptors of these and the one additional one of Intelligence- Solution crossover space.

Intelligence Space- understanding reality

These approaches help you make sense of reality, understand the causes and effects of issues, and identify opportunities. Activities are driven by an inquisitive and analytical mindset.

Solutions Space- shaping reality

These approaches help you test and develop solutions. Activities are driven by a generative and entrepreneurial mindset, aiming to shape reality.

Technology space- enabling action

Approaches and technology that enable action and change, such as digital tools and data-related methods (at the intersection with the intelligence space).

Talent Space- empowering people

Approaches focused on mobilizing talent, developing technical and leadership skills and increasing organizational readiness to make change happen

The Intelligence- Solutions Crossover space- using both mindsets

The crossover between the intelligence and solution space includes methods built on both mindsets. They aim to understand, as well as shape reality.

In summary, this map is still a work-in-progress as it gets others feeding in their ideas and giving feedback. I really think this “Landscape of Innovation Approaches” is a terrific source of reference for practitioners as well as theorists to work through.

I do recommend you take a look. Link here again and I certainly want to thank Nesta and especially Bas Leurs for the work that has gone into this and being shared with a wider audience.

*** Download this diagram as a PDF.

The post Nesta’s Landscape of Innovation Approaches first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Do you stop and reflect, do you “veg” out, do you seek alternative points of stimulus or find something completely different to go and do, read a book, listen to music, take a walk, climb a mountain or simply tune-out. We need a time out for reflection.

Well, I had a reflective moment on some points I consider within innovation that need re-emphasizing.

So my reflective points were these as we always should consider the whole connected system of innovation.

Extending innovations value – appreciating the whole system.

For me, innovation needs to be treated more like a complete interlinked value chain. We must step back and see the whole value chain system for innovation. It constantly loops back and feeds back-in to add increasing value and experience.  It has many connected parts that need to work together to deliver effectively and efficiently the new ideas and concepts being discovered through to final commercialization.

The innovation value chain needs the following, seemingly obvious but often missed points to consider:

1. An established system that is clearly repeatable to ‘push’ innovation through constantly
2. It needs to be able to scale, scope and quickly adjust according to the concepts being pushed or even pulled through, often by spotting unmet customer needs.
3. It needs flexibility, resilience, and adaptability that constantly adjusts and shaped accordingly and cannot be ‘fixed’, rigid and overly managed or controlled as many seem to try.
4. It needs to have breakpoints for considering the innovation options- carry on, kill off, spin out, send back to rethink, to allow to grow at a different pace, to accelerate more.
5. It needs to ‘capture’ the collective learning and experiences constantly gained from the past and build those into improving the process for future activities
6. The people who have ‘oversight’ need to have some form of option resolution built in for deciding resources, directions, allocations and investments. They need that responsibility.
7. All innovation ideas and concepts entering the extended tunnel need to align to the strategic direction, compliment or extend onto the platforms you are providing (core, adjacent or new) and feed the portfolio’s that drive the businesses growth aspirations.
8. They must have a clear ‘fit’ within the strategy needs and be resourced well.

Designing the innovation pathway- this, for me, is so important to visualize and conceptualize

To achieve increasing value in this, there is an innovation pathway you have to design and be ready to travel. It is highly dynamic and you, as the leader of the innovation activities, are required to constantly add the active innovation yeast by promoting the ‘fermentation’ needed for innovation to succeed, including:

1. Establishing and encouraging a robust set of innovation processes and technologies to support that constantly adapts and adjusts to the needs of the innovation concept, not the other way around.
2. The ability, energy, and commitment to drive maturing ideas and concepts to realization.
3. Create a powerful desire and motivation to innovate by encouraging the environment of what you do makes a contribution to our future.
4. As ideas and concepts mature, you constantly build and restate the business case, again and again, so it remains clear why this concept remains important.
5. You actively seek out the different and often diverse points of connectivity with all the stakeholders so they can engage, contribute and lend their support and commitment.
6. Constantly look for ways to empower individuals and groups to explore, challenge and improve constantly on what they know with what they need to find out and discover.
7. You have to work actively (hard) at clarifying constantly the links of the idea and concepts across the innovation process for all involved to stay committed to the ‘long run’ between idea to commercialization in times of uncertainty and flux.
8. Ensure you are actively working those networking, encouraging collaborating and building on the collective wisdom of many so that you are constantly exploring all the (emerging) options and expanding on the alternatives to extract maximum value.
9. Seek ways to always measure, evaluate and see return through progress and impact so everyone involved or viewing the efforts can constantly ‘see’ the value and where their contribution is helping, not simply once a year in those organized ways and events that fit the calendar or bean counter needs.
10. Strive for execution that builds from the best of the past by knowing what that is; remain open to what is all around you today in the wider world beyond your often more narrow confines and imagine what is really possible with that extra touch of imagination to ‘push’ by seeing beyond the known’s and traditionally accepted.

The concept-to-customer approach is an innovation pathway that constantly narrows down.

We do need a concept-to-customer approach across innovation. My 5C’s of capture, connect, convert, confirm and conclude shown in the extended innovation funnel can move this along.

Innovation is extremely strategic in what it contributes. We often to stop and consider its importance, we strip it of resources, we relegate it down the organization, we let it be subservient to our daily obsessions on efficiency and effectiveness, it should not, it should be constantly challenging and pushing these into new ways and thinking, we forget its value and purpose.

Innovation requires a more thoughtful understanding and we have to accommodate it within organizations by stating that it is often unpredictable, sometimes a chaotic process, it cannot be legislated or totally subscribed, thankfully certain significant parts can. It is by having this complete understanding of the entire innovation process so we can differentiate between the parts that can be made predictable and those that can’t.

We can also constantly work at making innovation more predictable, in managing its many parts by making them more efficient and effective wherever possible. The more the deeper in innovation insight and understanding, the more we are adding to the internal knowledge. By often allowing for as much flexibility and adaptability for ideas and concepts as possible to ‘travel down’ and consistently improve the narrowing innovation path, the more it is likely to emerge as the right end-result.

As we progress from discovery to execution we need to offer more guidance and encouragement than prescriptive methods, currently prescribed and handed out in ad hoc doses. We DO need to understand innovation well. We then can manage our core well, expand into any adjacent spaces that strategically fit more comfortably and organize the associated activities to push the right innovation through a pipeline towards a positive commercial outcome., i.e., improves on the existing

We will often have to go a lot nearer to the edge of uncertainty as we build this innovation path but knowing where these edges are is better than being constantly surprised. Innovation expertise inside an organization makes sound sense, it pushes the edges, it questions the core. Please see a previous post on some thoughts on this, for we still fail to connect everyone up to the same innovation cause http://bit.ly/fQW6Jq

One last thing here, we must also rather surprisingly, reduce the many existing tools and processes we try to fit around innovation that ‘stress’ the existing core infrastructure and are confusing us. This is the opposite of their intention, to make our lives easy, they often do the counter, they add more stress points within innovation. I think a further blog on this layering and its negative effect might be better, so that’s for another day.

Well, I just felt like having one of my reflective moments.

Keep innovating please in all you do!

The post Extending innovations value- appreciating the whole system. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We are on the brink of a transformation, a global one that connects us into information, knowledge, and insights in ever-powerful ways. thanks to the digital internet. We are also exploring the use of Artifical Intelligence (AI) more than ever.

BCG suggests that nine out of ten companies in their recent survey for the report “The Most Innovative Companies 2019” are investing in AI. BCG also suggests that 30% of those surveyed believe AI will have the greatest impact of any innovation area on their industry over the next three to five years.

We are also seeing the emergence of platforms and ecosystems radically changing how we collaborate and invent, design, solve issues from a changing shift in cooperation understanding. Platforms are fueling new business initiatives as they learn to engage across the whole value chain spectrum, from customer to delivering back the needs of that customer.

It is our technology being applied through new approaches that are galvanizing the new potential within innovation.

As we learn to orchestrate the underlying technologies, learn to build helpful applications, establish these software platforms this is beginning to become attractive as a new place for integrating, exchanging and collaborating. There is the talk of “the network effect” (Metcalfe’s Law) whereas more participants engage on platforms or in ecosystems and exchange, the more the value goes up and the community participating gets increasingly more out of the value of the “combined” thinking, data and insights. It has huge potential to generate new levels of innovation, ones that are more connected, more seamless and more what the customer wants.

So we come to CX + DX, it needs IX

Customer experience (CX) is driving change. The customer is expecting more value in the products or services they buy. They expect connected products, ones that are seemingly simple to then but highly complex to bring together. They will pay for this if the solutions offered are in their “sweet spot”.

To achieve this industry has to go through this digital transformation (DX) that is underway. Adapting a product to the need of one person’s preference has been pushing the final adaptation to that persons need up the chain in production. I wrote recently (here)

“This for me will center around developing the complete suite of transparency between product development and manufacturing and communicating this “connected” story. This is the connected need of IIoT to achieve. The information and knowledge source that connects the customer demand with the delivery of their need with their custom solution. This has been promoted as the new “experience economy”.by Dassault’s CEO Barnard Charles. He suggests this is “the new economy that drives the value of the usage first, as opposed to the value of the product or the things we produce, or even the services we provide” He feels the center of gravity in value creation is taking place to the emphasis on usage as paramount to serve. This makes sense to me.”

So we have the CX and DX being worked upon. What we need now is the Innovation Transformation (IX). I have written consistently on the need for the innovation to be re-equipped to deal with the digital changes coming towards us. Today this is utterly inadequate in dealing with all the change or transformation currently underway. Just, if you have time take a read of my post here of “We require a shift of Innovation Management Solution Providers” as to give you a more detailed background as to why there is such a need. We need ecosystems for innovation to thrive and prosper in faster ways.

I mentioned in that post “Innovation software is no different from the tides of change sweeping industries, digital transformation is opening up the connection possibilities outside single organizations. No one organization can keep pace, or has enough resources, or can cover off solutions that solve “universal” problems, or even ones in a diverse, huge Corporation collaborating across a global business, where functional groups involved are far more diverse than ever before”

This is becoming the nature of the present constraints. We need digital innovation

We can keep moving towards CX and apply DX but unless we recognize and make significant changes in IX we will fail to get the impact we are looking for or the customer is expecting. The flow of insights, of information and knowledge, gets caught up in such a log jam as the innovation system is not designed for such a force of “flow-through” or set up for such co-innovation needed. We lack many innovation open and interoperable tools or systems to speed up the creation process. We are caught in an age of the single solution struggling to make the connections to the new age of innovation.

Innovation actually needs to feed business systems and push all working within the design of solutions the ability to drive outcomes.  This is why the value of digital platforms and ecosystems will gain in the urgency of getting the whole innovation system fit for the 21st century, otherwise, innovation will remain stilted, disappointing and struggling to project what it stands for:  “advancing what we have with better solutions that solve customers problems”

We need this dynamic innovation process.

Otherwise, CX + DX sounds great but if it does not have IX the returns on investment or the growth rates required for this will never materialize. Let’s not forget this IX, it needs to be far more central in the equation today.

The post So CX + DX needs IX for the transformations we need first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I was really pleased to watch the official launch of the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) with its addition of the Prioritization Matrix at Hannover Messe on Monday 1^st April 2019.

This will become a very useful and relevant management planning tool to help manufacturers worldwide to determine and prioritize their necessary areas of focus with all the digital initiatives, based on an Industry 4.0 Maturity and their current performance.

This tool or readiness prioritization index has a real potential to finally bring organizational wide awareness and common language identification. It can help implementation in a number of significant ways.

This has been pioneered by The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), a very formidable Government entity within the development of Singapore over the years, and in consultation and growing support, from McKinsey & Co, SAP, Siemens, and TüV SüD.

The framework is a very systematic and I feel, a robust way, to focus on what matters to you in your own Industrial Revolution 4.0 journey (IR4). So often organizations do not have a clear vision, strategy or can develop a systematic roadmap for this form of transformation. It becomes overwhelming and a real challenge of where to start. Often the more you read, seek advice, the more you get confused.

I believe in this Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix you have a really useful framework that can give you the common language, understanding, and sense of direction, backed up with the why, where, what and when of managing out your own Industry 4.0 roadmap. The “how” comes from the advice you can then seek, armed with a greater holistic understanding of where you stand.

The Actual Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix

For me, it has the potential to be as catalytic as the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Aware that become such a movement behind quality that spurred in Europe The European Foundation for Quality Management (later to be renamed simply ‘EFQM‘)

Digital transformation is hugely complex. It is a transformation of epic portions. It is not one of those activities you can afford to leave to IT /OT or selected board members. This is requiring total company engagement as you transform your present physical world into a highly connected digital world, totally dependent on technology. It will have a social impact, significant shifts in talent needs and your workforce. It will require a very different strategy and a deep understanding and appreciation of technology.

Breaking complexity down

The changes will need to be new solution-driven ones, as much human-centric as ever, achieving increasing machine connection and offering a sustainable and inclusive approach as the final outcome. That makes this transformation the revolution it is seen to be, Industry Revolution 4.0. It has scale, scope, and complexity unlike what we have ever experienced before, as it requires us all to be more integrated and collaborative. To achieve this it is necessary to be all-embracing and comprehensive in our digital connecting up to leverage the gains this means.

The main effects of this IR4 are the shifts in customer expectations, on product enhancements, on collaborative innovation, and in different organizational forms. The merging of physical with digital will simply enhance value in some many different ways.

IR4 will have a huge impact but it needs framing and this is where the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritisation Matrix comes in.

Why I personally am relating to this framework and Singapore

Why do I see this Industry Readiness Matrix as important to put a significant level of support behind it?

Personally, a very strong identification. I lived in Singapore for 12 years followed by a further 3 years moving back and forth from Europe into Asia. I grew up in my consulting and advisory work on eight years of working with different Singapore Government Agencies and plenty of companies operating in Singapore and across S E Asia especially.

Singapore has a unique way to galvanize the resources and energy required to succeed. I worked with their EDB, MICA, MOE, Mindef, Spring, IE, the Prime Ministers PS21, often through the framework adopted to galvanize change and growth. These different frameworks included i-quality circles, scorecards, assessments, and audit approaches. They were based increasingly on the Business Excellence Assessment, I-Award for innovation.

That work of mine when in Singapore was also contributing to National Innovation Policy papers, building consortium studies, developing and contributing to different audit and public service innovation frameworks. I would certainly say “I cut my consulting and advisory teeth on innovation work” within Singapore and in S E Asia.

I really learned the value of organizing frameworks to help in this even when bureaucracy sometimes got in the way. You witness first hand how theses frames do truly galvanize change, as well as to allow you to benchmark, compare entities, their robustness and ambitions and then this gets others to relate.

A new initiative developed by the EDB, Singapore

So when you hear of the announcement of this Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix, as announced on Monday 1^st April 2019, you certainly sit up and become alert to what this can bring.

The smart part is how the Singapore EDB has drawn in and collaborated with McKinsey & Co, SAP, Siemens, and TüB SüD. This can have the real potential to go well beyond the borders of Singapore, through S E Asia and well beyond in its organizing framework to manage Industry 4.0. My respect for the EDB is significant, I kept approaching them constantly while I was in Singapore. I will always remember the Golden Egg, Buttons and Threads, but that story is for another day.

I have worked with SAP and am working with Siemens so this makes it even more compelling to understand and relate too. They are very serious to advance the Industry 4.0 revolution.

Siemens can leverage this framework in multiple ways

Siemens has made a massive investment in their Digital future and also has a dedicated business unit, effective 1^st April 2019, renamed Digital Industries. with about 78,000 employees worldwide and businesses generated revenue of around €14 billion within the Business Unit. They are firmly fixed on providing as many solutions towards Industry 4.0 as they can. Where they presently struggle is in its complexity, the ability to communicate this holistically for recognition and adoption at the client level, to what this change really does mean. This SIRI Prioritization matrix is a great place to start and engage with their clients.

They, Siemens are rapidly building use cases, have experienced technicians, engineers, and solutions to enable the client to relate too and argument their understanding of what needs to be in place and clearly, where Siemens can play a very active contribution in solutions.

Recently, Joe Kaeser, Siemens CEO, has been appointed recently as Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Association, the Asia-Pacific Conference of German Business (APK), the place where German and Asian business interests meet. I certainly believe this Industry Readiness Index would be one initiative that can eventually become “showcases” of member organizations to Asian companies, as a further collaborative space of the association as a value-add.

Relating South East Asia, Siemens and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

I recently wrote four articles for the internal Siemens Ingenuity Knowledge site focusing on different aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution specifically in S E Asia, although many of these can be universally applied. These were highlighting challenges, realities and the need to adapt differently. If you have a chance to read them I’d appreciate it.

The main question in these posts was this: Are South East Asia ready for the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Part 1: How big is the challenge really?

Part 2: The application of innovation, the Asian way

Part 3: What are the real opportunities to invest in S E Asia

Part 4: The Roadmap for the Digital Revolution

These posts give a greater outline of the challenges relating to companies in South East Asia. Putting to use the framework offered by the EDB and its partners. Actually they tie in fairly well,  it will help them considerably to manage the challenges and achieve a more collaborative environment where Government, Society, and other organizations work far more together in forming and exchanging on Industry 4.0 challenges.

The Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix is aimed to go global

I think the Prioritization Index will be highly welcome to organize around, for all organizations grappling with the complexities and challenges 4IR requires, not just in Asia but for all organizations anywhere in the world.

For example, Siemens have some incredibly talented engineers but the ability to communicate the Industry 4.0 story is one that needs to be communicated across an organization, that has the real need to resolve this global challenge.  I really believe this organizing framework significantly advances they story and positioning, if they fully take this on, in their own adoption services.

This framework, if seen in the way I see it, can become highly central to Siemens transformation story and association/collaboration and service provision into clients or potential ones. It gives a more holistic story across the organization. A common language and awareness frame.

The ability to assess manufacturers to focus areas of transformation and bring these four inputs yields an impact value which represents the relative benefit that a company will gain from progressing across the 16 index dimensions, by a single band of each dimension. Different bands will show different impact levels so the Manufacturer will be able to quantitatively identify the focus areas of prioritization they should take.

This Prioritization Matrix enhances the Index with a computational tool with many algorithm references of hundred of use case studies available. ones that help companies identify and recommend focus areas and digital initiatives to prioritize, based partly on their individual readiness score, and current financial performance, part of the SIRI tool.

So this collaboration of partners is coming together around the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix to enable customers to start their assessment, to identify gaps and where the opportunities are to work upon. It has both a technical and practical application.

What I like it does not prioritize on technology, a place a specialist would focus, it balances this out with Process the OT specialist with Organization. The three need to be recognized as the THREE core building blocks. It works on evaluating EIGHT pillars and SIXTEEN Dimensions.

In classic Singapore ways it suggests four pragmatic steps of 1) Learn key concepts and build a common language for alignment, 2) Evaluate the existing state and readiness level for Industry 4.0, 3) Architect the transformation strategy and implementation roadmap that works for you and finally 4) Deliver that is offering impact and sustaining transformative initiatives.

In Summar: Industry 4.0 has multiple challenges

I certainly believe this Smart Industry Readiness Index and its Prioritization Matrix provides an interesting management planning tool. In summary, it provides a real acceleration towards becoming IR4 ready. Including:

• Readiness, speed, the scope of technological and digital change will spur very different business models and opportunities within the Region.  Singapore through the EDB in promoting this initiative, does provide a really valuable contribution in a diagnostic tool, to the challenges of Industry 4.0, across the whole organization.
• There are layers of complexity that need peeling away and given more focused attention with so many challenging tasks in developing industrial enablement across the Region, that need to continue to promote productivity, growth, and inclusion. Through taking this SIRI approach of evaluating the different three Building Blocks, eight Pillars and sixteen Dimension approach, they help break down much of the complexity
• The “paradigm shifts” from the type of manufacturing of lower value add, to those that “add” and can be leveraged to build national capability is possible for many, through taking this combination route of industry 4.0, infrastructure enhancement, through digitalization and innovation means a well-structured and thought through the journey.
• If the framework delivers on its promise it stands Singapore and others in a strong forefront to deliver Industry 4.0 to gain a real competitive advantage and hopefully scale up in new ways.
• We have questions of scale and complexity but helping to construct a clear vision, strategy and a systematic roadmap reduce the challenges. This framework delivers the start point and quantifies impact and gaps.
• Knowing where to start, what to scale and be able to sustain are all great but to get a tool that can show you the impact on the bottom line and the effects this has on your profit makes it highly valuable and then having diagnostics that are pointing to the best positioning where this change progression needs to take place makes it exciting to determine
• For Siemens, and the other partners, it is to find the right balance for being a critical enabler of this transformation through providing their services, their vast insights to clients across the globe and a rapidly growing use case database will offer a powerful acceleration. To be a critical and essential partner in this transition and through this framework, they can play a significant part in accelerating Industry 4.0.

I think the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix can fundamentally change the “tipping point” in more rapid adoption and acceptance of the need to embrace and convert to Industry 4.0. It offers something highly valuable, I want to engage more with this as it evolves.

*****

The Prioritization Matrix is available to all manufacturing companies globally and interested parties should contact EDB or their respective parties t learn how to utilize the application for their facilities. A downloadable copy of the matrix can be found here.

The post Finally a framework to manage holistically Industrial Revolution 4.0 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I think with the recognition that innovation occurs across the whole organization the innovation management (IM) providers have to radically alter their business model or recognize they need to broaden out their target market inside organizations.

Innovation is occurring in all corners of the organization today. Secondly, if open innovation has gone way beyond a one to many relationships into a many-to-many then does the reliance on single entity software provision makes sense, focusing on single point of entry into companies? No, we have to think total enterprise software for our innovation management solutions.

Far too much IM solution providers think their models, components, upgrades and yearly showcase upgrades, as the big event. No question any “staged” release is welcomed by clients as they either have been asking for it for long enough, or have been finding their own ways of completing “workarounds” to overcome gaps, then updates are always welcome, as long as they are relevant, not just cosmetic changes. So often client solutions and their needs have considerable lag.

Innovation software is no different from the tides of change sweeping industries, digital transformation is opening up the connected possibilities outside organizations. No one organization can keep pace, or has enough resources, or can cover off solutions that solve “universal” problems, or even ones in a diverse, huge Corporation collaborating across a global business, where functional groups involved are far more diverse than ever before.

The IM software market is stirring

I feel one IM software provider so far is making a well-considered move towards a change in their business model and that is Sopheon. Their enterprise software approach is moving the innovation management market in a very positive way, they are connecting it up progressively. They have taken the view of closing the strategy- execution gap. Their approach to solutions are designed to keep strategy visible and continuously aligned with operational execution, throughout the initiative life cycle and that makes total sense. In my opinion, that connecting up becomes vital so I hope they push this thinking as hard as they can. What they still seem to lack is their need to actually offer a more robust end-to-end innovation software solution as something of a real need. They might feel they have this, I don’t. The idea management side is still light.

Sopheon is delivering the right “on-market” message that they “provide support for speed, agility, and adaptability – all are critical enterprise capabilities in the digital era”. They are claiming they are actively building business partner ecosystems. They want to navigate the new world order of digital disruption. Sounds right.

For me, Sopheon has the right vision. They claim it is solid, I would say perhaps rigid and cautious might be the constraining factor for them. I think the execution is a carefully managed one as they do have a very small business base (revenue of $34million at the end of 2018) . Actually all honesty I think all specialised innovation management software providers, operating in the classic idea management and portfolio space of innovation software solutions do have limited size businesses. Why is that when innovation is occurring in all companies. Is it the business model, is it so much still reliant on spreadsheets and internally designed systems.  It is a very fragmented market, constrained by the existing designs in place and that is the option to grasp.

Can Sopheon break out of the pack or will others make the leap? They, Sopheon, have been generating good cash and have presently a net cash position of $16.7 million. Healthy to begin to accelerate and attract the traction necessary but will they? They are taking a creative lead but is it bold enough? How they accelerate in the coming 12 months will determine this. Platform solution is extremely expensive, building ecosystems equally complex, even in this world of Innovation.They seem not to have a scaling business model or enough representation and conversion appeal.

Here lies the “rub” for Sopheon and all other Innovation software providers “The majority of their license revenue continues to remain perpetual in nature” and that, alone, holds evolution back. It is a rapidly outdated model, it constrains not accelerates.All are very proud of who they hang onto as clients and offering solutions in the cloud, just might alter this model significantly. I think there is enough evidence to say that switching cost is as much as a barrier as the original “one time” purchase. The nature of the business model needs to change to get thid traction, that the markert needs to gain real open innovation exchanges and connectivity both inside and outside the single organization. There is this real need to master product complexity. Stand alone product is fading fast, we have service, digital and changing business models to consider when it comes to todays innovation. Customers are expectinig this within their solutions.

The nature of the present constraints

The whole evaluation of the Business model rests on the decisions in this area for “traditional” IM software providers needs challenging and changing!  In the PLM market they have been wrestling with this for some time and have made significant shifts in their revenue models. If you look at PTC or Aras for example you get a real sense of pre-occupation and effort they have invested in making significant business model changes towards a “pay as you go” model shifting their model from one focused on perpetual software licenses into a more “modern” cloud-focused subscription-based revenue model, in the hope of smoothing out their revenue model from a reliance on achieving constant “big wins” that are not as well understood by the investor, fixated on quarterly results.   I have written about the different changes occurring in PLM here “The Need for Digital Innovation“, here in “Can We Have One of These? A Product Innovation Platform”

The universal software market for innovation solutions is huge.

The part of the market that has significantly moved is in the PLM solution providers domain. The ability to connect, to share, to save and adopt and adjust drafts of complicated designs in digital ways significantly improves through the use of offering a platform solution.

The PLM part that has been connecting engineers, designers, researchers derived out of CAD where electronics, software, and machine or structure drawing needed to be undertaken. This whole area has been rapidly modernizing into a product innovation platforms to support key elements of sustainable solutions that maintain, adapt, upgrade, integrate and keep multiple systems of record for designs that due to the platform approach can be easily shared within, across and outside the old environment.

PLM is undergoing a real architecting of PLM enabling solutions that are flexible, adaptable and capable of working with other solutions that are forming into an Enterprise Application Environment. Take Aras and its solutions.[1]

The whole redesign to collaborate around a single set of processes spanning systems engineering, hardware and software development, variant and options management, part release, manufacturing planning, quality, technical documentation, program management, and more. It delivers end-to-end lifecycle management at the enterprise level, along with cross-functional collaboration capabilities and through-life configuration management.

Adjusting direction can be difficult for companies that are traditionally slow to change and reliant on legacy products that have historically been successful. Outdated enterprise solutions used to support engineering and manufacturing of these products further compounds this problem, holding back the innovation needed to develop the next generation of products required to keep pace with customers’ quickly changing needs.

There is a growing recognition of adapting different types of software that enables the ideation stage and can integrate into all the other parts of the innovation value chain. There is growing specialization and client need for tracking trends, exploring technology solutions, IP patent searches, road mapping, portfolio management, foresight and scouting, collaborative ideas management, crowdsourcing, simply collecting inspiration or market intelligence, scanning environments to detect opportunity. All these have been growing in their focused specialty.

We have to demand Innovation Management Software Providers make some bold decisions

It is time to pull together many different fragmented choices and draw in the many creative tools and methods to generate and help people to help sort and give relevancy.

To do this the move towards ecosystems and platforms, this is becoming essential. The need is for a deeper platform thinking as the first part of this. Designing for platforms around ecosystems is radically different from existing linear designs along the classic innovation process of development.

Innovation needs to help people connect with each other, with ideas out there, to form different associations and it needs to leverage technology in far greater ways than keep talking about the “on-premise only” within one company and those new license wins or renewals. That is so 20th century talk.  We are in a world where open innovation is in the ability to connect across to other organizations and in this mutual collaboration look to generate significant advancements on present generation products, offered by the single company

There is a time to change the metrics. These companies should not be “tapping into technology” in tentative fashion, they should be embracing it full on like the major PLM platform providers!

We need to put in place the solution set that can make that happen. Explicate in design and intention to evolve as the understanding is recognized. Each within an ecosystem can learn from each other, they can improve what they offer, they can form new relationships and learn from each other as ideas move to greater acceleration in action and impact.

The potential addressable market for this opportunity is very substantial but will anyone presently in the market be fully prepared to really break with the pack, in a race to the potential this market has? Let’s hope so, at least the market is finally stirring.

[1] https://community.aras.com/b/english/posts/a-product-innovation-platform-the-foundation-for-product-success

The post We Require A Shift of Innovation Management Solution Providers first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Jeffrey Phillips and I are launching our fourth collaboration together, this time we are exploring innovation ecosystems and the growing impact they are having in the business world through their ‘conecting and collaborating difference’ that can lead to vastly different final customer experiences.

I just want to reaffirm what he has written on this, originally over on his site.

This is what he wrote:

Save

The post Innovation, ecosystems, platforms and the promise of more to come first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We are coming up to nearly 10 years since Dr Henry Chesbrough wrote his first book on open innovation as the necessary business imperative.  There has certainly been considerable progress in many business organizations to embrace this open collaborative principle.

“Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as their own internal ideas, and explore both internal and external paths to market. Firms need to look to advance their technology, resources, their knowledge and understanding through innovating with partners by sharing risk and sharing reward”.

Isn’t it strange that the very consultants expounding ‘open’ for innovation are as closed as ever? Why is this?

I would argue that the consulting industry specializing in providing innovation services is its own worst enemy today, by not being more open themselves. It is actually failing to recognize that this is inhibiting their own long-term prospects.

Nearly all within the innovation consulting industry seem to be resolutely staying very internally driven, self-promoting, still trying to convey the story of their mastery, when clearly this is so painfully lacking from the results in growth by many of their clients from their existing innovation activities.

Due to this lack of openness, they are failing their clients by not offering them leading and emerging practice advice. Yet the client is increasingly requiring more complete or holistic solutions, not from a ‘piecemeal of innovation offerings’ they are presently receiving.

These separate pieces currently being offered by one group of consultants often don’t dovetail into a complete innovation system because they are supplemented by a variety of different service providers, all having their own ‘pet’ approaches, methodologies, techniques and tools.
Why is it when many clients who are actively working on increasingly open complex innovation challenges and working through a more diverse range of collaborative platform solutions, that the innovation consultants working alongside them, are still such a different story of being closed up?

Consultants seem so reluctant to open themselves up and embrace this more open collaborative culture and gain from embracing that essential more divergent thinking that innovation often calls for by the use of external collaboration.

Innovation consulting is a fragmented consulting industry unable to achieve scale to match client needs.

Today innovation management advisory firms are mostly small, loosely organized, some highly specialised, that have a flourishing complexity of activity but often spend inordinate time reinventing many aspects of innovation management that are not necessary and serve little value for the client.

While client’s requirements for structuring innovation are often claimed as unique and distinctive, they are in many cases, actually not. What they really want is to acquire is a common, repeatable, scalable innovation structure that allows them to manage their distinct innovations on a consistent basis.

The understanding of the innovation process is basically common or should be. Until this point of difference between what a client’s wants is a common, scalable process and yet the providers want to offer, their own versions, innovation in general will face many disadvantages in not advancing, as it is not formed around a basic set of common standards.

Consultants are ignoring the richer places of competitive advantage or doing a poorer job of exploring variability, diversity and within the organizations building capability as it is people who offer the real value within innovation.

Managing the intangibles is certainly far harder and messy but it is the ‘sweet spot’ of innovation, where the multiplying of the degrees of connectivity, interactivity and sharing, offers the new innovation equation point.

Consultants are far too cautious for their own good
Consulting firms on the other hand are moving far too cautiously to any form of collaborative engagement; it is far too ad hoc. Wherever possible consultants want to manage as much as possible internally to ‘keep’ the fees generated inside.

This is not a recipe for building lasting relationships that have mutual value in growing understanding. They stay’ in-breed’ and are not reflecting the commonly held view today, “that all knowledge does not reside within your own walls”; they still reluctantly hang on to the closed system of  ‘invented only inside here’.

How do we resolve this? Should we? Are Disruptive Forces Around?
Combining all these islands of innovation knowledge into some form of combined force would be a healthy step. Innovation is consistently ranked among the top three strategic imperatives by business leaders yet it is not recognized by consultants with the same strategic commitment.

Of course there are some big challenges facing innovation consultants today:

1. How do you break out and resolve this fragmenting industry of many niche consulting players certainly not matching the clients’ ideal profile of global span and support?
2. The inability to offer broad innovation experience or depth in capabilities is another negative working against many consulting firms.
3. Forward thinking innovation centres within consulting are rare so there is little fresh ‘knowledge stock’ being added to tackle increasing complex issues around innovation.
4. Sophistication & specialization is highly sought after but expensive to keep around. And having this expertise sitting on the bench within one consulting company as it is regarded more as a cost liability and not as a valuable asset to leverage.
5. Strategic understanding in fast changing, complex markets and organizations is extremely hard for outsiders (consultants) to grasp in the detail required to be able to contribute into clients with the impact often justified by the fees demanded.
6. Limited experiments are currently being undertaken in the innovation consulting practices, yet clients are actually crying out for this, it is a massive unmet need or job-to-be-done.
7. Lastly consultant partners should change their remuneration models that drive their consulting business to actively seek more ‘win-win’ solutions in collaborative partnerships.

A bolder, more open collaborative model is required.

1. Consultant companies should become the host and potential ‘orchestrator’ of platforms for the ‘best’ to gather and collaborate and offer this to clients as a real value benefit.
2. Clients are learning how to collaborate and to openly network.  So shouldn’t consultants embrace this and seek out the places of complimentary knowledge by recognizing they can only, as they stand today, make a limited contribution and cannot claim ‘total solution expertise’ without active collaborations themselves.
3. There are growing sources of advice alternative– clients are recognizing this and seeking it out so why not the consultant being the platform provider for this ‘clearing house’ in diversity, thinking and understanding.
4. The appeal of bringing together experts that can come together and work on specific complex problems and then disperse has great value for all concerned providing it has a retaining clause and gives all involved their own specific returns on their business model.
5. The need today is to have real access to great quality thinking and this does not reside within the walls of one consulting firm. However large a practice of consultants they are repeating the same solution set, mindlessly pulling down their ‘best’ practice from their internal knowledge and then, attempting to apply this to someone else’s unique circumstances, failing to evaluate this sufficiently and eventually failing the client.
6. Consulting practices need to address rework. Much of the profit comes in reworking what has previously been delivered, selling it time and again. This would need changing but is not so radical a change as first thought. It is extracting the repeatable parts intelligently, evaluating the points of difference in a more forensic way from ‘available’ expertise.

A revolution for innovation consulting comes from opening up.

The resolution or (salvation) of innovation consulting is to build transparent networks of expertise, brought together on platforms provided by the nominated host or consultant, so clients see and value the access to broader, best available expertise that is working through their own, often unique challenges, not being felt as ‘cookie cutting’ recipients.

Complexity, uniqueness and expertise need to be addressed in more customized ways and that challenges the existing global consulting model of maximizing repeatability. Applying the best in knowledge application for innovation consulting services offers the client a real value for accelerating growth and job creation based on more radical and breakthrough thinking.

So what I propose requires us to think through a new model that can combine the best available expertise on a given client platform, hosted and orchestrated by the innovation consulting firm, pulling together the best advisory and thought leadership around to solve unique client challenges.

We need to alter our ways to achieve this.

What will it take to shift the existing practices? Possibly clients demands better support or simply keep voting with their feet by investing in their own experimental learning themselves, as they don’t feel the consulting advice available gives them much they don’t or can’t find out themselves.

The alternative is someone sensing the opportunity to disrupt the existing consulting model and bold enough to make that fist mover advantage and take innovation consulting up a level or two of engagement.

Actively working on finding ways in their value offer, so as to position themselves with clients as a critical ‘must have’ for working alongside them on their current and future problems in richer collaborative ways.

They share the joint objective of achieving a higher level of innovation growth and return that the client can’t achieve in their current approaches to innovation management.

The post A call for a more open collaborative innovation consulting framework first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.