• I like the principles of “demonstrating, validating, sharing and discussing” as you ‘plug’ into each other so you can achieve active dialogue on ‘given’ subjects on a solid ‘give and take’ approach.
• Often we constrain ourselves in working out the prescribed agenda of needs before we get into any dialogue, I think this is a huge mistake. We should make conversations creative, a rich mix of development techniques that generate good interactions and create that growing bond and identification.
• We need to allow time to let discussions and exchanges grow and flow and sometimes they can move into unusual directions that lead to even better creative exchanges for value building.
• We need to seek a bias for action, by simply keeping on asking the basics of “for whom, why are we discussing this, how can we proceed, when and what issues stand in our way?”
• I like the idea to start off any potential innovation conversation with a belief of its change possibilities; it opens us up to what both parties can truly get out of the collaboration.

The need is for both sides to feel they are gaining from any collaborations

• We should always start with the belief that we need to gain mutually, and often just simply recognizing that you might ‘just’ simply gain personal knowledge and insights that could offer value somewhere ‘down the line’.
• Each side constantly needs to track back to a sense of worth and that comes from allowing time for feedback and open thinking. Take your time to really engage in mutual conversations, they prove to be increasingly valuable over time.
• By the use of design thinking techniques can certainly help in providing a greater dimension to provide ideas to flow, makes exchanges and creative moves towards solutions. Learn the techniques and then try it as an alternative way to work and create together.
• We need to practice “circles of conversation” where they loop around, move around the parties and you gain increasingly from the positive reinforcing loop of different conversation strands.
• Lastly, we all bond, sometimes not so much with the problem but far more with the person explaining the problem, so mixing up the expected problem statement with personal experience and your values makes for a far more positive atmosphere, leading to fruitful conversations you might not have initially expected.

Why is collaboration so important to our future?
As we engage, we learn.
We can’t imagine what we don’t often see; others open our minds to new possibilities. We can stay anchored in what we see and do, or if we are prepared to let go and have this ‘freedom’ to look for mutual exchange we can scale new heights. Conversations, exchanges and collaborations give us the experience to learn.
The huge value of collaborative exchanges is how it opens up our minds as we sometimes realise that we were ‘vested’ in selective thoughts that were less informed than we expected. Opinions can fall away as better ones replace them.
We need to let go, unlock the knowledge that comes from collaborations. Just remember outsiders are not insiders, they have different perspectives and do not expect to ‘shoe horn’ their opinions into the one size fits all.
I’d argue to remain as open as possible, so as to allow yourself to simply open up in a world of mutual collaboration, it can lead to some powerful innovation ideas. Build trust, value your own instincts and permit judgement calls to be pushed off until you have allowed the other party to explain their potential contribution, and then jointly work towards the solutions.
Make your collaborative efforts move just beyond open innovation into relationships that continue the learning process for all sides. Make all your collaborating endeavours stimulating, then you move into that higher creative, co-creating gear and it is a far more rewarding place to be.
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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 Achieving a higher collaborative gear first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Here are some of my thoughts, some a little raw, others well-baked, even some half-baked!.

Running your own business is full of uncertainty, doubt and risk. Equally, though, you have a level of independence and this does permit you to respond quickly.

It can offer higher degrees of flexibility, allows you to pursue what you think clients really want, not what others above you are imposing as template solutions, or their personal views.

Finally, you can explore the options to deliver, as in my case,  services, in your own unique style that often work far better for clients needs.

You are not accountable to anyone, apart from the wife and the bank manager, always looking a little harder at you, that small business owner needing to deliver.

In between these two ends of independence and the uncertainty from the dependence a few clients you might be relient on constantly moving the goal posts, there are quite frankly, lots of raw emotions.

The best part, for me, is a growing confidence that I am operating many times in the ‘zone’ of client needs, that they require out of innovation.

The downside I have to admit is there is an awful lot of hard work that needs to go into this so as to get you there.

My Business Model gets a constant bashing.

I really believe in working the business model hard but as you initiate your execution, not only is it about “getting out of the office” (the Steve Blank cry) but trying to constantly work the relationships that are growing trying to understand what potential customers want. Equally you do need to look hard at what Steve suggests is the customer development manifesto .

Steve also suggests we can get caught up in the 9 deadliest start-up sins and although this is written specifically for start-ups I think many of theses can apply to all businesses. These ‘sage’ pieces of advice are not just for start-ups as I’m well beyond a start-up but I find them incredibly useful as critical reminders as I evolve and change my business model.

It is also about managing the incredible ‘flow’ of knowledge, insights and latest thinking that comes into you constantly every single day.  You struggle to read, absorb, relate too and translate these often breaking thoughts, into your own thinking and propositions.

Of course, much as you find out is not so much leading edge but simply a rehashing of existing ideas, yet still even in these, they have specific experiences attached to them and these are useful to learn from or be reminded.

The innovation forge to shape and form

I’ve been working in the innovation forge arena for fourteen or more years, designing, shaping and learning about innovation, trying to translate this into value for clients and their innovation challenges.

I seem to know where I want to go for my future innovation work but balancing the ‘inflow’ of knowledge with the necessary customer ‘insights’ is not easy, especially when you want to have as much paying work as you can.

No, running your own business is hard. The ‘fun’ is managing the inputs, working the absorption process, producing your own distinct outputs, let alone achieving the required outcomes you need through attracting  clients and achieving engagement.

Over the years my own business model has evolved

My business model has increasingly moved more towards a ‘trusted’ adviser, where I coach, council and mentor on innovation. I constantly look beyond today and work at identifying leading practice, methods and tools.

Of course pure consulting features but I genuinely believe working with a good counselor or confident have a vital roles to play for understanding the value generating and impact points.

This works towards addressing certain problems or challenges being individually faced, yet you are consciously seeking out the dynamic linkages within the broader innovation work.

This is to partly strengthen what is available and already in place, partly to accelerate resources into applying innovation knowledge, at a different, more organized, coherent level.

So I’m working far more towards a facilitator and adviser by design and choice to those responsible for building innovation capacities, so as to promote, stimulate and exchange thinking in innovation thinking and design.

The end result, is to contribute to exploring emerging and leading practice understanding for integration into an organizations thinking and innovation models.

To this end I have ‘contained’ my service offerings deliberately. These I can sum up this way, as:

Agility’s focus of innovation work (unpaid advert)

• I look to provide leading edge advice on the premise you want to improve your present innovation performance.
• The focus is all about bringing new forms of innovation competency or capability into the world of everyday thinking for clear impact and return on the investments made.
• The result is to deliver a more holistic, understanding of what is required in innovation, unique to each client & their challenges, tailored to their needs to accelerate performance
• These are based on finding solutions for the future, deliberately forward looking to overcome today’s challenges & supporting the future innovative growth, not looking to stay caught in a legacy of past, out of date design.

The pivoting we need in any emerging business model is really hard to do.

I often get caught in the customer segment pivot. You believe you have the solutions to solve real problems within innovation but actually identifying often the ‘hidden’ real customer that this is planned for, then getting them engaged is the hardest part.

As Eric Ries nicely puts it in his lean start up methodology, the hypotheses are confirmed but only partly, until you can find more of those often ‘hidden’ customers within the organizations, that are needing these solutions and applying them.

It does get frustrating when you believe you can make a positive contribution to many organizations, still struggling to articulate, frame and determine their needs and  understanding for innovation.

Applying a selection of solutions to one, does not mean it will be valid to another, as often the context is significantly different. It is a process of reiteration, of understanding the differences and reworking solutions, blending in and capitalizing on the DNA that reflect the uniqueness.

Searching for learning, growth and impact

Hence, well for me, the constant need is for exploring all the different streams of new understanding, these become essential, these become learning milestones and new building blocks.

These can also play mind games on you though, as they can  confuse me at times, on what is offering those real engines of growth, as I adjust to these new learning’s.

Clients have a growing need for ‘leading edge’ not old past ‘best practices’, that are often never really applicable to their circumstances anyway. I much prefer to focus on ’emerging’ practices’ as these tend to be more forward looking.

The growth comes from the need to reflect where the potential challenge is for the client but it also has to be more future-orientated enough to move challenges through to decent lasting solutions. Looking at solutions that are often not working for many others is not the answer.

This changing and building a new business model is no walk in the park, especially when you are in such a crowded competitive market space of consulting and advising on something like innovation as it is constantly evolving.

Actually I’ve found that the catalogue of pivots suggested by Eric Ries I must have somehow worked though most of his suggested pivots. It is no fun this pivoting lark! It often hurts when you want to push thinking and concepts that seem to be highly relevant and needed in the market place, pivoting and adjusting as solutions are nearly all unique.

I know I need more validation, more conversations, more observations to keep the engine humming well. Come on all you hidden innovators searching for a resolution to your current problems and barriers within innovation, show yourselves, I really think I can help!

So in moving forward I’ve been actively revamping my work

Today I have ‘settled’ for two business entities both relating around innovation advisory provision.

www.agilityinnovation.com – “the focus is upon bringing out the new forms of innovation competency or capability into clients work”.

www.hocaconsulting.com – a focus upon the Work to be done that is needed for our future growth and well-being to be derived through innovation activities.

My supporting activities are critically important

I complement these by what I discuss under this blog  www.paul4innovating.com  or have been able to get published on leading innovation sites. I want to explore and build the DNA of innovation as part of this need to understand innovation (my way) and offer a more (comprehensive) picture of what is needed for innovation to work well.

I have even gone off and created a dedicated website which is exclusive to my evolving ‘fitness dynamics for innovation’ as a theory I believe allows us to capture and relate to the capabilities and capacities needed to achieve innovation within each organizations unique ways to pursue innovation. This is under www.innovationfitnessdynamics.com  

To sum up

For me, establishing the ‘new’ often means moving beyond often the already ‘known’, it is to experiment with sometimes the untried, so as to learn, too achieve faster and improving results, too evolve. This needs fresh perspectives and dedicated innovation knowledge. I attempt to provide those insights and guidance in the emerging areas of innovation.

The issue is still the classical one of convincing clients to explore, to experiment and apply some of these, as they really need too get out of specific ‘ruts’. I think far too often innovation as they have designed it or managed it, is failing to deliver on its initial promise.  

Risk is the partner to innovation so I’d argue (as you would expect) that you need to push the existing boundaries a little more.

Yes, I’m aiming for transformational in results, from my own learning to relate into clients’ challenges and problems, yet I’ve often reminded this evolving practice of innovation is equally applying more and more to my own innovation design.

Innovation is an uncomfortable place to be yet it is exciting as it evolves and keeps pushing us towards the future.

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The post Finding our true purpose first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

It compelled me to comment upon as it relates to Singapore which is dear to my heart. This was about the Singapore Management University (http://www.smu.edu.sg) and the new Presidents vision of its future place.
Inter-disciplinary research for equipping students for comprehensive solutions

Professor Arnoud De Meyer, the new president, recently made his inaugural address laying out the future of SMU. He stated “Inter-disciplinary research and teaching will be key to producing graduates who can give comprehensive solutions for a changing society”.
He was also recognizing one of the present barriers within Universities was the way promotions come about from peer review and publications of a single discipline within the faculty.

This rather ‘myopic’ view of expertise by many present-day academics is certainly outdated. We need more holistic, cross-disciplined research as the solutions in today’s world that are needed are more in complex than ever before.

If Professor De Meyer can help bring about this sort of the change in academic thinking it will certainly begin to separate SMU and distinguish it in a crowded field, and I think it certainly needs to establish differentiation, as it presently has little legacy to hinder it after only being ten years in existence.

Formidable academic barriers
The real challenge within this is to overcome some formidable barriers to academic change. SMU has the potential of cultivating an unbridled spirit of innovation on campus if they set about it correctly.

Within their broader community  where faculty, staff and students  interact with outside society so many connecting ideas can be ‘free’ to flow through this concept of cross-disciplinary research, and then through their teaching from this.

Why, well not just because SMU is a young, superbly equipped campus lying  not only in the heart of Asia and Singapore itself. It is because it recognises it needs to be different and offer a paradigm shift in offering students not that silo focus based on old traditional management disciplines.

It is no longer adequate to answer the needs and challenges of organizations today with these outdated approaches and SMU needs to pioneer the way to differentiate so it can eventually rank among the top business institutes worldwide. It simply can’t by copying existing institutions.

Innovation lies at the heart of cross-discipline knowledge

New cross-discipline knowledge is certainly at the heart of innovation so as to drive future growth and delivers new solutions to more complex problems.

If we improve our academic institutions to provide different ways to see and solve problems it will certainly help us be an awful lot better to exploit this ‘combined’ knowledge.

We also gain a better understanding of ourselves, and how and where we fit in our society to make a contribution as we gain a broader perspective and reduce misunderstandings.

Education delivery has to change and catch up

There is many comments that education delivery systems has tailed off, and struggling to establish themselves to the changes going on around us. They are simply not catching up and this is why I welcome this initiative at SMU.

Can one university or a small, but growing group of like minded ones, take on the entrenched position by many academics and other institutions that simply refuse to change?

Professor De Meyer plans to encourage faculty to publish inter-disciplinary research and to acknowledge the higher level of difficulty in such research during promotional reviews.

I understand this point but this alone is not enough to complete his vision, it needs to be something that is part of a broader, bolder vision that benefits society and the students to ‘see the world’ in new and different ways.

Innovation enables new learning potential
I believe innovation lies at the core to rally around. Innovation can be the enabler of this cross-border encouragement through the emphasis on the study and teaching of innovation and how it links cross-disciplinary research.

To move beyond traditional boundaries and models, to embrace the potential of cross-disciplinary research you need to have leading-edge learning practice, where innovation is cutting across the old divides of formal education and silo learning

Professor De Meyer has begun a significant journey by making this issue of ‘Inter-disciplinary research and teaching as key’ to producing graduates who can give comprehensive innovative solutions for a changing society. He needs support and encouragement. How can we support this?

The post Taking on the world; innovation as unfettered, different and holistic first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.