The trough of innovation disillusionment

May 6, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Boredom
innovation disillusionment or just boring?

You get this increasing sense that the ‘fizz’ has gone out of the innovation bubbly, we are seemingly in a trough of innovation disillusionment. The innovation party presently feels a little flat.

When we turn up at those creative innovative parties today the numerous delicious canapés to choose from are turning up at the edges as we are becoming disillusioned, just being fed on a present unexciting incremental innovation diet, lacking any real substance.

We are not being challenged, we are being constrained, bored and fearful of taking bold risks

People are milling around with that bored look on their faces, some are also slumped down checking their watch or smartphones on when is the best time to cut out and find somewhere else to be, rather than be here. Has the fizz gone from innovation?

Tackling Societal Challenges through innovation ecosystem application

May 2, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, Fresh thinking, Innovation Ecosystems, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
Societal Challenges
Tackling Societal Challenges with Ecosystem collaborations

Perhaps why innovation feels somewhat flat (well for me) is our organizations and societies are utterly failing to allow us all to step up in innovation to tackle those huge societal issues; those massive, growing problems that are swirling all around us.

We need to shake out of our lethargy and really begin to attempt to solve the real issues of our time. Some organizations are clearly working on and trying to draw attention and gain greater engagement but we need a much greater concerted effort to focus on the big societal challenges.

Global warming, rising health issues, finally cracking cancer, malaria, dementia, finding different solutions to the ageing within society. How are we going to tackle the rapidly depleting natural resources, the future conflicts over water, food, or energy? These are big, hairy, audacious gaps to be resolved.

Are we capable or simply just avoiding these BIG challenges?

Transforming What? Delivering Future Impact

April 17, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Sustainability

Delivering Future Impact on Performance

As demand is more volatile today what becomes more important is the work to be done, not the work done.

Surprisingly Adam Smith identified this important difference back in 1776.

This can be explained as the work done is the accumulated knowledge, which has built up and been embodied in the firm’s results with the innovations achieved in the past and is seen as the tangible capital.

The work to be done is how well it can adapt to change. In the past century, we operated in the mass production era, with systems with standard goods and stable market conditions, the work done was equivalent to the ‘work to be done.

In today’s global market, with its rapid technology diffusion, disruptive and constant change with an emphasis on servicing the work to be done is more important than the work done and intangible assets are fundamental to this.

Sustainability will increasingly come through innovation ecosystem designs

April 4, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Sustainability

Making Sustainability central to our future innovation capability building will be through the adoption of taking on a new open ecosystem approach.

Broader collaborations will become central for future organizations to find ways to cooperate, network and build relationships, that recognize the partnership value, to achieve a sustainable, future business that offers impact and connected design for customers to value, that meets their changing needs.

Today’s challenge is to build the capacity to be different, to sustain and accelerate the critical aspect that innovation, ingenuity and creativity can provide, with the additional stimulus for sustaining lasting growth.

Our thinking needs to reflect a longer-term horizon, beyond just achieving immediate results. The dividend of thinking for a sustainable future has the promise of greater value and recognition. The reward by customers comes from the value of resolving growing complex problems, which is increasingly coming through this understanding of ecosystem design and collaborative endeavours.

We need to build far more collaborative environments for exchanging knowledge and sharing. To achieve this the recognition of the value of ecosystems as central to any future design is becoming central to this need, to co-create and capitalize on a wider knowledge only available in an open approach.

So what is value creation?

March 20, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Sustainability
https://www.imsmarketing.ie/news/a-value-proposition-statement-is-critical-to-the-success-of-your-business/

Value creation is highly dynamic, it is going on all the time and can increase, decrease or transform, in different ways, when you exploit your different capitals that will be in constant change and adjusting to reflect your organization’s business activities and eventual outputs.

This is when you can begin to see the value created by the use of deploying all the capitals to build new growth and what I call “stock” that along with “flow”.

Robin Sloan does a brilliant job of explaining this. I loved this explanation of the two:

“There are two kinds of quantities in the world. Stock is a static value: money in the bank, or trees in the forest. Flow is a rate of change: fifteen dollars an hour, or three thousand toothpicks a day. Easy – too easy.”

“Flow is ephemeral. Stock sticks around. Stock is capital. Stock is protein. And the real magic trick is to put them both together. To keep the ball bouncing with your flow—to maintain that open channel of communication—while you work on some kick-ass stock in the background. Sacrifice neither. It’s the hybrid strategy.”

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

Innovation Ecosystem Understanding through an AI-driven approach

March 8, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation Ecosystems, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation1 Comment

I always find it interesting when different though-strands seem to collide. You can put that down to serendipity, fate, luck or just being in the right spot at that time. I have always been a fan of the book “The Medici Effect; breakthrough insights at the intersections of ideas, concepts and culture” by Frans Johansson.

I like to think I am often colliding at the innovation intersections where I keep finding lots of synergies that feed my research and innovative curiosity to support others.

For the past six or so weeks I have been looking into Ecosystems and one of those (famous) strands took me to “Natural Language Understanding” and I read an article by Mark Seall, Head of Digital Communications at Siemens called “How AI is shaping the future of marketing communications” and it got me curious.

The critical interplay among innovation, business models and change

February 20, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, gaining innovation momentum, Innovation strategy, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

The critical interplay among innovation, business models and change

Jeffrey Phillips and I have collaborated over a number of years and I have always felt these have been highly productive, original in thinking and truly valuable.

One such collaboration was around the interplay of innovation with business models and change.

I wanted to extract part of this white paper”Critical Interplay Innovation Business Models Change 6-2“(goes to PDF), in this post, as it offers all involved in innovation a structure to break down innovation into its different models of application. It describes some important observations we often forget when innovating.

Confronting Your Darwin Effect through Innovation

February 2, 2022Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Confronting Your Darwin Effect through innovation

It is so hard to let go! It is so often harder to carry on, but determination prevails!

I have been working away, call it my labour of love, with plenty of frustrating moments but have “pushed on” through sheer determination, on my thinking through the ‘harnessing’ of the dynamics within innovation.

The journey has forced me into terrain that presented diverse challenges to achieve fresh insights and traversed many a rugged landscape to get closer to my goal of offering organizations their innovation fitness and future landscape design, one designed to alter their present capabilities and capacity to innovate radically.

Seeking out knowledge that feeds our innovations

March 10, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, gaining innovation momentum, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation

Knowledge and learning 3The more we embrace change and recognize innovation demands more of our time, the more we must seek out knowledge that ‘feeds’ innovation. And the more we ‘push’ for learning, the greater chance we have of thriving in a challenging world.

The expectation ‘bar’ needs to be raised from those practicing innovation, I feel the constant need is for those working within innovation; they have this real need to raise their game significantly. Innovation needs organizing but it also needs a better understanding of its contributing parts.

Learning and Education should always start with us.

Everything is changing faster- can we respond differently in our Innovation work?

March 5, 2020Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Interests, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation

Suddenly we are stopped from traveling; we are advised to work from home to keep us safe from this coronavirus and catching it.  We have the choice of “self-imposed” or “company-imposed” time at home.

Time takes on a different meaning; we are cutting out those (unproductive) meetings, the train, car, and flight times, and we have the luxury to do what?

Well, it is offering us that luxury of actually having time to think and reflect. Now that is dangerous as it takes us off our ‘chosen’ treadmill of pursuit.

I was pondering some thoughts around the quest for growth, the demands for change, and the need to become nimble, agile, and more dynamic in what we do. We crowd out our days and never stop to reflect.

So I started to think a little more. Now that can be dangerous, and I am not too sure it gave me answers, just more questions. My starting point was the endless journey of innovation.