Barriers to innovation, the cause and effect.

October 18, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Business Platforms and Ecosystems, Fresh thinking, Innovation Ecosystems, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation
Seeing the barriers, the causes and effects.

I am on a personal mission to convince innovation software providers, corporations and innovators to change how they undertake innovation.

In some recent posts, I argued that we need to adopt a broader innovation ecosystem thinking and design. I stated in one recent post, “We must promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for innovating purposes, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.”

I do think we need to restate the current barriers to innovation.

These barriers do not ‘magically’ change by delivering what I believe moves us to a better system for innovation, that of an ecosystem and platform architecture. Still, barriers do need to be consciously built into any new thinking as ones “to be resolved” in any new solution design.

Recognizing the present and ongoing barriers to innovation needs solutions to be built into any future design. Let me outline many of these here, building further the case for necessary change.

Today most organizations have barriers towards creativity, ideas and innovation.

Why do we need to change our thinking about innovation?

October 9, 2022Posted inBuilding Innovation Capability1 Comment
The Innovation Ecosystem Cascading Effect

I have been arguing in recent posts about the need to change how we approach innovation. We need to think about designs around innovation ecosystems.

In a series that builds the argument so far, I have provided the essential context within this post” Please, we need a different innovation narrative” followed by “Building out our innovation ecosystem in design and thinking.”

My personal energy is drawn from all the challenges we face, looking to help find solutions.

We must promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for innovating purposes, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.

Achieving this innovation ecosystem thinking does require a profound shift in how innovation is viewed and approached in the business landscape today and in the future.

Building the Single Innovation Digital Platform Environment

January 9, 2019Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation1 Comment

Aras PLM Platform Image courtesy of Aras

Throughout the past couple of years, I have been constantly arguing about the need to put innovation management on a digital platform.

These have come in different thoughts on digital platforms, ready for cross-industry and having in place, a rapid digital innovation process that scales and evolves on new technology and insights.

We need a radical design, universal in design and approach.

What if you could manage your innovation in the ways shown in this diagram?

This is the way PLM innovation platforms are progressing and currently being assessed by CIMdata in a PLM Innovation Assessment Scorecard shown further below. Link to the position paper

The argument about what any innovation management system provides goes on and on and still, we seem not to be at the universal acceptance point that an innovation management process is critical and needs a better system of management.

What we should finally accept, a platform connects all users, both internally and externally in their ability to share their knowledge and information in exchanges, in one environment to cultivate collaborations and continuous collaborative creativity. The more we design and need to deliver smart, connected and innovative products the more we have this innovation platform need.

The majority of the present software providers fail to grasp this.

Entering 2019 – What Do Each of Us Need to Focus Upon?

December 27, 2018Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Innovation strategy, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation

As we enter 2019 I always like to take a day or so, to reflect and think about what I should be focusing upon in the next year, around innovation. What has influenced me in 2018 and what I feel is shaping my thinking going into 2019?

I can honestly say, it never fully works out as the year progresses, there are distractions, subjects that attract my eye, hold my attention or simply ones become bigger in my wish to pursue as important to understand or become more focused upon.

Innovation is constantly shifting in customer needs and issues to absorb, relate too, build into our thinking, in a world where many within the business community are “time-starved, often knowledge poor” I look to help them on different innovation insights.

What about you? Here are my thoughts coming from 2018 that are leading me into 2019

Firstly in the year just closing I have been taking a look back at what I wrote about in 2018.Digital and innovation dominate.

On this site paul4innovating, I wrote 34 posts, a drop on past years, but increasingly with the shift into the constant integrating of digital into all things innovation, continuing as the emerging trend and theme, I seemed to spend the most time upon. On my other main site focusing specifically on ecosystems and platform related work, I wrote 25 posts.

Also in this year I began to put some fresh  life on two new posting sites, one focusing specifically on coaching and mentoring “guide4innovating” and the other “connecting digital and innovation” looking more at the critical part of digital and innovation that is forming most of my posting and researching work in recent months to break it out. My one other continues a very tortuous journey of building the dynamics when linked, become the connecting points in building innovation in the needed capacity, capability, and competence, that I term the pursuit of “innovation fitness dynamics“

Why do I run so many posting sites?

How do we measure success in our digital transformation? A journey of discovery

October 22, 2018Posted inAchieving innovation engagement1 Comment

How do we find answers to knowing what measures give us for success in any digital transformation? Are today’s measures relevant to tomorrow, are they still based on our legacy system of measurement, when a business was operating in a stable, predictable environment?

Today, I think we certainly have a beginning point but all of us lack a clarity of the end point of where digital transformation will take us. Why, well I think this nicely puts it, we have to move or be moved. Nicely put Mirko

Yes, we can measure success in our progress but these are in both multiple and equally personal ways.

Each organization is unique. Never has this become crystal clear that when you face your own transformation journey. You can learn from others, you can adapt but you need to clearly understand where you are in your own evolution and capacity to undertake change as it is simply your journey. This has not been as well recognized as it is today when we attempt to make any transition, from the old ways of doing business to the new one; that is highly connected, collaborative and based on our growing reliance on technology and ‘everything’ digital. It can become life-changing.

Platform models are the new order of our innovating business need

November 28, 2017Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Interests, Shifting dynamics in innovation

Part of my shifting my own innovation advisory work was to build out a greater understanding of the power of ecosystems platforms and customer experience collaborations. This site here https://ecosystems4innovating.wordpress.com/about/   explains why there is this dedicated approach in my focus. Also oulining the reasons I chose to shift part of my business over to developing a “certain” knowledge expertise on ecosystems and platforms last year so to help others and equip myself for a growing part of the future of innovation.

Increasingly we are looking constantly for better value. We are increasingly restless and explorative. The big question for many companies that simply sell products is can they benefit from making changes in these platform models. How do they go about it to capitalize on this restlessness and constant need of new experiences? Is the stand-alone product model breaking down? Do the more traditional approaches to customers, those that are more supply sided, still serve their needs today? The answer is no, platforms are building very different connected experience for customers, they are voting with their digital clicks to move their business to these offerings. Are you building platform businesses? You should.

Moving to a Digital World totally across your Business is highly challenging

October 18, 2017Posted inBuilding Innovation Capability, Interests, Polymers

Transformation is very hard at the best of times for all of us to undertake. Digital transformation forces us to work with mostly emerging, constantly evolving technologies, and then apply these in an integrated way into an existing business. This stretches our abilities significantly, as we may remain unclear of the finished design for quite some time.

We have to evolve it, as we go. With anything that is evolving in front of our eyes, we will need to recognize some of the decisions we will make will turn out to be wrong but made as a good judgment at the time, on ’emerging’ evidence, not proven. Achieving a digital transformation is becoming really essential for innovation, helping to enable your ability to deliver sustained growth through making all the ‘connections’ come together in different ways than ever before; in evaluations, analysis, in collaborations and in the process from discovery to eventual commercialization.

Digital transformation executed well is a really big undertaking. It goes way beyond making a series of incremental improvements to become cloud-ready as are supposed to build in and reflect social, mobile and digital technologies in the solution set. We need to fundamentally transform our processes by opening up and engaging with customers in dramatically different ways, in real-time, in constant exchanges and connected ways. Everything needs to be tracked and traced.

Relating to the New Innovation Era

July 5, 2017Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Shifting dynamics in innovation5 Comments

relating to the new innovation era

I firmly believe we are on the cusp of a new innovation era.

When you step back and recognize all the different advancements we have been making in designing tools and frameworks, and in understanding innovation, it holds promise.

Yet it is this recognition that the present is not working anymore with existing innovation systems, you do need to search for a real lasting change that does transform and connect all the parts into a new innovation designed ‘whole’. There are a number of intersections and driving forces that are coming together and what is emerging is this new innovation era. Now we have to weave them together.

Of course, much of what we have will still remain. We are still in need of finding innovations that provide new products, services or business models. These outcomes remain constant, it is the way we approach these that is in need of being seen as dramatically different. We require a more evolutionary, fresh perspective.

The sad part is that many of our existing consulting firms offer solutions that are unfit for today’s needs, or ill-equipped for offering advice on tomorrow’s purpose and the designs necessary. Equally, nearly all our larger business organizations are still locked in the past or attempting to catch up to the present but in random ways. This does need a real change but can we achieve it?

Innovation is advancing but most of it has been designed for a different time, the old era of stable markets, predictable solutions and having a clear sense of your competition. All that has changed dramatically. We have all been trying (very hard) to stay relevant in an ever-increasing uncertain world, applying solutions left over from a past era. Something has had to suffer and I believe this is our innovation outcomes, that are not shifting the growth needle as we keep our innovation systems and thinking trapped in the 20th-century mindset.

The Essential Connection Between Strategy and Innovation

June 27, 2017Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability2 Comments

Most organizations are seeking solutions to the necessary connections between Strategy and Innovation. The connection between the two are often broken.

Often it is within the strategies that should be outlined, lies the potential new spaces to play for innovation’s design. Yet how often do we fail to connect the innovation’s we design and execute specifically aligned to the strategic need?

We somehow seem to stay locked in the ‘here and now’ constantly repeating and refining the known and established within our domain of responsibility. Is this because innovation is not at the core of the business as it should be? Often we are inherently resisting to exploring change as it becomes risky and far more demanding. A good strategy, well outlined should encourage innovation and gain engagement but it can equally determine how we break down our imposed boundaries by its strategic intent, to encourage exploring and extending on what we know into the what we need to know. Strategic intent informs innovation.

If you have a clear strategic understanding of the needs of the business you are getting more of the understanding of where-to-play and how-to-win in your innovation activities and market investment. It is making these strategic connections that is giving innovators a better chance to deliver back concepts that offer alignment to this strategic need. Investing in this understanding and alignment should never be understated. The time invested, allows for the innovation investments to do their part in supporting the business and feeding it with the growth options required, or highlighting where the possible gaps might be, for additional investment or M&A activity, to accelerate this and bring-in fresh innovating momentum.

We are in need of a common language for innovation

June 22, 2017Posted inAchieving innovation engagement

German Late Medieval (c. the 1370s) depiction of the construction of the tower.

Any innovation common language needs working upon. It firstly needs recognition it is in our best interests to find a common point. It needs to be relevant to each of us, it must be current, appropriate, accurate and highly visible throughout the entire organization. It also needs to be allowed to grow and flourish, to evolve and become the lingua franca of all our innovation work. It needs building and constructing in conscious ways and design.

Let’s step back just for one minute, these ‘sentiments’ are fine, yet we actually do, seriously lack a common language for innovation and we should find the ways and the means to change this. It holds innovation back significantly. It can’t continue in a world of greater networking and collaboration.

Languages unites us or keeps dividing us

Language can have the power to unite us or potentially divide us. Developing a language to unite us in our innovation efforts goes some way to reduce disagreements and egos, to qualify individual interpretation or bias, often a key inhibitor that can block a team’s success. It lays in a common foundation. It builds confidence and understanding.

Once we have a common language, we can set about building and creating a more robust innovation management system. One that builds on this framework so it can relate to the relevant context, conditions, and environment for innovation, to offer within this building block, the common identity.

These identifiers can build into better understanding how to structure governance, process, and functional structures, to build a culture that is responsive as ‘they’ can identify a need for a common cause of understanding. It is in this central innovation language that becomes our clear unifying context, the enabler, and sense of personal identity with the purpose of what we are wishing to achieve.