Let me confess: I am not alone I am sure but I seem to be presently suffering from Social Media Return Dilemma. There I’ve said it, it is out in the open, “I suffer from SMRD”.

To be honest I am struggling with social media in innovation, struggling to get my head around it for my business, for me for a long time. It often seems overwhelming, do you feel the same? I worried about this years ago and still do. What is the best social media to have as part of your communicating strategy, how much time do you network?

It starts with a realization

I can see daily the amazing power that social networking can provide, it is certainly eating into my day, more and more. Is this a good thing or bad? What suffers, what benefits? The time issue has to increasingly be managed, and I have yet to come up with a repeatable plan to manage social media consistently each day into my work. I get so much from viewing, commenting, relating and learning.

I don’t have a clear enough strategy for it or where to direct my social media energy, does anyone? It continues to evolve in front of our eyes, are you cresting the social media wave or swimming like crazy to get back up on the surfing board?

I am still learning, experimenting, exploring through a combination of writing blogs, contributing to others, updating my connections, tweeting sometimes like crazy, publishing, promoting or simply clicking on a retweet or offer a “like” back to the author or the one that has publicized something that interests me. Often I do wonder all this frenetic energy leads to what end. It does nag away at me?

My daily bread is innovation

I focus 100% on innovation- I research, I advise, I coach, I mentor, I consult around it. I also write a fair amount about the subject. It is a little “all-consuming” and maybe social media is eating into this a little more than I can digest.

Not an uncommon dilemma

Presently I work as an independent but find this has its marketing difficulties so I need a greater exposure and through social media, I feel I can achieve this. It can lead to a clearer awareness of what I stand for and what I can offer and to date I can see solid progress in others responding, connections made, work undertaken on behalf of others. I want more, so I have to stay on this social media treadmill. The building does take time and time is a precious commodity, so I try to balance this accordingly. Is it “the chicken and/or the egg” so it becomes part of this social media return dilemma?

For me I certainly want to contribute to others, to provide back some of my experiences and significant knowledge gained in working across different aspects of innovation, as many people struggle with this daily. The one problem is I want to get paid for this and I keep wondering how social media can give me that monetary return?  At present, it seems more a constant outpouring and I have not figured out yet, the return for this. The more traditional channels to market still yield more but I think, no I believe, this is changing but it is early days. I’ve just got to figure out my SMRD model better to make this happen more.

The #influencer model- things are changing fast

Things are changing at last. There is a growing recognition that over time your thoughts, opinions, views build up a level of trust. Now, this is precious, as you really do need to guard this, hold onto it and keep improving it as best you can.. Achieving a “go to” trusted resource means you are entering the emerging #influencers domain. This #influencer phenomenon is presently hitting a fever pitch for consumer brand marketing and digital influencing. Perhaps innovation is following from where I see and partly where I seem to be heading, into the #influencers camp, in understanding this and re-orientating to what it requires. What do I need to put in and what do I want out of it- gigs and (close your eyes or look away, those of you that are sensitive to this) paid work for sure!

Connecting is one thing, engaging is another!

The opportunities are certainly endless to engage across the many innovation communities and social networks. To be honest it really is becoming a full-time job and I am simply ill-equipped to go there. I run a business, this must be only a part of the running, not the taking over.

I am trying to balance time, need and return.

I have certainly found offering a considered opinion on “all things innovation” as hard work. My time spent in research gathering and exploring, let alone reading all this collected wisdom is hard work. Yet in my view, to be recognized as an innovation expert, where I think my knowledge does reside, you do have to put in this hard graft and can be very satisfying.

I’m equally always in search to engage. By engaging in numerous conversations, in exchanges, asking/ answering questions and gathering value contribution back, needs a consistent synthesis of how to channel this back into my business in a more effective and productive manner. I’m told the opportunities are endless but are these leading to work? So far it is difficult to tell as my experimental strategy maybe is muddling the social media water, or is it all the combinations that keep me “bobbing along”. I often ask myself am I straying away from traditional models of consulting and client approach and is there one better than another?

Is anyone out there, really listening?

All I know is most clients seem to have given up listening completely. That is until they run into their own brick wall and then you see all the signs of panic and suddenly and urgently need to seek from others, finding answers to their problems. Often these are the new ‘burning platforms’, self-inflicted,  as many simply were not aware what was actually coming towards them, they ignored the warning signs, that building up of a head of steam, that then suddenly blew the cap off their innovation well.  Then it is “parachute time” for help to arrive and full-scale rescue. That familiar roar of the innovation fire engine coming to help douse the fire before it fully consumes those that waited for far too long, for it to happen.

Where do you go to generate awareness? We are told to form a social media strategy and execute it. Oh yeah, right! Is that on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, Flickr, Tumblr and soooo many more. Anyone got some half-decent solutions to manage this without an army of helpers, human or robot? Of course as pointed out by @mirko_ross in reply to @akwyz, for super-nerds Medium, Slack, and Discord. We can go on.

What I really do enjoy about social media

Social media allows me to build real relationships with my potential innovation audience, to inform them instantly of new developments in my area of expertise, in my company, in my travels, in my thinking and more and more in my life. I really have got to know many others that are social #influencers or experts that you can turn too and get some reaction.

Social media is allowing me to bring a previously unseen human factor into these relationships and I like that. It does seem the person at the other end understands the #influencer brotherhood and more than often wants to respond, as they are actually looking for that same important value in their social/ business need of being seen as contributing?

The blurring in front of my eyes

Don’t you wonder who really has time to read the “stream” of tweets that just “blur” in front of my eyes? How do we sort out this stream and extract value? I really wish I had a few more magical tools for that.

Are people on the receiving end really connecting with what you say or recommend and more importantly listening to all this advice being offered? Are we forming deeper relationships from this or just fleeting ones? Am I still a click away from the recycle bin or buried in a flood of messages crushing my message by arriving later and on top of the page?

So I’m asking myself many open-ended questions, on the contribution and impact that social media is having on my business life. I learned many things, I’m moving towards a better social media strategy from all this questioning. Will it transform my business- well that is another open question?

What I’ve learned to keep remembering

1. Social media is not a ‘fad’; it has become deeply embedded in my daily life.
2. I’m needing to engage across multiple groups to contribute and to learn from others
3. I am getting a ‘pulse’ on innovation happening all around me, each day, that shapes my thinking and response.
4. So far I have been dealing with social media on my terms but struggling to extract the value I need to build this fully into my business. I need to go with a different “flow” and “letting go” as you can’t relate to everything but what does that mean?
5. Broadcasts don’t work, self-promotion is not welcome and there is emerging a clear accepted social behavior depending on the social media. I’ve avoided these pitfalls and pleased that I have, as so many others seem not to be as socially aware.
6. It takes a lot of time to build up a reputation, a feeling of being a trusted voice, going to bed each night you worry constantly over not losing that.

Where I’m still learning

1. I need to select and settle on the social media applications that can fully support my strategic development priorities of building a thriving innovation knowledge practice.
2. I certainly feel I need more professional guidance to this whole area to make more sense of it as they seem to be fragmenting even more and experimenting just for the sake of it is tougher for small organizations to do. I just still feel inadequate when I see others seemingly working this space seamlessly- or are they?
3. Getting recognition of the expertise and knowledge that resides ‘within’ my business is still hard to achieve through the tools and applications. Knowledge platforms that work like Google or even LinkedIn are not so aligned to knowledge depth or breadth, they seem aligned with clicks, views, and shares.
4. The time that this engaging in social exchange is taking out of my day needs to be capped. It really is a huge daily struggle.
5. These “online exchanges” are running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year…even on holidays! You choose when you want to get involved yes, but is this just not leading us into an even bigger treadmill of never-ending activity?
6. The development of #influencing is valuable within my business mix, more than ever. Social media, my growing network are connecting me more than most other marketing channels into prospective clients.

What I still question to find the right answers to on four topical points:

1. That links are the Key to Success! It goes beyond that, it is to do with engagement, sustainable engagement and links are just not enough.
2. There are out there amazing building opportunities that wait. You can’t engage in social media half-heartily, it has to be full on!
3. Opening up new markets for your business will happen. Yes but I think over time, a time you have to put in to make this happen and it is often random, fickle and fleeting and must be the real struggle within the corporations at present, seeing a return on investment. Can we afford to just’ go with the flow’ on this?
4. Social media can provide instant market research abilities and feedback. The larger you are, the more demanding this will be. The more opinionated you are the more popular you seem to be but that has its downsides. The fickleness of crowds. The instant reaction may not reflect the long-term value.

So, I struggle on social media and its role in my chosen space of innovation. When you suffer from SMRD like I do,  they do tell me that part of the cure is to talk about your own troubles. A trouble shared……is a trouble tweeted!

The post So I keep asking myself “What is the role of social media in innovation?” first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This quote is from the former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Henry Rumsfeld, who mentioned: “unknown unknowns” (Rumsfeld, 2002).

Since then, people have started using quadrants of knowledge, i.e., known known, known unknown, unknown known, and unknown unknown, to understand and explain the nature of risk but also of leading to an opportunity.

For innovators so much of innovation is hard to detect, it needs discovery and working through these quadrants of knowledge as well. We need to treat ideas the same on how anything needs assessing but it needs to pass through a different thinking about knowledge understanding, as there are ‘known knowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ and we need to prepare for both within our innovation activities.

Our pursuit in life is often the same as our innovation efforts, it is in the search for discovery. Often it happens, that we already feel better equipped for exploring and observing by just getting out of our usual everyday working environment.

It is through this positive action, the need to search and explore, we can discover something that had previously been unknown, a new opportunity to give it a new value. Converting something previously unthought of (those unknowns) gives the potential for far greater value.

If you would like to read this paper where the above came from, then go to this link

For me, a good idea management system needs to be set up for all known and unknown possibilities to capture their potential. The front end of innovation has the challenge of generating ideas, but these come from these two distinct avenues – improving the known and discovering the unknown. Let me explain why breaking down our thinking into knowns and unknowns helps us.

Some links provided here take you to what one provider of idea management software can provide. There are a number of choices and I would always recommend a good, comprehensive evaluation before you finalize your choice, then it really needs to be well-embedded within your innovation process, to extract the best value out of it and give you a consistent return on its costs.

The knowns are those products, services, processes, etc. that we know we can improve upon.

The ‘knowns’ are usually tangible in what we already see. We are often specifically asked to improve on them by finding cost savings, improving their functionality or design. It becomes our task in delivering alternatives, in new varieties, updates, technology enhancement, or simply recognizing the lifecycle of the existing needs refreshing, changing or altering. Much of this work is incremental or distinctive in innovation. This is where a good, well-designed idea management system is ideal, being able to deal with capturing and translating the idea and turning it into something realizable and offering improved value on the existing (knowns). This is managing the innovation portfolio in a systematic and focused way.

Idea management software can offer a structured approach that provides a full concept lifecycle management process, directly built into it. It takes the management of ideas to implementation planning as its hand-over point is when the concept moves into commercialization entering usually a portfolio and pipeline management system.

We need to sustain and nurture the incremental

The constant challenge is coming up with ideas that are not simply one-offs, they need to be continuous in their pursuit. Most of our innovation in organizations is based on incremental improvements that need a sustaining capability. One of the most important parts of any sustaining capability is having access to software that allows for multiple activities to build. This capturing needs a more sustaining routine, a certain familiarity, including an idea management software that can be customized constantly to your ongoing needs, being ideal for managing most of our business needs, that of protecting and building the core.

When you are dealing with assessments of the known, there is a need to have a good evaluation process. Ideas need to be opened up to a greater stimulus, to an audience as wide as possible to contribute and gain their best insights or suggestions. It is encouraging and capturing that additional knowledge, that additional piece of the jigsaw that was missing, that someone else can provide in the development process.

Your job is to improve on the nascent idea you have, to get others involved and build upon this further. The last thing you need to do is spend large parts of your time on the mechanics because you are directing your creative energy away from improving your ideas into winning ones. Solutions need to focus on value, need and growth outcomes and often the reason why we settle on the knowns far more is that we are seeing ways which are seemingly easier to advance, to make improvements on the existing. Thankfully having a good idea management system can greatly support this.

The real value of any software capturing system is more for the unknowns as it requires greater collaboration, observation, and awareness. Unknowns need open, questioning minds and this requires a place to capture them and encourage others to collaborate and equally work on moving them from the unknown to the known and eventually highly valued.

The unknown becomes very different in approaching idea generation.

It needs a different type of approach. It needs to have a different level of innovation idea funnel. I wrote about this some time back, discussing the extended innovation funnel (here) and used this visual. It begins to break down the complexity we find in managing the two ends of the innovation process, discovering and driving concepts through the system.

The unknowns require a wide usage of capturing tools and techniques.

Observation is most probably one of the most important skills to have. It is highly valued in the idea management process. Thankfully technology made available many of these observing techniques and became ‘bolt-on’ modules or are offered in the idea management software solution out of the box – meaning you can automate this “fuzzy” front end.

All the different capturing solutions available allow you to get comfortable in their use, so you are free to do this observing, opening your mind to new possibilities, to find a relationship to what you are doing. The more you can turn unknowns into knowns that are validated through different identification tools. They feed the idea pipeline. For instance:

I always believe the more your organization is exposed to common tools, the more they form a common basis for building a communicating language, protocol, and common purpose.

A common tool I consider as highly valuable within the idea to commercialization process as it frames dialogues in time, resource allocation and the complexity of approach is the three-horizon-framework. If we have a good frame to frame uncertainty within innovation then you can begin to describe this to others while managing the unknowns.  The three-horizon framework has terrific value for considering options, discussing uncertainty and framing the business of today with the challenges you might be facing of the future.

For instance, when it comes to ideas:

For example, you can take the knowns and unknowns and recognize these have different discover needs and time horizons. They need different resources and thinking through to manage. This early recognition can change the very tone of innovation conversations and recognize what it takes in managing ideas that are partly incremental to service today’s business needs and more transforming, to help support the needs of the future.

In both cases, incremental and transforming, are taking ideas through to commercialization but in radically different ways. The value potential of those unknowns, pointing to the future, can grow in understanding over time, in exploring and experimentation.

All ideas that are ‘projecting’ change on your existing products, services or business models implicate the same – you must ensure you have the right conversations about time, resource allocation, expectancies and the ‘stark’ difference between exploitation and exploration when dealing with managing different types of innovation.

The pressure lays always on: how to quickly turn an unknown into a known?

The ability to prototype, changing an intangible concept into a working model, transforms the idea management stage. I would argue that prototyping needs to be in the idea management thinking from as early as it can be. It accelerates understanding, it validates and builds the experience, it allows valuable new insights to ‘play out over time’ to give increasing value. The more we prototype, the more we provide ‘hard’ evidence of the value of an idea turning into a concept to eventually arrive at a commercialized proposition.

By turning to a structured system of managing emerging ideas can allow you to capture your nascent idea, explore and then collaborate around them. Framing them even further in the context of value needs to be highly adaptable, robust and able to be scaled out. One of the best ways is to use a good, reliable and well-developed Idea Management software, for example, Hype does provide this, as well as a few others.

Innovation always has the best chance to flourish when people become engaged and really want to actively engage in searching out new ideas that have value and worth, but they need a place where this can be captured and shared. To achieve that ‘engage and exchange’ culture, you need a well-structured management system that can respond. Good idea management software systems give you a far better chance to innovate well, managing both the knowns and unknowns by capturing your discovery and exploration journey in effective and efficient ways, that gives you a clear system of record and the source of your organization’s collective knowledge to explore and exploit constantly.

 

**adapted and revised from an original post written for Hype Innovation, used an example within this post as a good Idea Management Software provider.

 

The post There are Knowns and Unknowns in Innovation: Let’s Manage Them Differently first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Seriously, have you not noticed the more we work in the innovation space, digital and technology have become inseparable and part of any innovation solution. The innovation funds are increasingly being switched to digital or technology solutions and the output of the discoveries from this digital technology need innovation to then be applied. A virtuous loop.

Managing in this shift has become more intense and committing.

The reliance on deeper insights, more data, greater communications is changing the way we undertake innovation. Speed, scale, and scope are greater within the mix than ever before. We are testing uncertainty constantly, validating a part, pivoting more, experimenting and prototyping to work through this deciphering. Data specific, technology-driven, innovation invigorating.

Organizations are spotting opportunities faster than ever. We are cutting across borders, teaming up with start-up’s, past competitors to seize these opportunities.

Let’s take the emerging Health Care changes going on in the U.S.

Let’s take Amazon, the “golden child” or “big hairy and scary brute”. They see a market is in that specific need of the Amazon treatment, then they are onto it. The recent announcement that J.P.Morgan Chase, Amazon, and Berkshire Hathaway are teaming up in a joint venture to do “something”  about the high cost, complexity, and bureaucracy of U.S. HealthCare, becomes one of those announcements that must have struck a real fear into all the prescription-drug middlemen. It is ambitious, yet the combined clout really makes you sit up and take notice. It is announcing the existing ways of conducting business, in silo’s of activity not visible to others, is going to be changed fairly dramatically. The change will be based on technology, data, and interactions, applying a digital solution alongside innovative applications and linkages, are going to be central to the solutions.

Then we heard that Apple was launching medical clinics, for delivering the “worlds best healthcare experience” for its employees Once it has mastered this, we can expect technology solutions will be applied on their learning for more universal solution application to the US health care, to offer out to the market. Now, this gets very intriguing.

The main purpose is to rein in the runaway health care costs, which are 18% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). The size of the “health care beast” is around $3.3 trillion and it is going to take considerable new investment and concepts to tame this and make it become a little leaner, less duplication and more efficient. Who better to search for creative solutions than these companies, watch as others join in this new battleground.

Yet again we are seeing a business decision made on spotting an opportunity and not concerned, at the present, on the classic financial measure of ROI- return on investment. If you look at Amazon they provide shareholder return on the value in the share, less in the bottom line. They see financial management differently. They chase growth and opportunity for their value.

How that will stack up with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway view on financial management will be interesting to watch. As Warren Buffett has stated “it won’t be easy or quick” to solve healthcare. The current search is on for a “terrific CEO” and in Mr. Buffet’s words “to apply lots of commitment, probably make some important mistakes, lots of time. I’m not interested in lots of time. At 87, I want to keep it moving”

Each of these companies; J.P. Morgan, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, along with Apple have lots of cash to invest, they have access to some of the best and brightest talent and technology solution presently known. This will produce concepts, solutions, and innovations that have high levels of radical change that will be built into them. It will potentially alter the way healthcare operates in ways we currently can’t imagine.

Now why did I raise ROI and entitle this “the New ROI for digital innovation”

Simply the focus on the bottom line might still be the place to focus upon for many but when you have a significant access of cash, technology and talent you have such an amazing confidence in exploiting existing and exploring new markets in ways beyond most organizations ability to comprehend or undertake.  The fact you keep investing your cash into that continuously and relentlessly investing cycle of growth, built on technology and innovation always being shaped by digital understanding, then the traditional ROI (return on investment) seems not as important as my new ROI, one of being Relevant, based on Outcomes and Impact as the new bottom line of investing judgement.

Relevant

It is this merciless and unremitting quest to grow, to expand, to seek out opportunities and disrupt much if what looks to be inefficient, still operating mostly in a manual world, lacking a digitally connected and highly connected value chain there is a real opportunity for technology and innovation to be creatively applied. We are constantly seeing creative solutions in new ways, in combinations of technologies, coming together to change our perception of our worlds (Smartphone, Online books, Uber, Airbnb, Device Management). These are significantly changing our environment, both in our personal lives and increasing in the Industrial world, of connecting up as they show us their relevancy and value. Relevance is today having a direct bearing on the matter, that an opportunity spotted as one that is pertinent to pursue, rigorously. The activity we focus upon in finding solutions must be relevant, ones that are solving real social and economic problems.

Outcomes

It is no more inputs or outputs, it is all about outcomes. The ability to apply, recognize and demonstrate knowledge and understanding. We need to constantly take our experiments from a theory that needs constant testing, adjusting into final validation. Outcomes are looking for new space. It is inventors, researchers and analysts need to achieve outcomes. We have the need to have both extrinsic and intrinsic outcomes, in healthcare solutions for example. We need to always define, build and gain identification with our outcomes as they show the new space and potential opportunity to build. Innovation outcome can be incremental, evolutionary and revolutionary. Outcomes are the new meaning point

Impact

J.P.Morgan Chase, one of the partners with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway, have spoken fairly often around impact investing. The need for scaling, access to sizable capital and exploring different business models. It is the right conditions when capital, talent and social challenge come together to resolve a challenge. The U.S.Heath is just one of those challenges that might be right for the JPMC treatment.

When we map problem spaces (U.S.Healthcare) we are looking for impact investing. The “impact economy” has been defined by the Aspen Institute as the “twin forces of supply and demand, impact investing and social entrepreneurship, that is driving systemic change in the US and around the world.”

Quoting from different papers on the “impact economy”: Part of the aim is to recalibrate supply and demand that looks harder at social impact. The need is to build a new social contract that may develop into a social impact bond- investors provide capital to fund community-based programmes whose successful implementation lessens long-term public expenditure and improves social outcomes. Clearly, this emerging concept will not be easy, but it does bring together all parties to attempt to drive impact and innovate in different fields where we have bigger social challenges. The key is it does need to generate shared value for all and that is going to be a hard road to travel.

Let’s look at some of the critical success factors for this to succeed.

The Monitor Institute wrote a report released in 2009 on impact investing and it provides an excellent overview of what needs to happen.  Their list of critical success factors was to view this from different parties’ perspectives but let me provide the list of significant issues to be resolved. So taking their suggested list and adapting it:

This is an evolutionary path. One that Healthcare solutions might need to travel, so all become highly engaged

• Developing a range of different but creative packaging instruments that make it possible to gain sufficient returns and bring the different parties together in this project.
• Most probably have some infrastructure especially suited to manage opportunities (separate stock exchanges, intermediaries, and specialists)
• Form a clear network/ community to enable linkages between investors and explore common goals.
• Encourage sufficient commercial capital to participate in joint deals by involving all possible investors that see this as critical to contribute funds too.
• Build sufficient submarket funds or grant capital that might have different investment rates so a more ‘blended’ rate is attractive and resolves different ‘benefit’ criteria between parties to underpin the risk/cost investment within the solutions.
• Achieve a common approach for assessing social/ environmental elements of investment from research and valuation aspects that allow new technology related solutions to emerge.
• Structure a viable market for investment opportunities where competitive returns can be demonstrated that yield attractive returns and reverse current cost acceleration
• Impact rating systems can be developed that offer acceptable minimum standards to certify companies and verification and are not actually equally destructive.
• Achieve a growing standard of metrics that set out goals of achieving social or environmental objectives that bring the supply/demand sides into a better, more equitable balance.
• A real push will be needed for more product innovation that meets the challenges, is able to be scaled up and overcomes potential (parts of) society’s objection or concerns with accepting the changes it might bring.

So, we need a different way to evaluate ROI

For me, if you begin to look around at the type of complexities we are trying to resolve we need to dampen the old school of “Return on Investment” and look to the new school of “Relevant, Outcome and Impact” as our new measuring stick.

If we continue to solve solutions through ingenuity from innovation, alongside digital and technology solutions, we will continue to challenge incumbents with new, better value propositions that continually innovate and evolve, as innovation, digital and technology form together giving a very different set of opportunities for value return to the ultimate consumer.

So Relevant, Outcome and Impact might just become our new ROI for business evaluation, born out of innovation, digital and technology application coming together to tackle tough challenges. Worked upon by harnessing talented people and analytical understanding. seizing new opportunities to resolve many of our inefficient areas.

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