In contrast, dynamic capabilities are those higher level competencies that determine a firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure both the resources and competencies to possibly shape, have the power to transform and then be deployed to meet rapidly changing business environments to take advantage of these changing conditions.

Recognizing the importance of Dynamic Capabilities

Dynamic capabilities are about selecting the right things to do and getting them done, while ordinary capabilities are about doing things right. The former implicates dynamic efficiency, the latter static efficiency.

Dynamic capabilities require an organizational form that leverages the knowledge and capabilities of managers throughout the organization. In business firms with strong dynamic capabilities, the key tasks of managers, especially those in the top management team, are entrepreneurial. It’s not just a planning role; it’s also strategic. It involves planning along with engagement and enactment, it encourages agility.

Appreciating and leveraging those ordinary capabilities is equally essential

The stronger these ordinary capabilities can be ‘honed’ then organizations can go beyond performing basic business functions well and can excel in these. While most capabilities, including some dynamic capabilities, are underpinned by organizational routines, many of the activities of top managers are non-routine by nature.

The key entrepreneurial capabilities needed for asset orchestration and realignment of the enterprise often reside in the skills and knowledge of top managers, managing the routines and assets and respond dynamically when changes are happening to adapt and respond

Ordinary capabilities involve operations, administration, and managing the governance. They are rooted more firmly in routines that are dynamic capabilities. A routine is a repeated action sequence, which may have its roots in algorithms and heuristics about how the enterprise is to get things done. Organizational routines transcend the individuals involved.

Finding the right complementary blend of capabilities is a real challenge to achieve

The capabilities perspective views the enterprise as clusters of complementary assets that must be combined and coordinated to create value. The utilization of such assets, therefore, requires managerial action. Managers in the dynamic capabilities framework perform that role. They orchestrate and call into being, the assets that are vital to firm performance.

They determine the speed at which and the degree to which, the firm’s particular resources can be aligned and realigned to match the requirements and opportunities of the business environment in order to generate sustained positive returns.

The alignment of resources both inside and outside the firm includes assessing when and how the enterprise ought to form alliances and joint ventures with other organizations.

Understanding all your required capabilities needed is essential

Valuing and knowing both your ordinary repeatable capabilities, to enhance and improve existing performance and discovering those that are more dynamic in nature, to change performance more significantly are both critical to identify, build and support in both consistent and thoughtful ways. The key is knowing what is critical and then how to focus and invest in those that drive and sustain performance.

Investing in a mapping of your innovation fitness landscape can significantly contribute to this understanding and advance organizational performance in the critical areas that offer it present and future value.

Extracts have been drawn from the paper and built upon: “The Functions of Middle and Top Management in the Dynamic Capabilities Framework” by Sunyoung Lee and David J. Teece

The post Recognizing the different capabilities to develop and grow first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

“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 build upon the capabilities of ‘sensing, seizing and transforming’ to build new capital that focuses more upon the dynamics within innovation, that provide the true value creation in successful outcomes in the final product, services or executing within business models”

We need to value both “stocks and flows” in equal attention to build innovation capital

The ‘stock’ of innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes, is a bundle of the firm’s resources/assets and holds the renewal capabilities and they possess attributes that make it a “strategic asset”

Innovation capital is made up of many different assets that are often context specific, and interconnected and this makes it hard to build without taking a broader, more holistic approach to developing your capabilities, capacities, and competencies to innovate. You ‘map’ and align these to fit your strategic goals and aspirations.

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital and each organization has a unique bundle of the firm’s resources and assets. It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities that build on a continuous basis the innovation capital.

This is one of my most important focus points to assist and aid organizations in their understanding “what makes up their unique innovation capital” and what needs to be added to deepen and strengthen this capital stock.

Building our stock then leads to the flow that then leads to building more stock. We need both stocks and flow

Most of our capitals are learning capitals

The more we strengthen our knowledge and value our people the more we can generate new knowledge, build greater narratives, deepen discussions, make better connections and build our interactions out across growing communities. The more we discover, the more knowledge we gain and this leads up to determine a potentially better decision-making that should, in theory, give greater confidence that our invested financial capital is in ‘good hands’. Our knowledge learning, the more dynamic, the more we search, absorb, called absorptive capacity and then diffuse, the more valuable it becomes.

The power lies in the linkages we can forge, in the acquisition, in assimilation and then into the eventual transformation that allows known knowledge to become new wealth-generating innovation.

My stated value position is…

I provide different framing techniques for helping to grow this necessary innovation capital and build the stock of the capabilities and capacities to enable and increase the dynamic flow of innovation activities.

The post Defining Innovation Capital first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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, yet these are the MOST valuable to leverage.

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 far too often on past performance and not future generating potential. We constrain ourselves, our growth and our potential by staying fixated on just the financials, constantly worried over the short-term results and not equally building and developing our capabilities for the future, this building capabilities and capacities  begins to makes up our future organizational  capital.

So what does 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 generalized 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.

Do you really want to discover what makes up your innovation capital? Then why not talk to me and begin a journey that builds a far better sustaining future where growth and value creation become far more realizable.

The post Understanding Your Innovation Capital- Well Do You? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Organizations have been focused for far too long around the importance of financial capital. It determines and drives organizations destinies. We are caught in a constant focus upon our achieving a return on our (financial) capital as our measuring criteria. Organizations strive for improving their ROCE, RONA, IRR,  EVA and a host of other financial measures.

As Clayton Christensen has been arguing the agenda of organizations begins and ends with the “search for numbers”. I think there is a time for changing this, we need to search for the knowledge that makes-up eventually the numbers.

There has been a distant voice for some time putting forward the need to appreciate and value the other capitals sitting within organizations. Much of the discussions have been housed under the term “intellectual capital” which denotes the sum of knowledge made up and contributed by our human assets, our organizational structures and our relationships that are developed.

These are the ‘capitals’ that transform into economic value through organization action. It is the financial capital that simply finances this.

Financial capital dominates any discussions

Yet financial capital and all its associated aspects rules, no, it utterly dominates. It totally fails to tell us in numbers alone where and what creates the value, it simply reports it.

It is this financial capital through our profit and loss, our balance sheets hides the value, or spreads it out in ways no one really understands its make-up.

Certainly those attempting to judge an organization just have to rely on a ‘history of numbers’ and some ‘selective’ market view to make investment judgements.

Equally those often running our organizations have a restricted view of where their real capital lies, as they focus on the numbers and then work down.

Today,we are  in a rapidly changing world and we need to understand it differently

The reliance of financial capital being the absolute measure is being challenged thankfully. Our business world is facing considerable disruptions from the accepted past practices, performance has become more volatile, more dynamic, more reliant on understanding that knowledge is where the value lies.

“Business as usual” is thankfully in a steep but protracted decline, the necessity today is to be constantly evolving and learning and that comes from knowledge acquisition, assimilation and then transforming and exploiting this into new value. We need to find new models for evaluating our real value and capital stock.

These ‘absorptive capacities’ are where we need to manage our knowledge flows better to translate and direct our understanding of new, value creating capital. We need to report on these far more as they offer the ‘residing’ and new stock that gives us new innovation potential and fresh value.

Learning capital needs to emerge and dominate future discussions

We need to give increasing incentives for organizations to learn. We need to judge the quality of this learning, not listen to ‘bland’ statements often presented. We need to know where this knowledge is targeted in narrative, discussions, spillovers and interactions.

What is being exploited, what is being determined in the decision-making process to give greater confidence that our invested financial capital is “in good hands”.

Keeping reliant on just discussing the financials within organizations we know is not enough. We have to force better discussions on the make-up of the other capitals, as these are still poor, left to individual interpretation and variable and we need to change this.

We are increasing opening up

As organizations become more open (open innovation for instance) the strength of linkages, of knowledge exchange, the translation of these activities is becoming really valuable to understand and focus upon more.

Through many of our activities we actually ‘borrow’ and it is then the ‘dynamic linking’ that we bring into the process, gives up the increased potential of innovation. It is the ease of learning, the ability to acquire and apply knowledge that creates the potential for innovation.

How many organizations really articulate their knowledge capital in acquisition, assimilation and transformation? Do we know how ‘path dependent’ they are- are they lagging in the market, are they simply opportunistic, are they locked-in far too much in potential downside risks.

Do they suffer from cognitive failure, do they lack the appropriate competencies to meet the constant challenges occurring around them. How much of this can you really extract from cold, hard numbers? Not a great deal.

Recognizing where our true value resides

The real problem we have is the lack of appreciation of what makes up our value, the real underlying wealth creating value, the one that truly ‘generates’. The tangible part is easier to appreciate (plant, land, material etc.) but is becoming a significantly declining part of the total sum of value of our organizations- sometimes it is only making up 30 percent..

It is our difficulties of understanding the intangibles as it is a very challenging task. Yet this has huge implications on the ‘health’ of the organizations we continue to invest in. Most organizations resort to “inferring” the value. This needs to change. The value today is in the interactions between the different components that make up our intangibles, out intellectual capital.

We are in need to identify what ‘drives’ organizations and that is our knowledge stock

For gaining and sustaining real advantage, and showing why it has the potential for creating new wealth we need to understand our capital stock.

This needs to be far more forwards looking; it needs to be more open and more transparent and it needs to ‘flow through’ the organization to find the potential to find new value from innovation. The call is growing increasingly for a new valuation model.

Static knowledge where we view financial numbers, never take our knowledge beyond what we are reading, failing to connect it and advance it is just not good enough, we do need to understand the underlying dynamic capabilities that make-up the organization. We need to access, absorb and translate our knowledge stock, allow it to flow and be developed into greater value-adding stock and innovation outcomes.

The post Struggling with counting ALL the sums of our capital first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Much of my focus within my work is to move organizations towards recognizing and expanding their innovation capital or stock.

The hard part for many organizations is that many of the key elements of innovation capital consist of many intangibles as well as tangibles and this needs deeper understanding and appreciation. These intangibles are in most cases non-technological and embodied in the organizational routines and thinking of the employees.

It is focusing on building the stock of this innovation capital as well as making the flow more dynamic, ever evolving, adapting and changing to the different conditions being presented to the company.

Some of the critical elements that need to be considered can be described as follows:

• Innovation strategy that relates to strategic choices a firm makes regarding its innovation
• The selection of the type of innovation that fits best the firm’s objectives and the allocation of resources to different types of innovations.
• Innovation culture that is the mixture of the innovation-related attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of the employees
• The integrating function of environment, culture and climates that stimulates innovation activities.
• Innovation structure that are formed to make up the innovation process, its governance and supporting intent
• The approach within the organization and the way the employees engaged in the innovation and how they are grouped and measured
• Knowledge (technological and non-technological) possessed by the employees engaged in the innovation process as much of the knowledge is tacit to varying degrees.
• The stock of knowledge can be increased by internal and external learning of an organization

It is the abilities of our internal learning as ongoing provides the creation for new knowledge within the enterprise.

Stocks and flows need equal attention to build innovation capital

The ‘stock’ of innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes, is a bundle of the firm’s resources/assets and holds the renewal capabilities and they possesses attributes that make it a “strategic asset”

Innovation capital are made up of assets that are often context specific and interconnected and this makes it hard to build without a broad holistic approach

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital and each organization has a unique bundle of the firms resources and assets. It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities.

This is one of my most important focus points to assist and aid organizations in their understanding “what makes up their unique innovation capital” and what needs to be added to deepen and strengthen this capital stock.

I provide different framing techniques for helping to grow this necessary innovation capital and the capacity to enable and increase the dynamic flow of innovation activities.

The post Understanding that innovation capital becomes your new core first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

There is a growing need for having some dynamic tensions within the organization’s system; these helps generate the better conditions for innovation to thrive. We are learning more on the better tools, techniques and approaches available for putting the learning tensions into our work, making them more dynamic, linked and increasingly relevant to the work to be done.

1). A common language is essential

Any dynamics in the system needs that ability to talk the same language, something that becomes common and embedded to support the routines and move quicker to the concepts and solutions, as others can ‘understand’ them as well. It is through working on the inner stories and appreciating the history, it is having an appreciation of events, good and bad, it is through local slogans, your jargon and dialogues that bring people together. The power of storytelling helps gain adoption and identification to those needs for working on a common cause.

2). Creating constant opportunities for conversations

So many organizations don’t work on the ongoing conversations, design workshops, road shows and dialogue sessions that give everyone linkage and growing identification. You begin to identify your sense of purpose and value contribution if there is a consistent diffusion of messages; these should be always lead from the top or moved up and down the organization to allow for these ongoing conversations.

3). Using the knowledge that resides

Organizations like to believe they are building domains of expertise but often they are actually building the silo’s to restrict the flow of knowledge. Knowing where the right functional expertise lies, the relevant skills, experiences or relevant insights ‘reside’ is increasingly important to throw open to all, to tap into, extract and contribute. This expertise can help with our daily routines by offering different thoughts, ideas and practices that may have a real impact on how you can change.

4). Wrapping up intelligence to give it real value and knowledge understanding

The bundling of intelligence is becoming critical. It needs to be increasingly shared across the organization at real time speed. As we look increasingly outside our organizations, our focal markets sensing and seizing the information and being able to connect it, to bundle it into knowledge that has potential application or relevance allows for absorptive capacities to really come to live. Those are able to learn to bring into the organization by accessing, anchoring and diffusing that external capacity for creating and exploiting new value.

5). Capturing and extracting tacit knowledge

Our ability to capture and access the tacit knowledge that resides in all our employees is a critical issue to achieve new dynamic tension. How do we harness tacit knowledge, capture it, even recognize its value we need to encourage a continuous learning environment, we need to have clear organization learning strategies. Tacit knowledge helps us tackle the unknowns associated with discovery. The more we share, put effort into collaborative ventures the more we learn. The more we engage with external experts the more we should gain from these exchanges. Context becomes vital, as does striving for that common language and association.

6). Allowing time to explore and improve our human capital

Tacit knowledge as it becomes embedded in shared values, assumptions and beliefs you can qualify and map tacit knowledge. Our tacit knowledge increases the human capital. It can, through creative acts give strong feeling and give a real sense of commitment. The more we explore, the more we ‘ignite our passions’ but you need to consciously find the time to explore by clearing the path to allow the absorbing to take place and then extract the knowledge through putting any challenge into context, allowing time to access, anchor and diffuse.

The ability to harness our dynamics is vital

The ability to make our environments more dynamic, more engaging, more challenging, more a place to learn and contribute allows greater movement and potential for innovation and growth. A growth that is for the organization and its people, to provide all the different intellectual capitals to combine, be those human (knowledge, skills and experiences), relationship (social and through our networks) or through the structural ones you put into place (where you pool knowledge, use routines and systems).

Good use of our intellectual capitals and knowing what these are, does allow for a greater unlocking of innovation value. The more we ‘work and encourage’ our learning capitals, combining the power that lies in the dynamic linkages we can forge, in acquisition, in assimilation and then into eventual transformation then this allows known knowledge to become new wealth-generating innovation

The post Putting some dynamic tension into the system first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We have to establish a way to map our ‘terrain of reality’ in not just how we are performing but what lost opportunities have slipped through, simply because we lacked the awareness to seize on these opportunities when we first spotted them.

We have significant gaps in our innovation capabilities and competencies. Have you ever really audited them? Taken them through a structured examination?

We do need to achieve a ‘reality’ check or we stay in a state of, forgive me, ignorance. We don’t see the possibilities we only see the possible and in today’s world that is a losers mentality. We need to push ourselves but before we do, we do need to know where we are.

Through my work on building the Innovation Fitness Landscapes that are relevant to you today and then structuring the place you want to be by starting to address the questions: are we focusing on the right ones to deliver on the challenges we are facing?”, “what can we do differently?” and “how can we identify those critical ones”? and “how can these be structured to clearly move us to the new capabilities we require?”

My role here is to be the guide towards building improved innovation capabilities and capacity

My role is to help in this task by identifying the opportunity spaces on where you need to focus your efforts‐ and apply the appropriate understanding and identify what resources are needed, so my job is to help you to navigate the terrain. Here is my journey outline described as a typical story that we all need envision and go through.

Through an innovation fitness landscape plan, you can access where you are and what needs to be achieved to get you to the desired point you see as where you need to be.

We call this “mapping the terrain of where you would like to be.” Your preferred place after you have accessed the competitive situation and what needs to differentiate yourselves, by being realistic about your present operational performance and a rigorous evaluation of how you can perform.

This is asking those searching questions around whether you have the commitment, resources, and determination to make a significant change in changing your capabilities or capacities to innovate. How are you both internally coping in an era of challenging technology change conditions but equally how you are seen to be externally coping with the pressures, rigors, and changes occurring in your marketplace.

You need to arrive at your preferred place after you have accessed the competitive situation and what needs to differentiate yourselves and being realistic about your present operational performance and a rigorous evaluation of how you can perform, whether you have the commitment, resources, and determination to make a significant change. How are you internally coping but equally how you are seen to be externally coping with the pressures, rigors, and changes occurring in your marketplace.

Arriving at a clear point of view

The intent is that we have to arrive at a clear “point of view” of both the reality of where you are and where you would like to be. These have to be explicit, to achieve a conscious awareness. I believe we have to go through some very specific and recognized steps, I outline the nine stages we need to work through the process here. These stages are a mixture of discussion, investigation and structured analysis and diagnostics.

This set of reality checks needs a clear, defining pathway in how the organization will need to change, a level of clarity of how you see your innovation capacity is not at the required level. Then we identify and describe the required outcomes of ‘fitness need’ of the structured work to be undertaken through the different parts of the Innovation Fitness Landscape assessment, establishing those capabilities you are likely to need, the more innovation dynamic capabilities. It is establishing these, that drive your innovation performance towards your stated needs and goals, ones to close the gap in present capabilities and required ones.

This moving from the present to the preferred requires this journey across the mapped terrain and the nature and character of that journey needs to be clarified, on what is needed from you and all the people involved to achieve your (transformation) goals. Those growing innovation dynamic capabilities become part of the enduring strategy that informs all those involved and mobilizes all that is needed to get you into this new innovation position.

The greater innovation fitness you achieve equates to more value creation potential you can generate.

These are the search for your dynamic points for innovation. These are unique to you, they make you distinctive. They lead you to new growth, new creations, new opportunities to innovate. You evolve. You constantly look to combine in different ways to stay ‘dynamic’ and sustaining. We are setting about building your innovation capital.

If you would like to learn more, then please contact me and we can set up a clarifying conversation to talk through this specifically, related to your unique position. Contact me at paul@agilityinnovation.com

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The post Peeling away the terrain of innovation reality first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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, yet these are the MOST valuable to leverage.

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 far too often on past performance and not future generating potential. We constrain ourselves, our growth and our potential by staying fixated on just the financials, constantly worried over the short-term results and not equally building and developing our capabilities for the future, this building capabilities and capacities  begins to makes up our future organizational  capital.

So what does 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 generalized 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.

Do you really want to discover what makes up your innovation capital? Then why not talk to me and begin a journey that builds a far better sustaining future where growth and value creation become far more realizable.

The post Understanding Your Innovation Capital- Well Do You? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

“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.”

“These build upon the capabilities of ‘sensing, seizing and transforming’ to build new capital that focus more upon the dynamics within innovation, that provide the true value creation in successful outcomes in final product, services or executing within business models”

We need to value both “stocks and flows” in equal attention to build innovation capital

The ‘stock’ of innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes, is a bundle of the firm’s resources/assets and holds the renewal capabilities and they possesses attributes that make it a “strategic asset”

Innovation capital is made up of many different assets that are often context specific and interconnected and this makes it hard to build without taking a broader, more holistic approach to developing your capabilities, capacities and competencies to innovate. You ‘map’ and align these to fit your strategic goals and aspirations.

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital and each organization has a unique bundle of the firms resources and assets. It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities that builds on a continuous basis the innovation capital.

This is one of my most important focus points to assist and aid organizations in their understanding “what makes up their unique innovation capital” and what needs to be added to deepen and strengthen this capital stock.

Building our stock then leads to the flow that then leads to building more stock. We need both stocks and flow

Most of our capitals are learning capitals

The more we strengthen our knowledge and value our people the more we can generate new knowledge, build greater narratives, deepen discussions, make better connections and build our interactions out across growing communities. The more we discover, the more knowledge we gain and this leads up to determine a potentially better decision-making that should, in theory, give greater confidence that our invested financial capital is in ‘good hands’. Our knowledge learning, the more dynamic, the more we search, absorb, called absorptive capacity and then diffuse, the more valuable it becomes.

The power lies in the linkages we can forge, in acquisition, in assimilation and then into eventual transformation that allows known knowledge to become new wealth-generating innovation.

My stated value position is…

I provide different framing techniques for helping to grow this necessary innovation capital and build the stock of the capabilities and capacities to enable and increase the dynamic flow of innovation activities.

The post Defining Innovation Capital first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Much of my focus within my work is to move organizations towards recognizing and expanding their innovation capital or stock.

The hard part for many organizations is that many of the key elements of innovation capital consist of many intangibles as well as tangibles and this needs deeper understanding and appreciation. These intangibles are in most cases non-technological and embodied in the organizational routines and thinking of the employees.

It is focusing on building the stock of this innovation capital as well as making the flow more dynamic, ever evolving, adapting and changing to the different conditions being presented to the company.

Some of the critical elements that need to be considered can be described as follows:

• Innovation strategy that relates to strategic choices a firm makes regarding its innovation
• The selection of the type of innovation that fits best the firm’s objectives and the allocation of resources to different types of innovations.
• Innovation culture that is the mixture of the innovation-related attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of the employees
• The integrating function of environment, culture and climates that stimulates innovation activities.
• Innovation structure that are formed to make up the innovation process, its governance and supporting intent
• The approach within the organization and the way the employees engaged in the innovation and how they are grouped and measured
• Knowledge (technological and non-technological) possessed by the employees engaged in the innovation process as much of the knowledge is tacit to varying degrees.
• The stock of knowledge can be increased by internal and external learning of an organization

It is the abilities of our internal learning as ongoing provides the creation for new knowledge within the enterprise.

Stocks and flows need equal attention to build innovation capital

The ‘stock’ of innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes, is a bundle of the firm’s resources/assets and holds the renewal capabilities and they possesses attributes that make it a “strategic asset”

Innovation capital are made up of assets that are often context specific and interconnected and this makes it hard to build without a broad holistic approach

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital and each organization has a unique bundle of the firms resources and assets. It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities.

This is one of my most important focus points to assist and aid organizations in their understanding “what makes up their unique innovation capital” and what needs to be added to deepen and strengthen this capital stock.

I provide different framing techniques for helping to grow this necessary innovation capital and the capacity to enable and increase the dynamic flow of innovation activities.

The post Understanding that innovation capital becomes your new core first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.