The combination of technology, the internet, resource constraints and the opening up of innovation to the outside world has changed the shape and content of conversations.

Shaping conversations can be either intentional or through serendipity. Ideas are usually never fully formed but emerge over these conversations, from fragments that need nurturing, encouraging, aligning and developing through ongoing conversations. Often the fragments need a wider network to come together and form around.

The push today is the ability to sharpen the ideas quickly and move into some early testing and validation, ideally with the final customer somehow engaged and then from this ‘interaction’ the idea shapes and its final understanding deepens onto a concrete delivery.

There is a growing need for more radical, out of the existing box innovation to tap into. Collaborators help here.
Collaborations are far more complex and I suggest our thinking this through might be managed in three phases of understanding:

Identification, definitions and then diffusion.

1) The first part is identification

Here we are looking to maximise our connections, we are searching for diversity to help explore and then reframe emerging ideas. The search for different perspectives always needs to be brought in.

• The hardest part is defining the problem to tackle and then be adaptive enough to make changes as you learn and discover. We need to constantly expand our networks through partners. The level of trust within these partners needs establishing, testing and constantly reaffirming.
• The search to engage: we need to find the brightest, the best, the more engaged to get the quality of conversation in both breadth and depth. We should not be quick to dismiss but actually seek out reciprocal learning, perhaps working on a ‘pay it forward’ approach.
• The often over used ‘win-win’ does need our constant attention because if we all are focused on the value-creation opportunities for all involved and less on the value capture for one we are going to grow our collaborative efforts over time in far better ways. These become true partnerships.
• Knowing who you are dealing with, their level of knowledge, experience, the track record behind them and their organization allows for a growing compatible level of commitment as each value the other, within any collaboration. Each appreciates the other and values them for what they bring.

2) The second part is definitions and delivery

Projects today are always looking for speed, who you bring on board needs to possess the right capabilities but you need to be clear on what these need to be.

• You need to search for the complementary in any collaborative innovation, you want to avoid or minimise the duplications.
• The working out of contributions and rights in any collaborative project need addressing early. The search for striking the balance, achieving equitable assignment is tough when it comes to IP but it needs addressing as early as possible.
• The motivation for collaborating needs better understanding. Reputations and credibility are made or broken on structuring collaborations correctly as ‘good partners’ become known fairly quickly in areas where there are limited players or potential partners. Establishing this credibility ‘stock’ gives significant advantage.
• Compatibility comes in all shapes and sizes but culturally compatible in style, openness, sharing and possibly management outlook are important to establish.

3) Diffusion has to be mutually supportive and is moving towards building established ecosystems

We’re increasingly looking towards ecosystems to build around us. These have completely different needs to manage and reflect upon, and why I have separated this into a clear phase. Managing the diffusion through ecosystem collaboration is often highly complex for more radical innovation.

• Firstly, these ecosystems might already be available to tap into, or we may need to build a new one. This calls for true catalysts to handle the growing complexity that needs consciously managing and drawing in others to the cause.
• Partly these ecosystems might need to be built as the idea is radical or architectural. We need a clear ‘define the cause’ to which we can group around. Ecosystems need that symbiotic relationship to work. Knowing what makes this is important to keeping the relationships and collaborative efforts flowing and building in sometimes difficult circumstances.
• The level of early identification of the interdependences within the collaborative partners is important. Organizations are increasingly looking to fully integrate partnerships that will work not just at the front end but throughout the innovation value building process right through to final execution.
• The compatibility of the partners and the people working within the ecosystem need the same identification. Who has critical impact on its success? The dealing with potential ‘choke points’ where you may need additional partners can lead to stability or crisis in complex partnerships. The project leader needs to continuously identify and drive towards solutions.

Problem solving always causes its own friction
Any ecosystem should remain transparent and have this constant re-affirming mapping back to the collective value-creation proposition identified at the stage or as adapted as the ecosystem learns, it becomes updated and recommitted as it evolves.

Often a more radical innovation platform takes some of the participants outside their comfort zones, the importance of a visionary insight about the potential becomes key to help contain and manage this.

The emphasis on emerging compatibility or extending core within their existing business often needs to be conveyed to dampen this concern down.

Working in complex ecosystems is not easy, the partner selection, the managing of the system usually requires clear and well-honed project and management skills.

Engagement will thrive or flounder on the mutual understanding of the benefits and these may be very different as an end goal.

Identifying what makes up your collaborative design early is important
The key thread that is consistent during these three phases of different collaborations of identification, delivery and diffusion is that it is challenging the existing behaviours usually found in closed systems.

The need is to replace ‘competing’ with ‘collaborating’ and that is not easy.
Collaborative innovation is about exploring the dispersed knowledge by attracting; foraging and experiencing that can make up collaborations.

These more open, external collaborations will enable organizations to discover, sharpen and shape innovation in very different ways than being reliant on ‘just’ themselves. Yet collaborating requires a real growing specialisation within any organization.

The earlier you can identify the critical aspects, the more likely you are to ‘allow’ collaborative innovation to work but it is hard work.

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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, its well worth the visit.

The post Exploring the criteria for collaborative activities within innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

It is a pathway I want to continue to travel along and will constantly try to encourage others to equally take the walk.

I was working through a set of presentation files today and came across this extract again and thought I must share this. It rings true as much as it did those years back.

“Strategy is useless without innovation; innovation is directionless without strategy”.

Below is an extract from Reinventing Innovation by John J Kao. For me, it is sadly as relevant today as when I first came across it, some years back. Are we making real progress in our innovation activities?

Read it slowly, can I ask you to linger over its implications, its questioning and its suggestions. The extract offers much for any innovation pathway we might be considering.

The Innovation Pathway
” Innovation fits with a designer’s definition of design: the ability to move from the existing to the preferred.

Innovation is the path by which we seek the future we prefer. Not the future that we’re going to get, but rather the future we want.

Today, there is a vast gap between the aspiration for innovation and its reality. Innovation practices that are in step with the speed, uncertainty, and volatility of the new economy are still a promissory note, in this day and age.

Until we have practices that go beyond brainstorming on the one hand or simply tweaking a new product development process on the other, we will never arrive at the promised land of strategic innovation. Few if any can point to systematic practices that realize corporate innovation in a reliable and continuous fashion.

If you take innovation seriously within an organization, it touches every aspect of how business is done. It’s about leadership, organizational structure, knowledge management, corporate purpose and values, norms regarding collaboration, and strategic foresight processes.

Innovation touches everything. An innovation system requires an examination of the organization in a holistic kind of way, which is why most organizations have a tough time grasping the agenda.

We have to talk about the hard work of creating deep capabilities within the organization, capabilities that once established with tremendous effort don’t go away and confer a competitive advantage over long periods of time

The economies of scale organization are hierarchical and control focused, as is the mindset of its managers. Economies of discovery, on the other hand, which in my opinion are characteristic of the new economy, work quite differently.

Instead of efficiency, we strive for originality, for what will change the game. Instead of hierarchy and control, the focus of management must be on collaboration and enabling what is new.

There must first be an intimate connection between strategic thinking and innovation. Strategic planning must co-exist with strategic foresight. Innovation becomes an answer to a set of strategic questions. Strategy is useless without innovation; innovation is directionless without a strategy. Second, we must develop robust innovation processes

We also need a new sense of the scope of innovation, to look far beyond products and services of seeing things and shifting perspective, so that a new vision, a new set of possibilities can emerge.”

The extract is from “Reinventing innovation” by John J Kao, The Idea Factory.

This simply needs re-reading and recognizing what John said then, which still applies today. Do you agree?

The post The Ability to Move Innovation from the Existing to the Preferred first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The question poised is “Innovation isn’t working! Is it time we innovate how we innovate”. The facilitator is Graham Hill (@GrahamHill) who will attempt to moderate this session that is simply a flood of thoughts of 140 characters by anyone who wants to participate.

Everyone ploughs in, offering thoughts or exchanges and for one hour parts of the question get ripped up and tossed around, other parts, the less tasty ones, are just left on the table. It is a twitter ‘feeding frenzy’ for people who are involved (or simply interested) in innovation matters. Fun, relevant and topical.

Graham chose to provide within his briefing paper (www.innochat.com) a reference to Dave Snowden’s work. In this case from his Cognitive Edge Blog “Moving from Robustness to Resilience” http://bit.ly/kvDN5Y  which initially surprised me, and then I really began to understand one important aspect that I thought I’d share here. Thanks Graham!

Innovation is in need of a step change in approach.
Anyone following this blog will see I have been arguing that innovation needed a better common framework. In a collaboration with Jeffrey Phillips and his http://innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com/ where we have been putting forward the case over the past few weeks. You can view this at http://bit.ly/mggPt4.

I strongly relate to Grahams argument that “Innovation has a long and inglorious history of failure. According to common wisdom, over 80% of products fail on introduction into the market (some even claim 95%). And 60% of them fail again on re-introduction. But the problem isn’t the products; it’s the way we innovate.

There has to be a better way. Our current innovation models were created for simple and complicated markets. Where understanding what customers need and plugging that into a linear innovation model was enough to drive winning innovation.

Today’s markets are different. They are complex and increasingly, chaotic. The linear innovation model is no longer fit for purpose. We need to innovate how we innovate”.

The new learning from this for me is shifting to Resilience

Where Graham (well, actually Dave Snowden) has opened my eyes is with the move from the need to stop building ‘robust’ innovation models but shift this over into ‘resilient’ ones. If you have ever listened to one of Dave Snowden’s presentations, it can be scary.

He has an amazing way to present and in every step of the way he builds an argument there lays a depth of knowledge. In this blog of his it is so ‘matter of fact’ it is worrying for us mere mortals.

He is so annoying in the best possible way, as he is doing this all the time, shifting my thinking in the work that he and others do at www.cognitive-edge.com.

Some people that know David well, say he is just constantly challenging and people love to engage with him but you have to go well prepared. Oh I nearly forgot, if you are Welsh it can be easier. He does make you think.

Shifting my thinking

In his ‘Risk to Resilient’ presentation I heard a set of important things that shift my thinking and advance it. We should refocus on building in more resilience into our approaches. In his case here, resilient systems.

1. Robust systems try to avoid or prevent failure and can often become crippled in the event of the failure.
2. Resilient systems accept that failure is inevitable. If you move from focusing on prevention to 1) early detection 2) fast recovery and 3) the opportunity, early exploitation (think Silicon Valley)

Dave Snowden highlights the strategic importance for organisations to refocus on the creation of resilient systems. This has real importance for innovation.

Failure is inevitable

He goes into a Probable > Possible > Plausible for event failure and the triggering of anticipatory awareness and this presentation is very valuable to listen through a couple of times.

Why does this shift my thinking?
Well in a number of ways. I certainly need to down play the robustness and build up the aspects of resilience more to encourage more risk and creativity in innovation design.

Robustness

• Firstly I have always ‘pushed’ for robust systems of innovation and this presentation causes me to reflect on this approach. To some degree you underline ‘fear’ to reduce failure so you consistently set about reducing this risk. Ideas that started with a real flash of insight come out the other end no more than a ‘damp squib’ that is more incremental and not as ‘disruptive’ as initially intended. They need to be ‘robust’ to survive or just more resilient?
• Secondly, robust systems fit well with financial people, with the ‘counters and controllers’ of this world. It give them a better sense of identity that innovation can be ‘well’ managed.
• Thirdly , robustness works with Six Sigma, with process efficiency experts and the more you can manage the  system’s characteristic behaviour the less uncertainty you can have.
• Fourthly, robustness is often associated with being strong and healthy, hardy and vigorous, with the opposite as seen as weak and feeble
• Lastly, robustness is often associated with accountability, keeping everyone responsive but due to the often ‘rigidness’ built into the system, we do suffer sometimes spectacular failures. As Dave Snowden says “we become crippled in the event of it”.

Resilience

• I do think we are all looking more and more at building into our systems, into our own personalities a greater resilience. We have to absorb more; in complexity, in events, in our personal energy
• We do need to recover more from failure, as failure is inevitable, to adjust to a misfortune or sudden change. We need to deal with difficult changing market conditions more than ever, to cope with adversity.
• This coping may result in the individual or the organizations ability in “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected, to learn from the failure.
• Some different research shows that resilience is the result of individuals interacting with their environments and the processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of risk factors. (Wikipedia quote).

Building in resilience into innovation systems
We need to enhance resilience for innovation management. Closely linked to resilience is adaptive capacity, our ability as humans to deal with change in their environment by observation, learning and altering their interactions in response to changing (market) conditions. It is harder to adapt a robust system.

So resilience leads to responsiveness, listening to the market and customer needs, adapting what we have learnt and being ‘resilient’ in altering what we do to deliver the specific need.

Being ‘adaptive’ is critical to innovation
Dave Snowden  finishes with this in this presentation of the differences between robust and resilient:

“The future belongs to companies, and to organizations and to governments who recognize the need for strategic agility and with that comes an approach based on resilience rather than robustness.”

The post Triggering Robust to Resilient for Innovation Thinking first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.