Redesigning the organizations middle for a new innovation shape.

August 15, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Antibodies, Leading innovation, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation
managers-choiceLet’s admit it, our middle management needs a radical makeover, a new fitness regime to make us far more innovation fit.
Most organizations do need to change their middle management structures as they are far from that necessary ‘fitness for 21st-century purpose’ in a constantly changing, challenging, more open innovating world.
The general argument goes and I relate to this, that the middle manager is so pressured to focus on the delivery of short-term results that all their efforts are centred far more on delivering ‘just’ an effective organization.
An organization that focuses on driving out any excess or leeway, reducing the variations, constantly dampening down potential risk and uncertainty.
Today much of this being ‘efficient and effective is in direct conflict with what innovation requires. A space for ‘cutting’ some slack, seeking differences, exploring what variances can provide, and encouraging a certain risk and uncertainty to allow for fresh thinking to emerge that leads to better things within the organization.
Yet the middle manager’s obsession with constantly chasing efficiencies alone, there is little ‘slack’ for innovation and new learning. Their measurement is often based on this efficiency and effectiveness emphasis and not on generating innovation.

Risk Is Understanding Your Scope of Reach Should Exceed Your Grasp.

August 8, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Antibodies, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Innovation strategy, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

Mans reach and grasp.We were not born as risk-takers but we can develop it through our own growing self-actualization, creativity, a pursuit for growth and enjoying that feeling of being stretched, going beyond your normal scope of reach.

Well some of us do, but sadly most tend to become risk-avoiding because of the environment they are in or have been associated with for long periods, where avoidance rubs off, it seeps into the soul.

Many enjoy being simply ‘passive’, avoiding anything that smacks of being ‘proactive’; it is safer to be ‘reactive’. Innovation and heaven can equally wait.

Putting it simply most people and organizations are just afraid to take risks and this fear takes over and drives their choices. Innovation is certainly something that suffers from this fear of risk.

Organizations miss critical opportunities, individuals fail to speak out and argue for a given change or innovative idea. We can simply stop growing, to want to become something more, we take the easy option, we avoid risk.

Exploring the criteria for collaborative activities within innovation

July 1, 2014Posted inPolymers

Collaboration discussionsThe shape of our collaboration activities has been radically changing in recent years.

The combination of technology, the internet, resource constraints and the opening up of innovation to the outside world has changed the shape and content of conversations.

Shaping conversations can be either intentional or through serendipity. Ideas are usually never fully formed but emerge over these conversations, from fragments that need nurturing, encouraging, aligning and developing through ongoing conversations. Often the fragments need a wider network to come together and form around.
sharpen-ideas-quickly

The push today is the ability to sharpen the ideas quickly and move into some early testing and validation, ideally with the final customer somehow engaged and then from this ‘interaction’ the idea shapes and its final understanding deepens onto a concrete delivery.

There is a growing need for more radical, out of the existing box innovation to tap into. Collaborators help here.

The Ability to Move Innovation from the Existing to the Preferred

June 12, 2014Posted inAchieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, gaining innovation momentum, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation

The Innovation PathOne of those defining extracts I came across many years back, as it is one that has shaped much of where I believe innovation needed to go, let alone where I believe it still does.

It is a pathway I want to continue to travel along and will constantly try to encourage others to equally take the walk.

I was working through a set of presentation files today and came across this extract again and thought I must share this. It rings true as much as it did those years back.

“Strategy is useless without innovation; innovation is directionless without strategy”.