knowledge exchange - Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence

Delving into a complex world: helping to keep pace

@paul4innovating — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 11:43:10 +0000

“The world has never been as complex, dynamic and uncertain as it is today and the pace of change will only increase.”

We hear this consistently, our continual problem is trying to make sense of it for ourselves, we know all around us seems to constantly increase in its complexity but how are we keeping pace or at least trying too? I can’t check out of the human race just yet, can you afford too? If not then read on.

For me, I try to attempt to keep up to date by investing increasing time in acquiring a better understanding, a deeper knowledge of all the interconnected parts. As part of my job, advising others on all things swirling around innovation, I invest significant time in researching, learning and applying what I feel is important to others to understand or at least to raise their awareness.

Even if we are “time starved” we simply must try and keep moving along in this understanding and hopefully once in a while keeping ahead of the curve, or think we are!

There is one rich source of knowledge that comes from many of the larger consulting firms.

The emphasis from many of these leading consultancies has been on establishing a clear “thought leadership” approach to underpin their expertise and attract as a ‘go to’ resource. As this is being published in more open ways than ever before, it is not just the client that is benefiting from this research or learning but the wider community. I extract a lot of insights, value and confirmation from staying connected into these consultancies. Do you?

Many of the bigger consulting companies offer a highly valued “thought leadership” with significant research backing this up. Their access to board rooms and global scale does give them a significant edge but it is how they ‘translate’ this into client value becomes the determination of its value.

Many of these investing significantly into this area of insight are presently actively trying to quantify the impact of this thought leadership. Recently I read at the clients end, in a recent survey of 400 CXO’s from www.sourceforconsulting.com, that they found that half of these rarely read thought leadership, so that automatically halves the size of the ‘market’. But yet…and this is where it becomes potentially valuable…..

Critically, of the remaining ‘active’ consumers, between 50% and 65% are surprisingly passing material on, yes, passing this on as it resonates or is valuable to someone else within the organization currently working upon or wanting to understand this particular area a little more. This encourages reading more from the same firm, and so on, continuing to build trust and a resource source.

As this trust builds the potential client are inclined to browse deeper into the website of the firm and extend their reading. But crucially, about a quarter contacted the firm concerned and, in many cases, bought services from them. It does seem thought leadership really can have a direct commercial impact. But not all thought leadership is equal.

The really important sniff test is “so what?”

One of the best sources of consulting news that focuses a fair amount on the “thought leadership” part comes from the company I mentioned above (sourceforconsulting.com). They suggest “thought leadership has come to dominate the marketing activities of consulting firms, and with good cause: our research with clients finds consistent evidence that good thought leadership matters to them, too. It helps them to do their job, to identify where world-class capability exists in consulting firms, and even to shortlist the firms for their projects. So “thought leadership” is becoming a highly valued part of the consulting equation.

As they state: given this is, or is becoming, the primary marketing mechanism for consulting firms, there is little point in producing thought leadership that leaves the reader thinking, “hmmm, interesting”, before tucking the report away in a drawer, never to see the light of day again”.

In their research in 2014, the impact of thought leadership clearly demonstrated that one personal recommendation is much more likely to drive engagement with thought leadership than one email from a faceless firm – and much more likely to be the start of a conversation.

Then we have the consistency test: Sourceforconsulting found firms dividing into three groups: the consistently good (a very small number), the consistently bad (a slightly larger number) and the consistently inconsistent (the biggest group by far). So it does seem thought leadership has some real mileage to go to get better, more consistent and in tune with client needs and the consulting practices expertise.

One consulting firm that I feel is doing a very good job – Deloitte’s US division and it needs ‘calling out’

Firstly I picked up on a quote according to the Chairman and CEO of Deloitte Consulting LLP, Jim Moffatt:

“Deloitte is helping clients with their most complex challenges – how to grow globally; how to innovate; how to integrate technology and strategy; how to attract, develop and retain talent – so they can make bold decisions with confidence.” I’d buy that so far on their quality of thought leadership.

Deloitte have set up different thinking tanks. An exceptional one is Deloitte University Press who publish some really good original articles, reports, and periodicals that provide insights for businesses, the public sector, and NGOs. They break down their topics into these:

Last year they provided some exceptional reports and views in my opinion I thought I’d spend a little time raising your interest, curiosity and learning on this picking on some areas I found relevant to me.

Firstly, let’s give praise where praise is due.

Within the topics that Deloitte’s focus on, there is clearly a reasonable level of cross-over but let me outline some very useful thinking by briefly summarizing the ‘hot spots’ from my perspective, which may differ from your own. I only touch on some points of possible interest:

Business Analytics covers Data Science and Analytics. It tackles artificial intelligence and cognitive analysis. It looks at connected learning and the network approach. One good link to explore is Digital Education 2.0: from content to connections.
Emerging Technologies discusses Why strategy, not technology, drives digital transformation, and also explores the value of smart devices, IoT and amplified intelligence. It covers the topic of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and cloud solutions to scale quickly due to diminishing barriers occurring in our business world. Also trend sensing, ecosystems, experimentation and edge scaling are covered here, along with expotential organizations looking for disruption.
Innovation offers articles on “Beyond design thinking”, written by Larry Keeley, cofounder of Doblin, of ten types fame and now part of Deloitte. They also discuss minimum viable transformation, and separately, a really interesting Editorial piece on scale and innovation.
Risk and Security is a section that covers cyber security, global risks, choices of regulation and different governance models.
Sustainability spends significant mileage on s mart mobility for many options within businesses, industries or regions of the world. It offers different thinking on options and alternatives on this sustainability question.
CFO focus is mostly about the transitions being undertaken in Executive transitions and offers thoughts around time, talent and relationships, making hard choices and letting go.
Growth covers a fair amount (at present) on consumer trends, the growth and options to be considered in their different focus industries.
Performance is hunting for that “superior business performance”, exploring this in the supply chain, value webs and platform management and in business relationships.
Social Impact looks at health, aging, alternative options, scarcity as a podcast, ‘smart’ options, commuting, ride sharing, transport options.
Finally Talent, here you have interesting topics like going rogue or connect passion with profession, learning, leadership, engagement, simplification and performance reinventing are nicely covered to stimulate our thinking.

In summary on Deloitte’s investment in thought leadership.

Deloitte offers a diverse range of topics, depth in introducing and discussing these on a website that is modern, attractive to engage and look around, and offers numerous different filter options and sign up options. Of course we each have our own focal points but there is increasing value in appreciating different aspects of thought leadership in quality and depth of understanding.

I would recommend Deloittes University Press and their updated collections archive to work through. It has recently been added I think from my recent searching*

Add the Deloitte consulting arms own website that covers human capital, strategy, operations and technology, it really delivers in my opinion, a highly professional impression and selection of good research in-depth, ease of navigation to draw you in to find what you are looking for and that all important feeling they can add value to you as a client or researcher.

I rate Deloitte as one of the best in this thought leadership space, many of the other bigger consultancies are real laggards in this, which I feel is a mistake in their client / reputation / marketing mix. I’d recommend you keep them on your radar as valuable to tap into and learn from.

Thought leadership is really a very, very big, growing business.

Measuring its impact is not easy for the classic ROI yet, if you can measure the material read and then passed on; you have achieved something highly significant. The screening for value has been pre-edited so that it’s relevancy to the receiver is personally valued, sent by someone who really knows what concerns them – something even the most targeted mailings can’t achieve. If those people are in the position to buy, influence any consulting decision then that is worth millions but more importantly allows the conversations to be on a mutual platform for deepening the discussions. Do you agree?

For me it is not just the passing on but the amount of yellow markers I am applying to these. That is partly my litmus test of quality, interest and learning.

Thought leadership is important to demonstrate today so not only can clients help “size and fit” the thinking with their challenges but for people like me enable me to provide a more comprehensive view of breaking trends, issues or thinking that many of my ‘time starved’ clients appreciate being introduced too. It helps me in being seen more as a trusted source of relevant and unbiased knowledge that helps them form a ‘greater’ opinion, hopefully with my ongoing help.

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Publishing note: This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have added to my own site as well.

The post Delving into a complex world: helping to keep pace first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The real value of knowledge exchange

@paul4innovating — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:57:27 +0000

Continuing in the series on knowledge exchanges and education for innovation.

Part two – what needs to improve in innovation?

I asked in the first part of this series of blogs –How do we advance the learning needed for innovation? So first, do we (all) agree that we do need to improve the education around the subject of innovation and its management?

Do we need to recognize it as an essential discipline that should be fully recognized with our organizations?

Today it is not central, it is not driving the business surprisingly when you stop and think about it, older more established practices drive the business and innovation is a responder. I think this needs reversing totally.

We live in knowledge-based societies and we need to constantly increase our share of understanding as this new knowledge becomes the building block for innovation to take hold and grow our wealth, create the next generation of products or services.

Our challenges are greater and more complex today.
Modern society is becoming a fairly intense place, it is growing in complexity, reducing constantly our need to reduce our reaction times so we need to ‘read and react’ far quicker than in the past.

We are being highly challenged in adapting our existing practices and processes within innovation to speed up. In reality top of mind for CEO’s is the innovation gap, they want to quickly see and fill and secondly, their worry over the innovation delay.

We need to find new mechanisms on innovation to allow for a better transfer.
The appreciation of knowledge – its collection, its understanding and interpretation and in its transformation and exploitation are not being valued as highly as they should within this need to speed up, to close gaps and reduce delay but more importantly, to contribute to higher value outputs that “fuels” new innovation activity.

The production and reproduction of knowledge becomes key – it drives activity and direction for innovation activity. As we create, accumulate and disperse knowledge we become more engaged outside our own walls. We need to seek constantly a comparative advantage and to achieve this goal we are seeking more and more open exchanges to allow this flow of knowledge to be captured.

We are becoming increasingly interdependent and permeable to disturb what “we think we know” to “what we need to know”. Relationships, networks, dedicated resources searching; collecting and assessing knowledge all rapidly contribute to our growing need for new capacities. We then need to build the appropriate capabilities to translate and exploit this new knowledge.

Our “need to innovate” is becoming our sole means to survive and prosper in this highly competitive world we continue to create and knowledge becomes the key to this.

Knowledge cannot be allowed to be left to chance today but needs a coherent, structured way to be captured, used and valued. “Our knowledge” is our potentially most highly prized tradable asset. The skills we build from this understanding allow us to build, explore and experiment so we can translate this into new innovations.

Content and Context are the essential partners.

As we look at innovation today, often one of four aspects are missing or under-served for what an organization is trying to achieve. The ‘context’ that innovation is set is usually the most poorly described part. The ‘content’ can fill rapidly but this tends to be full of endeavour and activity as the results have not been as clearly articulated as they should have been.

The ‘purpose’ and the ‘process’ make up the other parts. Knowing the purpose comes from setting the context – this clarifies the inputs that form purpose. Lastly we have the process where the activities should flow through.

Each of these four dimensions is often not as solid or robust as they should be, and increasingly, new knowledge is not getting translated to leverage its potential due to these weaknesses within our management of innovation.

Absorptive Capacity becomes essential to understand

As we rely increasingly on our growing ‘interactions and linkages’ we need a system to manage this. Absorptive capacity was introduced as an idea and first explored by Wesley Cohen and Daniel Levinthal in a 1990 article (“Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation”) and can provide us the knowledge learning path for building a real “knowledge exchange” process.

We can learn to exploit both innovation and learning in the following ways:
Internal

Learning by searching – as we formalize our search activities we absorb new understanding that leads to new innovation potential
Learning by doing – as we accumulate knowledge gained, we gain experience and the more we establish repetitive activities through exploring, prototyping methods and reduce the ad-hoc activities the more we can learn and gain from this approach
Learning by using – as we utilize and adopt more, through exploration and adoption of new products, new technologies and methods, we are opening up to experiment and possibilities to extend this new ‘experience or knowledge’ even further.

External

Learning from advances in science and technology – as we absorb new discoveries we capitalize on adding further value or diffusing this even more
Learning from inter-industry spillovers – the increasing value of cross industry collaboration and exchanges is going beyond ‘just’ spillovers, they are increasingly significant to our learning and applying different approaches that lend themselves to a greater commonality
Learning by interacting – we increasingly go ‘across’ organizations and equally move ‘up and down’ them to seek out interactions with other sources of knowledge and growing expertise. These are further augmented by external collaborative exchanges and cooperation activities allowing for deepening knowledge, greater experimentation and interactions to deliver potentially ‘richer’ innovation.

Each of these six points of learning need exploiting for innovation.

Finally in this part, I’ve discussed absorptive capacity in previous articles “making innovation practice spread”, learning to absorb new knowledge for innovation and moving towards a more distributed innovation model to provide a fairly comprehensive set of discussions on this critical aspect of innovation and knowledge provision.

We are equally in need to recognize differences and value in tacit and explicit knowledge.

The distinctions and discussions about tacit and explicit knowledge are equally important to our “knowledge exchange”. Ikujiro Nonaka discussed four different modes of knowledge conversion and subsequent organizational learning in his SECI model

Socialisation (the conversion of tacit knowledge to tacit knowledge);
Combination (the conversion of explicit knowledge to explicit knowledge);
Externalisation (the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge); and
Internalisation (the conversion of explicit to tacit knowledge).

To explain this we need to distinguish between tacit and explicit I outlined some thoughts in a previous article “tacit knowledge rich in its innovation implications” and further explored this in “making the appropriate impact”.

The critical message here is that tacit knowledge vs. explicit knowledge is where the interaction between these two is vital for the creation of new knowledge that leads to future innovation potential.

Knowledge for innovation needs to build in both formal and informal ways.

With the recognition that absorptive capacity and richer combinations between tacit and explicit knowledge needs a real recognition of their vital part they are playing within innovation’s future health.

Without new knowledge, we can’t explore the potential for innovation. We do need to explore these far more in our advancing knowledge and education for innovation

My last part within this knowledge exchange series I want to finish with the ‘coupling’ within the innovation system, our need for greater convergence and the dangers lurking in innovation. Each has its place within knowledge and education for innovation.

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