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.

The post Plan your innovation resolutions early for 2012 first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I call this the innovation rates of exchange.

A little of the theory: Coherence between organizational context and coordination of outcomes is subject always to those natural tensions of planning, resource allocation and the time imposed. Often decisions have a real tension built into them and they ‘shear’ against the real forces in play.

Like our tectonic plates ‘shear’ and cause earthquakes, the ‘shear’ effect has a disruptive influence on innovation outcomes.

Often the time horizon of possible desired innovation often has these real conflicts. The actual realities and needs of the organization we lower the innovation impact in final delivery. We fall back on incremental solutions as the organization does not have the patience, appetite or desire to see through the potential fully.

So that puts the theory out there.

It is such a pity the different time horizons for different types of innovation are not simply treated differently in most organizations thinking and planning. We need to ‘account’ for innovation differently.

This is where my suggestions around the three horizons can partly help, these I have extensively outlined in previous blogs to see the value of different mindsets for different horizon thinking.

Different types of innovation need to be treated differently- certainly more than other parts of the business in the planning cycle.

Sometimes innovation cannot fit neatly within timing budgets, being assigned yearly targets and having tidy plans for allocating resources and expecting results. Innovation is simply messy; it does not often fit the norm of budgetary planning.

There is a need to treat different levels of innovation differently. Incremental, Disruptive and Radical all have distinct characteristics that often don’t fit the norm in organizational mindsets to allow them to be worked through at their ‘right’ pace, we force them far to often.

We have three emerging horizons that need different treatment for innovation.

1.Those innovations meeting given goals– these should be within specified period covered by a yearly plan and cover mostly incremental innovation.

2. Objectives that are more disruptive in nature-these are often attained later, after a lot of experimenting until a clear approach emerges. These need to be progressed within the period but have a likely longer horizon, in this case our horizon two within the three horizon framework but usually more than one planning cycle of 12 months. Sometimes they can take two to three years to emerge.

3. Ideals that offer Future Radical Promise– unattainable within the usual time period, more longer term, but the progress is certainly possible during and after the period planned as they move from a weak signal or an aspiration point, by probing and investigating over an extended period of time.

As this flow of understanding gets translated into something more tangible, as the future simply ‘firms up’, it falls more naturally into what fits more in the longer term horizon perspective but still needs allocating resource within the planning cycle.

Breaking down these into milestone achievements that fit more within traditional planning cycles would make sense.

Our existing planning does needs to account for all three, they cannot be simply fitted into one set of plans, all having clear metrics and financials. In many cases it simply ignores the differences completely and forces shortcuts, dilution of a great, potentially radical idea , so it becomes ‘boiled down’ into a series of part disrupting but more often incremental innovations.

The search for breakthroughs

Not accounting for those vital differences simply reducing the chances of more radical breakthroughs, the very thing the C-Level is often crying out for. We need to think our ‘numbers’ and planning differently for innovation, pure and simple, otherwise you end up with innovations competitors can easily copy, and quickly and you chase each other to the point of ever increasing commoditization.

Innovation has its own rhythm

We need a change in planning out innovation, it does not ‘beat to normal time’, and it does certainly have its own unique rhythm.

Any coherency of innovations purpose, of what you want to achieve, and applying this in a rigid accountancy planned way does not work, unless you treat innovation differently in planning cycles and recognize these clear different horizons.

Innovation operates through a different set of behaviours and also in its delivery commitment and purpose from ‘business as usual’, it is challenging and searching for “business not so usual‘ that provides new value. This requires different mindsets at the C-level to manage this dual thinking.

They need to manage expectations of when the potential value being extracted is worth and be patient for achieving a far more impactful return on investment. Breakthroughs happen but usually with a lot of hard work and a sense of commitment, even when you have setbacks.

Different innovation requires different thinking and planning. It is these different ‘rates of exchange’ in understanding that need more understanding.

Perhaps by using the three-time horizons framework it might give innovation a more appropriate context to plan them differently than the present and permit more disruptive and radical breakthroughs to occur.

The post Innovations ‘rates of exchange’ require better understanding first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.