Four years ago, I downloaded an article that I keep coming back to. It was called “Managing Disruptive Change Be Ready for What Is Coming”, written by Estevao Seccatto Rocha. At the time, Estevao worked for KPMG in São Paulo as a transformation and turnaround advisor. Today according to Estaveo’s LinkedIn, he works for Stone Partners, still in São Paulo.

I think he wrote this article while studying at RWTH Aachen University, and he references Professor Malte Brettel, the head of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Group.

I kept coming back to this and decided to try and pick out some of the points here in this post. The work is either Estavao’s or Professor Brettel. I am trying to translate it in a way that works for me, and hopefully, you as a reader of this posting site to bring disruption far more central in your thinking.

Digital is one of the most disruptive forces we have to face. This is why I decided to summarize some points, remind myself and appreciate what we really mean when we advocate and encourage going disruptive.

Understanding the basics of disruption

Disruption is constant; it simply disturbs all we do. If we ignore it, we lose what we have; if we determine how to meet disruption, we have a chance to survive and even come out better, certainly differently.

Estevao offers this “Disruption change people’s routines, the way people think, behave, do business and learn, it “displaces an existing market, industry, or technology and produces something new and more efficient and worthwhile. It is at once destructive and creative.”

Much of the article attempts to apply a systematic approach to disruptions, which is why I partly like it. Disruptions come at you in different ways, and the ability to manage all the possible variables makes the management of disruption really tough.

The first need is to try and understand the disruption

1. Understand the disruptions. Why companies are disrupted, and what are the sources of disruptions?
2. Build patterns and try to understand in which pattern is causing disruption;
3. Start reacting to the disruptions in a general way;
4. Look more closely, understand the strength of the disruption;
5. React in a specific way;
6. Understand the changes in the environment and respond to them.

Disruptions happen as they are mostly triggered by 1) Regulative Environment changes, 2) Technology, 3) Customer Behavior changes, 4) Competition and New Players entering.

Professor Brettel established six specific disruption patterns, depending on how the disruption affects an organization.

Professor Brettel outlines each disruption pattern with clearly different intensities but lays out the reaction patterns, dependant on the degree of disruption, in this useful visual.

The article looks at different disruption patterns by Speed, Stage and by Impact. It then concludes with the actions to be taken dependent on the degree of disruption. by describing the actions, action pattern, action manifestation and rationale.

I have not brought these into this post. For me, it is the structured approach, not so much the specific questions that were applied (at the time), so if and when disruption hits, I have the basic thinking framework shown above and the suggested reactions to these. I think each disruption might have different reactions to consider.

The conclusions from the article are:

Success will come from being faster and flexible, anticipating and responding to drastic transformations, with an innovative approach, embracing change and capitalize on disruption. The organization must have dynamic capabilities to transform it into sustainable advantages.

One in three CEOs says their organizations have failed to achieve the value they anticipated from previous transformation initiatives due to:

• Failure to understand the complexity of the operating model: The most commonly identified barrier to success is underestimating the significance of operating model changes necessary to effect transformation across the organization;
• Inability to innovate: organizations are incapable of implementing formal innovation processes, management, and budgets;
• Missing the cultural connection: existing organizational culture is a barrier to execution;
• Failure to take a “business value first” approach to technology: organizations’ legacy technology/systems are a barrier to success. Transformations that begin with a specific technology (rather than with strategic objectives) are twice as likely to fail;
• Inability to execute: organizations are incapable of executing an implementation plan to build and operationalize a new target operating model.

It is sobering that embarking on transformation change, mostly forced upon you, ends up as a failure. The five summary points are as relevant as the outline to manage disruption shown above.  These five aspects doom the changes if they are not really focused upon. All the structure in approach is only as good as the ability of the CEO and team undergoing change can avoid these five failures.

So I wanted to capture this article or paper of Estevao’s as it has been on my mind for several years. I needed to place it in a post to be reminded, and as digital disruption is becoming the higher constant, it is good to be logged here to refer to.

The post Preparing for Digital within your Innovating Disruption first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Digitalizing has a positive impact on our innovation activities, it opens up new exciting possibilities. The first question of what, how and why are we doing this, we can start by looking at the data to begin to see there are potential ways to change something existing or improve on our idea or concept. As we gain insights then we can apply that innovative thinking with a greater technology application understanding.

We then begin to make the changes within the process, be those incremental, radical or even revolutionary to change the processes operating today.

We have distinctive ways to treat data and digitalization that leads to distinct new value points for innovation.

A useful view was provided by the IBM Institute for Business Value identified five distinct opportunities where digital innovation provides additional value:

• We gain new insights that augment products and change our thinking by the generation of real-time or constant flows of market and customer-driven data

• We improve our assets by digitalizing them. We can connect up machines, whole plants and complete organizations can be designed around the flows of data. This has an enormous impact on the potential to collaborate, to liaise, learn and build from this data, a new fresh knowledge insight. This can trigger ideas and new concepts to be evaluated as well as gain from having full oversight over the assets generating data or that coming into the company.

• The ability today is to combine data within and across different industries. Within our move towards platforms and ecosystems the exchange of data allows for a “greater whole” to view it, add insights and knowledge and from this combined effect those within the ecosystem can gain a commercial and competitive advantage to build appropriate products, services, and business models in response

• Each party is building up its own data. We are in times where trading data has become a highly valuable new source of revenue. Knowing weather patterns helps farmers, utility and those dependent on delivery to know and plan far better. We can trade audience data, interest in articles or newsworthy stories so others can associate with these to build more of a profile of who is engaged so they can offer products and services more tailored to their possible needs. The business of trading data is the new oil in the economy

• Lastly, we can begin to organize data into more distinctive patterns, service capability options and build more sustainable systems where you build increasingly an accepted language that becomes codified in some way that gives new value. We can systemize thinking through data that allows for uniformity and allows multiple systems to exchange and see patterns. This is where algorithms have increased value. They can predict change.

Each of these new ways to use the evolution of digitalization to add completely different levels of innovation potential. Seeing this value is one thing, achieving the connecting aspects it requires is another. As we continue to make deeper and deeper connections into manufacturing sites we do need to consider not just the value of digitalization and what it connects up, we need to study and review the data to look for the innovation opportunities to make this an ever greater impact on productivity, efficiencies but more import allowing us to think and design differently, to begin to think changes in technology and innovation.

Innovation and digitalization are as powerful as innovation and knowledge in their combination. They both combine to give new insights, new options to generate significant new and greater value. The sooner we can bring in digital solutions and processes into the innovation process of the industrial process, the better to realize some of the real potentials that this combination can give us, as fresh opportunities to add new value

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How do we find answers to knowing what measures give us for success in any digital transformation? Are today’s measures relevant to tomorrow, are they still based on our legacy system of measurement, when a business was operating in a stable, predictable environment?

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 digitally transforming 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, changes the scope and opportunities within the business and it is highly individual.

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

We should always calibrate but we need to seek our own pathway

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 a 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 relate to a better understanding of their transformation journey.

This involvement is being part of their external influencer community called SIEx. We influence in different ways but more increasingly shape perceptions and undertake exchanges. This is not a community for social media influencing 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 such as Siemens, and those that are outside, looking in, mutually engaging, offering their experiences and views on how they see change occurring and impacting their area of specialised focus.

These views within the community can have creative tension, they are sometimes a little uncomfortable, often challenging ‘relationships’ when someone outside challenges the management of an organization to give it a different perspective.

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. The value is in having time to listen, learn and adjust if the argument makes sense.

Diversity is allowing different perspectives to have a voice

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. I learn constantly and I hope they gain from my contributions equally.

The initiative for this building of a Siemens Influencer Community is driven within Siemens Communications Group, initiated by Clarissa Haller (@clarissahaller), the head of Corporate Communication within Siemens, and driven by Ellen Schramke ( @ellen_schramke). Ellen aims to connect the internal with us as this external resources to aid the Siemens digital transformation. We explore, discover and experience change as it is occurring all the time and I believe makes discussions relevant and valuable to all involved, it adds to the journey of Siemens.

The journey of discovery is the digital transformation one we all are undertaking

Digital transformation and digital maturity must be understood through the lens of business focus, which in turn prioritizes investments and defines success. It is knowing what outcomes you wish to achieve will help enable that transformation process but this is not a “static” process, it is dynamic, highly interactive and being able to listen intently and learn so we all evolve in the journey of digital discovery.

As I suggested earlier “Each business makes a judgment, on speed, scale, and scope of their digital transformation. These are highly individual.

The post Success in any digital transformation is a journey of discovery first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We really do have this compelling need to have a new cycle of innovation design.

A more integrated solution that takes our understanding of innovation and how to manage it, into the realms of ecosystems and platforms in its design and thinking.

To achieve this we need to recognize a significant change we must undertake in our present innovation management. We need to open up our thinking to embrace a new era of digital innovation

Does it make sense? You judge as you read.

Extract what makes sense for you, explore where there are thoughts that can be applied to your current innovation set up. Just remember a new innovative design needs to be radical, totally connected, and resource-rich.

Firstly, we do need to recognize technology is going to be inseparable in what we are doing in the innovation world, going forward. The blurring of our lives, of the breaking down of the different old industry demarcations, the blending of government, corporate and social engagements are all giving increasing voice to each of us as individuals, all happening due to this exponential set of connections. I sense from many this is‘epic’, exploding and life-changing, with all of us, simply learning to adapt and adjust, moving at speed to align ourselves.

The choice of apps, platforms, the number of connected devices is teaching us new ways of communicating, learning, interacting, and extracting different values and needs out of the technology available which is all constantly evolving.

How does a large business keep pace with this exponential connection?

Where is the starting point or the necessary change inventions one needs to bring in to understand the gaps and fill the voids, can we back-fill as we equally move forward?

The past business decision was based on evidence, validated and then this was justified and sort of evolved at a steady pace. There is something different presently going on, the sheer scale and impact of how technology is evolving at increasing speed will need a massive mind shift and radical redesign of our innovation management systems.
Although each organization is having so many competing priorities, the gap between how it is organized today and building these required digital capabilities is getting wider, unless you work through this transformation plan in a clear, purposeful way. It has to begin with a ground-up approach, small experiments that can quickly be scaled up or revised. It needs very hands-on engagement throughout the whole process.

A key need of this digital transformation is going to be asking the question of how we can build in ‘greater agility’ and what is presently stopping us from achieving this. Then it is the agility to achieve better response times to customers ‘needs, to respond to market changes quicker, to translate insights into knowledge and then into the product and service innovations that meet ever-changing needs.

It is recognizing and then facing up to your present ‘pain points’ and the key competitive places that agility, digital understanding and translating this into outwardly facing outcomes will significantly improve your abilities to compete, in often volatile markets. It is shortening the time between understanding and reacting, and this is where digital transformation offers both the ‘return’ promise or becomes the threat.

We are in real need of connecting innovation and digitalization. Digital innovation is the future, it accelerates our world of possibilities

Forming a strategy, roadmap and business case needs really many new considerations

There are many considerations, each organization will be different. Yet all have a common need; the recognition each organization needs to develop its digital capabilities, organization-wide, not stuck in some IT department. It is a total company-wide set of activities that are affected. It is developing the digital capabilities across the organization by transforming the culture, the people’s digital skillset and the structures to get into sync, not just with newly defined organizational goals but also consistently adjusting to the rapid pace of change occurring in the marketplace, aligned to customers evolving needs.

The critical first points to address are the lack of something, be this the resource to undertake such a task, a lack of digital talent residing in the organization or digital savvy, the ability to make this a corporate priority and not leave this to limited pockets of divisions, functions or channels. It needs this powerful syncing and top-level focus and support.

Then we need to encourage and expand the risk appetite, in rapid experimentation and learning, to accelerate the infusion of digital talent, enhance the understanding of soft skills and the art of collaboration, in new teaming, in-goal, and process identification and solution solving. Also, in developing greater fluidity in structures, exploring, and identification with the needs of new solutions to keep ‘feeding’ this back into the evolving roadmap. All of this needs to establish a new digital rhythm to encourage the flow of knowledge and understanding, to feedback into evolving solutions that will take time to develop and embed.

We are caught up in a technology revolution and the sooner we think “digital innovation” the greater our chances are for some significantly different outcomes that push the boundaries and connect-up to more radical designed solutions. Solutions that our customers will relate to, not because they are more complex, which they will be but because they are connected, adaptive, and anticipatory.

The new age of innovation is dawning. Let’s “seize the day”.

The post A new cycle of innovation design first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

How can we bring increasing agility into our innovation work, that requires both stable and dynamic moments to deliver better outcomes?

Where do we focus, what do we recognize as organization practices, that can begin to transform the organization and re-equip it for a different future?

Agility for me is vital, it allows us to increasingly be adaptive in an uncertain world.

As innovation continues to be central to growth far more in the future it is our ability to adapt and adjust to all the uncertainties and this requires the ability to be agile.

A report provided by McKinsey “How to create an agile organization” has been part of a broader ‘agile’ series from them but this one specifically gave me my necessary anchor point, to move forward with my own design thinking for agility and innovation.

McKinsey does point out in this report you do need all eighteen practices to be fully alert to agile, but it is these dynamic ones that hold the real promise in my mind. These are the ones we all should move towards as our projected aim to achieve.

So let me summarize these nine dynamic practices

I have taken the nine dynamic practices outline meaning from this McKinsey report and added my own thoughts and reflections within these summaries.

1. Information Transparency

Today we need to take away all the filtering going on in organizations. Those who fill positions to control and attempt to influence the data. If we can’t unlock the knowledge within the organization, we fail to connect the people working within the organization to its products and related customer needs. Transparency makes the sharing of the knowledge increasingly relevant to connecting up the ‘whole’. There needs to be a very powerful concept of un-filtering, to allow the flow of understanding. It is highly dynamic and powerful in all it can release if encouraged and supported.

2. Rapid iteration and experimentation

The whole emphasis today is on rapid and fast cycles of learning. That testing, learning and adjusting from mistakes and building on these become really valuable progress points. Prototyping is getting so much better, it is creeping into the everyday culture when we innovate, or should. The MVP concept is so right to get features that are potentially better, out there, to test and learn from.

3. Continuous Learning

The moment we stop personally learning, we are the real losers. We need to find ways to ”cut out time” to explore and look for new ways to learn to improve ourselves and what we do within organizations. We need to push for new ways of working and to learn ‘more freely’ from other’s knowledge, in open exchanges and ways to collaborate. We progress by learning from failures and relating to them.

4. Flexible resource allocation.

We need to be adaptive, fluid in any organization and team design. The ability to feel in a position to ‘ramp up or shut down’ initiatives empowers us. We need to want to constantly change teams, seek out joining new ventures. To be always wanting to be redeployed, not because we are hanging on but because any new deployment means new horizons and opportunities. Seek change out, embrace this flexible world and show you are a key resource to help mold and shape it.

5. Open physical and virtual environment.

I often struggle with open planned offices, they provide an environment that distracts and not promote. If you can achieve a way that people communicate and collaborate with each other then great but when you are in a globally dispersed organization it is how you openly ‘react’ in your daily work. For me the virtual environment holds the real future and with so many organizations denying social tools the key to make it ‘purposefully designed’ is to make the activities clearly visible to all that need to know, to constantly show where your intervention and impact has made a difference in building context, content, structure or sharing knowledge. We need to find much better ways to make this a really dynamic, exciting, and rewarding part of agility within organizations

6. Sensing and seizing opportunities.

The value of being proactive, to watch out for signals, to then act upon them, to make your insights valuable to change perceptions, to alter customer bias, to engage with the external environment to shape, influence and contribute into new initiatives makes ‘sensing and seizing’ so important to drive innovation as the catalyst of change.

7. Technology, systems, and tools.

The constant demands being placed on us, to learn and adapt to new technology, systems, and tools as it keeps changing is mega-hard to keep pace with. New organization design in architecture, infrastructure, practices, and ways is tough to integrate the old and the new. How we respond to these is highly dependent on the articulated needs of the business. We can only be ‘responsive’ if we relate to the changing needs. The ability to have a more modular architecture, updates coming in a shorter interval of times can help in a continued updating. It is when the process determines rigid design you can’t change. To ‘react and respond’ you need to keep looking at moving towards technology frontiers. Exploring and exploiting contributes to a better holistic desired business outcome.

8. Role mobility

The movement needs to be constant. When we design we need to always account for achieving a certain fluidity. We need to constantly match our present skills with organizational needs. As we develop a more open talent marketplace we need to have this increasing mobility. Communicating roles, tasks and project outlines need to be demanded, then we have the understanding to change and then deliver to these ‘askes’ of us. These need to constantly match with our own goals, the alignment is the enabler to make this happen.

9. Active partnerships and ecosystems.

Relationships are our trading value. As we build out networks we need to trade. We trade in knowledge, in contribution, in working alongside others to co-develop. We seek out partnering, to invest our intellectual capital with theirs. We look to build the organization’s ecosystem through these engagements, to contribute to new products, services and solutions to look to bring them always to fruition. Our ‘need’ for activity and engagement builds a thriving, more dynamic environment.

In summary.

If we can embrace change by seeking out ways to re-equip ourselves, we encourage our organization to become more dynamic by these actions. We do get stuck in a certain mindset and set of behaviors. We become beholden to them, they eventually ‘freeze’ our progress, we stop learning and experimenting. We need to push for formal mechanisms of change, we need to seek out our own. We need to take hold of our actions, be clear on our organization’s vision and how we believe we can contribute.

As individuals, as members of fluid teams and as an organization we need to be mutually reinforcing. For me, fluidity is equally the growing need of organization’s today.  It is in recognizing that the dynamic practices found for building agility into ourselves and the organization do lie in these nine practices, they give us this level of fluidity. Take them on board, practice them constantly and over time your agility becomes your transformation. It becomes the ‘norm’ and allows for constant adaption.

The post Achieving agility within your innovation work first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Innovation remains separate for the clear majority of our companies even today as it is full of unknowns and question marks. Top executives just do not like the sound of this, so they seek to ring-fence innovation. One where they want to contain it, to try to tame it, so it can mirror their (mistaken) believe that our world is one of order, control, and stability.

Instead of embracing that the real world is actually an innovating world, full of opportunity, for those prepared to take a greater risk, will have much to gain. Regretfully we still see many companies operating with a 20th-century mindset. Thankfully the pressure upon companies to innovate, to get their growth back, is getting a very tough place to operate in today without tangible demonstration of innovation being realized. There is this need to “embrace” innovation. If not, rapid extinction is occurring for many that choose to ignore the sweeping changes we are witnessing in the business world, where more open and technology-driven innovators are connecting and collaborating. Those companies that only halve-heartedly attempting change are fearful and still want to “box” innovation in. A transformation where innovation and technology go hand-in-hand does have to be utterly full on to succeed!

Talk to any executive and out they will trot that comfortable sound bite of: “well we need to strike the right risk-reward as the balance to achieve”. Probe that a little further and they start shifting uncomfortably when you focus in on innovation and their support to its activity. Just ask yourself how many people are totally dedicated to innovation compared to managing the financial risks? Innovation provides growth and future value, financial management mostly focuses on cost containment and utilization of existing assets to manage near-term value. We seem to get this risk-reward totally out of whack!

The creeping effect of Ring Fencing Innovation

I call much of what is currently going on around innovation as simply “ring fencing” so as to limit the risk that undertaking innovation can expose you too. “Ring-fencing” limits innovation impact as you continually push it back into a prescribed approach on how you view the world, one that is stable, safe and having prescribed borders and markets. Every innovation initiative is surrounded by metrics of success that are for “known” business outcomes, programs are “contained” to selected teams, labs are separated from the mainstream to ideate but fail to integrate back, business units are denied “decent” resources to pursue truly game-changing innovation. The constraining of innovation is at work, we are ring-fencing not breaking down borders.

Well, one big surprise, all of that intent on holding innovation change back are the ones drowning, or eventually being thrown out of the window on retirement packages or being sacked. If you don’t fully embrace innovation in today’s world you are the ones heading for extinction but at what price for the countless thousands being caught up in salvage attempts, arriving too little, too late.

Think about this for a moment, we are actually wanting to limit our exposure to innovation in many companies. Well if this view of mine is correct then it is no wonder it becomes hard to ‘allow’ innovation to take hold and drive a business. It is consciously being held in check as it conflicts with the present design of an entity built and designed in the 20th century. It is like the sailboats giving way to steam-driven ones or horse-drawn carriages to make way for the car. It is the (inevitable) march of progress, good or bad it happens, at speed, in disruptive force, and in gut-wrenching ways.

To break innovation into parcels of expertise, limit its resources, constrain its funding we are simply ring fencing innovation to protect the existing, to preserve the “old” order because many know of any different way of working.

Remove the Ring Fences and see what can happen – some examples of innovation being at the core

We are seeing many examples of where innovation has been totally embraced, as the core of what the company is undertaking. One good example that has ignored this 20th-century approach of managing a business is Amazon. It has been a runaway success, in taking technology innovation and exploring all the possible weaknesses in the current systems of business design. Amazon has disrupted books, supply chains,………..and so many other established industries or services that it continues to set about disrupting, and all others feel the impact. Let’s look at five:

CBInsights nicely puts it in its Amazon teardown document as “Amazon barreling into physical retail, financial services, healthcare and AI-led computing” All of these on the back of a massive e-commerce presence, transport, logistics, developing hardware devices, food delivery, open-source educational resources and advertising. It is a “colossal”  in that it prowls everywhere where it see’s inefficiency and complacency and sets about learning about the sector, disrupting it and offering the final buyer, the consumer, increased value or alternative options. Just imagine the position of AWS, the positioning of its AI assistant of Alexa, both cutting edge and learning platforms. These are real, ground-breaking innovation moves in services and imagination.

Then you have Alibaba, equally a technology-centric business built on connecting up providers of services and customers in a very technology-based approach to platform services. Alibaba is extracting out the inefficiencies of the old system by designing a new set of innovative ones built on platforms to conduct business, squeezing out margins, building scale and appeal for its customers. Alibaba is one of the most pioneering firms around, built from its firm grip on China as its core market for harvesting and experimenting. It has become known for the connecting up of the whole supply change and fulfillment consumption chain as a real leader.

Then you have the best case of taking innovation into the core and designing solutions that solve many of our previously unrecognized needs. Here I am talking about Apple, they gave us the ultimate example of good innovation, tangible products, well designed, in ways unimaginable until they are in front of us, ones that change our lives. Most of us can’t imagine being parted from our smartphone, tablet or computer today and Apple still seems laser-focused on products or usability. In CBInsights Apple teardown ” They see Apple further delve into “focusing upon Augmented Reality, Wearables, AI, Cars, And More”

Just look at Tesla and Elon Musk. What he is attempting in scope and breadth is staggering (Useful reference link). Covering off alternatives in Aerospace, AI, Automotives, Telecommunications, Transportation (space travel), Energy and Radical Manufacturing and Material Supply Chains are all so pioneering it is leaving everyone else racing to catch up. Clearly, they are at the edge of radical innovation in much of what they are pursuing.

Then we have Alphabet or Google. We all experience that omnipresence of Google in all its services under this brand. With Android Operating System, You-Tube and countless acquisitions it has spawned a business that is touching all our lives. Their approach to investing early and then exiting if it does not look to be making the “jump” into major revenue contributions is again, highly innovative, demanding on those involved and constantly experimenting to find the winning formula’s to achieve this growth acceleration.

Each of these five powerhouses of innovation has defied the traditional logic of how a business should be managed. They made innovation the core, through the use of technology, imagination, and sheer, determined visions of recognizing complacency by many of the existing incumbents. You will also recognize each of these five companies have very strong visionaries, they drive innovation from the very top.

Those left in the destructive path of companies like these visionaries and innovators

The numerous companies left in this destructive path have been struggling to survive or simply attempt to try and catch up. For so many companies they are not even embracing technology in the ways they should. They stay mired in legacy, viewing “their” established markets through very narrow prisms, distorted from today’s realities, of change transforming swaths of industries not seeing all of this coming. They refuse to see the value of connecting everything up or bulk at the cost of this. Their growth has dried up, hence why innovation is the most overused (under-worked) word that company leaders wish for but can’t come to terms fully with, it is out of their experience zone. Many simply can’t let go of their past experience, to step out of their existing models to embrace the changes underway.

They are so many laggards in the truest sense, having a self-belief of maintaining dividends, giving back to their investor’s constant returns but continuing to strip the company of its richest resources and assets; those of ingenuity and creativity, in this dominance of squeezing out all efficiency. People are creative but only when they are allowed to be  So these laggards make continuous attempts to phase innovation in, piecemeal. They shift the ‘ring-fencing’ in incremental steps. They have not realized they must “pull down the fences” they have built around innovation and unleash it, it totally different and radical ways. They are strangling the very life-blood of their future by not embracing innovation full-on.

Innovation is entering the boardroom but it still is not central to many decisions still being made- why?

We do see innovation creep increasingly enter into the boardroom but it clashes constantly with all those negative feedback loops that clash. It is a constant fight between the many forces at work. Working in innovation spaces are messy and unpredictable, companies look for predictable outcomes and drive efficiency. So much innovation progress is negated even with the positive feedback by the ‘forces’ of status quo. We keep having these countervailing forces in play. The need for maximizing efficiency, extracting constant additional value from core offerings comes up alongside venturing out of those zones of certainty into the zone of uncertainty that innovation gives.

It is a different world and ring-fencing innovation, to corral its impact is a self-defeating tragic mistake that must change.

Innovation should be the core, we have so many examples of the greater value and worth of the companies that did embrace it.

The post Ring Fencing Constrains Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

A good framework seems to grow, it becomes integrated into your thinking and application. You see increasing possibilities to apply it. One of these for me has been Dave Snowden’s Cynefin.

I also increasing apply the Three Horizons framework as well.

Both allow me to organize my thinking and provide options within any multiple evaluations to begin or shape thinking going forward. Both attempt to break down a growing complexity we all find in our word today.

One, the three horizons, attempts to sketch out our thinking about today’s world, of where we are and what we need to do to keep it going in a hopefully orderly state, and then looks to forecast out the changes we need to move towards, in a projected future and then identify the needs to get there. It passes through three horizons of today (H1), the near term (H2) and the longer term (H3).

You will find much of what I have written about on the three horizons story, within my “insights and thinking“ tab (shown above) and look for the applicable section. Equally, you can put into the search box “three horizons” and many posts will come up to explore this, if you are curious on its value, position and our need, to use this on a more consistent basis.

The Cynefin framework provides a wonderful way to sort the range of issues faced by leaders and us all, into five contexts, defined by the nature of the relationships between cause and effect. Dave Snowden has been explaining these consistently for years. Four of these five are; obvious (formerly simple), complicated, complex and chaotic states and requires us to diagnose situations and then to act in contextually appropriate ways. The fifth one is disorder, often overlooked or not fully appreciated. It is when something is unclear, it is in a disorderly, highly transitory state and needs to be rapidly stabilized into one of the other four to give it a more orderly state going forward.

So why do I see this Cynefin framework as growing in importance?

We are constantly moving from an orderly world into a more complex or chaotic one. We need to be able to recognize what we are facing when we are evaluating something, be that a problem, issue or possible solution. We need an organizing framework where we explore and then exploit, it is knowing when to do either of these becomes important.

Let’s look at different competitive environments we can face and place these into the Cynefin model.

The Obvious Environment

A relatively clear future is seen. Here the future, or the evaluation, is relatively easy to predict. Incremental innovation tends to go into this space. Adding additional features to software, in any strategic design are more predictable. We operate in this ‘state’ in repeatable and predictable ways. The relationship between cause and effect is fairly obvious to all involved so we set this up in those ‘classic’ structure and processes, having the application of regular reviews and place a clear set of measurements on them, to enable them to progress.

I often react over the use of ‘best practice’ but it is the practice we do apply to this ‘obvious’ environment if most ‘things’ are equal. Often we tag much as ‘best practice’ because we are not as thoughtful in our analysis as we should be. Much ‘best practice’ is for me, so often based on past practice, this is someone’s else’s practice, it becomes far too often just “lazy practice”. We often become “chained” to this application of best practice and totally forget to put this “practice” into its appropriate contextual setting. We get used to copying others and lose our own creativity or evaluation. The value of the Cynefin Framework is to challenge this “obvious” state and see if it is actually emerging, or moving towards a different state.

The application goes into a sequence of Sense- Categorize and Respond. That is you assess the facts of a situation or idea or concept, you categorize them and then respond, mostly on established practices or past procedures, systems or practices.

We have to watch out for a number of dangers here. Often we impose far too much micro-managing, we actually miss vital points and far too easily classify issues, as they are often presented as overly simplified. Equally the information has become condensed for higher management consumption, who do not pick up on possible growing problems or warning signals, often until it is too late. Also, we become complacent, our thinking becomes ingrained. If we miss a range of important points the obvious suddenly becomes chaotic, a crisis often born out of this poor evaluation or simplification.

The Complicated Environment

You can see distinct possible futures or projected outcomes. You have options, perhaps limited but clear and mutually exclusive to apply. You can form the future scenario’s. You can break down a construct, a proposal into short-term, frequent reviewed project landmarks. You do have options but the key is to bring everyone on to the same page. You are searching for good practice. Those ‘knowns’ need to be clarified and those felt as ‘unknowns’ need to be investigated and turned into ‘knowns’ Working in this space of complicated we need these reviews to recognize any necessary adjustments. So we need to establish some form of good investigative and application of some knowledge, usually drawn from experts or specialists.

Here we go into a sequence of Sense- Analyze and Respond. The emphasis here is Analyze and does look for this expertise to “inform” decisions to be made. We might sense what is wrong but getting to a real cause or effect needs this analysis.

Again there are numerous dangers in this complicated evaluation to look for and avoid. Engrained thinking is one, here it might be the experts more than the ones listening. Experts can dominate and highly influence conversations and one has to guard against this. Listen to alternative voices. Often expertise does come with clear opinions and those need to be questioned, to see if this opinion is missing the further opportunity, different options or can be explored in more controversial, imaginative ways. The ability is to listen out to novel thoughts and give them time to be explored. We can over-analysis, that ‘paralysis’ that needs watching out for. Here it is the chance to be more creative, to brainstorm, to allow exchanges and challenge to the surface. You often need trade-offs to arrive at a consensus or decision-making. If after a reasonable time you still have not found a solution, it might be because it is actually more in the complex rather than just this complicated environment.

The Complex Environment

Here we are getting into the area that a right answer does not exist. So many of the parts are dynamic and we are spending increasing time on breaking down ‘unknown unknowns’. We do not have the insight of retrospect but we are in a search for patterns, understanding change as best we can. Here it is constructing a solution for emergent practice. It is not possible to define distinct and/ or mutually exclusive scenarios. Cause and effect are in retrospect. You look here to focus increasingly on building guidelines, establishing rules or standards and less on applying fixed processes that do not meet this environment. Actually, there are an awful lot of decisions within organizations that are complex. If leadership imposes to early, or without the necessary thinking through is a serious error. Leaderships job here is to explore the path forward, so as to gradually reveal itself. This is the place where new business models, innovation, and creativity can emerge.

So to allow future ranges of possibilities to emerge we Probe- Sense and Respond. Sensing is where the path begins to emerge. We need to build the competencies to experiment, prototype and test increasingly in this space to allow that emerging solution to come out.

What we always need to guard against here is this falling back into past experiences, applying past practice to this situation, or ignoring major differences because it is not within our existing experiences. Often the instinct of taking control, applying command and decision-making to fit a self-imposed timeline or determined need for clear outcomes can dominate. When you are in the ‘unknown’ environment outcomes become increasingly hard to determine. The call is for more experimentation and inquiry so the probing becomes very important to make the sense. The other aspect that needs flagging here is the clarification of risk and failure tolerance. If you impose a sense of order, a call for clear outcomes, criticise failure and regard risk as unacceptable you undermind the evolutionary process. From this set of actions, you can easily fall into a chaotic state as poor decisions are based on a lack of real discovery. In the complex environment a stepping back, allow those patterns and validations to emerge and then respond to them on which, in your opinion and best judgment can succeed, is critical

The Chaotic Environment

Nothing is right in any chaotic environment. The relationship between cause and effect are impossible to clarify. The shifting is constant. It is a turbulent place to be. The most important starting point is to stabilize this “sense of chaos” as quickly as possible. They are never any recipes for success already known, you have to design it or simply build it. The key is to get reactions aligned, clarify principles to enable levels of decisions to be made, who determines what and why across all those involved. It is the nature of acting early but acting as critically important. The whole need is to transform the situation from chaos to complex. Communications and engagement are critical. Shifting ambiguity into a growing pattern of certainty through well-considered actions.

When we are faced with a chaotic environment it is Act – Sense, and Respond.  We are operating in the realm of  Novel Practice. Effectiveness comes from developing responses, build out the directives, communicating these clearly and taking constant action to restore the sense of order. It is highly turbulent, has high tension and requires a high level of pattern-based leadership. It is a place where many decisions need to be made and very little time to think.

We often hear of those legends who took control and turned something around, that saved us. One environment is completely different from another, even when you think there are similarities.  We also need to guard against placing known specialists into new environments, if they have that self-opinionated self-image. Leaders or crisis management teams do need to move the context from this chaotic to complex, and be ready to change from command and control quickly into a challenging environment where complexity needs to take hold, at the very least, to quickly stabilize this sense of chaos.

What we do know is this space is the place to impose innovation. Novelty, directive leadership all become highly valuable, people open up to experiment well. It has been suggested when you manage chaos, you manage innovation in parallel. One team focuses on the crisis, another on the innovating opportunities to do things differently. It is the time to make the real change to move through chaos, to complex, too complicated and then too obvious.

The Disorder environment

There is a fifth-domain, shown in the middle and that is the one of disorder, not knowing which domain you are in and we often struggle to recognize which domain we want to be in for innovation or to take the business forward. This disorder stays with us until we impose order, structures or clarity to the thinking and recognize the place (domains above) we should be operating in.

This is a truly random state. We need to place this disorder into its right environment and hopefully, it is only a transitory one, highly undesirable, needing to be ‘taken hold of’. Having no order needs to rapidly change. We fall into disorder when we lose attention. The most simple definition of disorder in Cynefin is the state of not knowing which domain you are in. Your immediate job is to seek out which option of the other four states will get you out of the disorder one.

Complacency can create a catastrophic failure

Finally, to complete the understanding, the Obvious domain is next to Chaos because complacency (the extreme of Obvious) can all too easily produce a catastrophic failure.  Thus that boundary is represented by a cliff, or more technically as a catastrophic fold. You can find yourself moved from an orderly, steady state, the business that is obvious to you and then thrown suddenly into chaos, by a sudden change.

There are many examples of sudden change that might mean real threats to your very survival. A sudden disruption in the market, unforeseen competition ‘suddenly appearing and totally creating havoc. You fall off the cliff and descend into chaos. This sudden shift from the obvious can become a catastrophic fold, sudden bankruptcy due to complacency and not being alert to the dangers that are building up all around you. We often fail to stay alert to changes in the market or simply ignore them.

As more and more disruption forces occur, the state of suddenly going from a well ‘oiled’ machine into a state of chaos is this feeling you are falling off a cliff. It all begins not to make any sense to you anymore, you lose that sense of order. Your solution is to try and “impose” a ‘known’ order but that might be a serious mistake, or you recognize this becomes the opportunity to construct a new order through rapid experimentation to find a new pathway back to order. You begin to open up your thinking to evalaute new models, thinking or ways to undertakre business.

So the value of the Cynefin Model

Today we are seeing “waves of disruption” that can can be depicted as the (reverse) sequence of chaos- complex- complicated – obvious, as the necessary stages to go through to meet these changes occurring. Knowing them by applying a framework likes Cynifin places it into a contextually appropriate structure, working through this through the Cynefin framework can become valuable. Knowing the different stages of how to make sense, by using this “sense-making” model really does help. Seeking out and knowing the context is critical to any decisions made on where you are classifying your order..

I wrote this  in a post “Learning the mantra of innovation context”

“The power of context shifts everything and then gives it ‘shape’. It provides the conditions and the circumstances of time and place and why we need to find and deliver something different. It provides the innovation marching orders.

If we place innovation in a certain set of contexts, then those setting about the task are more sensitive to the needs and understanding, they can relate or can reject this. It can allow them to work more clearly and effectively, not necessarily effective as innovation is inherently messy.

Context gives us certain guard rails or borders to help gain a more united focus. Where we go after that, by pushing those borders will depend on those involved by seeing a greater value in an evolving context of mutual understanding. The ‘setting it in context’ allows for dialogue, adding more value to the thinking”

I keep going back to David’s model as he evolves it through constant practice and engagement. It can be applicable to many situations.

Cynefin, by the way, is a Welsh word, it means “the place of your multiple belongings” and just apply this to all the situations you need to assess the state you are in and the type of approach you need to undertake. This model helps put much into a contextual value.

Finally, I have drawn a lot from David Snowden’s work, in certainly writing this post but more importantly to gain so many insights and stimulus for what I do and how I want to apply it. I always enjoy his thinking, challenging and wanting to explore.

The post Cynefin: A framework that grows for me all the time, in its value and worth. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

At present, you can download the report before it might slip behind a paywall at some later stage. I would take advantage while you can. The report provides insights from 270 innovation, R&D and strategy executives and considerable work on structuring the conclusions in highly thoughtful and valuable ways to the reader.

If you are not familiar with Innovation Leader, they were created to be a growing and essential resource for innovation, especially in the bigger organizations. It has a more specific focus on the US scene but much of what it has found is universal in my opinion. It’s editor and Co-Founder Scott Kirsner (editor@innovationleader.com) and his team are building a great point of reference and meeting point for innovators to exchange and learn from each other. Maybe you should join?

Why do I think the report is well worth you investing time to read? The report provides an excellent document that enables good discussions to be drawn from the benchmarking of many organization, to compare with your own organization. The report is laid out into four parts: 1. Creating Strategic Alignment, 2.Funding Innovation, 3 Delivering Impact and 4 Moving forward.

It offers up great suggestions on tactics, relationships and obstacles you can face in any sort of innovation program, be it an early forming one or at a more mature stage. It can allow you to communicate and suggest the needs for a new innovation approach where you need others involved but they would expect to see a validation. This report helps in all these and much more.

I am going to just focus on three parts that really caught my eye

These are 1 “Who Owns Innovation“, 2. “The Big Shift Occurring” and 3 “Obstacles to Innovation“. I have taken a visual from the report to support these focal points with permission, as this report is a copyright “2018 Innovation Leader LLC and KPMG LLP- all rights reserved report.”

Who Owns Innovation?

I pulled out this visual specifically on the transformation activity but as the whole report section on ownership of innovation discusses the differences, when it comes to breaking them down into incremental, adjacent and transformational innovation activities. Each has its own analysis. I chose the executing of transformational as it is the hardest but specifically to call attention to the array of groups working in this area.

We tend to focus on one group or another or hand it over to a separate innovation lab but here we actually see seven groups can be actively engaged in transformational innovation. This brings home the complexity of managing innovation, of aligning all of the different, sometimes conflicting activities and groups involved in innovation. Yet it is recognizing it is simply not “contained” to one specific group, even transformational innovation. I find that very valuable to be reminded about.

We are dealing with both internal and external groups that are more specialized and focused. Organizations are recognizing they can call upon different resources and dedicated groups to achieve transformational innovation.

The general Business Unit is less involved in transformation innovation but they will always have a key involvement and perhaps final say as they are more than likely going to promote or block the transforming ideas if they are not actively engaged.  The dedicated Innovation team on the visual shows the main ‘spike’ which tends to follow today’s trend, for achieving a specific innovation focus and not being distracted you provide space for dedicated teams in different formats that ‘fit’ for you..

The one that is interesting, is that outside resources do show up at this current level, does indicate the growing recognition of larger organizations recognizing increasingly that going outside to specialists offers a very distinct level of separation to achieve breakthrough innovation.  Outsiders offer a very different level of pairing, of business acumen and consumer empathy that is often not found in-house. This can give you a terrific access to different thinkers. draw in people with very different professional backgrounds that have design, engineering, and technology as their core.It really can transform thinking and product solutions.

It is good to see this outside engagement with specialist parties becoming an important part of any innovation transformational portfolio- the separation to focus in and providing a more diverse tapping into the outside resources that are available.

The Big Shift Occurring

Where do organizations focus their energy and resources? There has been this commonly offered guide that a 70-30-10 ratio recommending incremental should be at 70%, adjacent at 30% and finally transformational at 10%. I have really detested this broad recommendation, it is in my opinion simply bad advice, without some detailed understanding of your market condition, your competitors, the changes we are undergoing to even make a rule-of-thumb recommendation as most simply just copy this blindly. Can you imagine a tech company on these ratios? They are more likely to be 10- 20- 70 or a company in the middle of significant industry changes working on these ratios, incrementing themselves to death?

I would argue anyone trying to get out of the incremental trap needs to place increasing resource, energies, learning and funds towards adjacent and more specifically transformation. This is why I am glad this trend is underway and we see in this report nearly a 50- 25- 25 and that is really welcome. When we see a 35-30-35 as a recommendation I’ll be even happier but depending on your industries circumstances and need.

I was pleased to see this trend, it holds promise for the future of “better” innovation offerings that are more unique and radical. Do take a look at the industrial variations. The more we move towards transformational, the more we are thinking longer-term and that is a really important Big Shift.

Obstacles to Innovation

There is so much written about obstacles. It is placed at the leadership door, it is in the poor innovation culture, or a lack of budget, poor visions or alignment. The list does go on and on. Two that really stand out for me and confirm what so many working in innovation often say (often quietly) are “Politics and Turf Wars” and “Inability to Act on Critical Signals of Change.” Just take another look, if you stop and take your time on the visual above they are number one and number three as the real issues.

Now the fact they come out so high indicates a really good underscoring of this report getting closer to the heart of innovation. The report points out the larger an organization gets the more turf wars and politics “kick in” to become such obstacles. It does affect all, large and small, and this raises one of the biggest issues of how can these inside blockages be successfully eliminated? We need to reflect on these and offer some better, lasting, solutions. We often see conflicting priorities, calling in favors, those “pet” project of a senior leader all become caught up in this turf war and politics. How can we reduce these down?

I have suggested we need a greater alignment and along with Jeffrey Philips in some of our past work, we have suggested and constantly practice the Innovation Executive WorkMat methodology, where the central part is the communication, cascading and constantly build the common language and it this document becomes the central one for innovation to draw from. In this workmat approach, you have seven parts: Strategic alignment, Culture, Environment, Structure and Processes, Governance, Common Language and Communications and finally, Motivations and Metrics.

It is this combined workmat approach, owned throughout the organization, that can begin to break down politics, turf wars, lack of vision, poor executive support, or failing to pick up opportunities, and miss signals of change. It also looks to give collective ownership.

In the Innovation Leaders report, KPMG has a specific section on “acting on signals of change” that is worth reading. Again as a constant champion of the Three Horizons methodology, we can begin to pick up weak signals of change that are all around us today and build those into the framing and innovation activities of incremental (h1), adjacent (h2) and transformational (h3)

So for me or any other person involved in innovation, this report is a must go too.

It is full of terrific insights covering many essential aspects of innovation management. It has a handy “key questions” and points to some very useful “resources after each of the sections discussed.

Finally, the report outlines the hallmarks of a mature innovation program and equally for those launching an innovation program. Great insights and learning just within this section.

I strongly recommend it as a report you can’t afford to miss.

The post A really worthwhile report on Innovation not to be missed from Innovation Leader. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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

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

It starts with a realization

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

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

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

My daily bread is innovation

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

Not an uncommon dilemma

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

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

The #influencer model- things are changing fast

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

Connecting is one thing, engaging is another!

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

I am trying to balance time, need and return.

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

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

Is anyone out there, really listening?

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

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

What I really do enjoy about social media

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

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

The blurring in front of my eyes

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

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

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

What I’ve learned to keep remembering

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

Where I’m still learning

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

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

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

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

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

I was catching up with my often collaborator and sparring partner on “all things innovating” Jeffrey Phillips  recently, and within our conversation, some of our discussions sort of triggered a reflection back to some fundamental work we undertook some years back.

In revisiting it, I felt it does stand the test of time and does seem to make this “come around” seem true. Let me provide a quick introduction along with some brief explanations :

Innovation for me always needs common reference points

When you don’t have a common approach to something, in this case, the management of innovation, you can have considerable pockets of inefficiency and a high level of ineffectiveness to deal with. Your organizational energies become fragmented as you constantly deal with differences, gap issues & misunderstandings that result in much-hidden costs and ‘spent, unproductive’ capital.

You often find resources are not focusing on advancing innovation; they are often spent on fixing what you have. By not having a clear common approach that everyone understands you fail to establish a common language. By not adopting a common set of innovation reference points you can remain often unproductive, consistently re-adapting, re-working and plugging gaps that could be better invested in managing the many aspects of complexity you always find in a better thought-through innovation management structure, one that focuses on advancing your activity.

A belief that has not changed.

Jeffrey and I believed, even more so today, that the innovation space needs a common starting point – a collaborative reference model.  Certainly, many other large and successful industries have common standards – in technology for definitions and common software and platform building, or in common accounting protocols have significantly advanced business confidence, common understanding, and sharing. We are gathering around the protocols in Industry 4.0 presently to connect and link manufacturing in a more “globalized” world.

So we need to begin to build an Innovation Management Understanding

It is with these shared and transparent frameworks, clients can gain knowledge, have a growing confidence to make an investment and gain a clearer sense of direction. So why don’t we seem to achieve a common approach to innovation, not constantly adjusting and adapting to different ‘standards’ or approaches and feeling innovation just seems to be stuck in a random, ad-hoc approach, left in individual organizations to figure out?

What we all really want is to acquire a common, repeatable, scalable innovation structure that allows us to invest, manage distinctly different innovations on a consistent basis.

 Adopting a common innovation framework has numerous advantages

Clients in partnership with advisors can build from this basic common platform of understanding by the more effective use of applying people with the right skills and capabilities to focus and accelerate the job-on-hand: the need-to-deliver innovation consistently to final clients needs.

If consultants, advisors, and practitioners can demonstrate that their solutions are based on a common framework they set about the creation of their own unique differentiation, based on their unique skills and points of value-add, not hiding behind generalizations, easy to copy quick fixes, spend most of their time on the constant need to firefight and plug gaps, or sometimes add to the mystery that unclear aspects of innovation management or incomplete advice can generate. It degrades efforts in our view.

We constructed a four-layered innovation model building around 1) strategy, 2) different necessary innovation approaches, 3) people and culture and 4) processes and platforms.

Reviewing where we are and recognizing innovation can be approached very differently

Now before I go any further I want to spend a little more time on reviewing this past work, relating it to what we have learned in the recent times on innovation’s advancement and see if we can re-emphasize the depth of analysis and research we undertook and bring it back into our innovation world.

This is the next step in building the common understanding

This is recognizing there are different innovation types and they have unique approaches that can still be incorporated in a common process. Each has its own detailed map but the top-level type denominators are shown below.

As I said, on my recent re-visit it seems to stand a test of time and forms a fundamental bedrock of collaborative innovation in all its different dimensions and guises.

Then we have the Common Process suggested as the adopted process for managing innovation

This is where innovation management software needs to be ‘joined up’. We have two distinct offerings, those that provide software for the front end and those that approach the portfolio management process. These need integrating but as the best, in the class as an integrated robust software offering, one that is available in one software package, not as it is offered today, in one or the other being a stronger piece of software (FFE) and the other staying light (PLM) or the other way round. It needs connecting up in a comprehensive way. Some current software providers might claim this is being offered but I have yet to be convinced any have achieved this as yet. Let me be proved wrong!

Does what I am sharing here make sense to you?

I need another chat with Jeffrey to see if we can open this back up to the scrutiny it requires and, as always, different thinking to improve the approach any argument for a common innovation process requires from others.

We are not usurping the different standards being currently worked upon for any ISO or equivalent proposal. We are in the search for a practical and logical common practice for innovation and its management process.

The post What goes around, comes around, in Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.