We are opening up our thinking about where and with whom, to collaborate.

We are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into one that is having a far more open stance. We are searching for more collaborative innovation (external orientation) combining external partners into more ‘collective thinking’.

The shifts taking place are offering us the promise of “extra acceleration” that is needed to improve our innovation performances from concept to market delivery. Or, we hope it is!

Collaborative innovation is also leading us to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success, as nearly all novel ideas lay are mostly outside the organization’s domain of understanding. We need to always bring the knowledge inside and build from it.

As we increasingly include the customer and their more exacting needs within our understanding, these multiple collaborations and dialogues are building this better internal understanding to align our innovation with specific opportunities, relevancy and needs.

There also seems that many organizations are presently searching for new business models of innovation delivery or architecture.

Equally, we are constantly moving from managing in linear innovation processes and making these more adaptive, constantly looping back when new information or data is being discovered, increasing this knowledge and insight in highly dynamic, constantly evolving and informing ways.

I’d say we are presently in a state of flux on adjusting to all of what this might mean, in customer and market offerings, as well as internally adapting our structures to the new forms required in these business model changes.

Adjusting to many different forms of external relationships

We are forming external relationships in many different ways as this increased diversity does matter to each organization for building different competitive positions in their innovation offerings.

We are creating the potential to deliver innovative products and services through new business models that would not have been enabled by only having one organization attempting it. Collaborations are definitely adding value to the innovation equation.

Also, we are seeing complexity rising significantly. The search for finding greater value is shifting even further, increasingly forming around innovation ecosystems, loose federations of vested interest, forming and dispersing when the job is complete.

Our innovation exploration will become far more evolutionary and requires a completely different way to think and manage these ‘relationship contracts that are forming around a given concept of platform engagements.

As we tap into all the expertise up and down the value chain we will become far more aware and will need to explore all the depth in thinking, contributing and making available through extending our connections in deeper and broader ways. Knowing how to adjust, accommodate and shift our thinking requires us to become more agile, finding new ways of connecting and working.

Do you notice how the single industry focus is seemingly in decline?

Opportunities exist everywhere. We need to look well beyond our own industry to evaluate different perspectives and seek out the potential of different concepts that can be adapted to our own industry.

Many companies are exploring the value of becoming involved in a business ecosystem that crosses a variety of industries to build new communities that have the capacity to transform existing environments.

As an example, let’s take the “battle of mobile devices” has now become a war of building a better ecosystem. It is not one single product it is chasing an increasing share of minds, preferences, changing habits and tastes and to achieve this ‘paradigm’ shift the search is on for forming the ecosystem that can deliver this ‘transformation’. This is coming through apps, technology, and different value propositions built into a platform of offerings that combine through your mobile device.

We are seeking out relationships, not just within given industry sectors but into partnerships that allow us to deliver different offerings, that would not be possible without broader collaborations.  The relationship between NGOs and the private sector used to be combative rather than collaborative.

However, that is rapidly changing

Take for instance the Oxfam and Unilever partnership have been working together since 2010 to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Also the External Alliances department of the Nestlé Research Center(NRC) manages external collaborations and partnerships to complement the internal Nestlé R&D pipeline and innovation process. Currently, NRC participates in more than 200 external scientific collaborations worldwide.

Then Unilever created  The Unilever Foundry, a new platform that unites and expands the company’s existing efforts to work with startups.

The Foundry will serve as Unilever’s flagship, global tech collaboration and investment program, providing an accessible mechanism for startups to interact with them in their “pitch to pilot” approach.

Offering more one-stop, connecting places to go about your business
Interesting examples are how Autodesk and Adobe are building the environment for others to join, build and participate within. The focus is on rapid prototyping in collaborative environments. They are offering one-stop shops where technology, 3D printing, software design, their engineering services can be combined to work on your ideas, all ‘housed’ in one location.

For start-ups, small and medium-sized organizations are given even more chances to bring their concepts to life and find the opportunity to compete with larger organizations through this approach. They are helping you to bring your prototypes to life and create real functional end-use parts with additive manufacturing, production processes and software applications.

For instance, Autodesk facilities at Pier 9, in San Francisco is a place for design and fabrication, it includes a cutting edge digital fabrication lab, a woodworking shop, a metalworking shop, a 3D printing lab, laser cutting and printing capabilities, an electronics workshop, a commercial test kitchen, and an industrial sewing centre as well as smaller speciality project areas.

Stepping out is stepping up

Today there is a growing realization that thinking ecosystems can allow us to have a new framing of possibilities and offer us different mindsets that tap into different and diverse relationships, partnerships, alliances and collaborations.

This was unthinkable until recently, without the enablers to make these connections through technology and more open platforms where you can come together and collaborate.

The increasing value of participating in ecosystems or collaborative environments allows for large and small organizations to come together, share, exchange, create, scale and serve markets in ways that were not thought of before as we did not have the ‘ways and means’ of how technology connects us in so many different ways to new possibilities.

We are having the increased ability to interact and co-create in increasingly sophisticated and novel ways opens up new opportunities. These ecosystems form a bond of shared interest, of recognition and purpose which quickly becomes established as the new ‘commons’ in sharing and contributing.

Opening up to being supported should accelerate your innovation

Any opening up should be clearly designed to accelerate new innovation but as you build these external relationships or participate in these innovation centres, it can often equally ‘complicate’ the original intention by this different layering in of complexity.

Keeping it initially simple, exploring and exploiting, building and adding increasing value as you grow, enables an evolving value proposition that keeps you keen to extend beyond your borders from the increasing returns and more distinctive offerings you can provide.

We do need to open up, learn from others, look for and engage in far more collaborative ways across more diverse groups than ever before, each vested in a better outcome and then build this ‘acquired’ knowledge into your thinking and offerings for delivering better outcomes.

The post Opening up our innovation to stay relevant first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I am presently reading an early release draft of a book written by Mike Docherty of Venture2, on innovation, and I would certainly recommend the read when it comes out.

The book Collective Disruption will be available as of February 2015.

The book as Mike wrote to me, is aimed at corporate leaders, both in large and small companies, charged with new sources of transformative growth and makes the case for co-creating new businesses with entrepreneurial partners.

It builds on a foundation of open innovation, but is focused specifically on new business creation (vs core business support).

I know that Mike is passionate about the intersection of corporate innovation and entrepreneurship for co-creating new businesses and business models. As CEO of Venture2, a consulting and new ventures firm, he works with leading brand companies and start-ups to commercialize breakthrough new products and businesses.

Mike has experienced disruption many times.

This crisis is personal one to Mike, as he has seen and been involved in numerous points of innovation disruption.

As he states in his book: “I have been on both sides of the conference table as it (disruption) has unfolded. In my work inside and outside of big brands, I have come to know, respect, and work alongside the managers who have to make innovation work for both the company and the customer. Theirs is a serious challenge. I know because it has been and continues to be, mine as well”.

Mike was part of the turnaround team at Sunbeam Corporation some years back, who combined became really creative thinkers and they become well respected in pioneering many of the aspects of open innovation. They achieved an impressive delivery of 150 product launches in the second year by leveraging partnerships and the internal creative forces, going from the previous 10 new products in the first year.

This experience took Mike into a new direction and helped form his business evolution in his work with his venture business and boutique consulting practice, Venture2.

In his book, he clearly stated open innovation is not enough.

The core of his book is firstly arguing the old definitions of innovation are dead (this I totally agree with) and as he states new ideas are coming from everywhere, emerging competitors are disrupting established companies every day. Companies need to increasingly focus on new business creation for step-change growth.

Yet as he states, and I totally agree, this is a scary place to go for big companies, as this is transformative innovation and most are simply not good at undertaking this.

His book sets out to address that ‘soft spot’ in the big-company skill set. It is all about understanding, learning ad playing the collaborative disruption game. This he believes comes through a collective disruption model where you engage more with the entrepreneurial ecosystem to create market-disrupting businesses.

That means collaborating earlier and more deeply with partners and that’s the roadmap he’s trying to share with this book.

Mike lays out some practical approaches in each phase of corporate/start-up co-creation: discovery, definition, incubation and integration. And he supports his case with interviews and examples from some leading exponents of innovation

He offers a book for the insider of big organizations but also for the partners found outside, as well as for the many entrepreneurs that will find they are dealing with big organizations.

They need faster scale up and preparation for a successful exit, early engagement of the bigger company into the new value proposition, either threatening them or enabling them to enter into a new area of their innovation.

So this is a book that goes beyond transactional approaches and focuses on the need for relationship-based networks and a solid understanding of the innovating ecosystem, one of collective disruption for future growth.

So we are at the end of the old era of innovation?

That era did have self-imposed walls and traditional (old-fashioned) design. Today we need to build our ecosystems, seeking out partners and entrepreneurs alike. This does call for being far more disruptive, as Mike suggests in his book “Collective Disruption,” we need a new order, where you can navigate, always with some risk, into new growth opportunities by constantly learning and collaborating with others.

I would argue once you become familiar with managing in disruptive times, in working with partners all dependent on each other, in mutual and ever-increasingly ecosystems, you learn to look well beyond your old self-imposed borders.

You will suddenly see this new innovation expanse where you can begin to roam to explore increased innovation opportunities. You recognize that migration of constantly moving and change becomes essential, a necessity that gives you a greater chance to not just survive but feed off of those new innovation opportunities.

A place Mike suggests: “where you’re living the unique challenge of creating transformational and step-change growth”.

Finding that set of collaborating capabilities and competencies that can be successfully unleashed as our new innovation activities, ones that can be radically different- they create real growth. One’s where agility, lean and risk-taking become more of the norm, they are dynamic, ever evolving and changing, and so those innovation activities are richer in eventual outcomes.

A place to keep you healthy and sustaining and growing by traversing constantly across a very different, ever-changing (and challenging) landscape, than the one you left behind that also needs renewal.

For some reason reading this book triggered thoughts of the mass migration of Wildebeests in East Africa

As I was reading through the opening chapters, for some reason, it triggered a thought of the mass migration of the Wildebeest in East Africa. The old-established practices of innovation are exhausted; we do need to change our approaches and mindsets to find those new ‘feeding grounds’ of innovation.

Why this book triggered this is that disruption is becoming part of our business life, or it should be. To stay alive today or to remain healthy, you have to leverage and extract from the whole innovation ecosystem to create the different conditions; equally, you need to take increasing risks to transform and improve your chances of survival.

Watching the frantic herds of the wildebeest migration crossing the Mara River can be very spectacular; there are often scenes of great panic and confusion as the massive predator crocodiles in the river wait to pounce. Utter disruption yet necessary to survive and prosper for all involved.

For business, are these predators the consultants advising a business with often conflicting messages adding even more panic, or the entrepreneurs, who seize the ‘feeding opportunity’ to fatten up by creating the frenzy that goes with this crossing point?

When you make a significant move away from your established ‘feeding grounds’ you suddenly have such an expanse of new opportunity but it is not without risk, the risk of crossing over, recognizing the other side is essential to be the place for new, real growth.

I could not get this thinking out of my head of migrations as I continued into the book. Strange isn’t it on what sometimes does get triggered as connections as you read a book?

Are we about to witness this mass movement to find new innovation opportunities?

Mike’s book Collective Disruption certainly nudges us along, it does lay out a case for change, a contributing part of the processes and understandings that needs to ‘stir the forces’ we do need to bring about for real innovation change.

Mike, in his book, partly catches that sense of the wind of change, that is blowing and needed for innovation. Mike offers some highly practical solutions and thinking, based on his depth of knowledge and experiences within his work of approaching your need to change, with an imaginative framework to help you navigate the terrain, so as to make the necessary transition for yourself and your organization.

Innovation, certainly is for me, in real need of changing; the global forces and those competing are making the mass within our companies restless for change.

We are on the road to migration; finding new solutions built far more based on collective and disruptive approaches, that will offer far better innovation outcomes for sustaining our futures and opportunities for achieving better levels of growth we need.

The post Where are the new feeding grounds of innovation? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We are coming up to nearly 10 years since Dr Henry Chesbrough wrote his first book on open innovation as the necessary business imperative.  There has certainly been considerable progress in many business organizations to embrace this open collaborative principle.

“Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as their own internal ideas, and explore both internal and external paths to market. Firms need to look to advance their technology, resources, their knowledge and understanding through innovating with partners by sharing risk and sharing reward”.

Isn’t it strange that the very consultants expounding ‘open’ for innovation are as closed as ever? Why is this?

I would argue that the consulting industry specializing in providing innovation services is its own worst enemy today, by not being more open themselves. It is actually failing to recognize that this is inhibiting their own long-term prospects.

Nearly all within the innovation consulting industry seem to be resolutely staying very internally driven, self-promoting, still trying to convey the story of their mastery, when clearly this is so painfully lacking from the results in growth by many of their clients from their existing innovation activities.

Due to this lack of openness, they are failing their clients by not offering them leading and emerging practice advice. Yet the client is increasingly requiring more complete or holistic solutions, not from a ‘piecemeal of innovation offerings’ they are presently receiving.

These separate pieces currently being offered by one group of consultants often don’t dovetail into a complete innovation system because they are supplemented by a variety of different service providers, all having their own ‘pet’ approaches, methodologies, techniques and tools.
Why is it when many clients who are actively working on increasingly open complex innovation challenges and working through a more diverse range of collaborative platform solutions, that the innovation consultants working alongside them, are still such a different story of being closed up?

Consultants seem so reluctant to open themselves up and embrace this more open collaborative culture and gain from embracing that essential more divergent thinking that innovation often calls for by the use of external collaboration.

Innovation consulting is a fragmented consulting industry unable to achieve scale to match client needs.

Today innovation management advisory firms are mostly small, loosely organized, some highly specialised, that have a flourishing complexity of activity but often spend inordinate time reinventing many aspects of innovation management that are not necessary and serve little value for the client.

While client’s requirements for structuring innovation are often claimed as unique and distinctive, they are in many cases, actually not. What they really want is to acquire is a common, repeatable, scalable innovation structure that allows them to manage their distinct innovations on a consistent basis.

The understanding of the innovation process is basically common or should be. Until this point of difference between what a client’s wants is a common, scalable process and yet the providers want to offer, their own versions, innovation in general will face many disadvantages in not advancing, as it is not formed around a basic set of common standards.

Consultants are ignoring the richer places of competitive advantage or doing a poorer job of exploring variability, diversity and within the organizations building capability as it is people who offer the real value within innovation.

Managing the intangibles is certainly far harder and messy but it is the ‘sweet spot’ of innovation, where the multiplying of the degrees of connectivity, interactivity and sharing, offers the new innovation equation point.

Consultants are far too cautious for their own good
Consulting firms on the other hand are moving far too cautiously to any form of collaborative engagement; it is far too ad hoc. Wherever possible consultants want to manage as much as possible internally to ‘keep’ the fees generated inside.

This is not a recipe for building lasting relationships that have mutual value in growing understanding. They stay’ in-breed’ and are not reflecting the commonly held view today, “that all knowledge does not reside within your own walls”; they still reluctantly hang on to the closed system of  ‘invented only inside here’.

How do we resolve this? Should we? Are Disruptive Forces Around?
Combining all these islands of innovation knowledge into some form of combined force would be a healthy step. Innovation is consistently ranked among the top three strategic imperatives by business leaders yet it is not recognized by consultants with the same strategic commitment.

Of course there are some big challenges facing innovation consultants today:

1. How do you break out and resolve this fragmenting industry of many niche consulting players certainly not matching the clients’ ideal profile of global span and support?
2. The inability to offer broad innovation experience or depth in capabilities is another negative working against many consulting firms.
3. Forward thinking innovation centres within consulting are rare so there is little fresh ‘knowledge stock’ being added to tackle increasing complex issues around innovation.
4. Sophistication & specialization is highly sought after but expensive to keep around. And having this expertise sitting on the bench within one consulting company as it is regarded more as a cost liability and not as a valuable asset to leverage.
5. Strategic understanding in fast changing, complex markets and organizations is extremely hard for outsiders (consultants) to grasp in the detail required to be able to contribute into clients with the impact often justified by the fees demanded.
6. Limited experiments are currently being undertaken in the innovation consulting practices, yet clients are actually crying out for this, it is a massive unmet need or job-to-be-done.
7. Lastly consultant partners should change their remuneration models that drive their consulting business to actively seek more ‘win-win’ solutions in collaborative partnerships.

A bolder, more open collaborative model is required.

1. Consultant companies should become the host and potential ‘orchestrator’ of platforms for the ‘best’ to gather and collaborate and offer this to clients as a real value benefit.
2. Clients are learning how to collaborate and to openly network.  So shouldn’t consultants embrace this and seek out the places of complimentary knowledge by recognizing they can only, as they stand today, make a limited contribution and cannot claim ‘total solution expertise’ without active collaborations themselves.
3. There are growing sources of advice alternative– clients are recognizing this and seeking it out so why not the consultant being the platform provider for this ‘clearing house’ in diversity, thinking and understanding.
4. The appeal of bringing together experts that can come together and work on specific complex problems and then disperse has great value for all concerned providing it has a retaining clause and gives all involved their own specific returns on their business model.
5. The need today is to have real access to great quality thinking and this does not reside within the walls of one consulting firm. However large a practice of consultants they are repeating the same solution set, mindlessly pulling down their ‘best’ practice from their internal knowledge and then, attempting to apply this to someone else’s unique circumstances, failing to evaluate this sufficiently and eventually failing the client.
6. Consulting practices need to address rework. Much of the profit comes in reworking what has previously been delivered, selling it time and again. This would need changing but is not so radical a change as first thought. It is extracting the repeatable parts intelligently, evaluating the points of difference in a more forensic way from ‘available’ expertise.

A revolution for innovation consulting comes from opening up.

The resolution or (salvation) of innovation consulting is to build transparent networks of expertise, brought together on platforms provided by the nominated host or consultant, so clients see and value the access to broader, best available expertise that is working through their own, often unique challenges, not being felt as ‘cookie cutting’ recipients.

Complexity, uniqueness and expertise need to be addressed in more customized ways and that challenges the existing global consulting model of maximizing repeatability. Applying the best in knowledge application for innovation consulting services offers the client a real value for accelerating growth and job creation based on more radical and breakthrough thinking.

So what I propose requires us to think through a new model that can combine the best available expertise on a given client platform, hosted and orchestrated by the innovation consulting firm, pulling together the best advisory and thought leadership around to solve unique client challenges.

We need to alter our ways to achieve this.

What will it take to shift the existing practices? Possibly clients demands better support or simply keep voting with their feet by investing in their own experimental learning themselves, as they don’t feel the consulting advice available gives them much they don’t or can’t find out themselves.

The alternative is someone sensing the opportunity to disrupt the existing consulting model and bold enough to make that fist mover advantage and take innovation consulting up a level or two of engagement.

Actively working on finding ways in their value offer, so as to position themselves with clients as a critical ‘must have’ for working alongside them on their current and future problems in richer collaborative ways.

They share the joint objective of achieving a higher level of innovation growth and return that the client can’t achieve in their current approaches to innovation management.

The post A call for a more open collaborative innovation consulting framework first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I’ve adapted my view here to reflect where it becomes even more relevant to the innovation consulting companies that I feel are in general struggling in today’s environment, for multiple reasons.

The challenge today lies for many in that they are not providing real consulting value to clients, and unless this will change it will continue to erode the client’s confidence in these service providers.

In many ways, the consulting industry specializing in innovation is its own worst enemy. They are resolutely staying very internally driven, self promoting, still trying to convey the story of mastery, when clearly this is lacking and due to this failing the client.

The client is increasingly requiring more organic or holistic solutions not a piecemeal of innovation offerings. These separate pieces often don’t dovetail into one complete innovation system because they are supplied by a variety of different service providers, all having their own ‘pet’ approaches.

Why is it when many clients who are actively working on innovation challenges have moved to a more open collaborative platform for obtaining and underpinning their own internal knowledge for product development?

Clients have embraced (sometimes admittedly  reluctantly) into entering strategic partnerships in supply chain, purchasing, HR management and a host of IT related activities, in research and development.

Clients are pushing even closer to engaging the final consumer within the understanding of meeting their needs, or working to discover the ‘unmet’ needs. Yet the innovation consultants are still a different story of being closed up, reluctant to open up and gain from more divergent thinking on the problems these changes are causing to clients.

Consultants are far too cautious for their own good

Consultant firms on the other hand are moving far too cautiously to any form of collaborative form, they tend to bring ‘experts’ in for ad hoc, one-off assignments when they need deeper expertise. Wherever possible consultants want to manage as much as possible internally to ‘keep’ the fees generated inside.

This is not a recipe for building lasting relationships that have mutual value in growing understanding. They stay in-breed and are not reflecting the commonly held view today, “that all knowledge does not reside within its own walls”; they still reluctantly hang on to the closed system of inventing only inside here.

This you see in the host of variations on what is claimed as their versions of “common innovation” theme for processes, systems, idea management etc., and often ‘mutton simply dressed up as lamb’.

I see an awful lot of clients experimenting and learning internally and due to this becoming extremely selective for the use of any outside advice. For many of the innovation consulting firm this means they are often far too busy catching up, lagging in their own emerging practice and due to this ‘lag’ have lost any thought leadership position in many things relating to innovation.

To overcome this you need to be engaged, to be able to piece together fragments of information to gain the insights that independence can offer.

This requires dedicated experience and constant involvement in broader innovation understanding not in the way it is going of specialization, who let slip the critical insights as it is ignored as it did not apply to their narrow area of knowledge.

Sadly general well experienced innovation practitioners are thin on the ground. You do need to search hard for these but they are available. Also large consulting practices can’t afford to have more than a few experts scanning this innovation terrain.

Exceptions and Client Needs

Of course we have notable exceptions; the value in what Bains, McKinsey, Booz and PWC have is often in their access to C-level people and their ability to provide reports on best practice to help in benchmarking industries and practices around organizations current thinking of innovation.

The conclusions though are often are not translated into practical solutions, they remain research findings. These help all of us involved in understanding emergent innovation practice to relate and absorb the findings but these on there on are not enough of the answers clients are looking for from external service providers. They want to connect the thinking to improving practice.

Clients often lack real deep insight or draw out the implications from these emerging practices, they want to work more alongside others in experimental practice spaces to truly figure out how to respond to them or understand the implications to their own business. It is only part of the innovation knowledge puzzle for the client.

They need to constantly look elsewhere to piece this together, if at all they can, as so often the reporting looses much of its value as it is not translated into suggested solutions if the consulting industry fails to provide these services or knowledge laboratories.

Clients are forced to seek out for themselves, through informal groups or ones organized by industry necessity to piece together their understanding, a little like a patchwork quilt.

Where is the previously respected “trusted” adviser, the consultant within this, often sidelined or desperately trying to muscle into the discussions for their own gain?

The value of taking and translating all these disparate reports into new suggested models of practice seems not to be important.

Why are consulting firms not working methodically through the “collective” summary of these reports and then distilling them into emerging ideas as a development engine? It does seem this “connection” to much knowledge is not being valued and pulled together and the ability to have these dissected and interpreted,  is lacking by most consultants, even the ones providing the reports, so clients are left to interpret it themselves.

This can’t help the client/ consulting equation and many mistakes can be made in wrong interpretation as environments and circumstances are usually unique. This is where external advice can score significantly in explaining differences and providing appropriate solutions that still merge in the emerging practices but to fit that specific client’s situation.

The absence of the large consultancy in innovation forums – why?

Why is it that the larger consulting practice is often absent from forums, conferences and internet live exchanges? Also due to their increased absence, others are gratefully filling this space but perhaps not as well. I’m not talking about the software solution providers here; I’m talking about the strategic consulting heavyweights.

This has some advantage for the ones filling the space but without the large consulting companies driving innovation insight as they do have the global insight and resources; most innovation consultancies hang onto existing, tried and tested methods using existing tools and techniques and don’t push the boundaries.

They are often not in the position to do this. So the reality is, Innovation is not evolving as well as it should do, as it presently does not have this ‘bigger muscle’ to drive and push for change often generated by the big consulting houses.

They presently seem to be highly selective on their innovation focus and that is more constraining to all and not helping advance the practice of innovation management like it could be.

Global consulting practices are being driven more by the numbers, by the ability to utilize and leverage pieces of work to obtain a return. It is less in that consistent, ever-present engagement in all avenues of social dialogue, consulting has become more of a “roll up your sleeves” and pitch in to help.

This lack of reflective consulting between where the collective presence of consultants, clients and employees engaged in innovation can regularly meet to explore more of the “what if?” is not helping consulting firms, or clients in interpreting the sets of front line signals and turning these into consulting opportunities on shifting many current established practices, processes or methods.

We are losing innovation opportunities as we fail to translate these ‘signals’ and advancement in leading practice.

The move of clients building their own internal innovation capabilities

Lastly in this critique, clients are increasingly building up their own internal-in-house innovation consulting capabilities, not just in execution but in design work. This denies consulting the necessary working practice or playing time to experiment, to explore, to learn and translate this to the benefit of many.

These shifts, along with others that make up an increasingly long list are eroding the position of the innovation consultants. I think there is a time for a sea-change to take place.

So let’s firstly summarize the bigger challenges in innovation consulting:

1. Clients are facing an increasing fragmenting industry of many niche consulting players. This is becoming more the ‘boutique’ service providers who have limited scale and global practice but is really matching the clients’ ideal profile of global span and support? It is a constraint that requires clients to continue to build internal capability with its different but perhaps similar cost profile.
2. The inability to provide broad innovation experience or capabilities. This is another negative working against many consulting firms. Many of the partners have been out of their respective industry for a number of years and fail to appreciate the real ‘heartbeat’ that someone closer to it can detect, they have been removed from day-to-day activities far too long and often the pace of change is hard to keep up with. They are increasingly reliant on others to form opinions and does that replace the experience that got them to where they are?
3. Forward-thinking innovation centers within consulting are rare. There is so little contribute into the fresh knowledge stock, always needed by consultants to present their constantly updated “case of relevancy”. Often research is simply a re-hash of older material. A new solution has to be found to strengthen the innovation knowledge stock.
4. Sophistication & specialization is highly sought after but expensive to keep around. Having this expertise sitting on the bench within one consulting company is regarded more as a cost liability and not as a valuable asset.
5. Strategic understanding in fast-changing, complex markets and organizations is extremely hard for outsiders (consultants) to grasp in the detail required. To be able to contribute into clients that are facing complex problems and to navigate these ‘fast flowing rapids’ needs a real sense of the pulse. All these are within the challenges to be resolved within the consulting industry.
6. Limited experiments are currently being undertaken in the innovation consulting practices. The focus is far more relating to taking best practices and applying them to as many clients as possible. Critical thinking in innovation is hard to justify. Experimental innovation is something clients are very unwilling to pay for yet they actually should be crying out for this, so as to gain competitive edges from these insights. This is a huge challenge to overcome. Trust and reputation as thinkers in innovation helps but there is equally a reversing on offering the same advice to all, willing to pay. Some client/ consulting advice should be mutually exclusive.
7. Partners need to change the remuneration models that drive the consulting business. They focus in industry-specific domains in general yet clients are seeking beyond their own borders increasingly to gain fresh insights and competitive advantage. Our innovation consulting companies leveraging across industries enough? A traditional breakdown, of which consulting company is best known for, and used to solve specific problems, continues to reinforce expertise and limit broader advice. This is not serving the clients well, although it is ‘claimed’ consultancies reach across industries for insight and possible application. This does need greater cross-fertilization focus as it is potentially very valuable.

This lack of active search across industry is a vicious circle that needs breaking into more, so as to expand capability and capacity and offer broader innovation practice techniques and options for clients to explore.

All these are within the challenges yet to be resolved within the innovation consulting industry.

A bolder, more open collaborative model is required.

1. Consultant companies should become the host and be the potential ‘orchestrators’ built through platforms for the ‘best’ to gather and collaborate.
2. Clients are learning how to collaborate, to network, to leverage and tap into outside domains, I think consultants must make this fundamental shift- embrace the old (consulting) enemy, their competitors, and seek the places of complementary knowledge that when combined can offers clients the very best, not the reworked second best.
3. There are growing sources of advice alternative- clients are recognizing this and seeking it out. The growth of niche consultancies, the use of academics, and the ability to reach out and pay for the top expert in their field excludes the specialized consulting firms more often than not. Thought leadership is not residing ‘within’ but outside and consulting needs to find more imaginative ways to pull in this expertise to add the value clients want in diversity and understanding.
4. Clients are increasingly willing to bring together diverse advice. The consulting company that provides a platform/ conduit for a community of experience extracted from a rich diversity of backgrounds to work together on bigger than usual challenges I feel would be appealing to clients. These collaborations do not have an in-built expensive overhead to support or a forced umbrella identity.
5. The appeal of bringing together experts that can come together and work on specific complex problems and then disperse has great value. It is through these expert interactions it can offer a different approach than we are seeing today. These ‘events’ or challenge outcomes can then be broken down into the ‘discrete’ parts necessary to drive solutions and can be parcelled out to increasingly specialized firms that work on the part within the value solution that contributes to resolving the complex problem.
6. The need today is to have real access to great quality thinking and this does not reside within the walls of one consulting firm, however large in employees (often repeating the same thing).

A possible resolution or is it salvation for innovation consulting.

The resolution or (salvation) of consulting is to build transparent networks of expertise, brought together on platforms provided by the nominated host or consultant, so clients see and value the access to broader, best available expertise that is working through their own, often unique challenges, not being felt as ‘cookie cutting’ recipients.

Complexity, uniqueness and expertise need to be addressed in more customized ways and that challenges the existing global consulting model of maximizing repeatability.

A new model needs to combine the following on a given client platform, hosted and orchestrated by the lead Consulting Firm based on a reflection of today’s ability to pull in the best advisory and thought leadership to solve unique client challenges:

1. Establishing clearly the Business Model coherence & the Challenge clarification/ analysis and ensure this is communicated across all the collaborators working on this solution platform.
2. Providing the Platform Management through collaborative software that allows all the best parties to collaborate on their ‘given’ piece and the lead consultant coordinates and extracts the best value from these parts.
3. Open to all collaborators the strategic intention and the modularity construct so they see their contributions and part to play.
4. Process analysis and mapping techniques that are common and freely available to all to use- a standard of tools and techniques that all participants are familiar with too leverage any exchanges or concepts between the participating parties.
5. End to end customer and supplier interaction points, well thought-through and managed by the lead consulting party to extract the best insight, foresights and their value in unique combinations.
6. Co-creation, co-production and collaboration being actively encouraged, integrated and visible to all to build this value even further.
7. Provide common shared tools, standards, IP, protocols and know-how protection/ transfer and validation governance.
8. Ability to experiment, test hypothesis, pilot and rapidly expand within the platform collaboration to advance and validate thinking and constantly search for the up scaling needed.

Henry Chesbrough wrote recently in his “Open Services Innovation” book about the commodity trap, this applies equally to the consulting industry, it is certainly not immune. There are new disruptive forces in play, these are placing limits on the existing innovation consulting model as a healthy business model.

Perhaps it is near to its end, and consultants need to change their thinking and then the approaches fairly radically to stay relevant and thrive

Orchestrating a more open diversity of knowledge on collaborative platforms needs a significant change in consulting, that you could argue applies to all consulting practices.

Clients demand more value and for consultants to regain their position as providers of expert knowledge they need to become the ’orchestrators’ to add value and deliver propositions that tackle clients increasing complexity in more open ways, otherwise, they will face an increasingly marginalized role.

(revised and updated on 19.03.2012 and re-posted)

The post The Challenges of Real Change Required by Innovation Consultants first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

One such list I compiled from mainly two sources on roadblocks to open innovation. The main source was Dr Brian Glassman. He wrote a paper “Open Innovation’s Common Issues & Potential Roadblocks with Dr Abram Walton. (http://www.innovationtools.com/PDF/OI_issues_and_roadblocks.pdf) and different thoughts that I found as well worked through.

The other source to make up this list was from P&G’s experiences gleaned from different sources. Together I feel they make for a solid list of roadblocks or issues to think through. Let me share these:

Firstly the core need or use of open innovation

1. Generating ideas for new products and services
2. Solve technical problems that are vexing or too complicated or expensive to solve internally
3. Co-development of difficult problems, services, products, technologies

Issues & Potential Roadblocks

1. Internal buy-in- quick wins, types of motivations- how to tackle this?
2. Changing the culture is a big challenge. Shifting from inventing everything internally and owning all the IP to an open culture, with shared risks and rewards is a huge leap. You find that not everyone embraces open innovation at the same speed, or to the same degree.
3. It is important that employees realized that any open innovation was not another name for downsizing and outsourcing jobs but instead, a strategy to ensure sustained business growth for the Company. Leveraging open innovation as a way to increase capacity for our internal researchers makes sense as a key message
4. Recognise early  to concentrate on what we do really well internally and look to partners externally in instances where they can either do better or faster to bring products to market more quickly
5. Build rewards and recognition into the career development related to open innovation recognising its value to the organization and its learning.
6. Change the mindset of open innovation as a ‘threat’ to open innovation as an ‘productivity enabler’.
7. You have to champion the early adopters. Whether it’s an individual or a business, you take those who are on board, passionate, and have embraced open innovation and you make heroes of them to the rest of the business.
8. It’s a process that begins with networking and building relationships and grows into productive business transactions that benefit both participants as well as consumers.
9. Approaching ‘partner understanding’ in a similar way to consumer understanding. To become the ‘partner of choice’ requires being outwardly focused to understand partner’s needs, concerns, expectations, goals, etc. and finding ways to delight them at the first moment of truth (their initial contact as a potential partner) and the second moment of truth (during the collaboration).
10. And at the monetary level, ensuring that partnerships are truly a win/win for both sides.
11. Set out to coach internally and ask the question “Would you sign for either side?” In doing so, we increase the likelihood of repeat partnerships. And we build a solid reputation as a true partner of choice.
12. Establishing trust with your open partners- reputation, honesty,  avoiding overly aggressive negotiations, prompt and clear communications, IP openness
13. Intellectual Property-  complex and often central, full ownership tussles, limited disclosures, fair split on inputs, commitments, resources, capital
14. Corporate lawyer blocks- core beliefs in potential conflict with open disclosures, at what point involve them, oral agreement stage or before, required buy-ins
15. IP category blocks- the class the IP falls in, open, who benefits, competitive positions, weapons of defence to block future options, issues of internal security
16. Payment systems- typical payment process large vs. Small, how and when to pay, pay on milestones, be clear on this
17. Communications- central capability in finding, evaluating and working, the types of person as communicators, champions, connectors, the mindset needed and determination required to break down barriers, knowing the different channels to answers to unblock.
18. Structure of the initiative- a web page of officers, connection details, spamming, unlisted hot numbers, availability and response mechanisms, extroverts, mindset based on a deep desire to connect and communicate, proper, active and trustworthy statements of intent
19. Clear & Stated Agreement Established at the Beginning of the Relationship- establish a clear understanding and broad agreement on vital issues, the ‘up front work’ is critical
20. Clear, Descriptive and Motivating RFP- these communicate the corporate needs to the open innovation network. RFP’s usual sections- opportunity area, problem statement, detailed information where possible (costs, pressures, priority, value, numbers) and anything felt to be relevant to improve submissions. Not too tight, not to lose, easy to read, well structured and financial rewards potential options
21. Limiting Participation – often more work examining the proposals than resources to complete this. Pre-qualify partners through screening, widen criteria if needed later.
22. Unfocused open innovation programmes- go off in any direction, benefits of quick wins, create wish lists of clear wins, based on core area of use (application), great potential areas, vexing problems, high value solutions, finding valuable new capabilities or new resources
23. Facing the unknowns- no journey is without problems, face these squarely on and admit to shortcoming quickly. We are no longer islands of knowledge, we need to learn.
24. The skills needed to succeed are their adaptability to change, entrepreneurial skills, sensible risk taking behaviours. Being able to identify and remove organizational roadblocks to open innovation. Continual questioning of status quo and looking ahead to find new solutions. Actively working internally to drive culture change, while remaining laser focused externally at consumer needs
25. Encourage a more active involvement in real life work settings vs. in the lab.
26. Provide settings to give as many people as you can real life business experience, and provide jobs to students and faculty in different imaginative ways. A great example could be strong university collaboration partnerships that over time work really well.

These do provide a good working-through type of list, to help get you into a better open innovation shape and be more prepared to tackle issues as and when they come up.

Hope you find it useful, I did

The post Managing different open innovation roadblocks first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.