We all need to recognize the type of innovative leadership personality within our organization, the ones we are working for, as this might help you manage the innovation work a whole lot better and attract the resources you need.

So can you recognize the traits of your innovation leader?

Are they front-end or back-end innovation leaders? Here’s how you can begin to spot the difference.

The thinking about this came from this book.

A book recently published “Innovation Governance- how top management organizes and mobilizes for innovation”, written by Jean-Philippe Deschamps and Beebe Nelson is one I can totally recommend it as it is so rich in thinking around managing innovation.

The author’s view argues that organizations are traditionally tribal and often each group possesses its own rules, and its own judgement of what is important and this ‘creates’ the absolute need to have a mechanism or strong personalities that can ‘cut’ across these potential barriers.

One suggestion coming from this book is recognizing your innovation leaders

According to the authors of “Innovation Governance”, you need the right combination of front-end and back-end leaders, since the two types are complementary. They are able to lead and manage these tribes.

The best way to identify these two types of leaders is often their functional orientation, possible background disciplines and their general management interest and attitudes.

A good example of this ‘divide’ is between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook of Apple, as highly visible and well cited in personality, backgrounds and interests, in what we read. As described well within the book this difference is best illustrated by this Apple leadership comparison.

The front-end leader
Steve Jobs was clearly a front-end leader. He constantly sought out more radical creativity in design and end product results.

• He had a real passion for new ideas, exploring and combining different thinking and designs, and searching for solutions to customers’ un-articulated needs to improve their product experience.
• He was constantly questioning the status quo and challenging (extremely hard) and confronting the team around him with constant how, what if, what else and why not type of questions.
• He had a more entrepreneurial flair and more of a venture capital mentality regarding returns and risks; he kept focusing on ‘big win’ promises, instinct often drove him.
• He had this belief to constantly experiment, to open up new paths and different thinking and he looked to accept risk and tolerate failure by moving through the ‘dwelling stage’ into the ‘learning from’ set of insights.
• He encouraged individuals to have a degree of freedom, he challenged them constantly, and he expected a climate of mental adventure and excitement to attract others into the organization but these were made up of a diversity of backgrounds. Yet he was, by all accounts a control freak. Nothing passed without his agreement
• His own background was rich in diversity and inquiry and he draw often from this and he portrayed himself as a rebel
• He held onto his vision, yet was prepared to adjust the pathway towards one that responded to meet breaking opportunities.
• Finally, his tolerance levels were often ‘explosive’ but he generated a level of commitment to producing some of the stands out products of recent years.

The back-end innovation leader
It is often questioned why Tim Cook took over when Steve Jobs died. He is seemingly the archetypal back-end guy.

He was credited with managing the Apple supply chain, manufacturing and logistics, thus freeing up Jobs to focus on his front end pursuits. Tim Cook comes with more of an operational discipline.

• He focuses on getting products to market flawlessly in cost-effective ways, mastering all the complexity of putting in place the operational foundations necessary to go from concept to launch and roll-out.
• He has an insistence on achieving higher planning quality and expects the process discipline and standardization to make innovation replicable.
• He understands the demand for speed to market through a high level of cross-functional integration and a ‘first-time right’ philosophy in implementation.
• Would have without doubt flexibility in execution decisions, based on detailed operational knowledge and pragmatic risk management.
• That ability to motivate staff for product battles and promotion of the ‘launch and learn’ approach, leads to adapting quickly to improvements, re-launch cycles and even recalls.
• Tim seems to ‘think’ strategically, considers the investment community, amassing cash and systematically picking off areas that maintain Apple’s present higher-end approach.
• He seems to continue to encourage higher value incremental steps, holding on to accepted Apple philosophies and perhaps struggles to ‘go’ for the bold new breakthroughs.
• Tim strikes me as more ‘grounded’, providing for greater stability and managing a maturing organization.

Both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have strong leadership skills, they both have ‘got’ innovation but their approaches and acceptance levels would have been coming from their different approaches, personalities and backgrounds. They both got detail.

Strong leaders with distinct personalities need understanding. Otherwise, you are often forced back to the ‘drawing board’ for deeper reasons than you initially consider. Consider the personality and what ‘ makes up’ their set of experiences and risk profiles to help ‘advance’ your innovative thinking

Balancing the respective innovation clout is always needed.

If you have a front-end leader at the helm of your innovation activities then you need to find the balance of who manages the disciplined operational side, then if you have a back-end leader, who will defend an aggressive front-end agenda?

The appointing of any innovation leader has significant implications, sometimes huge.

This ‘style’ can determine what generates innovation and can determine the passion, commitment and emphasis point that your organization’s innovation will possibly give preference to, and then provide those necessary resources you are needing.

It is well worth understanding where your innovation leader’s personality, background and functional orientation might lie. It might make your task a little easier to attract the funds and resources you need. So many of our innovation concepts die within the organization, often sadly, as they lack sponsorship appeal and simply do not get them excited.

So by appealing to the basic instincts of their personality traits you can perhaps ‘hook them’ into your innovation concept. Once you have their attention you can then ‘open it up’ for why it makes sense to explore further for taking it out into the big wide world.

The post Recognizing your type of innovation leader first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This questioning increases particularly when there grows even more uncertainties in marketplaces, when you are forced into making tougher investment decisions, in allocating resources, in adjusting a strategy to meet changing circumstances.

Then you get the “well, what’s the payback period then?”

Often we struggle to offer a half-decent reply as most innovation has stayed mired in incremental approaches and so becomes fairly complicated in identify the new part from the old that is already the invested part, or it remains uncertain, as it is often exploring the unknowns.

Perhaps we should reverse this question or be ready to ‘gazump’ it and beat them to the question before they ask. Two specific ways to think about this come to mind.

The first was suggested in a post back in 2005 by Ruth Ann Hattori called “the cost of not innovating” and I like this one. The other came from a post by my innovating friend and collaborator, Jeffrey Phillips “what are the opportunity costs on not innovating?”

Jeffrey is still not residing on a tropical beach as he still has not got the complete answer to that one. Both are tough questions but well worth reflecting over.
Merging both of their thoughts here and adding a dash of my own spice let’s explore this a little more

To quote from Ruth Ann’s article “What is the cost of not innovating?” What can happen when you don’t innovate but your competition does? If management’s evaluation of the cost of innovation is only focused on ROI and doesn’t account for the cost of not innovating, they are only seeing half of the picture and may be missing the half that’s strategically critical for the future.

Well how would you answer the following questions?

Again Ruth Ann nicely raises a few uncomfortable ones with some small adjustments on my part.

1. In the past couple of years, have any of your competitors brought to market an innovative product/service that you had the capability to create but failed to bring to market? Why?
2. Has someone recently entered your market/industry with a new or novel new business model that is placing your business at a higher risk than in the past?
3. Have any of your competitors found a way to streamline or reinvent processes that you still struggle with, to become increasingly open and find new collaborative ways to speed innovation to the market?
4. Have your customers begun to drift away in search of a completely new solution to an old irritation as they continue to experience frustrations with existing products?

The cost of not Innovating is the estimated dollar value your competitors have gained and that you have failed to capture through your own innovation efforts and this strikes more at the core of the need for ensuring innovation is well-managed and supported.

The cost of not innovating includes everything you miss when your innovation efforts aren’t focused on your entire business process.

Can we compare the value of the missed opportunities to the opportunities we chose to pursue?

Jeffrey thinks the answer is a qualified “yes”.  He suggests “that is, we innovators should attempt to place a value on every innovation or every good idea, and suggest that the avoidance of innovation means that we miss out on new customers, new markets and most importantly, new revenues streams and new profits.

Those missed opportunities come at a cost – usually in disruption or product or service obsolescence.  This analysis requires a number of assumptions – that we can create a new product or service, that it has value or benefits to customers, and that we can assert some knowledge about the downstream revenues or profits that will be missed if we don’t innovate”.
Jeffrey puts it really well, do managers ever ask “what is the size of the opportunity we miss if we avoid innovating?”

You should consider not just the short-term costs but also the longer term implications if you choose not to innovate by investigating and exploring all the options, otherwise someone else will slip into this ‘void’.

What needs to be recognized by all is that measuring ‘returns’ is really hard

Often the person asking the “what is the ROI on innovation” has never been involved in creating, designing or managing innovation. They can often be the ‘bean counter’, the hard-nosed CFO out to drive up the short-term performance, imposing short-term deadlines on getting the innovation launched within a given calendar year to meet much of his performance measures.

They also often do not really appreciate that there are real disparities on time, investments and resources for managing an incremental project against one that leads to discovery or disruptive innovation and why these are dramatically different.

Of course we need to measure, including ROI, by attempting to qualify and quantify investments and their returns. ROI on innovation is just that much more complex. It is actually where you start in any discussion on returns. We should always start early; keep the dialogue going as thinking becomes validated by new data, by new understanding.

The most valuable return comes from creating ‘something’ that separates you from competition and has the potential for a sustainable advantage. We should actually start here.  Achieving this outcome raises the bargaining power; it raises the perceived value of future attraction from investors.

Innovation that is different from other offerings in the marketplace gives you a clear space from the route that most travel, that of commoditizing the marketplace, often through everyone just pursuing incremental innovations.

Sadly, many within organizations are only given the one choice within their innovation hands are just the incremental cards to play with. These cards are the only ones dealt out by a leadership that often simply do not understand, or allow others to dictate, as they are not fully engaged in innovation and what it can truly offer.

We need to raise the stakes, play innovation poker perhaps and ask the question of them “what is the true cost of not innovating? “What is the true cost of not engaging in innovation?”

Recently I’ve been making the case for closing the leadership gap on innovation.

So before I even get into asking “the cost of not investing in innovation” I’d look at the leadership gap or engagement with innovation as that gives a “fair” indication of where innovation truly fits, beyond just simply jargon and talk.

We have to ask constantly where else do you grow a business, besides extending into new geographical areas – and tell me what is the investment in years and resources before you see returns here? Or you safely continue to incremental-away as your contribution to having a comfortable and safe life.

That just might be one comment to far but might lend its self to being rephrased in a way that is palatable.

No, until we change much of the prevailing thinking, innovation is our only primary source of new wealth- of a country or organizations growth-to get true engagement, that is our real imperative to achieve. Innovation primary aim is to strengthen profit, not weaken it, to build on what we have with something that advances benefit and many often fail to recognize its place here also.

We all wish to be part of something truly exciting and certainly can’t get that much excited if we are asked just to engage with innovation simply as ‘appropriately’ or without any real understanding of what is being asked but not supported.

I wish we could get a greater innovation engagement.
Sadly the leadership tends to push innovation down the organization and in so doing is handing over their future, our future, and no wonder we are seeing shorter tenures at the CEO level.

Investors and stakeholders can only live with this level of perhaps, at best, ‘steady’ performance for a limited time as this approach is increasing allowing for others to seize opportunities, chosen to be ignored often by current management or not fitting with their prevailing attitudes and tenure.

It is time innovation sits ‘squarely’ in the middle of each board room, well represented and searching constantly in linking innovation to the strategy.

I’ve outlined much on this alignment in different articles but start here to get into these previous articles.

So often too little too late

Just look at the attempted turnarounds left far too late because the warning signals were ignored or not wanted to be attempted, as they would have threaten the existing ‘core’ of what had been achieved and invested in, often build for different times.

By taking a more evolutionary approach, they would see emerging the rising stars of  tomorrow where the organization will, over time, become their new core businesses.

Emerging new business help answer the “not investing” question

These emerging innovations or businesses may be step-outs from the core or more related extensions that simply need new capabilities and time to build. They might be completely new areas to invest in. Building successful future businesses requires much seeding but then the questions on “when do we get returns” rises up again-

A leadership team simply focusing on their short-term performance makes choices others never know about that are the real stakeholder, the real investors that take an equity stake.

Why do investors often remain ‘blind’ to innovations that have horizons that are not within the annual review; even external board members often lack an innovation clarity that covers all the three horizons that innovation should be actively worked across.

The missing engagement for innovation at the top
A clear lesson or message lies at the heart of this missing engagement gap at leadership level. Either we invest and engage, to be beyond “average to good” in performance and drive the business with a “no compromise on innovation” mantra to get you above the majority and work hard at managing the risk and return equations this needs.

I believe this is the pathway to a healthy, sustaining future and we need more of this “quest” for real growth.

Or you hanker down and become “frugal” and continue to par back to “good enough” where the majority of organizations wish to be, so they can safely draw down their ‘result package,’ You try to keep the majority of the ‘passive’ shareholders happy to receive a steady return on their investments.

To achieve this often there is a need to sacrifice employee’s for the short-term and throw away their knowledge, trim away the products that don’t fit, divest in assets that don’t yield immediate return, attempt geographical expansion on a “foothold” strategy and with products simply adapted but not built from that markets understanding up.

The final straw is the announcement of buy back schemes instead of investing in the future by committing to innovation. Risk and investment in the future has got lost completely. This is the pathway to eventual destruction but often the leadership choosing this path are not around to see the “bitter fruits” of these decisions.

This is our real innovation dilemma, our innovation blind spot when we look at where innovation fits within organizations, often we really do not know what is actually taking place. I believe innovation roadmaps should become part of the reviewing process to give a better indication of the areas of future promise.

Those that do constantly ask “what is the return for this innovation” really know this is hard but are often I feel defending the (their) status quo, wanting to maintain the existing practices, denying in themselves by ignoring what is going on around them and re-affirming short-term performance as the focus, at whatever cost.

Those that look at innovation differently, across different horizons  are searching for opportunity, for new innovation pathways to a better, sustaining future.

I very much subscribe to the three horizon approach to innovation where you operate in different mindsets and scenarios.

We do need to ask constantly “what is the cost of not innovating” and “what is the lost opportunities we missed” by avoiding or reducing innovation down to meet these short-term pressures.

These that do want to engage in answering these two questions I feel, are really keen to explore and embrace the future through innovation. They recognize uncertainty and risk-taking are necessary needs in today’s more competitive environment and have to be a fair slice of the ‘investment pie’ going forward in managing.

Perhaps these are the perfect questions to ask each time –  it begins to sort out the visionaries from the plodders. Those engaged in innovation, those going through the motions.

Then if you are still having difficulties in receiving replies then ask “well, what actually becomes the final cost when we are forced to respond, often when it is too late?

Let me know how you get on in your personal investment return by asking others about a lack if innovation investment. Be ready for a spirited discussion perhaps and look for a positive outcome.

It improves everybody’s innovation rate of return.

The post What is the missing cost of not innovating? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have recently been in some different discussions about the merits and balances required for the separation to manage incremental and radical innovation. Partly this is in preparation for a workshop later this month but partly from a conversation, I am having with a sizable, well-respected organization, with its head office based here in Europe.

In the conversation within the organization, we were discussing the breakdown in their treatment of incremental and radical and they suggested this was being managed within an “ambidextrous structure” yet I was not convinced. I have to point out this was only a part of a broader story on the difficulties of managing conflicting innovation demands that they were having.

One key constraint in their thinking I felt was not having distinct units as they were trying to manage incremental and radical through the same process and that, for me, is a basic mistake.

I feel to truly claim an ambidextrous organization you have to be working towards the conceptual model offered by Reilly and Tushman on the “Ambidextrous Organization”

Reilly and Tushman’s argument was to truly flourish, not only do you need to maintain a variety of innovation efforts but  it does need more of a recognition of the full organization to manage these differently, not in isolation or selected parts of your organization.

You need to consciously address the differences and build those into the twin process of managing incremental and radical. Let me offer my take on this.

Simultaneous the need is to manage the differences in Exploration & Exploitation.

I love how two words have such potential in their meaning and approach. It is the same as ‘divergence or convergence’. They clarify distinct differences, you don’t merge them, and you treat them as one leading into the other (divergence into convergence) or running in parallel (exploration & exploitation) for good reason.

Exploring and exploiting do need separation, at least in our thinking or applying. In organizations that practice ambidextrous design, they separate the new, exploratory units from their more traditional, exploitative ones, allowing for different processes, structures and cultures to emerge but it is at the senior management level they maintain tight links.

This way you can pioneer more breakthrough or even disruptive innovation while allowing the incremental gains to be focused, and optimized without this consistent set of  distractions of trying to balance the two within the same resource pool or trying to squeeze it through the same assessment and timeline process.

It is very different when you have to go on exploratory expeditions which are harder to determine and the last thing is having the constant pressure of balancing for time and between types of innovation. Exploration & Exploitation approaches need really different measuring metrics also.

It is at the senior leadership level any conflicts are managed not within the unit or organization department or even by a head of the unit if the organization does not manage in this ‘ambidextrous’ way. If you attempt to manage these together I think you don’t extract the full benefits you can gain from having this more dedicated focus, working on distinctly different innovation needs.

What does radical mean to you?

The other issue I have is the use of ‘radical’ within the discussion. This can create such different meaning for each of us and can certainly be preconceived, so it already becomes hard to let go or change.

Also ‘radical’ is often felt in larger organizations as something that simply does not fit as they are not a radical organization but a careful, often too cautious one.

So ‘breakthrough’ seems to be a more natural fit and sits opposite of ‘incremental’ far more in my mind and it seems most others, worried over the ‘radical’ label.

For incremental you exploit  through upgrading, adding more choice or building on what you presently offer, whereas you explore far more for breakthrough projects.

You can rightly point out there are numerous different type approaches and I recently wrote on what is the appropriate design within our organization (http://bit.ly/zdUhKp ) using radical I know. Your type is partly determined by your structure and its degree of optimization of its potential flexibility and what you need to achieve.

So what are differences to be recognized for Exploring and Exploiting?
The understanding has to come back to alignment, the alignment to strategic intent (of the innovation need) and the recognition of distinct differences in critical tasks.

It is defining the differences is the role of the leader, who is either managing incremental or breakthrough innovation,as they should focus on different competences, controls, rewards and the environment you are expected to work within, to deliver these as effectively as possible. It is difficult to ‘flip’ between the two as they call for distinct mindsets.

Again it is the power of the difference in thinking about these. Using the comparison of exploitative versus exploratory in this two-word comparison that I love, does give you the real differences in the focus that needs to be recognized and undertaken.

I’m sure you can extend this list even more but the point is that the difference in mindset is significantly opposite. Can you apply these within the same business group or unit? I seriously doubt it.

Eating from the same innovation stew pot everyday might not be the best solution.

As we think of innovation we have to be careful not to limit ourselves, not just in approach or types but in the way we set about and manage this.

Trying to bring all aspects of innovation activity into one ‘pot’ means you end up with an often underwhelming stew. It simply fails to really deliver, as you failed to do the necessary separating and distinctive preparations that all the parts needed to be achieved as your end result, to meet the different market needs that are around.

You need to separate, the innovation that sets about protecting the core, building and strengthening it and that that pushes and extends the business beyond.  These really require really different mindsets in approaching and managing across the organization.  Not just in  isolated pockets struggling to balance the different demands being placed on them.

Within these ‘collective’ silo’s they can’t differentiate distinctly enough and until this is fully understood it constrains and adds unnecessary pressures.

Unless you address this  it is never fully appreciated across the organization on what is needed to be going on and how you should support and measure it’s results. Bundled up it all becomes a compromise.

There needs to be this realization that incremental and breakthrough are so different in activities, processes, structure, cultures and metrics to attempt to achieve the optimized effect, you need this ‘dual effect’.

Having a clear separation in managing incremental and breakthrough innovations is more effective and efficient but please don’t tip them in in the same pot, but distinct and separate innovation ‘cooking’ mediums, to achieve a more outstanding and differentiated set of results where compromise was not down to being mixed into the same general approach.
Save

The post The separation effect required for innovation choices first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Reading through the latest global survey results from McKinsey entitled ‘Innovation & Commercialization, 2010’ at http://fwd4.me/cRK and you must wonder with all the activity (and hype) surrounding innovation why we do not make the type of positive progress you should expect in innovation management.

There are very positive signs innovation is emerging stronger than ever from the recent bout of economic ‘flu’ we all have been going through. The report starts on a high note “84% of all executives say innovation is extremely or very important to their companies’ growth strategy”- yippee!

The darker side is the ‘but’- “little has changed in the way they generate ideas and turn them into products and services plus many other challenges remain remarkably consistent”- oh dear!

Do we ever learn?
The core barriers to successful innovation have not changed according to this survey. What will make the connection if innovation is so important yet not changing in the way we manage it? The answer does lie in the reports tentative suggestion “formalize processes” but that does need a more detailed grasp of what makes up innovation management and much of corporate management does not seemingly have the willingness or commitment to learn this.

How can we change this lack of progress in learning?
I’ve been working on this in different ways that include some detailed researching, collaborating with like minded people and exploring the different aspects that do connect the multiple strands that make up innovation.
McKinsey’s report does confirm (thankfully) that the biggest challenge is organization and suggests “improvement in understanding in this area would make the most profound difference in innovation performance.” So I and my collaborating partners are on to something here.

I have been amazed at the different attributes needed to make the multiple types of innovation work, be this open innovation, business model innovation, design-led, needs driven, operational, service excellence innovation, technology focused or research & development innovation.

Add in simply ‘management innovation’ and you really begin to see the complexity to grasp for improving the chances of a sustaining success in innovation as more likely. No wonder it becomes difficult for CEO’s, HR Managers to structure and organise their innovation efforts in better ways but you can.

More on this emerging work will be outlined later in future blogs. For this blog let me suggest simply:

Steps to help  improve the innovation process include:

• Recognizing, allocating and aligning the talent to the required task and training them in the required attributes needed to be in place for the ‘type’ of innovation needed
• Ensure leadership is clear in its needs to achieve and which options within the innovation types available can best be applied to realise this.
• Have a process that is well thought through and tightly managed so as to reduce the ad hoc parts right down so the necessary ‘resource energy’ is channelled appropriately to meet the strategic needs.
• Keep constantly attentive to the relationships that go within and beyond the company walls and focus on the techniques that reduce ‘destructive tension’ and replace this with ‘constructive tension’
• Simply recognizing innovation does require a formalized process and the appropriate attention and efforts are constantly at ‘top of mind’ and clearly understood within the organization to align strategic- innovation priorities and this ‘need’ is paramount to succeed.

If innovation is a real priority then management within organizations does need to invest and learn about it more. They do need to have this necessary fuller understanding of the process from beginning to the end and what makes it tick repeatedly, and work effectively and efficiently, otherwise the next survey will be telling us the same repeating story, that little has changed in innovation understanding in a world of arguably constant change.

It is strange if this lack of learning continues on the required understanding of what does need organizing and recognizing in structuring the required innovation management. I, for one, would like to change this.

The post Will we ever learn to manage innovation to make progress? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.