I have often been returning to scaling, struggling with finding the best answers. Many organizations struggle with scaling. This can be scaling their organization, their capabilities or more often, taking an idea into a fully scaled delivery.

Maybe I have been looking at it all wrong?

The complexities of scaling can’t be lightly dismissed. You need very often, size to scale. This could be in a new plant, in where production should be situated, so it can be allowed to scale at a later date, in resources able to achieve scale or more importantly you scale according to the type of goods or demand so they can be readily available, closer to the market they are needed.

When you work in a global organization, scale takes on even greater set of dimensions, one that needs coordinating and managing.

So I was thinking through some points on scaling a little differently. They are partly ‘open questions’ or some thinking out loud. You can say they are “half-baked”, perhaps in more than one way!

Can we make scaling up more systematic? I know that a good colleague and friend of mine, Ralph-Christian Ohr spends significant time on this to crack. He is a joint facilitator to “Scaling-up: From Corporate Startup to Business Impact” along with Frank Mattes. You can follow their work over on innovation-3,  where they help companies to set the Scaling-Up of a fully validated innovation concept up for success.

I am thinking scale differently here, So let me explore this, it is only emerging for me. I have found much on scaling-up as specific to a certain point of need, such as a startup to a new business outcome. Can we think of scaling-up differently?

So a series of questions first.

Are we placing the emphasis of “scaling-up” too far down the delivery chain? Should “scaling” be broken down and modernized? Can we scale-up firstly in the digital world and then take this into the physical world. I am questioning scaling-up and much of this might be simply mumble jumble or is it? So some of my opening thoughts and I will also want to come back to this at a later time.

When we decide to scale

As we scale and become more outward in chasing global trade, issues move from being simply complicated to be far more complex. Past experience can be enough to assist complicated but complex becomes more problematical as it is ambiguous, uncertain and presents a uniqueness in its challenges. Scaling-up does have the potential of opening up new places to play, or the dark holes many of us often fall down into. Getting scaling right is hard and having it available at the right time even harder. How can we reverse engineer scaling up to reduce complexity?

This growing uncertainty we face in the world that has become (overly) reliant on the continuance of open borders, will add to our scaling up dilemmas. We are seeing risk management become increasingly important in any assessment on where, how and why we need to scale-up and more importantly when. This growing complexity to manage is increasingly moving organizations towards the very traits innovation also requires. Those of dealing with greater ambiguity, of building in the needs of agility, higher levels of flexibility, curiosity and the willingness to explore and experiment, and take increasing risk.

Dealing in agility

For many, it is a very uncomfortable place to go, when they have invested millions in their supply chain. They naturally want to channel everything into their supply chain to optimize and utilize it. They have obtained high levels of visibility but in this pursuit of optimization traded off many levels of flexibility. Supply chains have become reliant on high levels of predictability. This reliability has been working well for the established organization, set up to extract maximum efficiency and effectiveness out of the investments they have made in predictable markets. Careers have been made previously on stability, exploitation, and extraction, not risk and exploration. Yet, what if this changes? Scale will be dealt with differently if unpredictable conditions come towards us.

Yet, as markets become increasingly uncertain, new competitors entering the markets with very different ways that they see the supply chain and delivering their solutions, will be better positioned to leverage on a more volatile set of market conditions. Emphasizing delivering on customer needs will be placing uncertainty back into the previously honed supply chain model or production model of many companies stuck in the old model of generating demand for their solutions, not those of the marketplace. The risk of being highly scaled is fast becoming a point of disruption for others. Scaling up needs a different lens than in the past perhaps.

The shedding of legacy can equally liberate innovation

Legacy, leadership, cultures, and processes, are inherited from the past industrial economy of standalone businesses, where the scale was achieved through mass production, tailored to the producer’s needs, of providing products that worked but not necessarily in alignment to the customer’s needs. That was fine when you had a limited choice available. There is a shift going on today.  Supply is exceeding demand and demand has simply become that, demanding. That is reversing part of the thinking towards scaling up, the consumer expects and demands a solution to their own specific problems, and organizations have to adjust accordingly.  This is where innovation comes into play. Supply has become more tailored and focused. It needs to be more agile and flexible. It is being forced back in the production process to meet rapidly changing demand. The scale has to respond accordingly.

To get supply closer to demand, you need to be closer to your ultimate consumer, in the market and through a more personalized, focused dialogue to shorten “the response to change,” to keep in pace with customer requirements. In many ways we need to scale-up understanding, the front end of innovation, drawing in the knowledge and insights quickly enough and then process these at speed to keep pace. Today scaling-up has a different point of resource emphasis, it is not so defined as the end point but more as “adaptive” scaling, at the appropriate point of need. We are shifting from applying standardization and searching for increasing flexibility. Scaling needs a more modular set of solutions.

So standardization is giving way to customization. Large-scale product runs are being adapted to meet more specific opportunities; response rates and customer engagement are being hugely advanced by technology and constant exploring the full customer journey with data and analytics helping the understanding. Hierarchy and delegation are flattening out and seeking engagement. The whole doing and thinking, is based far more on this dependency on growing real-time feedback and ongoing knowledge flows. Digital application throughout the organization to speed up understanding and provide visibility, where ever it is needed to shorten ‘response’ time.

The changes we are undergoing play towards innovation outcomes seen differently

Strategy today, is far more on grasping the essence of a constantly changing situation and equally on anticipating the future. It is forward looking not backward filled. A primary goal of growth requires innovation to be the catalyst to create the future. For this to happen we do need to recognize that innovation must become a greater instrument of strategy, far more central or core, in organization application and understanding. It is the best means of gaining a strategic advantage and often the basis of survival in how innovation creates, leading to new growth and profits.

So by us recognizing innovation as the means of gaining an advantage, we need to think more creatively on where and how we scale.

Unfortunately, innovation is primarily made up on “Knowns and Unknowns in Innovation: Let’s Manage Them Differently and much of the innovator’s job is to make these “known” as soon as possible. Any plan of future actions needs to be designed in different ways. We need more modular thinking and this is where scaling can be achieved differently. We are seeking emergence; this is the key.

Today we are struggling due to these legacies. We are attempting to scale out, often on a current path of decline, or organizational design; one that is too rigid, and static, and we chose to ignore many warning signals as the understanding is not well connected up. The route to new scaling needs to be built on a fluid design, dynamic and based on constant discovery so we can be in this ’emergent mode’ as quickly as we can, to translate this.

The value of the digital twin may offer some resolution to scaling up (of everything)?

The smaller the component to build, the quicker you can scale it and optimize it. In the age of the digital twin, we can build the virtual product by specifying and validating it, we can prototype it for increase verification and greater digital/physical engagement and interaction. Then we can go into a virtual production to simulate, to map product concepts out, to validate and begin to commission and structure the physical as you can provide better understanding, structure, and behavior your innovation concept will have increasingly “down the innovation concept/validation” process.

We are moving the front-end of design into a virtual one, more and more, to enable products and then eventual production to simulate, test and optimize concepts in a virtual world before it enters the real world. As we work in this digital twin world we continually gain new insights from concept designs, from customer feedback and then when it does enter the real physical world there is a well-established continuous loop of improvement.

We can design production, facilities and a host of other things through digital twins. I wrote “have you got your digital twin strategy sorted out yet? This thinking more holistically about how and where digital twins can be applied does make a significant contribution to thinking “scaling-up” accordingly in very digitally connected ways.

Scaling up comes from focusing on real points of value, these being optimizing, enhancing, digitalizing and streamlining, on a continuous basis and digital process design, might do this well. It is for me, the combinations we can achieve from engineering the innovation value chain through connectivity, through increasing intelligence and feedback, and by constantly validating this, by automating this innovation process of design in this digital (virtual) world, as well as in its physical one.

We need to build more into our front end to model different scenario’s so we can “scale” and ask “what if?” accordingly. We are surely building designs that by going through this digital /physical process that gives us flexible, are scalable and upgradable as the designs evolve. We then adapt our scale as we validate.

As put forward by some of the suppliers of PLM software, we do need to think far more about Product Innovation Platforms that offer enterprise-wide foundations to build and design the concept, to scaled out the solution. To achieve this we do need to creatively think where a digital twin can play their part, recognizing the digital thread that is occurring in all our future innovation activity. Going fully Digital offers us an evolutionary path if we choose to take it. It connects much more than we have connected today.

We must recognize “just” physical assets are actually less important, they are becoming increasingly dependant on digital being part of their offering, an increasingly valuable part, as more of our solution components are software related. It is in the software we have the potential to scale out in different ways, less in the physical assets that house them. The value of software giving outcomes and insights is increasing the value of the assets. The physical assets are the delivery mechanism, the host, and it is the value “extracted” from data that is rapidly giving the “return on investments”. So what should we be thinking about to “scale-up?”

Many “stand-alone” manufacturers would gain by considering platforms and joining forces in ecosystems that can design and share more complex solutions. This allows for a shared scaling up design. This fresh thinking of ecosystem design gives different scope, architecture, and capabilities. Having smart, connected products offers the ability to scale differently.

Innovations and Strategy need to be tested constantly in a different time and space.

Re-thinking design, applying digital solutions can provide the connecting mechanism to explore, relate and test assumptions, to relate your context to the higher level ones. You have brought back “scaling up” to the front end.

By designing your innovation through greater visualization and digital “twinning”  you can cascade your innovation views quicker. By building innovation concepts digitally, you can to make better assumptions, predictions, solutions, and decisions; it is drawing in all involved, specifically customers into the strategic process. It allows for conscious awareness, it becomes the method to examine, test, validate and improve on the assumptions. Then you can scale-up with increased levels of confidence.

The post The problem of scaling can confuse those innovating. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This report was produced by Dr. Michael Kolk, a partner, Digital  Innovation Lead in Arthur D Little and Heike Woerner, a principal, technology and innovation management.

Now that is music to my ears, a report that provides extra “jest” to my own arguments that digital innovation is going to take over in very significant ways the innovation management process from discovery to delivery.

So many of the current suppliers of software are asleep at the wheel still working the old tired model of how to set about innovation. That will change, it will change and I predict we will see significant movement into having digital solutions specifically for innovation management in 2019. As I know the continuing deepening of insights will eventually compel companies to change their innovation management thinking.

I just want to highlight four visuals from the Arthur D Little (ADL) report that makes the connection of digital and innovation stand out as a place we all must go, as soon as possible. Arthur D Little have copyright to all the visuals shown here.

ADL suggest the most important technologies can be grouped into three families, depending on what they bring to innovators
1. those that boost intelligence, for instance about customer needs;
2. technologies that bring better and faster foresight, e.g. concerning product performance;
3. digital solutions that improve and accelerate collaboration, communication, and learning.

As ADL rightly point out we have had consistent improvement in innovation performance but it still has not been at, in my view, at most organization’s satisfactory levels. They raise some critical “if only” questions and ask “might digital provide an answer”? The answer is not so much what digital can offer, it is what organizations want to (finally) become. Will they become more focused and organized to commit far more deeply to building innovation into their core. I think they will have too, in this digital age or they will be even more disadvantaged, disrupted and struggling to find sustaining growth. Its the call of top management to commit to innovation in more resolute ways.

The fourth one I want to provide from this ADL report gives a really excellent visual of the nine building blocks they (ADL) believe have the potential to transform the way innovation gets down.

ADL clearly have their views on how they will approach this digital innovation transformation. Much of the report breaks down different “persona” or archetypes and offers suggested ways to set about approaching each of their challenges to gain benefit from the transition to digital innovation, “if companies can overcome a wide range of barriers”

ADL offers some helpful opening guidelines to help solve this challenge to move to digital innovation. I think it is going to be very hard, firstly to instal any innovation engine across an entire company and in bridging this lack of capabilities, competencies and capacity without radical overhaul of what is in place today, the legacy systems of innovation, and this deep commitment to making innovation as core as digital will be.

Again, where ADL have gone in identifying how digital technologies will transform the ways that innovation will be managed, signals a positioning that they, as a practice, can continue to build from this research that went into this report. I assume they will further build a practice into advising on the translation, impact, and meaning. To help us all translate this radical redesign of the innovation management system, that we are all struggling to get our heads around. This report contributes in very helpful ways.

ADL in contacting them promised, “there is more to come“. I, for one, will be looking forward to this. The comment was: “We have already deepened and broadened our insights in recent months and will continue publishing on this important and intriguing topic!”

If you go to “search” in this posting site of mine, you will see I have been researching and offering thoughts on this new digital innovation era. If you put into the search one of these (links supplied);  “new innovation age” or “the future of innovation” or “designing the future of innovation” or “collaborating across industries” or finally “digital discovery” you will see how I have been looking at this across multiple strands of thought. All I can offer is some thoughts here: “start reading, start thinking and start transforming”

There is a new innovation era and it is digitally enabled. 2019 promises this to become critical in it’s building and gathering momentum.

The post Innovating in the digital age- a terrific report first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

There is this consistent need or pressure to grow, yet that specific needle stays stubbornly stuck in low growth numbers, even with all this innovation talk and desire. Why is that? We know you simply grow a business by choosing a mix of investing in innovation, merger, and acquisitions or releasing your resources into more profitable activities. Innovation as a dedicated activity still sits uncomfortably within many organizations.

To try and catalyze growth, companies undergo perennial reorganizations, often to revitalize themselves. According to a Deloitte report, 50 percent of companies are undergoing an organizational transformation, yet only 11 percent think they will succeed. What’s worse, 70 percent of transformation programs do fail. In these failures, we only seem to continue to layer on complexity as a further stop-gap measure.

It is no wonder we’re growing increasingly pessimistic about making a positive change to a different transforming model within organizations. Without innovation taking a more leading transforming role, most of our established companies will continue to struggle to break out of their existing approach to business. Far too many are mired in a past business mindset.

One basic argument is that no matter what we do to undertake change, we seem stuck in the Industrial Age of the last century. We claim we are in the innovation age, one where a digital transformation will finally transform us, yet it remains elusive. I recently came across the below illustration of the struggles we seem to be having, in changing our companies from the industrial age to the innovation age. It depicts much of the constraints around how people are still working.

Source: www.swarmvision.com

What is holding this innovation age back?

To start, we face strong countervailing forces that restrict our abilities to break out of our past to move towards a new way of working. Pursuing old business paradigms of how a company should be run is not helping us.

Is it because of this traditional way of working, designed into the company, that we are all becoming disengaged and disenchanted with what we do? We’re often left feeling powerless to influence the type of change that we want to see, to release our creative juices and not simply to make those quarterly reporting numbers or get caught up in constant cutbacks when they don’t meet market expectations.

We are increasingly facing very different competitive pressures. This is a very “VUCA world” – the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of general conditions and situations we operate within. Pressures are not just external. We often bring them upon ourselves, as we were not anticipating, investing, and looking to build a different type of business. We fail to invest in foresight and insight, continually not adapting and adjusting our organizational skill set around a more agile, adaptive, highly responsive innovating and creative organization.

Every time we begin to call on innovation, we face negative forces. These are the ways we still wish to judge business – on its short-term results and its ability to limit risks. To give returns to shareholders that safeguard their investments. To achieve this, we look for maximizing efficiency and focus on the continued extraction of value from our core. We talk about investing in the future, in making adjacency moves, and in encouraging risk – but is that really the case?

For many, risk management has never been seen beyond the protection of the status quo. This attitude toward a risk-containment approach restricts innovation. It is actually limiting or even sacrificing the future by not investing in all the aspects of growth, especially bold explorations of new growth avenues. They fail to invest in a clear, distinctive capability of innovation capacities, that is fully integrated within their organization. Innovation stays outside the current core.

I am not proposing we abandon the need to protect our investments and to provide a reasonable return for investors. Instead, I’m suggesting more of a conscious shift where we focus on building more effectiveness, extracting more synergies, and exploring greater growth options.

Can you imagine having the same number of people involved in innovation growth as we have that manage the finances of a business? In most companies, we have small, dedicated innovation teams of five to 10 people trying to take on this Herculean task of growing a business through innovation. They are reliant on engaging others, focusing on their specialized areas to hand over their time to innovation. This is often above and beyond their daily job responsibilities.

Approaching innovation in this highly constrained way is simply not a recipe for success even though in recent years we have been trying to make the subject of innovation more attractive by tempting people to join in and participate in multiple ways.

Extracting innovation has become very complex

Let’s all agree that we live in a complicated world. We are continually witnessing growing threats all around us. Competitors are disrupting – even ones who were not around 12 to 24 months before. We see mergers, closures, or once great beacons of industry shrink before our eyes due to new alternatives. I have in mind here GE and the dramatic restructuring pain it is currently going through. We feel increasingly unsafe unless we happen to be one of those sitting in a technology-related business where growth has been extraordinary in recent years (e.g., Apple, Alibaba, Amazon).

But first, when you think of innovation, what comes to mind?

Source: European Commission

In “Opportunity Now: Europe’s Mission to Innovate,” a 2016 European Commission report (a mere 360 pages long), the author makes this point:

“Innovation is also more complex than ever. Complexity, chaos, and non-linearity have been seen since the 1970s as the defining features of our age. But still, our advanced societies find it hard to make robust policy for a complex innovation system.”

We should always start by recognizing innovation as a complex system. As the report defines, a complex system is a place where:

• no one can have a complete map of the actors and forces at play,
• the system’s behavior is not simply the sum of the behavior of those parts,
• feedback loops surprise us and change the behavior of the system,
• the system is “autopoietic”: behaving in a self-driven way and not just in ways we have yet to understand.

The report also questions, quite rightly, that having a pipeline theory as too simple. The author suggests innovation is not like a Roman aqueduct, designed to allow water to flow; instead, it’s a “muddy pond,” rich but obscure.

That is not a comfortable view for business leaders determined to limit risk, maximize resources and be consistent to extract efficiency and be fully effective. Innovation flies in the direct opposite to this need of corporate design. So, we have become highly creative for innovation to be allowed to operate under the same roof as these efficiency and extraction rules and regimes.

We have come up with multiple ways to exploit innovation. It can contribute to the business model, explore the margins, undertake core renovation work, experiment, and prototype, and be completely new to the world. But it always seems to be divided up in different parts of the business. I often feel innovation activities within companies are a continuing set of experiments, needed but not systemized, fragmented in its potential energy by this underlying need to keep it under control and to minimize risk and feel exposure.

Are we dissipating innovation resources or recognizing that one-size does not fit all?

We are fragmenting much within innovation. Is this good or bad for the longer-term? “The Ten Types of Corporate Innovation Programs,” an article was written by Jeremiah Owyang, founder of Catalyst Companies, provides a terrific list of possible types of innovative programs to consider. But by adopting too many, you fragment and possibly dissipate your innovation resources. Owyang offers a good description and examples that make this a highly useful reference point. Which do you undertake or are actively considering?

Many others are emerging beyond these ten types, where “open” sets the tone for building creative spaces, in lab designs or investment by different avenues of VC funding, internally and externally.

To begin with, these ten types of corporate innovation programs form a good starting point to consider what works for you. Which strategies can push innovation further down or out of the company and help move the growth needle for your innovation program? Check out Owyang’s description below.

The Ten Types of Strategy for Corporate Innovation Programs

 1. Dedicated Innovation Team

Corporations often start with staffing an innovation team within the company of full-time employees dedicated to developing the strategy, managing, and activating innovation programs. These leaders are experts at internal communications and are change agents.
Example: MasterCard, Hallmark, and BMW all have innovation teams dedicated to new business ideas, as does Nokia. Learn how Nokia’s innovation team works here.

2. Innovation Center of Excellence

Innovation can’t happen in a single group; without broader institutional digestion, new ideas will falter and fall. Some corporations are setting up cross-functional, multi-disciplinary groups to share knowledge throughout the company.
Example: Various retailers and consumer packaged goods companies enable this. Read: Creating the Physical Space for Innovation

3. Intrapreneur Program

Rather than rely solely on external programs, internal employees – dubbed “intrapreneurs” – are given a platform and resources to innovate. These programs invest in employees’ ideas and passions to unlock everything from customer experience improvements to product enhancements and full-blown internal startups that are then launched from within the company.
Example: Adobe’s Kickbox program is widely recognized as the leading program. Read: Exploring the Intrapreneurial Way in Large Organizations

4. Open Innovation: Hosted Accelerator or Corporate Incubator

Hosted inside a corporate office, large corporations invite startups to embed at their physical locations and provide them with funding, corporate support, and other perks. This brings innovative startups inside a large company for everything from overnight hackathons to long-term programs. Other variations include online open-innovation programs that request – and often reward –ideas from the crowd.
Example: Allianz Digital Labs in Munich hosts startups, and GE Garages enables startups to partner.

5. Innovation Tours

Frequently inspiration comes from outside, not within. Corporate leaders tour innovative organizations, companies, and regions to discover trends in various industries, learn from speakers, meet partners, and be inspired as they immerse themselves in innovation culture.
Example: European-based WDHB and Nexxworks tour executives in Silicon Valley and beyond. See an example of an innovation lab tour from the University of California San Diego here.

6. Innovation Outpost

A dedicated physical office, such as in Silicon Valley or wherever innovation happens in their market, staffed with corporate innovation professionals whose job is to sense what’s occurring in a market, connect with local startups, and integrate programs back into the corporate HQ. Some of them host partners, events, and startups, thereby spreading the function to Internal Accelerator programs. An Innovation Outpost is typically managed by employees – unlike an External Accelerator, which is run by a third party.
Example: Swisscom, Vodafone, and Nestle have opened Silicon Valley outposts. Read Evangelos Simoudis’ blog for insights.

7. External Accelerator

Corporations partner with third-party accelerators to provide sponsorship and/or funding in exchange for relationships with startups and integration opportunities. Corporate innovation professionals often embed themselves in Accelerator offices, fostering relationships with local startups. These External Accelerators are run by third parties – unlike Innovation Outposts, which are managed by employees.
Example: Plug and Play, Singularity University, Rocketspace, Runway, 500 Startups, Betaworks, and more.

8. Technology Education, University Partnership

Corporations can tap into new graduates, early-stage projects and companies, and the network of an established educational institution. In addition to traditional universities, there are new private versions opening up that are dedicated solely to technology training, like Galvanize and General Assembly.
Example: General Assembly, Galvanize, and most tech- or business-focused universities.

9. Investment

Many corporations place bets among the startup ecosystem, with both small amounts for early-stage startups and larger amounts of corporate funding that yields market data, creates opportunities for follow-on investments, and blocks competitors.
Example: Intel Capital is a leader in direct corporate investments.

10. Acquisition

Rather than build innovation from the inside, many corporations acquire successful startups and then integrate. While often expensive, the startup is often already successful, and the acquisition can help the startup scale further.
Example: As one example, Dollar Shave Club was purchased by Unilever for a reported $1B.

Source: Jeremiah Owyang. Some additional links also applied where relevant.

Are we fragmenting our innovation activities or applying a solution to a specific problem?

We do have to guard against “simply” adopting one type of innovation over another. It needs a deeper understanding of what we want to achieve, and then we seek out the tools, methodologies, and solutions. Diving in and experimenting has some value, but some clarity in what you want to build in innovation capacity makes sense first.

If we apply one approach, we are in danger of “shoehorning” innovation to fit a program. Maybe we are then not allowing the idea or innovation we had in mind to evolve in its own way – in its natural path. Perhaps we are only responding to a top-down pressure of fitting initiatives into that same pattern of seeking efficiencies that fit within an organizational design that will eventually choke innovation.

We need a new call for change based on a focused innovation mindset

For the majority today, we are at this countervailing point where innovation is in need of breaking the impasse. We need a different, more holistic set of solutions to manage innovation.

What I want to look at in a series of articles in the coming months is how we can manage risk from innovation differently. How can we build and accelerate different corporate innovation programs? How can we begin to re-equip our talent to build their capabilities and capacities and to recognize that we can design innovation differently to engage in innovation in more transparent, more structured, and more open ways? How can we design our programs more purposefully?

There is a call for finding more methods and approaches that are open and scale well. We need to reset the baseline of innovation through knowledge, collaborations, and building capabilities. We need to build networks and systems designed for this explicit innovation purpose. Let us finally separate “extraction” from “exploration” in the design of companies. We need to strip away complexity within the way we practice innovation today and connect “it” all up in a new innovative design.

***This post was originally provided for Hype and has been republished here

The post Why Are We Making Innovation So Complex? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Today, I think we certainly have a beginning point but all of us lack a clarity of the end point of where digital transformation will take us. Why, well I think this nicely puts it, we have to move or be moved. Nicely put Mirko

Yes, we can measure success in our progress but these are in both multiple and equally personal ways.

Each organization is unique. Never has this become crystal clear that when you face your own transformation journey. You can learn from others, you can adapt but you need to clearly understand where you are in your own evolution and capacity to undertake change as it is simply your journey. This has not been as well recognized as it is today when we attempt to make any transition, from the old ways of doing business to the new one; that is highly connected, collaborative and based on our growing reliance on technology and ‘everything’ digital. It can become life-changing.

Each business makes a judgment, on speed, scale, and scope of transformation.

How they evolve, in new growth, in their changing business model, in their innovation, in their capabilities to manage the “spread” of activities required to transform. How do they upgrade or re-orientate their people, their customer-facing activity for example?

The world is moving at different speeds, technology is being implemented in unique ways. We are all making and leaving our digital footprint, each very differently depending on our own situations. Judgment becomes personal, relative to your own situation. We need to measure in those “measured steps” what you need to determine as a transformation journey. Of course, once we have our ideas, we can begin to find ways to measure. It is not a bad thing that we must calibrate this against others, in seeing the outcomes feeding back from our customers and markets but it is a journey that you can undertake as you and only you, have the best grasp of what is needed or required. It is your journey.

Can we look out and give it a ‘hard’ quantification in five or say ten years? Does digital transformation have any easy answers? We can take some broader measures as business is still driven by growth, growth in revenue, in product mix, in-country development, in market share. Or equally how the perception of the company is beginning to change and how the market ‘sees you’ as different and adapting to volatile conditions. You hear the word “exponential” often and that seems a high validation point today.

Seeing the digital transformation story in different ways

I am involved in a community that supports Siemens and attempts to contribute as well as extract better understanding of their transformation journey.

This involvement is being part of their external influencer community. We influence in different ways but more increasingly shape perceptions and undertake exchanges. For me, and I think certainly Siemens Influencers, this is taking on a radically different meaning from that social media aspect alone. It is where there are engagements in deeper meaning and relationship growing, that can only emerge from sharing other’s perspectives.

We have two perspectives for this community to thrive in, the insiders working within a business like Siemens, and those outside, looking in, mutually engaging. This can sometimes be a very uncomfortable, often challenging ‘relationship’ when someone outside challenges the management of an organization. You can face “push back” or simply a rejection, or moments where you can openly exchange and gain from conversations.  Or, you simply add a new dimension to a particular challenge or problem, that is if the other party is prepared to listen or learn.

Many companies talk of diversity, in who they attract within their company but this diversity of opinion, of different perceptions, is as increasingly important. I think Siemens is recognizing this and exploring what this means in value and contribution. It is a privilege to be part of this.

The initiative for this building of a Siemens Influencer Community is driven within Siemens Communications Group, where Clarissa Haller (@clarissahaller), the head of Corporate Communication within Siemens, outlined her vision of this in an article, providing some of the opening values in forming an influencer engagement group in B2B.  She talks the three “R’s” of “relevance, reach and resonance” and that forms a good “mantra” for influencers, in general, to work towards and specifically for influencers working with Siemens, in my opinion. How this group is forming and storming in new ways lies with Patrick Naumann, (@naumannpatrick) the Siemens Influence Engagement Manager. He has the hard task of “herding cats”- An idiom denoting a futile attempt to control or organize a class of entities which are inherently uncontrollable – as in the difficulty of attempting to command a large number of cats into a group (herd). This he does in a number of amazing ways. It certainly is not “futile,” it is very progressive and highly imaginative but it can be a little disorderly and challenging to steer, transitioning change that is radically different from past practices within an organization like Siemens. The diversity within the group influencing needs exploiting in many ways to extract the greater value.

Patrick recently commented in “The 2018 State of Influence 2.0” written by Brian Sollis that shows the progress of influencers and he commented on the impact within Siemens. Being on the inside of the Siemens program this report is lagging behind the evolution. Siemens has been turning aspirations of getting this community to form and influence in unique ways. What Patrick states here, these are getting greater each time we meet. As part of this exposure to Siemens, we are having some significant engagements with their senior people.

Three months ago, while in Munich for one of these community sessions, we met up with Dr. Roland Busch, (@BuschRo), currently the CTO of Siemens and soon to assume the role of COO, in a new structure emerging early next year.

At the time I had mixed feelings on the session but in the past few months, I have been reflecting a little more on this.  Recently revisiting the recordings of the event (part of my misgivings of the session being recorded) I extracted a lot from the dialogues. So the recordings gave me a longer-term value of putting much in a different context.

It reminded me that the perspective of giving events considered time for reflection may deliver many “sound bites” from parts of a session but there is this need for us to piece together a ‘greater’ whole. At the time we react and magnify one aspect and not frame it in something that is greater, more cohesive and lasting. Giving time and reflection can do that. This Q&A gave me the opportunity to consider how a digital transformation journey is made up of so many aspects to consider. There are no easy answers.

The session, a Q&A, spoke around many of the aspects of managing a digital transformation. This was within Siemens and in general.

Dr. Busch presented a very sharp operating canvas that Siemens is working through, their emerging narrative to handle digital transformation and equip themselves to be at the forefront of leading this.

You might have value in watching some of the sessions, short vignettes that tackle specific aspects of any digital transformation journey. These offer the Siemens perspective and are worth listening too.

So each of these questioners is part of this influencer community. I have picked out five that reflect part of the connection issues that make up our digital transformation journey

The first was a question from Lucian Fogoros, (@fogoros), co-founder of IIoT-World, was asking about the present stage we are in, relating to the digital transformation journey, relating Industry 4.0 and asking specifically about adoption rates. Dr. Busch’s reply broke this question down into the ability to deploy, how digital transformation needs to be gradual or can be undertaken in more “bigger step changes” depending on the type of industry each organization operates within. He saw digital adoption coming from “how they show up in each environment” to give us a level success rate. I liked that perspective as it signified it is relative to your own position, industry, and ability to drive change. Huge infrastructure facilities are totally different from re-equipping a whole plant for a new car. Each takes the digital journey in unique ways.

A question from Antonio Grasso (@antgrosso) a well respected and leading digital transformation advisor, zoomed in on Cybersecurity and the worries of trust, of possible roadblocks on the road to digital transformation. Dr. Busch touched on Siemens own focus through their “Charter of Trust” as they can see sustained attacks that might run down (degrade) critical infrastructure as critical to be prepared for. He touches on a concept of simulation of these possible attacks through having a digital twin and working through their Mindsphere platform where you can prepare for these attacks or get levels of adaptive security. to be increasingly secure, wherever possible. Yet it is still a cat and mouse game that needs constant vigilance to stay ahead.

Then a further question from Wilko Wolters (@WSWMUC) a digital specialist in the Automotive world and Lecturer. He raised a question about much of the current roadblock to digital transformation lies in the attitude of the people, in their awareness, current skill set and the ability to adjust and change. He emphasized the need for a “working culture” that reflects a digital transformation. Dr. Busch spoke at some length on finding a new way to unlock the potential in the people, the blending of different engineers into a team environment where software redesign gets increasingly factored in. Then the inevitable “agile development needs” and co-locating closer to market and customer needs and finally, that need for as rich a “diversity” in backgrounds, skill sets, and experiences. It is as much an adaptive challenge in changing the culture as it is ‘simply’ applying digital solutions

One from Antonio Santos (@akwyz), Atos Social Media Business Evangelist and Community Manager, asked one of those great open questions around a digital narrative of “are we talking all about the same thing?” “Are we blurring differences?” Now that has different perspectives (again) be those regional in maturity, in market and company outlooks. According to Dr.Busch we are in very different stages of evolution, there are emerging common understandings of recognizing where platforms, the cloud, data, and analytics are growing in importance to making these digital transformation changes, yet they are very different across industry type, regions of the world and even individual markets on their abilities to actually bring about change within “certain” architecture constraints. Yet Dr. Busch felt there is a growing convergence as: “we continue to mature solutions we bring this convergence”

Lastly, the one question I got the greatest value out of, was one posed by Dean Gratton (@grattonboy), a technology futurist and global influencer. Dean was asking did Dr. Busch see an end result. how would Dr. Busch and Siemens look back in “X” years time and judge success in any digital transformation? Now, this is a tricky question to answer. The reply from Dr. Busch I liked “there is no end point”, he spoke about us all being in the middle of a (digital) chess game, you can see opportunities opening up but the permutations, in this case, are constantly increasing, not closing down. “We are seemingly sitting in the middle of the chessboard”. An interesting perspective.

I got the understanding from this that we are in that wonderful world of perpetual beta. I like the work of Harold Jarche he calls this “the future of work is a perpetual beta”  You pick up the message within the Dr.Busch Q&A here that “we are connecting devices quicker than people” and how do you measure this? The need is to shape it, to leverage on the strengths we know and can see as valuable.

When asked a little further of Dr. Busch on a “harder” measurement, when looking back, it comes back to where Siemens digital business is today and where it can possibly go. Today of the digital business of Euro 5.2 billion, only Euro 1.2 billion is digital services and Euro 4 billion in digital software. It is the ability to grow this in a company that has Euro 80 billion, digital shows its (external) revenue as only 6.5% of total company revenue. This is where ‘exponential’ needs to happen.

The absolute need for Siemens is to grow this part of the business as an increasing share of total business and that requires finding better answers to deploying digital solutions to customers, designing solutions that can be replicated and not reinvented each time and continuing the search for breakthroughs in products, that provide improvements in productivity, efficiencies, in improved and efficient ways. This is, in my opinion, the way to validate and make the digital transformation through the increased ability to build new business model designs, ones that capitalize on this connecting up and the acceleration for innovation in future design, to ‘account’ for the promise of digital.

What is better in understanding digital transformation than having open dialogues?

I think having dialogues, debates, and conversations between those on the inside of our organizations engaging in open conversation with a savvy, smart and digitally aware group of outsiders have real value. Many of the questions and answers are on many a senior executives mind when it comes to digitalization.

This community forming around Siemens is a brave step initiated with Siemens Communications Group to give this richer diversity of opinion, advice, engagement. It takes “influencing” way, way beyond just today’s influencer meaning, of social media influencing. It can become an interesting model in design for companies wanting “dialogues of trust” in community exchanges.

Digital transformation is central to Siemens in its future. It offers a good “window” to observe, learn and gain from.

The post How do we measure success in our digital transformation? A journey of discovery first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The Whitepaper called “Product Complexity, Digital Transformation, and the Innovation Imperative- The race to reinvent how complex products are developed is here“.

This made me a little jealous and a little wishing that ‘we’, across the whole of innovation management, could not have one of these platforms available today. Some claim that they do this already but seriously they do not.

I have argued we do need to change the way we undertake innovation and its development. I am really frustrated by the legacy we have in our processes, systems and the ways we approach innovation, and its development lifecycle. We still break it up into separate parts, dealing with the pre-ideas stage, collecting insights, the idea management, then into a pipeline or portfolio system, that all has so such manual and siloed approaches built into this. These are tue legacy systems.We do need to bring innovation management into the 21st century where everything is transformed through a platform that allows total integration.

So as I read about the solution that Aras provides to the designers within Manufacturing to manage PLM complex systems and products, you have to wonder why this cannot be extended into all innovation’s management. Of course what “sits” on the platform will be different but it has much that can adapted and aligned in the principles of any design.

What is clear anyone that does develop a fully integrated platform designed for innovation will certainly disrupt the current way products are managed. We can actually get into true lifecycle management across not just one business but within collaborations across functions, companies, and entire ecosystems, to contribute.

This whole idea of a unified environment for innovation simply solves so much of our current constraints within this area. It allows all involved, those within the management of innovation and those who are actively supporting or needing to be well-informed, to all operate within the same environment. We can for the first time build a system of record, we can through “open” technology provide an approach that is flexible, scalable, upgradeable, and fully visual to all. A truly open innovation platform. The whole momentum of collaboration becomes accelerated.

The idea of platforms today is they can be overlayed over your existing systems (well most) if they have some level of digital interface. This allows for some levels of migration from older systems as they migrate to this innovation platform.

The ability to connect across functions, across different domains, different environments and entities really make this a highly valuable proposition. We really do need an innovation management platform and does the way that Aras has set about this, give us a working concept design?

Just take a look at the visual from the Whitepaper from Aras

Now think of the whole innovation management need. Can you visualize all our separate systems feed up and onto the platform to form the much-needed end-to-end lifecycle management across all the innovation management design, or need

I like the way Aras are designing their PLM platform system in broad functional designs.

This gives food for thought in designing functionality into a broader innovation management platform.

Function one is connect teams to contextual information, much like idea management software today undertakes. It is designed for pulling together the fragmented architecture and present information in immediately usable ways. We often need to collect ideas from multiple sources and channels and then attempt to translate these into value concepts to be explored across different functional groups. The design is working across system and functional boundaries.

Function two is focused on managing configurations across disciplines and functions complexity, often what is (poorly) attempted by portfolio management software. Here they are opening up for all to access, they can build this system of record in hand-offs. contributions, build functionality for design reviews and establish traceability. All involved can view progress, design and view all the necessary linkages

Function three is designed to enable collaborations across teams, functions, and disciplines. The platform provides open access at different levels and supports both formal and informal collaborations and exchanges. Established processes and rules can be built in, you can create an audit trail that records decisions etc. Now I know this sounds like some of the current idea management software providers attempt to provide but is this on a platform? Is this in a cloud? Is this potentially open to others outside one organization? Is this easily scalable without significant rework or cost? is this going from idea all the way through to commercialization?. The answer for all operating in our present space is an emphatic no!

Function four supports all phases of the product lifecycle. We lack functionality within today’s product development process to go beyond certain stages of the process. The effect is silos of trapped information that become buried, forgotten or simply not passed on. We cannot design one system for managing across the full product lifecycle design. To have the capability for modeling, designing, simulation all are requiring separate systems. Why? Let’s get out of the 20th century and get into this digital century in how we manage innovation, please

The design outcomes we need to determine

The whole ability is to see beyond just producing a physical product as the end result, we can move concepts into the exciting realm of having digital twins. Digital twins offer the new exciting way of seeing products in a virtual environment. One where you can draw in the final consumer, into contributing to these designs far more earlier, having a consistent reiteration environment. This gives us a far more extended prototype capacity for all to see and improve upon without expensive mockups or reworks, smetimes only offering crude ones that do not represent the finish product in so many ways. Because we can’t provide better prototypes or designs we can miss vital feedback. Having digital twins within the innovation development process can change that. We can design the concept digitally for people to see and get a digital “feel” about what it can mean in the final form

The other good things if we move over to a dedicated innovation platform we can consistently upgrade tools, methods, commuinicating mediums, repositories for access and recording. Just like the present software offerings this can still be managed and deployed supporting on-premise, hybrid or in cloud installations as your system of choice that can then be simply changed if and when needed or you become comfortable in opening up to others, to collaborate and build in a secure platform space.

Finally, we might finally get to adopting an open standards approach to innovation management to achieve integrations across other enterprises and we finally begin to establish a common language of innovation understanding. We really do break down barriers and build our trust in an innovation system built on data and a system of record and that, for all involved, puts a higher level of trust into the innovation management system. Even board members can become more engaged- oh careful, that is for many a dream or a nightmare!

In conclusion.

Am I dreaming or is this a reality? If it is a reality then how long? Innovation Management needs to come of age, a digital age where platforms form the connected future. Who is willing to take up this challenge and radically alter the innovation landscape forever? Be the disrupter that innovation actually needs to inject a sea-change of how we manage innovation and view it, as an integrated design system, all can see and work within. A true corporate system closer to the heart of the Enterprise to belief in, draw confidence and support for the value it can provide.

The post Can We Have One of These? A Product Innovation Platform first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Much of the innovation discovery journey is a disappointing one. A hunch or insight becomes a dead end. A promising idea did not foresee a roadblock that cannot be resolved. Resources constantly “churn” and get depleted, waiting for others to be brought up to speed. Those not involved directly within the innovation project constantly remain skeptical or require more proof. The status quo of the existing places an increasing drag on the forces of change.

Then we have that often-delusional aspect; where the organization has this total belief they are well ahead of their competitors and simply point to their financial performance as the justification that their innovation is superior when it is so many other factors that have determined that. Superior is often so transitory.

When they are constantly scanning reports on the “state of innovation” it can often lull them, to give some that warm glow, others quickly being dismissive, disregarding many of the key messages as “not applicable to me”.

Then disruption suddenly hits. The cries of “Where did that come from” and a doubling down occurs firstly on costs as that is easy to stop things, fire a bunch of people or plunge into a reorganization that “actually been in the works for months” A quick ramping up of innovation to counter the attacks, to regain the initiative is simply not possible, as the resources are not there, the systems not in place, the more radical innovation unobtainable. Simply there has been a lack of sustained investment in the exploration and exploitation of the “pursuit of innovative ideas,” that are pushing new concepts, that often lie at the edge of the organization.

I mean anyway, come on: “we really don’t believe in innovation, it all is full of risk, uncertainty and all those unknowns and that is the last place to go when you are fighting in a different set of market conditions, isn’t it?” Cut costs are the recognized solution not thinking your way out within innovation. Thinking about innovation implies the longer-term and that is not so welcome at board level in today’s volatile world.

So where does innovation sit within your organization?

Two reports recently came out. Both are, I feel, “painting” a realistic picture of where innovation does sit within organizations. Am I happy with either of these, no of course not but in my view “nothing can change until something does change” What do I mean by that? When innovation becomes paramount to the future at board level then a change can occur. I don’t mean lip service to innovation, I mean deep, defining and structured thinking on innovation

The two reports, one from CB Insights, who I believe do a consistently brilliant job at “tear downs” and evaluations of industries, markets or topics. The other reflection on innovation comes from a most dependable source, researchers moving towards their doctorates at the Harvard Business School and the necessary research support to get them there.

Lets briefly look at both.

I’ll start with the one from Yo-Jud Cheng supported by his professor Boris Groysberg and a co-author, Michael Slind from HBR. The article was “Innovation Should Be a Top Priority for Boards. So Why Isn’t It?” The survey was conducted asking over 5,000 board members from around the world asking “do they do enough to support innovation?”

The outcomes cover more than innovation but provide a good overview of board thinking and priorities for areas such as strategic challenges companies face, governance activities and processes that boards are good at, expertise sitting on the board, and the hard aspects of being a board director. Innovation gets caught up in so many, sometimes conflicting issues but in many respects does not get the attention it deserves, especially as it is the most important catalyst for growth.

Innovation is well behind many other issues being focused upon by directors. The survey exposes the myth that innovation is not one of the three top challenges, innovation ranks fifth as it follows the more conventional concerns of managing talent as the top (and that did surprise me) and regulatory and competitive threats. Technology trends lay in the seventh position in this “biggest strategic challenges.”Reading through the responses, the lack of faith in their processes was disturbing. Risk management is rated far more than innovation as a better process.

To quote “When we asked directors about the effectiveness of their board’s processes for supporting innovation, 42% rated their processes as above average or excellent. In contrast, 70% of respondents think their boards have effective processes for staying current on the company”

Both, for me a little damming for preparing for a disrupting world or positioning innovation as the future catalyst for growth.

The other valuable point for me was another insight from the survey

“We also found that a focus on innovation tends to go hand in hand with longer-term time horizons. Companies that are organized around creating and enhancing value over the long term were more likely to have boards that prioritize innovation, as compared with companies that are primarily focused on achieving short-term results. Laying the foundation for innovation requires a forward-looking mindset throughout the firm and the board”

The two major takeaways for me

The report can be viewed here but finishes up with a good quote (correct insight in my opinion or validation of many):

“As one director noted, “We spend a lot of time on operational strategy — growth, acquisitions, etc. — [and] not much on risk, people, innovation.”

Now that is very disappointing but what do we expect from innovation?

In one final quote from this article: “when boards seem to have a “widespread lack of board-level engagement in innovation processes (that) could be a major blind spot and a potential liability”

My second report is the one from CB Insights

CB Insights recently released a report on the “State of Innovation” where they surveyed 677 corporate strategy executives. It does fit or correspond to the HBR researchers thinking, it gives a closer fit of what is going on with innovation in today’s organization. You do need to provide your email for access and to download of this report.

The report is a visually very easy read but gives a clarity to the big issues constraining innovation. I do like this style of reporting, offering up one page per insight. It brings them specifically into “stark relief”. This approach is really good to bring out the impact of that particular point. A good lesson in presentation, certainly for me!

I picked out these as my specific takeaways:

1. 41% of executives said their companies are extremely at risk or very at risk of disruption
2. Corporate strategists talk the talk but don’t walk the walk
3. Companies focus on incremental innovation with 78% of innovation portfolios allocated to continuous innovation instead of disruptive risks
4. Customers and employees are driving innovation. My thought is what do you expect if boards are not as engaged as per the HBR report above stating?
5. 57% of respondents said their companies do not follow formal innovation processes and executing remains mostly ad hoc and unstructured. Even the majority don’t have processes for ideation and development phases. Now that is shocking!
6. Companies lack confidence in their ability to innovate and it progressively gets “less effective” in each of the phases of innovation. Idea Generation, Development/Design, Commercialization/ Launch, Optimization/ Management and Product Retirement
7. Companies take an insular view of how they will attack innovation
8. Finally: Because they prefer to build (themselves), corporate innovation is slow.

When I look at this list I really do go “oh dear”. There are some clear positive takeaways also in this report such as “high performing companies build cultures of innovation across functions” and achieve a 5X increased performance due to this and “high performing companies invest in disruptive projects”.

The issue for most is “how do they become high performing? Until we treat innovation as a core process, disciplined, structured set of activities that are managed in different ways than the existing business, we will struggle. Embracing the aspects of a high performing business within innovation offers significantly increased performance. The ability to grasp all that this entails and establishing a set of innovation management disciplines, most will simply “bounce” along on a very unsatisfactory innovation projection of mediocre growth and return.

So to download the CB Insights report go here “State of Innovation“. It is well worth reading and is in such an easy, digestible format

In Summary

I would suggest you go and take a look at both of these reports. They reaffirm that innovation is not the priority it should be at board level, both offer a devastating reality of poor innovation processes and structures and a lack of corporate design for salvaging innovation out of its current mire of incremental, ad hoc and risk constraints due to this lack of top focus.

Innovation is full of rhetoric and hot air. Those in the trenches are believers but they are battling forces that make it doubly hard to make a success of innovation. The internal forces are as much against them as the external unknowns.

As I opened with as my title “What do we expect from Innovation? Mostly disappointment.” We can only dream that we are still moving towards my view of that “New Innovation Era”. It still lies ahead if we want to recognize the valuable contribution innovation does make to the future growth and, more importantly, to their ongoing sustainability.

These two reports reflect the potential of where innovation can go but do offer a snapshot of the present reality of why it cannot until multiple aspects of innovation management are addressed and accepted. These changes are essential to underpin innovation with a clear focus, dedicated resources, recognized as a functional discipline, well thought-through processes and a top to bottom recognition and focus on its importance. Will something change? I seriously wonder although I’ll keep banging the innovation drum, hoping some will (eventually) listen.

The post What do we expect from Innovation? Mostly disappointment first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Even managing the present portfolio of innovation initiatives gets caught up in these underlying tensions as it becomes another opportunity to open up the old wounds of bruising past battles and get back into those discussions again.

Suddenly the CFO becomes animated over the uncertainties; the research director grows defensive, and the marketing director more strident in why it is constructed that way.

The HR director raises their concerns on stretching the resources too thinly and suddenly a fast and furious open debate erupts. Then the Supply Chain director throws in the concerns that the system will not cope with the sudden influx of new introductions in the remaining part of the year.

Each has a valued perspective but much of these are based on past positions, attitudes built up from other pitch battles and scores to be settled.

The CEO listens and silently thinks to himself:  “what happened to the series of bonding exercises that we had all had invested in, suddenly just gone”.
Lingering Dogma
One of these ‘investments’ made within the board was to resolve the strong personalities around the table that tended to push certain views and try to make it the dominant logic.

The very nature of these ‘debates and exchanges’ was that they were not being left in the boardroom but were actually seeping down into the organization and suddenly more of the organization was becoming at odds with each other on where innovation ‘fits’ and what it requires.

Each board member has previously recognized that their own failings in holding onto their positions and acknowledged on one of these away-day sessions they were contributing to this ‘tautness’ that was found across the organization. Yet they simply were falling back into old habits or that fixed mindset. Something had to change and fast.

Fixed mindsets and biases

Holding onto these positions were actually holding the organization to ransom, as it rises up and dominates in these more open debates it freezes positions, alliance are struck that become more opportune and less to do with the right decision for the business.

These have been slowly forming more constraints on the ability of the organization to explore the best options on strategic design, let alone where innovation can support it. This was shrinking the size of the opportunity horizons that could be investigated and linked.

Conflicting needs and holding positions
Often within any debate it is difficult for many individuals to change perspectives; they can’t even change their ‘established’ opinions even when they are being confronted with overwhelming evidence.

They ‘dig in’ and become dogmatic, resort to well established and tested fear tactics. Those old chestnuts come trotted out about “complexity, fast-changing market conditions, uncertainties of key clients, the downturn effects, our limited resources” etc, etc. to hold their favoured position and deliver their ‘push back’ in exchanges like this. No one ends up the winner or loser, it just becomes a further stalemate

Mental dexterity or imposing my authority becomes the choice for the CEO

The debate has gone on well past its allotted time, the issues were getting caught up in more personal attacks and suddenly innovation becomes the ‘whipping boy’ for some of these disjointed failures occurring. Cool heads have left the room, replaced by accusation and counter accusation and rising tempers.

Suddenly the CEO springs into life, he has listened, observing and considering his options. The first idea he had was one of ‘how can I sack the lot’, but this was quickly dismissed as not sensible, because around this table was the best available talent for tackling their given areas of specialisation.

When this team combined it was ‘awesome’ was often made as comments from independent observers.   He recognized his job was to orchestrate this ‘tension’ into a more positive set of dynamics.

The choice he had to make was between the ‘carrot or the stick’. He could impose his opinion quiet strongly and had been known for this ‘stick’ approach many times, he actually had become quite legendary for ‘shredding’ both the good and the bad. This time he hesitated.

Recently he had been going through his own discovery of what made up his mindset with a personal coach. The meetings had been brutally honest, still ongoing, and were open and mind-shifting as they could be, between two people who had shared experiences, enjoyed each other’s life experiences and how they arrived at this point. So he took the option that he saw was the right one –  the one that seeks and cajoles, that shifts perspectives and given mindsets.

Learning different approaches can change perspectives
Gently he brings order around the board table. He asks a series of open-ended questions “where does innovation contribute to strategy,”  “where can it contribute more?”, “what is holding US back from delivering on this promise?”, “why can’t we realize this potential?” and finally “how can WE change this?”. Each question slowly reduces the negative tensions and replaces it with a positive, unifying set of positive tensions, the issue has moved from the ‘you or me’ into the’ us’ frame of thinking.

He begins to draw out the expertise around the table, he gets each to appreciate the proficiency of the other, and he draws out a ‘string’ of positive contributions. The individuals around that table only minutes ago clearly at each other’s throats, have united in finding plausible answers to these questions.

Applying the appropriate intervention

Suddenly the atmosphere changes with the deftness of this intervention. It has not been imposed, it has been sought out, by asking the experts within the room to tap into their areas of knowledge. The debate begins to move faster and faster, one good idea contributing to another, feeding off, building from and breaking down the issues that hold innovation back in its contribution to strategic direction.

He takes one further step, he reminds each person of the three horizon framework they had all been introduced to fairly recently. (see below for links). “What we have to remind ourselves is that each Horizon needs different mindsets for innovation”.

The third horizon, the more futuristic one, is really different to how we are managing innovation in the current system and its management. That horizon (3) is motivated by vision, value and beliefs.

Whereas the one we call the intermediate one (H2), which straddles the present and the future is more an entrepreneurial mindset, attempting to anticipate changing values and detect the shifts in the market place and as these become clearer, they can lead to the H3 world.

Suddenly the discussion has significantly shifted. The focus has become one of applying different mindsets to approaching and linking innovation to strategic direction, depending on the challenge, complexity and time and by so doing they start sharing uncertainties that contribute even more positively to the debate that needs resolution.

Respected solutions and changing context.

Dogmas can also be extremely positive, they can reinforce solutions, and they can underpin approaches that can shape and influence very different attitudes and beliefs. In introducing a framing approach that moves the discussion beyond, the current drivers of innovation, then the trending aspects that can shape what an organization works upon, and finally, those emerging aspects that remain ‘sketchy’ but do have potential strategic implications, brings a galvanizing change. They keep looping back where they can, recognizing where they need further understanding or just placing a ‘watch’ on that aspect.

Innovation is suddenly linked to a process of change and strategic direction options, that lift the debate into a series of a plausible and coherent set of activities. This focuses the energy around the table on to the defining, yet opening debate, of linking the future work to the shape and the organization’s needs, making the debate as strategic as it can be.

Find out how you can change the tone of any board debate around innovation

Take a little time and view the series on the Three Horizon Framework either on this blog by entering into the search field under “three horizons” or through the series published on the Innovation Excellence site. If you start here under the opening one of five within the series of “

Have you considered the three horizon approach”  (http://tinyurl.com/c6fed9c ) and then further releases each day during the period that follows this first one dated 31st July 2012.

I can’t promise it can stop all the unhealthy debates around innovation in the boardroom by adopting the Three Horizon framework.

What it might change is the perspective of where to focus the expertise and energy to make innovation far more the strategic bedrock, that organizations are looking to achieve, the link towards a healthier future.

It’s not personal anymore, it’s considering options in a future-orientated way for their business, to find better ways to thrive not just survive.

The post Lingering dogma, fixed mindsets, tensions and conflicting needs first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.