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.

*******

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.

I’ve saved the $40k that it is estimated to attend this annual event and I can certainly find the time to absorb what is being said in my own environment.

Perhaps the messages are more salient because of this, I don’t know, as I’m highly unlikely to be attending this forum as you have to be invited.

So what has caught my attention is not surprising for its relevancy, to what I do and think about, around the issues of innovation and its ability to lead us out of our present adversities

The one discussion that was valuable on this involved a panel that spoke at length about risks in uncertain times. It was headlined as “Leading through adversity” but focused on the uncertainty being faced and where innovation can help in reducing unfamiliar risks and giving us some clarity.
Watch the debate here http://tinyurl.com/a6lqm5h

There were lots of discussions on different types of innovation from Professor Clayton Christensen’s emerging view we have three types of 1) empowering innovation, 2) sustaining innovation and 3) efficiency innovation.

Another panellist Anand Mahindra spoke of two types of Pioneering cutting edge and the “More for less” movement found in frugal innovation thinking as the two that need us all to think through.

Both were good contributors to where innovation needs to fit but our difficulties persist as we all do not share a common language.

The Chairperson of Bains & Company, USA Orit Gadiesh kept reminding us that fear comes in two different forms: “uncertain”- which tends to freeze us until we resolve some of that uncertainty and “unfamiliar”- where many CEO’s and organizations are presently grappling with. Both are presently “scaring us to death” to quote Clayton Christensen in dealing with the “unknowns”.

Two comments sparked a thought- one by Martin Senn, Group Chief Executive Officer, Zurich Insurance Group, Switzerland was his “interconnectivity of risk” and the other one was dealing with the new issue on the block everyone is thinking through “Market transitions” and the effects in each economy on job and wealth creations started by John Chambers, CEO & Chairman of Cisco.

Preparing for innovation for the future.

These two comments lead you to begin to think about Innovation for the future. We are going to continue to live in unpredictable times and there is an awful lot coming towards us in new business model designs that are going to radically alter the competitive landscape.

We sense entire industries are being threatened. Toppling giants send shock waves throughout the world and certainly the corridors of our business leaders.

This continued uncertainly, this dealing in the unfamiliar, this feeling of something coming from nowhere made me think of “heat-seeking innovation”.

So for a little bit of fun I took a look at some of the comparisons between heat-seeking missiles and applied those to heat-seeking innovation. Ok, a little “left field” but it became interesting, so stay with me for a few moments of wandering. Too much listening to our leaders in Davos perhaps?

Stretching your thinking around heat-seeking innovation

So, I’m stretching our thinking, ignoring much within the design of heat-seeking missiles but looking at some of the commonalities surprisingly around us in different ways that we need to build into our innovation capability, building for future innovation to respond to in far smarter ways.

Heat-seeking innovation relies on piecing together considerable data, rapidly absorbing the individual values to ‘react’ to the unfamiliar and continue to manage the constant and familiar.

Let me explain some parallels with heat-seeking missiles.

With so many new business models occurring, they are out to destroy what is already in place and part of the incumbent CEO’s role is to avoid this fate or be the one to bring the new business model to fruition. They need to ‘seek’ more and ‘risk’ more.

As the name implies heat-seeking missiles home in on the hot areas of a target, the parallel is that our innovation needs to do the same job. Home in and do the job, disrupt (destroy) the existing and gain the advantage through new business models, products and services.

Heatseeker innovation requires us all to get a whole lot smarter.
We need to get a whole lot smarter with our innovation efforts, we need to build innovation systems that are “smarter” in discriminating targets and resisting the jamming effects, internally and externally often deployed to try and influence and alter their mission. We need to use the heat map to focus in and cut out this ‘background’ clutter. We need to stay the innovation course.

Firstly we need innovation combustion

It is the amount of innovative heat, the energy feeding into the system, to quote from one article on heat-seeking missiles: “the energy is in the form of a crystal lattice of vibrations that vibrate along the chain”. The more heat one omits you achieve a continuous band that raises the (innovation) temperature and increases the thrust and combustion.

All sources of energy (our people) emit the potential for innovation activity. The more you ’emit’ you achieve growing propulsion in new innovative energy so the more you vibrate (with innovation) the higher the intensity. You need to build the innovation engine that allows the energy source to propagate (our people and their ideas and actions) and champion its value and source of future growth.

Controlling the burn

Propulsion needs a controlled burn time. To get a better speed, to move organizations forward faster levels of heat-seeking innovation, there is a need to have a combination of proximity and impact infusing. Here the CEO needs to lay down all the “guidance systems”, and provide the positioning of targets and issue the necessary commands (the innovation strategy aligned to corporate goals) to achieve the desired flight path.

This relates to getting close to our customers, our markets and having available core capabilities to deliver desired results does need a certain closeness and determination to infuse the parts.

There also needs to be in place optical filters which I gather for heat-seeking missiles are made up of absorption filters that have wide bandwidth (scanning and assessments) and interference filters that design down to extremely narrow bandwidths (clear innovation focus) and both require good transmittance (communications) and reflecting unwanted energy (a design of a common language and intent) instead of absorbing it.
Reject what is not relevant to getting the heat-seeking innovation away (good governance and project management).

In other words stop unnecessary interference which comes from our own reflection (dogma and mindsets) and laser in on what secures your future. Push through the “flak.”

What we need to set up is targeted directional information to accelerate this impact infusing.

So we need to ensure the following to be put into place for optimising our heat-seeking innovation (missiles) to become operative and deliver their full impact.

We need seeker types

We call these innovation scouts. These are the source for detecting new innovations, targets to zoom in on, seeking out their heat and these targets allow up to home in on to defeat with countermeasures, provide the information to avoid, possible seek and destroy as threats, or rapidly learn from as these take evasive actions to improve our own innovation efforts.

We need scanning patterns and modulation

As we build our own capabilities in innovation it is the space in front of us becomes the one to scan for new targets (core, adjacent or new spaces). We need to amplify the signals (weak signals offer tomorrows innovation). The more we ‘do’ innovation, increase its frequency, the better we become at hitting the right targets more accurately.

Cooling effect
Heat-seeking missiles need to lock into increasing lower level signals and often the heat being omitted by much within the system can overpower the weak signal. We sometimes need to cool our systems to lock into these targets (portfolio pruning), especially over longer time frames and horizons (the three horizons of innovation)

Tracking

Heat seeking missiles have their seekers mounted on a gimbal. This allows the sensor to be pointed at the target while the missile might not be. Like missiles innovation cannot always be pointed at the target, we need to explore other trajectory paths, but at a given time we lock into the target (innovation value chain) and begin to control the direction innovation points in its execution and delivery.

The interesting point is the gimballed seeker needs to be able to track the target independently (stay true to course) until you make that decision to lock in and fully align in the final execution.

Hitting the target

We all like to take the most direct path to the intercept, to deliver innovation. Newer missiles are smarter and use the gimballed seeker combined with what is known as proportional guidance in order to avoid oscillation (our fear and doubts) and stay locked into the best, most efficient intercept path.

So maybe there is sufficient with heat-seeking missiles but in our approach to innovation I would argue we need to develop up a greater ‘design capacity’ for heat-seeking innovation so we can zero in on all that threatens us.

We take design to a greater height, take out what is currently known and leave us with the blue sky and the dawning of a new age, simply flying into the “unfamiliar and unknowns” this debate at Davos triggered in my “time out” moment.

Why have some guys in white coats just arrived at my door?

OK, I’m returning to my innovation real world but this had some heat omitting fun for me. I need to watch for others to home in and comment on this.

Time for some evasive action and drop below the visible spectrum where heat is generated, and stop emitting useless radiation and all this background clutter to return to the serious job on hand, building our organizations capabilities.

Although I do like the idea of “heat-seeking innovation”. Now let’s take the medication I’m being offered by these guys.

The post Heat-seeking innovation that comes inbound from a panel discussion first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I gather in the months of May, June, July and August- the northern hemospheres (usually) warmer months- there is higher potential where algal blooms and also in European climate, some shellfish are less palatable as oysters, for example, are spawning at this time. This raises the risk that can spread toxins and lead to a possible poisoning.

Now you might be wondering what this has got to do with innovation? Well, I’m off to Singapore for ten days in early May and I certainly will be ‘hitting’ the shellfish buffet but really innovation is top of my agenda for this visit and one thing that I will remind people about is to focus on the “R” in innovation.

What do I mean by focusing on the “R” in innovation?
My three “R’s” are Revitalise, Renovate and Regenerate, all often ignored within innovation. How often do we push on regardless, ignoring a number of warning signs and don’t take the time to stop and take stock to see what we can shed and simply get rid of.

I wrote a piece early last year (http://bit.ly/eOuO82) about “Writing off legacy within your innovation systems” as we tend to layer on to existing systems and processes instead of taking the chance to step back and see things from the current or future perspective, we stay locked in our past learning and approaches.

Well I certainly feel we all need to re-think that for shedding legacy. We also need to find those three “R’s” hidden within innovation.

Revitalise
Firstly you need to challenge your vision and where innovation is required to fit. Often by simply resetting the vision and how innovation fits within your (evolving) strategy does make a difference to everyone’s understanding of the purpose and direct from their innovation efforts. We do need to constantly change, to challenge and to revitalise on a regular basis.

We need to redefine what we are wanting out of innovation and then take that fresh look at systems, processes, cultures and capabilities. We need to produce a revitalisation ‘action plan’ that restores and refreshes the ‘impact’ points that innovation can offer. Restoring the value of innovation needs to be constantly rethought at corporate and operational level.

Renovate
Organizations are constantly searching for continuous improvement; it often comes in many different guises. Innovation should equally have a clear renovation programme, no different from all the other organization activities that need improving. Putting in place a consistent industry or even cross-industry benchmarking programme, or focusing on more material enhancement, knowledge learning and seeking out changes makes significant difference in your performance, should all be part of this.

We often get ‘stuck’ in our own ways of doing things and often it is only when a crisis ‘hits’ we suddenly seek difference positions but that can often be too little, too late. I think there is a need to be constant on improving innovation, we need to renovate innovation continually or we risk the case of often missing out or letting our competitors slip away and move ahead in the lead.

The other part of the renovation is to review the ‘content and context’ of innovation. We need to update, modify, change, drop and merge these and that is an essential part of the renovation programme, to evaluate the content and the context constantly.

Regenerate
There are always design considerations within innovation. We need to constantly seek simplicity, motivation, involvement and improving the existing culture. We need to regenerate ourselves. Our people need to constantly upgrade their competencies and skills, they need to engage within teams, seek out diversity of opinion to stretch their own thinking and they need to form or generate new connections and deepen external relationships to learn more of what is going on in the world.

Those that stop learning are the losers and those around them feel the frustration of this. To regenerate constantly makes for a learning organization. We need to undergo spiritual, moral and physical renewal for improving our culture and climate to innovation so much more than we do, we often leave this to chance and not thoughtful design.

Innovation and Impunity

Each of the above “R’s” is vital to build into your innovation plans. So you need to make sure there is always an “R” in your innovation, not only will it be ensuring innovation remains fresher but it will also help rid you of those harmful toxins that can poison your best efforts if you did chose to ignore the “R” in innovation.

I loved one comment about eating shellfish “whether it is January or June, you can eat these plump beauties with impunity”.

So let’s hope the combination of (hopefully) fresh seafood in Singapore and my worries that so many organizations  may  have forgotten to heed the “R” in innovation, does get heard by everybody who cares to listen, and I don’t suffer any punishment or unpleasant set of consequences from this.

Believe me your innovation efforts do benefit by recognizing that these three “R’s” do need to be constantly at the forefront of your innovation eating thinking.

By the way, innovation with impunity sounds very intriguing.

The post Putting the “R” into Innovation to shed legacy first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The ability to ‘evolve’ is very determinant on the knowledge base, either within a given economy or within a ‘federation’ to bring together as something new, offering more value than what is on offer today.

The combining of the dynamics within innovations parts

Innovation is highly dynamic in its constant change but also in its need of constant co-ordination of its parts.

I’ve been writing a lot recently on different issues that need thinking through for regaining a more sustaining innovation growth engine. Here I wanted to think out loud, about National issues that become more drags and not accelerators to innovation.

I then have tried to identify some of the reasons, and then finish with a personal reflection on the US versus European and some suggested actions needed for improving their innovation activity.

Often we forget to put our own innovation efforts into context, so I’d like to go up to the helicopter view here, maybe it helps us to relate better to some of the external barriers that need equal resolution, as we do often come up against these as we try to innovate within borders. Innovation cannot be contained, it needs harnessing but allowed to ‘move’ where it needs to go.
Nations are Very Different and should simply resist copying.

No one nation can just copy another, the same as one business entity cannot simply copy another, each has distinct characteristics, a history and a certain set of ‘physical’ boundaries on where it is located. Different cultures, different histories set each Nation and Business entity apart.

The main differences of Nations required to innovate for jobs, for wealth creation is they simply can’t migrate to another country, or spread themselves around the globe to tap into the activities in these different places. Some try to though, with imaginative joint collaborative investments.

Each Nation have to think differently, they are all firmly anchored in their settings, in their history, their investments already made and their own unique needs.

The job of nations is to attract as broad a set of innovation activities and set about to create the ‘right’ conditions and facilitate these as best they can, and always forced to work within the economic circumstances they find themselves within. They can’t escape but they can create the ‘right’ conditions.

The Value of the Innovation System needs well constructed.

The innovation system operating within each country is made up of a set of resources, capabilities, technologies and institutions, all broadly conceived, that need to systematically contribute to the process of innovation. It is the way this is constructed in scope, scale and efficacy will largely determine the innovation prospects.

Some countries have a well-evolved (national) innovation system that devotes significant resources and knowledge to the system (such as the EU), others allow the market conditions to attract and generate innovation (perhaps the USA).

The argument is if you have a good innovation system you get good innovation policies from this. I often wonder if this is really the case as policies, the world over, are governed not so much by common sense or allowing for market demands to dictate but are ‘interfered with’ by politics, by an intervention that often distorts and puts markets out of good order.

Decisions often made have the knock-on effects that was not fully considered or simply ignored. So each nation makes its innovation system choices.

Capturing and Measuring the Innovation Activities

Innovation operates at the level of people, by firms and networks of firms learning to do new things in collaborative ventures. For them, the mechanisms are the important enablers, not the macroeconomic structures politicians often get caught up in.

What allows competition to thrive, what needs to be in place to be within a cooperative system, and where are the resources needed and the knowledge required to be accessed?

It is the ability to create ‘value’ that will determine if one location over another is the appropriate place. Many nations focus hard on these factors, to ensure the set of activities needed to be undertaken by the firm can be achieved.

If Nations are not focusing on this point they simply will lose the enterprise and all its surrounding knowledge to somewhere else.

Also sometimes Nations get lost in their fasciniation with statistics and measurements, with comparision. How can you really compare and contrast Nations for innovation, they are simply different?

Nations often forget what is needed is to provide a ‘track record’ and environment so as to allow breakthrough innovation to happen within their borders.

This requires providing a friendly set of conditions and encouragement to simply pursue around given ideas or thoughts and find every means possible to facilitate this, look at Singapore and its government as an excellent example, of providing this committed support.

Nations’ best roles are providing the right climate and nurturing the culture to accommodate it through education, infrastructure and constantly encouraging outward-looking thinking and clear the path to make it happen and then anchor the business entity, not only with incentives but in this commitment to fully support it for mutual ‘win-win’. They grow, we grow.

Often Innovation National Structures Get Caught Up in Other People’s Business

Enterprises claim they ‘welcome’ government involvement, but often they don’t, especially when they see what comes with it in ‘red tape, bureaucracy, countless meetings and committees.

Enterprises clearly differ in their innovation capabilities, some are minimally resourced, some are haphazard, highly entrepreneurial and opportunistic while others are highly organized and considerable resourced.

How the innovation systems that are put in place to help in all the myriad variations can work is both a demanding and difficult one to balance that is for sure.

Getting Out of the Way, or Placing Yourself in the Middle

The difficulty is where does a Nation wanting to promote, develop and protect its innovation base stand? Does it stay on the sidelines allowing the ‘dynamics’ of the market decide or does it wade right into the middle and swim alongside all the parties, accepting the rough and the smooth?

It comes back to the same problem “it all depends”. Today I think if Nations want to achieve superior innovation outcomes they need to ensure particular skills and practices are present, on their soil, to manage and navigate today’s world of highly uncertain, complex and highly distributed environments by crafting, and crafting really well, the mechanisms that enable this.

I do not feel allowing innovation to simply flow is the right way, it needs deep understanding of all elements of innovation effect and often within National policies this is not the case.

Where government and its agencies can dramatically help is in providing instruments and ‘healthy’ funding options to promote and accelerate innovation and hopefully anchor it deeper into its society.

Often the Choice is Hard to Let Go Of

For me, the EU is not the ideal benchmark on how to set about innovation. It is overly structured, complicated and layered. In the EU, the 7th Innovation Research Framework attempts to put this all into place. Alongside its Competitiveness and Innovation Framework program these provide the overarching themes and objectives of where innovation will contribute in society.

The EU funnels its considerable funds through either these programs or derivatives of these or bodies set up to focus and promote ‘given’ activity. It invests in partnership with regional development parties and offers structural funds yet still with all the hard work of streamlining its disbursement into ‘promising’ innovations it struggles to get that innovation momentum required.

The structure itself has a maze that thousands are engaged in, to just pilot their projects through or offer their services to manage this activity to obtain funds or train you in its understanding. This set of activities, born out of necessity, offers no real added value and continues to ‘depress’ and not ‘progress’ innovation as the EU would like.

Taking this ‘highly structured’ route to innovation is not the right way. Innovation needs to be devolved as far down as it can go. The closer it gets to the actual needs of innovation, the better the delivery of resources, funds, structures etc.

When the innovation is full of unknowns, completely new technology for instance, then the resource can be effectively channelled to the organizing structure to dispense more in the “R” of research than dispersing for the “D” in development.

The EU simply has not got its balance right on the disbursement of innovation, both in funds and knowledge, it is to much top-down.

Certainly, Nations Need a Center of Innovation Knowledge and Expertise
In many countries, this is ‘outsourced’ to think tanks, institutions, universities or simply review committees set up to advise the government on policy.

Often that advice is highly skewed to where the information is coming from. The value of innovation experts residing within a centre of excellence can make a difference, it can reduce the risk of failure, and improve the chances of pushing the emerging winners.

This centre can balance out much of the external, often highly biased thinking. This centre can constantly raise the awareness for innovation and highlight the drivers, capabilities and resources needed for growth and wealth.

These centres need to translate the needs of “the know-how and why” out into the market as opportunities to pursue. The market needs to determine, detect and explore these.

Proactive Innovation Needs to be Channelled Through Entrepreneurs.

Innovation is considered one of the few proactive strategies available to promote wealth and growth. It does need organizing; it cannot be left to chance.

It is working on the connectivity points; to reduce often abstract agendas and turn them into tangible opportunities. We need to make the approaches and thinking around innovation as coherent, accessible and open as possible.

At the heart of any future within innovation is the entrepreneur and the ability of nations to succeed in today’s environment of ‘stagnation’ is to provide the environment for these new entities and smaller ideas -rich ones to grow. Joseph Schumpeter talked about ‘creative destruction’ many years ago, back in 1942, that applies even more in today’s world.

Creative destruction resulting from innovation and entrepreneurship is the force that creates sustainable long-term economic growth.

Schumpeter concluded that radical innovation can lead to a better society but it is the way you interpret this that will determine the winners from the losers. In Europe, the entrepreneur exploits existing structures whereas that shining beacon of entrepreneur activity lying in Silicon Valley and in a number of other innovation hot spots of the USA seem to have a greater appetite for radical change.

This has its consequences and its attractions. Venture capital has its concentration in the US; failure is not only tolerated but talked about as a learning point, a certain badge of honour even. In much of the rest of the world failure is a heavy stigma that constrains and is often judged harshly by society.

The USA Has the Inbuilt Structure and Capabilities, Only if it simply would realize it and execute on a given (and agreed) plan but will they ‘grasp’ it?

If the US was to really study its emerging innovation activity, the value of entrepreneurs and small business holders to the economy and job creation (yes, really), and bring together that ‘collective learning curve’ of all the positive forces to facilitate entrepreneurs and SME growth it would have such an economically powerful lift to its current malaise.

The difficulty is the activity undertaken in the Entrepreneur sector is often not captured, so it is never really methodically enhanced, support only is provided in a piecemeal fashion, not in a comprehensive roadmap.

If only policymakers could realize the potential of supporting entrepreneurs fully, it has its new launching point to the future. Equally it can quickly position itself as the vibrant ecosystem ‘core’ for innovation start up and acceleration.

The US has most, if not all of the factors needed in place, it just needs a collective recognition of what it has, what it can provide and that is simply, going back to what America use to do best; to provide the best possible conditions to pioneer, to explore, to extract, to venture forth and simply innovate.

It is through the recognition that the small business is the economic generator of jobs and through recognizing and then intensifying the factors needed that would then allow entrepreneurship to flourish there would be a real path to growth and fresh economic activity.

Reigniting that American dream

The American dream is still around, it is still part of the make up and often the American gets highly caught up in the adventure, that pioneering need; innovation can certainly feed that ‘desire’. This is a great trait to have, willingness to have a go.

This time to reignite this desire it has to recognise that it (the US) needs to move across a new innovation landscape or prairie, a global one, where entrepreneurs are free and able to roam where they want to, for those best ‘feeding grounds.

This is where the US can grasp and firmly anchor entrepreneurs in their backyard as it has nearly all of the enablers and through this ‘anchoring’ it might help transform its economy back to an engine of value and real worth built back on that currently lost entrepreneur ‘spirit’ it has been in the past famous for.

To do this policy needs to ‘anchor’ everything that entrepreneurs require and seek to protect this by all the means possible, not in protective practices but in proactive practices and stimulus.

Clear the current innovation ‘wood for the trees’ so it can then allow the emerging best to grow tall and give the new growth needed for the ‘ecosystem’ it will attract around it.

This was originally submitted and published in www.innovationexcellence.com for their topic of the month. Some modifications have been made for this separate post.

The post Innovation as the means for Economic Evolution first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Yet we still keep these organizational needs locked into those old structures, systems and processes that have been layered one on top of the other as we learnt about innovation over the years.

We often simply kept  adapting these (often badly) into the existing way we were managing innovation. Isn’t it time we addressed this growing issue of adapting, stopped the compromising and started redesigning our innovation systems from afresh with present-day leading innovation practice thinking?

Managing innovation as a system is no different from managing IT for example. You get to a given point where the costs of running innovations through your existing systems continue to rise. You begin to diminish your innovation performance.

Speed to market seems never to improve the way you want it too, and more importantly delivery against the identified market opportunity seemingly gets more and more compromised.

The risks of cutting corners seemingly grows every day, and you under-deliver on the opportunity first seen.  No wonder eventually leaders begin to question and lose confidence in their innovation abilities.

The results increasingly become suboptimal.
Is there an alternative?
I believe we need to re-engineer innovation differently and more radically.

Without doubt, we have all learnt enormously from the evolution of innovation and its management but there is a time to rethink the whole rationale behind innovation, its systems, structure and process.

Increasingly organizations are appreciating their unique but surprisingly precious few distinctive innovation capabilities that (can) set them apart. Understanding these does start giving the strategic perspective of what is core and to be protected and developed, that meet the strategic priorities, against what needs to be increasingly outsourced or relegated in management attention and support.

We need to challenge what we have in place and understand what needs renewing and what needs ‘letting go’. I have already written about a twelve step process for innovation renewal in an earlier blog (December 2010-  http://bit.ly/gvomnr) that offers a renewal step-by-step process.

Companies have hundreds of layered capabilities built-up within innovation.

What any review should account for is the capabilities that really matter, the ones that are or should be distinctive, that can set you apart in innovation. Not just those than simply keeping the innovation business engine running but the ones that extract the maximum toque out of innovation, from idea to implementation and delivery into the market.

We do need to totally redesign the innovation engine.

The best thing possible to do though is sitting down and totally redesigning a new innovation engine that few others can emulate, based on the capabilities identified as needed and core, mapped to strategic priorities. Out of this you will begin to identify your legacy systems, the layers of obsolesce within the system to innovate that should be challenged and replaced irrespective, and updated whatever way you eventually decide to approach your innovation renewal.

A tip here is those distinctive capabilities that do or can set you apart also need to be coherent across your whole organization. Everyone needs to contribute into changing those older habits and systems as a top priority for all functions, as the identified distinctive capabilities are providing the ways to distinguish you from others. T

hese might be based on speed and insight- to respond rapidly to changing consumer needs, translation of customer insight by meeting these specific need and ensuring delivery from idea to market is better than anyone else’s. Any redesign needs corporate backing and organisation identification.

Innovation is really the only game in town for value potential
Can we afford to keep our existing innovation ‘systems’ in place? How much longer can we keep denying to ourselves and admit that we do not have the best innovation systems in place?

Isn’t it time to retire older practices built up around innovation as they emerged in different ad hoc ways over the last few years and really redesign the innovation system, process and structures from top to bottom based on leading or emerging innovation practice?

Of course, there will be most certainly regular course directions based on changing innovation understanding and their seen value (eg, value of networks, collaborative enterprises etc).

So if they are based on rigorous value understanding, risk and market assessment of what is valued in innovation activity then consistent renewal is built into this work from the beginning, so ‘legacy drag’ is minimised.

It would be ideal if this was driven by a core group within an innovation unit. See my blog partly on this http://bit.ly/fQW6Jq

The need is for a high level of judgement and understanding of innovation.

Of course, any innovation redesign will need a high level of judgement.  There is a time when management not only should be demanding more speed, agility and effective delivery of innovation but must equally be prepared to provide the guidance and direction, so as to enable those distinct innovation capabilities to be well designed and optimized for the future delivery of the organization’s innovation needs.

Leadership needs to raise its own innovation bar, be prepared to junk the legacy that is built up around much of the existing practices around innovation today within the innovation systems and support and enable the organization to be able to deliver on speed, agility, effectively and on time on its core capabilities identified and agreed as critical.

There is certainly a right time to deal with the legacies within our innovation system.

Approaching this through more of an optimal fresher designing approach that builds around those distinct core innovation capabilities should become a necessary strategic requirement.

This is earlier than later, so organizations can match strategic desire with the ability to deliver on it through the latest practices, not old ones built on past habits and out of date understanding.

The post Writing off legacy within your innovation systems first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.