Should we care, does it matter? I would argue it does, increasingly so. Within our innovation capital lies the future of the organisation and holds one of the really important ‘golden keys’ to the sustaining performance of the company and its future growth potential.

We need to find a way to unlock this as we are constantly being pushed for new business models that create, deliver and capture value. It is in the entire makeup, the value structure around the offering, and this is made up of distinct capitals that drive the new business towards success.

How do I define innovation capital?

“Innovation capital is the sum of all that promotes the development and changes required for achieving innovation outcomes, within one organisation or its broader networked environment, for marketplace advantage”.

“These are made up of the resources, processes, knowledge and capabilities, that are constantly evolving and highly dynamic, to build greater innovating capacity.”

The hard part is valuing innovation capital as these are constantly being renewed and evolving.

Innovation capital is a set of renewal capabilities and understanding what these are is critical but today is not well understood. We find it extremely difficult to report clearly on the makeup of our innovating capital and where we should focus in their development

Determining and being able to articulate the value within these capitals would be truly valuable and would help us differentiate between those that are static or simply repeating, and those that are dynamic, ever evolving, searching for new knowledge.

Building stock, generating flows

It is the generating of ‘new stock’ that builds the values of our future capital. It is these unique bundles of an organisations resources and assets that give us our new innovation value, through the process and flow of new knowledge and its value creation, that lead to commercialization. We need to constantly create fresh innovation capital.

It is the dynamic interactions and flows between the different innovation capital assets and the other intellectual assets that innovation requires for successful activity and outcomes. This is where absorptive capacity plays its vital part in structuring this process.

How can we capture and articulate the innovation capital?

So, the key to identifying innovation capital lies in its stocks and knowledge building assets and their uniqueness in the resources that make this up, in constantly evolving and learning, these are the real strategic asset to nurture and build. Leveraging and continually building the ‘stock’ of our innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes.

It is our ability to ‘mix and combine’ the innovation activity that it consists of, in all the decisions and activities that occur, from the recognition of a need or a problem, the decisions and then the activities that occur that build through researching, developing concepts through to the eventual release into commercialization into successful market outcomes that feeds and builds the combined innovation capital.

Knowing this make-up of our innovation capital provides us with the potential for driving our future growth. Identifying the real capital that will drive and sustain the real advantage, providing the future potential for new wealth should be the essential way we measure organisations performance, not on past financial performance or personal perception, built on limited understanding.

Holding the future back if we lack a deep understanding of our innovation capital

If we had a better understanding of the make up the innovation capital, and what makes up its critical enablers, then we are better positioned to qualify and even quantify a more confident future, based on the capital that ‘feeds’ the future potential.

We need to understand the strategic importance and take the time to explore where our innovation capital lies to understand all the value-building points. At present most corporate boards lack any clear line of sight into this, it significantly holds innovation back, it constrains growth, and it can make us all far more cautious of the future, for knowing where to invest and grow as we lack the level of what innovation capital should we be leveraging in our understandings.

I think it is the time we did clarify our innovation capital in far better ways. Need any help?

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

The post Is Innovation Capital important to us? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

How often do you pause for thought, testing yourself, questioning even simply for ‘just those few minutes,’  to allow yourself to openly challenge where you are and what you are attempting to do?

We keep relentlessly moving on, like a wandering herd of buffalo, always looking for fresh pasture, those new feeding grounds. It’s not good.

Of course, I often get caught up in this restless pursuit of gathering more, when I spend a growing amount of my time researching innovation. I keep coming across so many things that ‘trigger’ the thinking, pushing me on.

Do you let them go, ignore them, quickly pass over them, or attempt to capture the issue as something well worth investigating further at a later stage, or just get them simply behind you in the here and now.

I think I must be reverting back more into a hunter-gatherer, in my case upon innovation insights; collecting the raw material that I am looking to eventually translate and distribute as this growing knowledge stock.

The outcome  I trust is moving me slowly towards becoming an innovation curator, hopefully, valued by others. Well, it’s a goal.

I also regularly need what I call my ‘walkabout’ moments to chill out and regroup.

Walkabout is best known when an Australian Aborigine undergoes a journey, wandering in the wilderness for periods as long as six or so months.

This wandering mostly becomes a rite of passage, in my case my walkabout’s are aimed to move my innovation understanding from one state to another, hopefully improving by what I have learnt and gathered.

I have so often to force myself to stop being a collector of ‘all things new’ that is written about innovation. I keep attempting to put as many of the existing pieces together, searching for the patterns and insights, trying to make a different sense to them, with the aim to add further to the innovation stock and innovation capital.

Presently I am in the middle of a digital and paper clear-up ready for another walkabout

Either the mass of papers that I confess I’ve printed out so I can highlight, scribble over and allow these to ‘fester’ a little longer, so the ideas permeate through my thick skull or my digital collection all need shaping differently. I’m been busy working through my digital library, whipping this back into a decent shape after a heavy collecting period of interesting articles that all need to be referenced for future use.

There is so much to explore, it does get overwhelming and this is why these ‘walkabout’s help clear my brain (and my desk). I also use mind mapping software to capture much so the different patterns and connections can become a little more coherent, well for me at least.

Craving for the innovative open road

I do like the idea of an open road on where we can go and what we might explore but we actually do need to take some time to choose the routes, even when much of it can be serendipitous, as it has to contribute ‘just’ beyond knowledge into something valuable.

In our investigations we need to watch out for all the signs (not necessarily signposts)  along the way, those signals, patterns and emerging trends as we both search the horizon but equally in fully appreciating what is all around us, as we travel building our understanding on that journey.

I often feel I am a journey man and I’m certainly comfortable with that.
I have to admit, I am a happy man playing in my innovation sandpit, linking these thoughts into emerging solutions to tackle some client problems, move innovation along or answer some questions posed.

I work on these for others on given value propositions around the following: “you need someone who can put clear coordinates into the innovation world“.

I keep moving towards this concept of being a curator of innovation, collecting and distributing it, interpreting it, re-ordering it to meet specific needs. To do this I need to keep up a given rhythm, filtering and funneling, dampening or magnifying this growing knowledge around innovation.

I enjoy this but it does take up more time than I can sometimes really afford. I think I need an investor who see’s value in structuring this into an innovation knowledge platform, until then, if ever, I travel my path.

 “Time starved, knowledge poor,” so when do we gain the luxury to think

When do we find the time to really delve into the necessary understanding for innovation in deeper and valuable ways. We are often just ‘reacting to daily issues’ and constant crisis as we are so focused on the delivery of short-term results.

We lack a space where we can explore thoughtful analysis, deepen our personal knowledge and make all the right connections we would ideally like. We lack time and insights that can give greater direction or answers.

We are needing those personal ‘curated’ spaces where our particular interest builds up in the required knowledge (collect, manage and apply) to then be able to build from this and move onto the next knowledge stream of value to you. We never find the ongoing opportunity to alter our innovation understanding and influence our future delivery.

What would help here? Is it innovation coaching, mentoring, providing an innovation knowledge platform, a place to go and find content-rich insights that yield impact and give a renewed intensity? What would be attractive? What would give to your understanding of innovation and its management?

How does one offer such a personal space where you can draw in the knowledge and interpret it in your way, appropriate to meet your innovation goals?

Also I’m enjoying some sparring, exchanging, and developing as ongoing.

I’m also caught up in a great discussion with my occasional sparring partner Jeffrey Phillips of Ovo, this time around in change, culture and innovation and I think this will eventually emerge as a further piece of collaborative work between us.

This will follow on from our collaborations around the Innovation Executive Work Mat , where we have been seeking out common cause and building strategic and innovation alignment, along with our earlier attempts to describe a “Collaborative innovation reference model“, published under “reducing innovation mysteries” and on its homepage.

I’ve written before about “finding our true purpose” and working the innovation space is mine to explore and think through. As I stated in that post, mine is increasingly focused upon:

“Establishing the ‘new’ often means moving beyond the already ‘known’, it is to experiment with sometimes the untried, to learn, to achieve faster and improved results, to evolve and push boundaries. This needs fresh perspectives and dedicated innovation knowledge. I attempt to offer those insights and guidance in the emerging areas of innovation”

Off on another innovation walkabout, it is about time, hopefully, the answers will keep coming from the time hopefully well spent.

*Amended on 16.04.2015

The post Walkabouts are needed for learning and testing ourselves first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Not understanding what makes up the capital is holding innovation back. We are actually constraining growth through this lack of understanding as it makes us all cautious of the future.

If we don’t fully understand the make-up of all our capital should we invest or divert resources to delivering on it? I think it is high time we did.

So what makes up our innovation capital and why is it important to know?

Should we care, does it matter? I would argue it does, increasingly so. Within the innovation capital lies the future of the organization and holds one of the real golden keys to the sustaining performance of the company, or not.

The generally accepted view is that Innovation boosts a company’s earnings, speeds growth, ensures an advantage over competitors, and greatly appeals to shareholders. Put another way, businesses that deliver earnings growth based on a continuous stream of new products and services and new ways of doing business capture the innovation premium.

So tell me, why are we seemingly so bad at identifying what actually makes up our innovation capital, apart from some sweeping generalised statements attached in the accompanying comments within the financial result statements?

We need to find a way to unlock this as we are constantly being pushed for new business models that create, deliver and capture value. It is in the entire make up, the value structure around the offering, and this is made up of distinct capitals that drive the new business towards success.

How do I define innovation capital?

“Innovation capital is the sum of all that promotes the development and changes required for achieving innovation outcomes, within one organization or its broader networked environment, for market place advantage”.

“These are made up of the resources, processes, knowledge and capabilities, that are constantly evolving and highly dynamic to build greater innovating capacity.”

We are searching for what makes-up and provides the true value creation in successful outcomes; in final product, services, knowledge understanding or executing within further business models.

We need to understand what makes up innovation capital far more in the future.

Mostly this innovation capital comes from the different intellectual capitals, those unique sums within each organization, of knowledge made up of our human assets, organizational structures and social partners making up the organizations eco system.

It is when we bring these together in different, evolving ways we transform the knowledge into new economic value, through this organization and personal actions. Financial capital cannot do that; it can only fuel the other capitals, it lies idle until we employ the other capitals.

The hard part is valuing innovation capital as these are constantly being renewed and evolving.

Innovation capital is a set of renewal capabilities and understanding what these are is critical but today is not well understood. We find it extremely difficult to report clearly on the makeup of our innovating capital yet investors are increasingly attributing more to the intangibles, based on limited knowledge.

Determining and being able to articulate the value within these capitals would be truly valuable and would help us differentiate between those that are static or simply repeating, and those that are dynamic, ever evolving, searching for new knowledge.

How can we capture and articulate the innovation capital?

I believe we can. One of the big key’s to identifying innovation capital lies in its stocks and knowledge building assets and their uniqueness in the resources that make this up, in constantly evolving and learning, these are the a real strategic asset.

Leveraging the ‘stock’ of our innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes.

It is our ability to ‘mix and combine’ the innovation activity that it consists of, in all the decisions and activities that occur, from the recognition of a need or a problem, through research, development and commercialization of an invention into successful market outcomes builds the capital.

Knowing this make-up of our innovation capital provides us the potential for driving our future growth. Identifying the real capital that will drive and sustain real advantage, providing the future potential for new wealth should be the essential way we measure organizations performance, not on past financial performance or personal perception, built on limited understanding.

We need greater insights into all our organizations ‘collective’ capitals

It is the ‘combination effect’ of leveraging all our capitals that yields the real lasting sustaining values. Today, we are lost in numbers and details, financials dominate most discussions, we need to encourage exploration into the make up of all our capitals.

Until we can peer under the organizations ‘hood’ a little more and understand the make up of all the capitals then we will continually fail to understand the real innovation activity that generates the value.

We need to know more on what can and does ‘drive’ future performance, what lies at its core or is being built-in for new capabilities and capacities to innovate, looking to secure the future.

If we had a better understanding of the make up the innovation capital, and what makes up the critical enablers, then we are better positioned to qualify and even quantify a more confident future, based on the capital that ‘feeds’ this future potential.

The post Holding the innovations of the future back first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I expect you could answer this fairly comfortably.

It might need a little added help from your finance department but you could produce and show significant details that we are all ‘schooled’ to understand and generally have accepted, under common definitions and standard practice.

Our businesses are measured constantly on their financials, we produce a constant flow of reporting documents that provide useful insight and allow for a more informed judgement by present and future investors on the health of the company. We are ‘wedded’ to our financials and ignore the real value within our organizations of all the other critical capitals that generate and strengthen the business.

What if that same person came to you and asked instead: “what makes up the innovation capital of the company?’” could you answer this as clearly as the financial one – I would suggest most probably not. (By the way, if you feel you can then please let me know I would be more than interested).

We are focusing more on past performance and not future generating potential by staying fixated on just the financials within all that makes up our organizational  capital

So what makes up our innovation capital and why is it important to know?
Should we care, does it matter? I would argue it does, increasingly so. Within the innovation capital lies the future of the organization and holds one of the real golden keys to the sustaining performance of the company, or not.

The generally accepted view is that Innovation boosts a company’s earnings, speeds growth, ensures an advantage over competitors, and greatly appeals to shareholders. Put another way, businesses that deliver earnings growth based on a continuous stream of new products and services and new ways of doing business capture the innovation premium.

So tell me, why are we seemingly so bad at identifying what actually makes up our innovation capital, apart from some sweeping generalised statements attached in the accompanying comments within the financial result statements?

We need to find a way to unlock this as we are constantly being pushed for new business models that create, deliver and capture value. It is in the entire make-up, the value structure around the offering, and this is made up of distinct capitals that drive the new business towards success.

How do I define innovation capital?

“Innovation capital is the sum of all that promotes the development and changes required for achieving innovation outcomes, within one organization or its broader networked environment, for marketplace advantage”.

“These are made up of the resources, processes, knowledge and capabilities, that are constantly evolving and highly dynamic to build greater innovating capacity.”

These innovating capitals build upon the capabilities of ‘sensing, seizing and transforming‘ so as to build new capital that focuses more on the dynamics within innovation.

You are searching for what makes up and provides the true value creation in successful outcomes; in the final product, services, knowledge understanding or executing within further business models”

We need to understand what makes up innovation capital far more in the future.
Mostly this innovation capital comes from the different intellectual capitals.

Those unique sums within each organization, of knowledge are made up of our human assets, organizational structures and social partners making up the organization’s ecosystem.

It is when we bring these together in different, evolving ways we transform the knowledge into new economic value, through this organization and personal actions. Financial capital cannot do that, it can only fuel the other capitals.

Within these capitals lie the three primary components of intellectual capital: human capital, structural capital and relational capital. These do the heavy lifting to generate the value in the capital.

Human Capital is perceived as the knowledge and learning abilities of the human resources, it primarily as comprising knowledge (explicit and tacit), skills, intellect and talent of individuals.

Structural Capital provides the organizational mechanisms and architecture for retaining, packaging, reinforcing and transferring knowledge along with business activities.

Relational Capital represents a firm’s accumulated knowledge and ability to absorb, exploit and extend knowledge from its relationships to create, develop and maintain conditions that serve the interests of both the firm and increase its principal external partners.

Increasingly other capitals are being given the increased focus

Technological Capital includes efforts in R&D, technological infrastructure, and intellectual and industrial property.

Organizational Capital includes elements such as organizational culture, values, attitudes, information and telecommunications capability and organizational structure.

Strategic Capital that builds up the layers to offer a viable business, it provides increasingly the logic and purpose that ‘connects and attracts’ and ‘accounts’ for delivering the business model, that provides to the market and delivers on the need to build and sustain the organization and keeps it viable and evolving..

We need to make greater efforts to measure these capitals, as they possess the value of all the knowledge used, combining human with physical capital to generate outputs that drive progress and future outcomes.

We are highly vulnerable unless we know what makes up our capital stock.

Financial Capital is useless on its own to generate growth unless it has its ‘feeding stock‘ and that is within the other capitals.

It is the ‘stock’ of these that generates the values. It is these unique bundles of a organization’s resources and assets that give us our new innovation value, through the process and flow of knowledge and its creation, leading to commercialization. We need to constantly create fresh innovation capital.

It is the dynamic interactions and flows between the different innovation capital assets and the other intellectual assets that innovation requires for successful activity and outcomes. This is where absorptive capacity plays a vital part in structuring this process.

The hard part is valuing innovation capital as these are constantly being renewed and evolving.

Innovation capital is a set of renewal capabilities and understanding what these are is critical but today is not well understood. We find it extremely difficult to report clearly on the makeup of our innovating capital yet investors are increasingly attributing more to the intangibles, based on limited knowledge.

Determining and being able to articulate the value within these capitals would be truly valuable and would help us differentiate between those that are static or simply repeating and those that are dynamic, ever-evolving, searching for new knowledge.

Perhaps a good example here is to think of Apple and its innovation premium.

Apple delivers on its innovation promise in products, we, as customers seem to want. They have mastered the convergence of ‘breaking’ technology, placing a significant emphasis on design, user experience, combining materials to deliver products that make that statement of quality, fulfill our increasing appetite for technology we see as increasingly valuable to our daily lives.

Then they bundle it by providing ease of use within the make-up of the product, offering closed platforms to enhance individual experiences and deliver this ‘bundle’ through the sheer generation of excitement and buzz.

They seem to be able to leverage all their different capitals. They build in the emotional capital, the reputation, a trust factor, raising our expectations of a future promise. They are leveraging all parts of their capital stock extremely well, on a constantly evolving platform of knowledge and learning. Can others emulate this combination effect?

How can we capture and articulate the innovation capital?

So the key to identifying innovation capital lies in its stocks and knowledge building assets and their uniqueness in the resources that make this up, in constantly evolving and learning, these are the real strategic asset. Leveraging the ‘stock’ of our innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes.

It is our ability to ‘mix and combine’ the innovation activity that it consists of, in all the decisions and activities that occur, from the recognition of a need or a problem, through research, development and commercialization of an invention into successful market outcomes builds the capital.

Knowing this make-up of our innovation capital provides us the potential for driving our future growth. Identifying the real capital that will drive and sustain real advantage, providing the future potential for new wealth should be the essential way we measure organizations performance, not on past financial performance or personal perception, built on limited understanding.

We need greater insights into all our organizations ‘collective’ capitals
It is the ‘combination effect‘ of leveraging all our capitals that yields the real lasting sustaining values. Today, we are lost in numbers and details, financials dominate most discussions.

Until we can peer under the organization’s hood a little more and understand the makeup of all the capitals then we will continually fail to understand the real innovation activity that generates the value and we will always have a lack of measuring an organization’s performance in any comprehensive way.

We rely too much on historical numbers, alongside a judgement of the rhetoric offered by the board about the promise of future performance. Judging innovation’s performance is based partly on current product launches and announced future pipelines where the board is typically cautious.

It often makes us as those investors equally cautious. We need to know more on what can and does ‘drive’ future performance that lies at its core or is being built in new capabilities and capacities.

If we had a better understanding of the make up the innovation capital, and what makes up its critical enablers, then we are better positioned to qualify and even quantify a more confident future, based on the capital that ‘feeds’ the future potential.

Holding the future back

We need to understand the strategic importance of the make-up of the innovation capital and presently most corporate boards lack any clear line of sight into this.

It holds innovation back, it constrains growth, it makes us cautious of the future, if we don’t fully understand the make-up of our capital. I think It is time we did.

The post What makes up your innovation capital? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.