How often do you pause for thought, testing yourself, questioning even simply for ‘just those few minutes,’  to allow yourself to openly challenge where you are and what you are attempting to do?

We keep relentlessly moving on, like a wandering herd of buffalo, always looking for fresh pasture, those new feeding grounds. It’s not good.

Of course, I often get caught up in this restless pursuit of gathering more, when I spend a growing amount of my time researching innovation. I keep coming across so many things that ‘trigger’ the thinking, pushing me on.

Do you let them go, ignore them, quickly pass over them, or attempt to capture the issue as something well worth investigating further at a later stage, or just get them simply behind you in the here and now.

I think I must be reverting back more into a hunter-gatherer, in my case upon innovation insights; collecting the raw material that I am looking to eventually translate and distribute as this growing knowledge stock.

The outcome  I trust is moving me slowly towards becoming an innovation curator, hopefully, valued by others. Well, it’s a goal.

I also regularly need what I call my ‘walkabout’ moments to chill out and regroup.

Walkabout is best known when an Australian Aborigine undergoes a journey, wandering in the wilderness for periods as long as six or so months.

This wandering mostly becomes a rite of passage, in my case my walkabout’s are aimed to move my innovation understanding from one state to another, hopefully improving by what I have learnt and gathered.

I have so often to force myself to stop being a collector of ‘all things new’ that is written about innovation. I keep attempting to put as many of the existing pieces together, searching for the patterns and insights, trying to make a different sense to them, with the aim to add further to the innovation stock and innovation capital.

Presently I am in the middle of a digital and paper clear-up ready for another walkabout

Either the mass of papers that I confess I’ve printed out so I can highlight, scribble over and allow these to ‘fester’ a little longer, so the ideas permeate through my thick skull or my digital collection all need shaping differently. I’m been busy working through my digital library, whipping this back into a decent shape after a heavy collecting period of interesting articles that all need to be referenced for future use.

There is so much to explore, it does get overwhelming and this is why these ‘walkabout’s help clear my brain (and my desk). I also use mind mapping software to capture much so the different patterns and connections can become a little more coherent, well for me at least.

Craving for the innovative open road

I do like the idea of an open road on where we can go and what we might explore but we actually do need to take some time to choose the routes, even when much of it can be serendipitous, as it has to contribute ‘just’ beyond knowledge into something valuable.

In our investigations we need to watch out for all the signs (not necessarily signposts)  along the way, those signals, patterns and emerging trends as we both search the horizon but equally in fully appreciating what is all around us, as we travel building our understanding on that journey.

I often feel I am a journey man and I’m certainly comfortable with that.
I have to admit, I am a happy man playing in my innovation sandpit, linking these thoughts into emerging solutions to tackle some client problems, move innovation along or answer some questions posed.

I work on these for others on given value propositions around the following: “you need someone who can put clear coordinates into the innovation world“.

I keep moving towards this concept of being a curator of innovation, collecting and distributing it, interpreting it, re-ordering it to meet specific needs. To do this I need to keep up a given rhythm, filtering and funneling, dampening or magnifying this growing knowledge around innovation.

I enjoy this but it does take up more time than I can sometimes really afford. I think I need an investor who see’s value in structuring this into an innovation knowledge platform, until then, if ever, I travel my path.

 “Time starved, knowledge poor,” so when do we gain the luxury to think

When do we find the time to really delve into the necessary understanding for innovation in deeper and valuable ways. We are often just ‘reacting to daily issues’ and constant crisis as we are so focused on the delivery of short-term results.

We lack a space where we can explore thoughtful analysis, deepen our personal knowledge and make all the right connections we would ideally like. We lack time and insights that can give greater direction or answers.

We are needing those personal ‘curated’ spaces where our particular interest builds up in the required knowledge (collect, manage and apply) to then be able to build from this and move onto the next knowledge stream of value to you. We never find the ongoing opportunity to alter our innovation understanding and influence our future delivery.

What would help here? Is it innovation coaching, mentoring, providing an innovation knowledge platform, a place to go and find content-rich insights that yield impact and give a renewed intensity? What would be attractive? What would give to your understanding of innovation and its management?

How does one offer such a personal space where you can draw in the knowledge and interpret it in your way, appropriate to meet your innovation goals?

Also I’m enjoying some sparring, exchanging, and developing as ongoing.

I’m also caught up in a great discussion with my occasional sparring partner Jeffrey Phillips of Ovo, this time around in change, culture and innovation and I think this will eventually emerge as a further piece of collaborative work between us.

This will follow on from our collaborations around the Innovation Executive Work Mat , where we have been seeking out common cause and building strategic and innovation alignment, along with our earlier attempts to describe a “Collaborative innovation reference model“, published under “reducing innovation mysteries” and on its homepage.

I’ve written before about “finding our true purpose” and working the innovation space is mine to explore and think through. As I stated in that post, mine is increasingly focused upon:

“Establishing the ‘new’ often means moving beyond the already ‘known’, it is to experiment with sometimes the untried, to learn, to achieve faster and improved results, to evolve and push boundaries. This needs fresh perspectives and dedicated innovation knowledge. I attempt to offer those insights and guidance in the emerging areas of innovation”

Off on another innovation walkabout, it is about time, hopefully, the answers will keep coming from the time hopefully well spent.

*Amended on 16.04.2015

The post Walkabouts are needed for learning and testing ourselves first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

How can we liberate that creative energy we have within our organizations, how can we achieve higher engagement?

How can we learn, share and transform the knowledge that is all around us, simply flooding in? How can we translate the data flowing in with the knowledge insights and innovation outcomes expected? How are we going to unleash the creativity that goes with new knowledge?

We need to actively encourage connected minds for value-creating opportunities and knowledge sharing for innovation to flow right across the organization. All the raw data needs connected and engaged minds.

“For this, we need to think about installing a modern engagement platform that has the knowledge and learning as its beating heart”

Why do we need to build this modern engagement platform? Big Data is knocking on your door.

We need increased capacity to ‘listen and capture’ understanding. We need to deploy some filtering and analytics as ‘big data’ becomes increasingly part of our organization’s lives. We need to go beyond analytics.

“We urgently need a system of absorbing and translating data’s raw power to turn these into measurable innovation outcomes”.

We need a structured system where we manage any absorption of data through its different stages of translation into valuable knowledge, to see its potential and then to realize the (new) value out of it for new innovation outcomes.

With all this new data flowing in, you need to turn it into valuable knowledge by capturing all the interactions, offering search and discovery services, organising different events and scenario management and be able to retrace the interaction history. We need to think beyond just data discovery.

“We need to equally build a knowledge-sharing system and this will require as much a robust technology solution as at the raw data front end structured on a scalable learning approach”.

We need to find ways to merge data and information to turn this into ‘actionable’ knowledge and eventual valuable new innovation. We do need to think harder about building beyond analytics into these engagement platforms.

It is here you actually mine the raw knowledge and transform it. We need to absorb in our organization’s capabilities or we will simply overload them with just data.

We need to shift from scalable efficiency to scalable learning.

Firstly and most important for me, is our need to understand the building of learning and experiences through the Absorptive Capacity framework as I think it will have an increasingly valuable part to play in managing data, information and knowledge going forward.

A fair time back two researchers, Cohen and Levinthal (1990) pioneered the concept of absorptive capacity, further defined as the ability of an organization to identify, value, assimilate, and apply new knowledge.

Since their 1990 publication, the concept has been further developed and given rise to many thousands of published papers on this subject.

The value of absorptive capacity is that when organizations have some prior knowledge and awareness they are more receptive to adding new understandings and new ideas. They can build better value from not just the knowledge but the structured application of it.

“As ‘big data’ grows we need to move from potential to realized outcomes”

Organizations that encourage and set about learning consciously and consistently will set about the search for the new ideas coming from all the incoming sources by having this already established learning structure in place. They are far more likely to better recognize new ideas that might lead to innovation.

Exploiting our learning requires framing

I would suggest those organizations that exploit the Adaptive Capacity framework are more likely to develop a deeper understanding of integrating, exploiting and experimenting with any new knowledge. Then they are in that ‘better’ shape to set about placing the data and knowledge gained into a new setting, framing new concepts or hypotheses, to push this knowledge forward into new innovation.

“We need a structure where we are constantly, consciously advancing learning, extracting its value, turning this into valuable new potential and successful innovation outcomes.”

This gaining of continuous knowledge encourages constant learning and this has a positive feedback cycle as it builds the capacities and capabilities for future innovation activity for the increased potential for new value.

Absorptive capacity, once recognized and established as a system, promotes the search for new knowledge that greatly increases the capacity to make the necessary new connections for new innovation to happen.

The ability within our knowledge gathering needs a continuous focus and methodology of approach.

For this to happen, it does need continuous focus, we need to build greater absorption capacity. If organizations take the alternative route of wanting to squeeze every last drop out of the existing innovation activity or research department, organizations over time develop as bad learners, they begin to ignore, assume they have the knowledge and get fixed in their mindsets.

They totally rely on data and don’t apply their knowledge and they fail to translate this into meaningful outcomes.

Those that fail to seek out and absorb, will certainly tend to reject faster and increasingly adopt the “not invented here” syndrome. That can only last for a limited time before ‘innovation decay’ and ‘data overload’ do set in, people become frustrated and finally give up and leave, and when they do just remember all their knowledge goes with them also.

“There is a real risk that all the incoming data can be totally overwhelming, we need to structure a learning system to absorb, exploit and translate for measurable innovation outcomes”

In managing new innovation outcomes we need to apply absorptive capacity as a learning framework

We certainly understand that today innovation is not confined to the walls of one particular company. The world ‘absorbs’ more innovation than we can turn into greater value but we need to attempt to capture this and see if and where its value might lie.

If we agree that most innovations happen outside often self-imposed boundaries then we have to extend outside all our existing boundaries and go beyond. We have to open up our organizations and collective minds to draw in the knowledge so as to allow it to reside, circulate and be translated into new forms of understanding.

Absorptive capacities give us the system on which we can encourage the gathering, understanding and translation of knowledge. It underpins engagement and also helps manage the ‘raw knowledge data’ that needs transforming. We all need to be able to have ‘syncing’ capabilities of learning.

We need a system to capture and allow knowledge to flow, and a strong absorptive capacity has three main outputs which result from the flow of external or distributed knowledge that is allowed to flow internally.

“With the creation of new knowledge and insights, these can create new innovation that then leads to new economic and social value”

Achieving a clear engagement platform for all to gain from

So in our need to achieve a greater engagement from everyone within our organizations we need to recognize the importance of having a ‘modern’ engagement platform available, a central place for scalable learning to take place so we can structure the new knowledge and insights coming into the organization.

As we increasingly need to engage, where outside knowledge combines with our internal understanding and needs, then we do need to think about scalable learning to anchor and then diffuse new knowledge into potentially more valuable innovation outcomes that are measurable and linked back through the learning cycle.

The post We need the engagement platform for translating big data learning first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I really have appreciate it. I wanted to draw out some useful learning from this report and useful reminders here in this post that there is no easy answers in innovation, social or business related.

The report outlines the difficulties of enabling innovation in social sector organizations. In this review the authors undertook exploring what enables organization capacity for continuous innovation in established social sector organizations, that operate at an efficient scale, delivering products and services.

Three oversights that conflict in working in the social innovation area

First, innovation is often perceived as a development shortcut where pushing innovation is often at the expense of strengthening more routine activities, which this ‘push’ might actually destroy rather than create value.

Second, social sector innovation has little external impact to show when it is enacted in unpredictable environments. Proven innovation can often fail when transferred to a different context and there is equally an undervaluing of the positive internal learning impact that comes from these ‘failed’ innovations.

Third, the power of negative organizational factors, such as bad leadership, dysfunctional teams and overambitious production goals as examples, makes the innovation task extremely difficult to succeed in difficult social conditions

This report helped me rethink the value of incremental in social innovation

I have been constantly complaining about incremental innovation needs to become more radical, more disruptive, more breakthroughs and what this report provides is a totally different slant on incremental innovation.

Also I have talked often about the knowing of the context of innovation and this report offers a brilliant reminder of this.

Over-rating the Value of Innovation.
The report offers this thought within social innovation: “Most of the value that established social sector organizations create comes from their core, routine activities perfected over time”.

It is the efficiency being produced in providing standard products and services is the place that creates tremendous value, particularly in places of widespread poverty.

The organizations involved have found a working model in a particular context requires predictable, incremental improvements and lots of them to generate superior outcomes over time.

The authors cite the Aravind Eye Care Hospital for their focus on continuous improvement of practices and investing any profits in building additional capacity. It is the dedication to standardization that drives operational productivity.

They spend their time eliminating variation to build constantly capacity to make an impact at an increasing scale.

The important point here is “constantly building capacity to make an impact at an increasing scale” and it is in finding the contextual linkages is where incremental has its greatest value potential.

Perhaps I push for different types of innovation within business far too hard and this observation might argue for a better viewpoint on the pursuit for incremental innovation. It brings my own pendulum into a better position perhaps of valuing incremental improvements?

A few ‘call out’ points here

• “Unpredictable innovation activities always compete with predictable core routines for scarce resources.”
• “Poverty-related or persistent problems may not need innovation solutions but rather committed long-term engagements that enable steady and less risky progress”.
• “Innovation is not triggered by change but progress and impact may come from dedication and routine work” and that this can challenge the argument for more innovation.

Recognizing the value of productive innovation.

The report uses as their innovation type “productive social innovation” and argues the need to rely heavily on trial and error and constant organizational learning to make this truly productive. To yield improving results where scale is critical.

The value of learning from failed innovation.
In the world of complex social issues innovation actions are inherently unpredictable, often placed in hostile environments, where you need to understand local power structures and the many root causes of the situation you are attempting to solve through innovation.

The call-out for me here is the emphasis for the systematic learning and building the knowledge base that provides the capacity to innovate or not. Also each situation needs significant evaluation before any adoption of practices from other places

The impatience with making fast progress
The report touches on “doing the right things” but it is within the unique dynamics and contextual factors that often innovation is prevented from happening. Innovation relies on a constellation of many enabling and contextual factors fueled by excessive optimism of the ones pushing for innovation solutions. There is so much that can stifle innovation or derail the process.

The recommendation is for greater critical diagnosis and evaluation of all the negative factors and hurdles that set about unearthing a large number of cognitive, normative and political factors.

You simply can’t reply on “simple recipes” as a prevailing dogma or well-meaning recommendations, it boils down to exploring the factors, complexities, challenges and realistic time-scales involved in dealing not just with the poor but all complex social challenges.

My call out here: I find this such a timely reminder for all innovation, as business leaders constantly express their frustrations with innovation failing to deliver.

The learning for me here is from the report is this increased emphasis on understanding all the negative factors that constantly block innovation and these are different from one situation to another. The environmental analysis becomes vital.

A summary within the report gave me these thoughts.

1. It is time to move from innovation as an ideology to innovation as a process—a transition that might be less glamorous but will be more productive
2. These recommendations should enable social sector organizations, their stakeholders, and researchers to develop analytical models and tools to unearth negative factors that prevent productive innovation.
3. Similarly, funders who carefully think through the implications outlined in the report may find ways to escape over-supporting fashionable innovation initiatives and under-supporting promising but difficult innovation efforts, particularly those in complex environments where formulas for social progress have not yet been found.
4. Finally, the process approach they are recommending to social innovation is an attempt to swing the pendulum back from the supply side of social innovation to the demand side of social innovation.

The authors finish with “Our hope is that an increased emphasis on innovation as a process will help avoid bad social sector investments and thwart unproductive debates about quick fixes to entrenched social problems.”

This report gives a useful reminder that there is a lot to keep constantly learning about the differences within innovation

This report gave me a shift in insight by explaining many of the enabling factors for organizations already established, that are searching to operate at scale within specific social contexts.

Incremental innovation is where they might create more social value through focusing on continuous ongoing improvements to extract learning, and reinvest this into scaling improvements to then build this into further capacity.

Also we can’t take anything for granted, the context, the environment, the application of different types of innovation all are unique and simply ‘applying’ general solutions just doesn’t work. I have argued this consistently but this report deals in understanding the specific conditions for a ‘given’ type of innovation as being essential to be really alert too.

Again, this report is “Innovation Is Not the Holy Grail” and well worth your time to read.

Seeing innovation from a specific social perspective has some very useful learning from a business perspective.

By understanding the value of incremental improvements can be more valuable in certain contextual situations than simply applying additional innovation creative investments without understanding all of the factors behind the challenges that are being tackled.

The post There are no easy innovation answers. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We can ‘fall over these ideas’ or we can find ideas or concepts through explicit search. Then to translate these and turn them into something new and different we need to have established some sort of diffusion and dissemination processes.

Having this established as a sustaining system provides an essential source to building organizations capabilities and competencies.

The more we work external knowledge the more we potentially enhance and multiply its value from a single idea into the potentials for multiple innovations. Having a systematic framework can be dramatic for generating new knowledge and gathering ideas for new innovation potential.

Throughout this post I’ll link into previous posts that you might like to explore but this is not necessary.

The issue is how we set about adopting and adapting new knowledge.

Each organization we work within collects its knowledge in different ways. Each has special characteristics, systems and ways to set about doing this. Often finding the knowledge is highly random. Many cases the knowledge we are searching for already resides in the organization, sometimes when we go outside we find one of the paths of this knowledge actually leads back inside our own organization. When this happens it leaves us puzzled on how and why this happens.

A long time back two researcher, Cohen and Levinthal (1990) pioneered the concept of absorptive capacity, further defined as the ability of an organization to identify, value, assimilate, and apply new knowledge. Since their 1990 publication, the concept has been further developed and given rise to many thousands of published papers around this subject.

 The value of absorptive capacity is that when organizations have some prior knowledge they are more receptive to adding new understandings and new ideas.

Organizations that encourage and set about learning consciously set about the search for new ideas and by having this already established ‘learning’ are far better at recognizing new ideas that might lead to innovation.

These organizations develop deeper understanding of integrating and experimenting this new knowledge and set about placing it in a new setting, concept or hypothesis, to push this knowledge forward into new innovation. They are consciously advancing learning.

This gaining of continuous knowledge encourages constant learning and this has a positive feedback cycle as it builds the capacities and capabilities for future innovation activity. Absorptive capacity, once recognized and established as a system promotes the search for new knowledge that greatly increases the capacity to make the necessary new connections for new innovation to happen.

For this to happen, it does need continuous focus. If organizations take the alternative route of wanting to squeeze every last drop out of the existing innovation activity or research department, organizations over time develop as bad learners, they begin to ignore, to assume they have the knowledge and get fixed in their mind sets. They fail to absorb, they tend to reject and take on increasingly that “not invented here” syndrome. That can only last for a limited time before ‘innovation decay’ sets in, people leave and the knowledge often goes with them also.

The problem also can lie in too much knowledge

The other vital part of understanding absorptive capacity is its terrific benefits for diffusion and dissemination of ideas. As the knowledge we glean from outside comes inside it can confront, it can challenge the “what we know”. It is at these times we must stop the initial reaction of “let’s reject this” and allow time for a deeper evaluation, making sense from this different perspective. Looking through alternative lenses helps here.

Organizations are always in a hurry. They design innovation pipelines to get narrower and narrower. They want to quickly dismiss ideas that don’t fit in their norm, the system is poorly equipped to handle different, more challenging thinking, yet this is the very place radical, breakthrough and disruptive innovation ‘sits’. Organizations must find better ways to resist allowing knowledge pathways to become narrower before the knowledge, insights and potential connections have been well absorbed.

Allowing a greater access to new sources of knowledge, discussing emerging innovation concepts by diffusing the understanding does allows for increasing those ‘real’ connections where something really different beyond the existing can be shared as emerging.

It is allowing the absorptive capacities to fully work through the knowledge gained, to improve your capacities. Providing innovation and your ideas and concepts extended time, you can provide for different connection points for exploiting innovation impact even more. If you allow for this additional time to explore and discuss specifically in the search for those more radical connections and outcomes, you have the potential for far more.

We do need to allow knowledge inside our organizations to flow more openly

We need to stop the ‘cognitive blinders’ that constraints the diversity of opinion by allowing concepts or knowledge to be more broadly seen and worked upon, shared more openly. Make innovation far more open inside the organization as well as outside. Practice a more ‘holistic’ open innovation is highly valuable for pushing beyond the current incremental approaches, simply because knowledge is only residing with a few chosen people. We do need to avoid all the cognitive traps around.

Let’s really adopt open innovation, internally as well as externally. It is allowing not just new knowledge in but to allow this new knowledge to flow and be absorbed and then can be better translated into new application or worth. There are significant roadblocks within open innovation today that need resolution.

The art of harnessing knowledge lies in our intellectual capital

When we are chasing after new growth we do need to employ all our capitals. Today the dominant capital is financial, it rules the others and that stifles knowledge, innovation and the potential for being different. Financial capital tends to be based on past numbers or immediate concerns, it struggles with the future. It wants to reduce time, risk, inefficiencies and replace this with always improving the rate of return on the financial capital.

We need to think about a better way to judge ‘rate of return’ and that should be on recognizing the critical importance of the other capitals, those that make up the intellectual capitals. Broadly these fall into human, structural and relationships. They are the capitals that make up the value and provide the new generating value that are embedded in the personnel, organizational routines, and network relationships. They provide fresh capital through innovation and strategic renewal.

There is an incredible set of connections between all the parts of intellectual capital, absorptive capacity and knowledge that make for new innovation and give us the real chance of value creation. I’ll discuss this set of connections further in a subsequent post.

Thankfully some organizations are becoming enlightened

Knowledge and Innovation are engaged at the ‘hip’, they are inseparable. To separate them both would die, one feeds the other. It is through the application of approaching them through a system like absorptive capacity you can generate the flows needed to keep our search for new ideas stimulated, our innovations pushing forward and allowing others to benefit and build on this knowledge further.

If you have not considered the place for absorptive capacity and its value, it is high time you did. It might be your missing link.

The post Absorptive Capacity, Knowledge Management and Innovation 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.