This “run” is the time when salmon migrate from the ocean and swim to the upper reaches of the rivers, where they spawn on gravel beds.

This event is an annual run where grizzly bears, bald eagles and sports fisherman all “feed” off the struggling salmon as it attempts to make it “upstream”. It is one of the natures more arduous journeys.

This set me thinking about the innovator within a company. They face the same “salmon run” or gauntlet when they try to bring to life a new innovation. The innovation equally has to swim “upstream” of validation, encountering all sort of obstacles along the way to get approval. Actually can we make a further parallel here?

You can replace the “grizzly bear” with the CFO, wanting to catch you out in your lack of hard, quantifiable numbers or not wanting to commit the level of investment into this project as it seems, in their opinion “very risky”. Then you have so many “bald eagles” swooping in to attack your idea as it disturbs their status quo, it challenges the existing business model or it would not fit within the current organization’s ways. They attack the idea for fear it “steals” from existing resources, it risks canabilizing the current product, it simply means more work for them. These “bald eagles” are constantly diving at you to pick your idea off. Then you get the “sports fisherman”, constantly casting his line wanting to snag or catch you, to reel you in and make your idea his or just simply being the one enjoying the “sport” of the catch, stopping you from moving further upriver with clever questions designed to impress others with his insights.

The innovator constantly has his “run”. He builds up his arguments and validations, he collects facts, trails and builds prototypes but then he has to go and sell the concept to management. This is my equivalent of an innovation salmon run.

If you regard the role of being the innovator as similar to a salmon struggling to get upstream to spawn, to undertake some hatching (in this case of ideas) then you often do have to face as the tortuous journey. They constantly face the “innovation run”, just like salmon, there are so many obstacles to their run.

Innovation is seen as counter-intuitive to the majority of the work undertaken in established businesses

The approach to Innovation is counter-intuitive to what we’ve been taught in business schools and undertake in daily organizations that have been taught and came up the ranks managing predictable businesses based on metrics. Most of the folks at the helm of organizations or working in them at senior level, starting with the MBAs or finance types, set about managing risk, seeking out greater productivity and efficiency as the ladder to progress

The innovator, on the other hand, is working in random, exploratory ways, exploring new thinking not relying on established practices.  We’ve thoughtfully designed the modern organization to produce predictable outcomes, increasing reliability and reducing risk. Innovation is an unnatural act within the current system and metrics-driven mantra. T

Understandably so, executives who take a “show me the numbers” approach to innovation see expensive experiments, lots of novelty, lack of planning and worst of all, no defensible numbers and set about wanting to disprove it. The antibodies that lie in weight for the innovator.

We know Innovators face significant barriers to get their ideas into realization.

These form many of the barriers to not achieving a successful innovation environment. Let’s list many of these. This handy list from Miriam Lourdes Filgueiras  Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana, José Antonio Echeverría shows how hard it is to “swim upstream” to hatch a new innovative idea.

Like Salmon, innovators must build up their body mass ready to take on the innovators run for approval. They must be ready to defend, validate, to prove the potential value of their new concept and its future value to the organization. They do not have the solid foundation of “repeating hard numbers” they have to build them through a series of steps, of validations, proof of concepts, customer engagements and shaping the original concept towards a commercial outcome.

Salmon, once they arrive to spawn have spent so much energy and physiological change to get to that point they die. The innovator certainly does have a greater chance to survive but we do see the turnover of the innovation manager in many cases is getting shorter and shorter, in many of our business organizations. Sometimes between 3 to 5 years and they move on or simply out. So the innovator does equally have as a innovators lifespan a short life. Is this because the innovation salmon run takes its toll on them, or have they simply become the next grizzly bear, bald eagle or sportsman challenging the next innovation run? Or perhaps, they learned something themselves about the innovation run to help clear the way for the next innovators salmon run?

The post Facing The Innovators Salmon Run 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.

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.

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Where does innovation figure within this? In new products, new services and plenty of noble entreaties to adding to the growth I am sure. One aspect you might want to consider within all this activity and planning is to develop a resolution list of issues that need resolving.

I mean really, finally, actually resolving in 2012, to allow innovation to have a greater ‘hold’ on future thinking. Achieving a consensus, a clear focus, and a corporate commitment is what strategic plans are about so draw up your list of innovation resolutions needed to be resolved in 2012 and commit to them within the plans. Be upfront and bold.

Make sure you choose ‘soft’ as well as ‘hard’ innovation resolutions within any mix

One thing I would recommend when you draw up your list. Most corporate executives find the ‘softer’ aspects of innovation harder to work through.

There is this certain ‘hard wiring’ that everything has to be clear, measurable and tucked away  in the accounts or ‘ticked off’ in each person’s mind.

Softer aspects of innovation often don’t conform to this orderly view of the world and it is addressing this inconsistency ‘head-on’ has great value.
As anyone working across innovation challenges can recognize, it is the intangibles, the softer aspects of innovation, that make it truly work, so my recommendation, make sure you embed these softer ones within any set of innovation resolutions.

Eventually more people become comfortable these ‘softer’ aspects are critical to focus upon as they become strategically established and it makes the job of any person engaged in innovation a little easier that it is recognized.

Here are 9 innovation areas that might need your resolution for better outcomes in 2012.

These 9 struck me as issues that are causing problems for innovation but please don’t let me stop you making your own list, but all I ask you is please make sure you have not forgotten them by the end of January. These resolutions should be strategic commitments to really work upon to fully resolve.

Raise them, talk about them, get them agreed as important to resolve and build them into your strategic plans for 2012, along with the required actions, resources and thoughtful solutions to delivering on these.

–          There is this urge to keep forcing change on the client with new products and services. We are in really different economic times at present and they might find these as difficult to accept so working out ways for extracting value from their need for a ‘steady state’ can provide different innovation opportunities such as adding services to a product.

–          The recent emphasis has been on finding the ‘disrupting’ application, product or business model, nothing is wrong with this to change existing markets or move into new segments. There are many other ‘types’ of innovation to explore which might actually not be as equally disruptive to you. Disruptive approaches are often fraught with risks for you and this might not be the time for this strategy anyway, explore the others to contain risks in volatile times. Learning about the significant differences in required competencies and approaches for each type of innovation will provide for a greater dimension to your future innovation activities and your ability to deliver on these.

–          Establishing a more ‘listening culture’ so you can discover far more about the issues effecting your customers, your employees so you can adjust your innovation offerings to cater for a more exact need. This can be a really powerful competitive advantage. There is a lot to absorb in this, from social media to CRM and through learning and experimenting. Raising this up within a resolution need for 2012 would be strategically important for your organizations future to really define and structure.

–          We struggle to leverage the tools that are available for finding new opportunities, be these at the discovery stage or in market research. By exploring the array of tools that are available for spotting trends, needs or unearthing the next big opportunity you can leverage and exploit these different techniques allowing a deeper appreciation of their value. Also one positive outcome is to have established a greater toolkit of techniques to take forward.

–          Downturns are really good times to get rid of some of the ‘legacy’ within your organization, to finally recognize older systems, flat file repositories for managing innovation, idea management systems can be reviewed and you re-position yourselves with some incredibly nimble, low cost, highly flexible systems that are available through a Web 2.0 approach. This can greater advance a more integrated flow of ideas to concepts through product life cycle management approaches and cloud management. No time is lost in learning and experimenting with these in pilot, beta testing environments so you can be well-positioned to justify new expenditures based on these ‘investments’.

–          One of the biggest issues for me is the continued lack of innovation alignment to the strategy within organizations. A recent report suggested that anywhere from 25% to 50% of your organization’s time and effort is being spent on tasks that don’t fully align with the corporate strategies. If innovation folks don’t understand that their efforts are not really contributing to the strategic goals then you should be concerned. I would suggest fixing this potential ‘unproductive loss’ is a great resolution to pursue.

–          When is the right time-frame for innovation delivery? Next quarter, next year, in three years or in what period. Setting about establishing that innovation simply does not conform to annual financial calendars and needs to be accounted for differently would be an incredible, potentially internal breakthrough point. Having this on your resolution list to ‘crack’ through extensive internal discussions so as  to allow innovations to move within its more natural discovery through to the right delivery cycle. Far to often it is being shoehorned into an unnatural calendar that limits the original concept and compromises the potential result, that could allow for delivering more game-changing innovation would be a dramatic recognition.

–          The question still remains for many organizations of when will innovation will be totally embedded in the psyche of the C-level corner office. Spending dedicated time and efforts for the numerous C-level executives to finally ‘get it’ so they move from emerging to emergent would solve one of the biggest innovation inhibitors faced in most organizations. Making the commitment to educate and inform the top echelons or your colleagues on a consistent basis would make a terrific resolution to steadfastly go after throughout the next twelve months.

–          Quantifying innovation is always a difficult ‘nut’ to crack. Again the majority of the management want everything to be measured, a return on the investment. Taking time out to delve into the different ways to quantify and establish these as the metrics to be adopted and used can put finally ‘to bed’ this perennial issue. Showing the real value innovation brings to the organization needs a real dedication in understanding. Getting to an innovation value ROI map and all that it impacts as innovation ‘touch points’ can galvanise an organization hugely if they understand this. Time well invested.

Of course, these are just some suggested resolutions, tough ones actually but I think resolutions should be demanding on you.  I’m sure you have some of your own that should be written down and ‘baked’ into the 2012 strategic plans to manage, pursue and resolve.

Sometimes fixing some of what you have got that sometimes does not fully work, is far better than always searching out for something new. Many of the ones suggested above really would strengthen and embed innovation into your organization’s culture.

Go on, adopt some innovation resolutions that need really fixing in 2012, I’m sure you can name a few.

Establish them in your strategic goals and personal commitments and then set about cascading them down and across the organization as important ones to be fixed in 2012.

Do plan for fixing them by drawing up your innovation resolution list and include it in any and every review.

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