The object of the game is to navigate one’s game piece, according to dice rolls, from the start (bottom square) to the finish (top square), helped or hindered by ladders and snakes respectively.

Originally from India the game is a simple race contest based on sheer luck and I am beginning to wonder if we are playing a new version of this with innovation? This is called “bust or boom” or “success or failure” or even “maybe or maybe not,” or even “will we, won’t we.” It just all depends on our luck in rolling the dice, a serendipity with a darker twist that many companies seem to be playing with their innovation capability building.

The game came to mind as I read through a recent survey on Innovation

I have just been reading an Innovation report / survey from Accenture called “Clear Vision, Cloudy Execution” and I really do think we are playing with innovation as a game, it has some really serious implications within it that need more drawing out than possibly offered in my view. We should be getting worried that many bigger companies are losing the innovation game.

Accenture in a survey conducted with 500 US Executives leads with this conclusion:

“US Executives are unrealistic in believing they have the capabilities they need to achieve their bold goals. The truth is that most struggle to generate the returns they seek from their innovation investments”

Yet it seems companies are confident in their innovation performance, awarding themselves high marks as innovators, even rating themselves as very positive in their performance against their (known) competitors. So tell me where is the growth then? Why are our public companies continuing to buy back their shares, shrink their work forces and continue to chase the cheaper investment alternatives of relocating where the tax breaks continue to bolster the returns of short-term thinking?

Accenture in their report details (this opens a PDF file) rightly  points out “confidence is a good thing” but in their experience “that companies that believe they have superior innovation capabilities are less likely to take steps to improve their innovation processes, culture, capabilities and operating models”

Also “that leaders are less likely to appreciate (and explain to management teams) that innovation is a complex discipline that requires diverse approaches“. This is when you are on the ascendancy (often mistakenly) and throwing the dice and progressing up the ladder of my snakes and ladders analogy.

The issue seems to be on not really understanding how they innovate or what is needed to innovate consistently.

The snakes that are all around, according to Accenture, are that companies don’t learn from past mistakes, miss market opportunities and are risk averse. They have badly slipped back on these.

It does seem to have become a “board” game of playing with innovation on a “shall we, shan’t we invest, sustain or allow” what we have gained to slither away as we roll the dice one more time. This time we land on the snake and slid back on our innovation progress from a series of market failures and often start again, often with a change in the innovation leadership.

Before I get ahead of myself let me explain the origin of snakes and ladders  

Referring to Wikipedia: the game snakes and ladders was originally from India. “The game was popular in ancient India by the name Moksha Patam. It was also associated with traditional Hindu philosophy contrasting karma and kama, or destiny and desire.

When the game was brought to England, the Indian virtues and vices were replaced by English ones in hopes of better reflecting Victorian doctrines of morality. Squares of Fulfillment, Grace and Success were accessible by ladders of Thrift, Penitence and Industry and snakes of Indulgence, Disobedience and Indolence caused one to end up in Illness, Disgrace and Poverty. While the Indian version of the game had snakes outnumbering ladders, the English counterpart was more forgiving as it contained each in the same amount.

This concept of equality signifies the cultural ideal that for every sin one commits, there exists another chance at redemption. Have we this same luxury with the management and building of innovation?

The sins we are still committing in the name of innovation pursuit.

The Accenture survey of executives and managers within 500 U.S. companies reveals that six in 10 (60 percent) said their companies do not learn from past mistakes. This is nearly double the 36 percent who admitted to this three years ago when Accenture last conducted a similar survey.

Nearly three-fourths (72 percent) indicate their firm’s often miss opportunities to exploit underdeveloped areas or markets versus 53 percent three years ago.

More than two-thirds (67 percent) believe their companies are risk averse, a large increase from 46 percent revealed in the previous survey.

The survey also shows that 82 percent admit they do not distinguish their innovation approaches between incremental versus large-scale transformational change – meaning they use a single “one-size-fits-all” approach to achieve different goals.

Also most respondents said they have “big” innovation ideas but are missing an organizational “home” with the company. So their ideas often go nowhere.

“A significant gap exists between what U.S. companies want to achieve in the innovation arena versus what they are able to do,” said Adi Alon, managing director, Accenture Strategy.  “They want to innovate yet they need to take different and bolder actions to achieve transformational, major revenue-generating innovation. True innovation requires aggressive changes in technologies, operating models and talent.”

The recognition that the chances of redemption are certainly getting less

Yet also emerging from this survey was this really far more bullish view on disruptive innovation compared to the survey undertaken three years ago.

For instance, 84 percent said they believe innovation is key for their long-term success compared with 67 percent three years ago.

The same percentage of respondents – 84 percent – said they are looking for the “next silver bullet,” meaning a market-defining innovation rather than incremental iterations of the same products.

Creating new products is a priority for almost half (47 percent) of respondents, an increase of 20 percentage points from three years ago.

Accenture believes the building blocks of successful innovation are being put into place, few have assembled those fundamental elements in a way that drives the changes needed to generate the investment returns. I would really disagree with this with what they are indicating as the “sins of slippage” reported.

Accenture conclude “companies are embracing innovation as a tool to drive their business forward” but “they need to learn how to flex their innovation muscles with new thinking, new collaborations and new approaches to execution.”

They also are suggesting that it seems organizations have not yet learned clearly enough on how they innovate and can’t distinguish beyond achieving incremental performance gains and this executive desire wishing for transformational change. It still seems hugely at odds with their actual record (of performance) and the realities, shown in their responses to this survey and their belief and assertions of having innovation prowess and dominance. There is a significant mismatch occurring. This needs a far greater “call out” to recognize this set of inherent weaknesses.

Companies are seemingly playing this innovation game of ‘snakes and ladders’, rolling the dice expecting the “silver bullet” to power them up the winning ladder but then finding themselves suddenly landing on the snake (of reality) to slip back down. Innovation seems to still be left to chance, just like my game suggested and that is a risky game.

There are more snakes than ladders in the new board game of innovation

It is about time this “board game” of innovation snakes and ladders is put away and recognizes we are far more playing the “game of thrones” where the struggle is constantly evolving Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men…we are in a disruptive world where we are all wanting to play the ‘Game of Thrones.’

This game of thrones includes start-ups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, competitors unheard of previously as suddenly arriving, emerging entities from ‘distant’ lands and those who see as adjacent or making new combinations powered by collaboration and new technologies, all wanting to surround and dethrone the incumbent. This is today’s reality.

Listening to the messenger we might be mistaking our real position

I disagree with Accenture that “embracing innovation as a tool,” it needs to be a real core, not simply a tool ,within our companies; better funded, understood and defended, it should not slip back as it seems to have done, indicated by the results from this survey.

Equally I feel in the results that companies are not on the right path unless we enjoy the game of constantly slipping back is not how I would be reading these results, yet Accenture are suggesting this.

I do think they (Accenture) have some of their conclusions wrong and are not delivering the serious messages this survey is bringing out in a way they should. Innovation is not a game to be left to chance, the roll of the dice or the ‘quiet’ acceptance of playing seemingly ‘snakes and ladders’ with it.

Having “building blocks being put into place” after years of talking about innovation is a real concern. I would have thought companies should be far more ahead than this. If the survey results are indicating such deterioration’s in some of the most critical aspects I feel the report seems more advocating a “quiet acceptance” whereas the results are a disaster.

I can’t understand the approach here. I would argue Big Corporate America is deluding itself on its innovation prowess it has serious issues to address if it truly believes growth will come from innovation if it is accepting this deteriorating outcome. It is the consultants role, from its data, to paint the ‘realities’ of this in starker ways. I would.

Accenture might have reported this outcome differently than it chose too. I think they missed the opportunity to deliver a darker warning here. Perhaps they felt not equipped to deliver this starker message but I believe they should have, the deterioration is worrying.

The world is not waiting for those steadily putting in place their building blocks

In my take on the world today, the reality is, we are all facing an increasing world of disruption and simply believing in finding (by chance) or just looking for that ‘silver bullet’ is not a winning position, it is a gambling one. Have our larger companies taken up the role of a gambler, enjoying the thrill of simply rolling the dice but more than likely not have more than ‘equal chance’ of winning the game. Are they feeling beaten already? It increasingly seems so. Innovation is an imperative we can’t afford to let slip back.

Having a good, clear focus on innovation, its value, contribution and the commitment it needs helps stack the winning odds in your favor or at least, equips you to fight in a really changing, challenging world we are presently in.

The real warning signs big US business is in deep serious innovation trouble

It does still seem that many US executives are deluding themselves on their innovation competences. Their mistaken beliefs and lack of real understanding of the complexities within good innovation management should not left to the ebbs and flows of chance, whim or short-term thinking. The need is by seriously putting into place a dedicated structure, well resourced and competent team,  built from a comprehensive understanding of innovation and its management. That requires a deeper thinking than most are prepared to do.

If executives continue to accept not to learn from past mistakes, constantly miss opportunities to exploit, big ideas are going nowhere and remain risk adverse, yet they keep looking for the ‘silver bullet’ as their solution, they are in deep trouble.

Watch out others are playing a different game

It is far more likely to come far too late for many incumbents as others, schooled in lean and agile thinking, searching for unmet needs or under-served opportunities will have disrupted them, well before this as they are constantly learning from their mistakes, consistently experimenting, exploring and exploiting opportunities by pivoting constantly, in the pursue of big ideas and embracing risk. That is a bedrock of much of the thinking that goes into innovation, market development, change exploration and growth generation

I would be very troubled to read this Accenture report if I was Corporate America.

The tone of US companies being on the right pathway, suggested by the authors, doesn’t help when you have such big boulders causing giant gaps in this innovation journey. It does seem the need to find a new pathway of innovation needs urgently finding.

We can’t afford to play this game of ‘snakes and ladders’ with innovation anymore and this survey should be a real wake up call to all those living in their ‘corporate’ ivory towers the real world is ‘eating you for breakfast, lunch and dinner’, the attacks on your established positions are constant, global and relentless. If you don’t feel surrounded, you soon will be.

This is the right time to wake up to the realities and reading a report / survey as seemingly benign but potentially lethal as this one from Accenture, one that on first read it might seem, is ‘clothed’ in reassuring tones,  yet it does seem to have some very worrying messages within it, believe me.

I would be very worried within the large US companies equally if they just take the suggested medicine offered here in this survey , they need to really forge a new more radical innovation pathway but will they simply keep playing the innovation snakes and ladders they seem to be doing?

The post Are we playing snakes and ladders with innovation? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We are in the ‘cusp’ of a fundamental change that technology, platforms and connected ecosystems will bring into the mix for connecting and collaborating in dramatically different ways than in the past.

One of the implications will be our need in measuring the metrics within companies. The measurement of inputs, throughout and outputs need to become far more focused on delivering speed and scale potential as the critical points. We are far more needing to focus on the outcomes as our primary point of measurement.

This is a further post on discussing outcomes as the focal point of our innovation measurements, following my recent one of “Shifting to Ultimate Outcomes”

Recognizing the emergence of the outcome economy

The outcome economy which is emerging has many implications within it and how we measure and value these will become increasingly important. Companies will need better data to calculate costs, evaluate its potential value and will be modelling far more the risks and tracking the factors required to deliver within any outcome-based value promised.

To quote from a recent World Economic Forum report:

“In the outcome economy phase, companies will shift from competing through selling products and services, to competing on delivering measurable results important to the customer. This is a much more challenging prospect. Among other things, providers will require a deeper understanding of customer needs and contexts in which products and services will be used. Value based on output also entails quantifying results in real-time. Both of these requirements have been nearly insurmountable obstacles to scale – until now. It is the digital age that makes the outcome economy possible”.

There are a number of implications as we move from a ‘push’ into a ‘pull’ environment where results are measured by the customer as valuable to them. For example, pricing practices of a solutions end result will clearly change, based on sold performance, as will the emergence of more predictability modelling of delivering certain outcomes and their potential value.

We are becoming part of the connected world, comprising new market ecosystems and technology platforms that ‘look in’ and foresee, expect, and even predict new outcome results. This will require a far more dynamic environment, one that is responsive, agile, fluid and highly adaptive to meeting customer needs, in real-time.

Internally this is going to challenge organizations in significant ways. As we break down the present silo view of ‘our’ assets, bring into more into play a system of assets that we will evolve into a system of systems, this could fundamentally redefine businesses, the way they work, collaborate and utilize what is available to them and what needs to be ‘drawn in’ to get the job done.

We are facing an evolution from “solutions” to “outcomes”.

Our measurement system has been established on “value-added” principles or should have been at the very minimum. These have been based on “pushing out” the end result to customers, products and services offered in particular bundles of broad appeal.

Today we need to target and develop offerings that meet specific customers’ true needs. The customer has been evolving into a far more knowledgeable and increasingly sophisticated one, as they are closer to the end market, hold the relevant data and can determine and decipher changing patterns far quicker than those further back in the supply chain.

They have better visibility today. Often they feel they really don’t need the help of the salesperson, they have most of the means increasingly available to them, in a globally connected world, if they chose to exploit this.

The shift within suppliers of products and services is taking place, engaging even deeper with customers’ needs.

This focus to accelerate and determine their value to the customer needs to have a clearer understanding of their unique needs and then set about designing and delivering true solutions that meet these needs and are seen as highly valuable. Strategic relationships are increasingly important for maintaining ‘line of sight and value’ to the customer.

As we move far more to the art of selling outcomes, it will bring together sophisticated capabilities, based around technology. There will be an increased recognition of ecosystems that are seen as needing to combine for addressing customer strategic issues where higher value can be extracted.

These outcome-based approaches will be strategic, long-lasting partnerships where shared risk and reward become central to all parties. It changes the dynamics of relationships and offers radically different competitive advantages to shoot for.

The traits of outcome-based solutions

These will be very much custom based-solutions, they will be increasingly based on configurable solution- architecture. They will have clarity in “understanding the challenges and commitments to deliver specific outcomes on critical business needs”. They will be based on platforms that can design, deliver and operate the solutions.

This becomes more a customer partnering model, formed on a partner ecosystem strategy and clear solution architecture to allow it to flow. It will be designed for cross-organizational enablement, seeking – in real-time – customer intelligence to provide a better outcome.

The value for all involved is the opportunity to share in a greater value-creating solution that is based for on delivering the outcomes desired and needed.

How GE are switching their approach.

One outstanding example of how this outcome-based proposition is evolving, is by evaluating and reading about the GE Predix solution offering the software platform for the Industrial Internet through predictivity technologies covering health, extreme machines, lighting, aviation, oil & gas, transportation and energy.

They are building a platform for igniting the next industrial revolution and their white paper outlines this. This is not an easy sell, it has a significant time lag as many of the existing products already in the market are products that have less technology built-in them and have significant life spans to constrain this concept, but “predictive technology” has the potential in providing a real value-adding story into the GE selling story, where it may provide some changing competitor advantage if structured well.

This new industrial platform is here, we need to focus on outcomes.

With it has come the opportunity to make a broad-based change across the industrial world. The time to start is now and that requires a radical shift away from the past 20th-century measuring and metrics model into recognizing the significant shit to redirecting your business to outcome solutions.

Each person within your organization should be measured on outcome-based solutions, I’d junk all those income, throughput and output ones, these are holding you back if you want to release innovation. We are all in need of just focusing on outcome-based solutions, these are what customers want providing they deliver what they need to improve their business returns.

You certainly do “get what you measure” and that has a real challenge in today’s connected world where we need to collaborate, connect and share far more to achieve greater value-adding outcome-based solutions as the way forward to earn the trust of the customer by providing solutions they need but are also building better, lasting value into your product offerings.

The post The Connected Art of Selling Outcome-Based Solutions first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

From this writer’s point of view, their innovation activity gets caught up in plenty of unintended consequences, to put it mildly, in wasted debate, discussion & bad decisions through wrong measurement criteria.

Firstly, we are still locked in the old paradigm of thinking this is an industrial economy where we set about measuring inputs to innovation (R&D expenditure, capital investment) and then focused on the intermediate step of throughput and then outputs (publications, production units, patent filing, end products).

We also perceive innovation far too much still as an activity within just one company – viewed as linear, with considerations for services more of an afterthought (like ‘bolt-ons’). Production systems remain far too often the driving force of performance judgement.
Today, the world of innovation is completely different. We need a far more open set of resources (many outside our own company) to enable innovation.

The process has clearly been recognized as non-linear. The chase for more ‘real-time metrics reflects the shift to a knowledge-based network economy to accommodate growing uncertainties, the multiple choices and varying outcomes that innovation offers.

We need to move our measuring to ultimate successful outcomes

Recognizing the need to change our measurement culture

This shift means we have to push a whole lot more on challenging established measurements and metrics – question if they are still valuable or just ‘simply’ established and have never been questioned in a way to overhaul the whole process. Everywhere we look within innovation systems, there are significant legacies in place.

We need to do a better job at measuring knowledge flows – it is the increasing emphasis and use of technology that allows us to challenge the old measurement paradigms. We still love to count machinery use, transactions, production of widgets with an engrained efficiency mindset.

Sadly it is not as effective, nor relevant, to the world today. Actually, most of these are just statistics that don’t drive us forward; they constantly make us look back. It is not ‘forward accounting’ for the knowledge built to underlie new creation and valuing the way this is developed and diffused in the future.

This also brings to the surface the need to understand our intellectual capital. If you understand that, you have a better chance to be more innovative, inventive and creative as you move far more towards a learning environment focusing on the value of all the intangibles that generate knowledge or leverage through relationships, human engagement or dynamic structures that shape and respond.

Valuing our network relationships more.

The value of networks is still not accounted for as well as it should be within our measurements. We collect the number of connections, yet we fail to capture the knowledge generated by these interactions; they stay resident often just with the receiver, not captured within the organization’s brain to understand and put to better, more effective use, applying the multiplier effect.

Technology is rapidly changing this, and this collective knowledge and networking are being leveraged more, but is it really being measured as a vital metric that provides value?

The conditions to generate really insightful innovation often remains ‘hidden in plain sight:

• Are we matching context, aligning innovation activities closely to strategic company needs?
• Are we actively seeking to match expectations and capabilities to deliver on the innovation that will lead to new forms of company value?
• Are we searching for ‘intelligent’ indicators where those initiatives shift the ground and advance on previously intractable issues?
• Do we know the true dynamics within innovation, what is either static or just simply repetitive and needs more constant monitoring, more likely through technology than human involvement?

Today we are working through the impacts of the Industrial Internet (IoT)

This promises to be transformative; it will change the basis of competition and, through this, the basis of how we measure ourselves. Not only will the industries have their boundaries withdrawn, but there will also be a new wave of disruptive companies challenging the incumbent since they don’t suffer the legacies of the past.

Technology is driving the change:

• The world will improve its operational efficiency in dramatically different ways (time, asset-utilization) through more predictive maintenance and increasingly remote management.
• We will become far more comfortable with connected ecosystems, forming around software platforms that will break down and blur traditional industry and working boundaries.
• We will see increased collaboration between humans and machines, and even machines to machines, which will shift productivity into a new realm – which we need to understand to capitalise on the potential this offers.
• Lastly, we are rapidly moving to the outcomes economy, fuelled by software-driven services, innovation built into the hardware, and the increased visibility into products, processes, location, customers and partners.

It is in this last shift of outcomes that we need to build our measurements and metrics around.

We constantly move towards the era of outcome-based services.

Businesses will be forced to shift from measuring the inputs and outputs of products to outcome-based results, where a business competes on its ability to deliver measurable results to customers.

This delivery on outcomes will radically shift how we measure and reward our progress. It will call for significant levels of increased collaborations across a growing, ever-changing ecosystem of business partners, bringing together those involved to combine products and services with meeting customers’ needs.

Platforms and ecosystems will become far more commonplace to facilitate and capture the data, translate the pockets of knowledge, so these are shared, aggregated and exchanged across these growing ecosystems, where we are all increasing working to create and capture value for ourselves and contribute to others within the platform ecosystem.

Our participation in platforms is helping us to facilitate transactions, interactions and mobilization and increasing extending out to learning platforms, each of us looking to achieve a successful and ultimate new outcome that improves on the existing.

These shifts in the ways we form collaborations give us broader connected knowledge that creates different insights and eventually new business models. To achieve this, we are becoming increasingly reliant on the partnership network or relationship we form within different (chosen) ecosystems to learn, distribute and monetize these in new products and services that fit our needs, all occurring at unprecedented scale and speed to capitalize on opportunities and create a new competitive lock-in or contribution to our needs.

These are providing increasingly new products and services that meet customer needs based on the learning outcomes and exchanges.

Moving from outdated measuring criteria

How we embrace the daily changes means we must challenge much of the way we presently measure and manage innovation. Innovation can’t stay hidden behind closed doors, safe within a selected group or siloed off. We can’t keep working with outdated measuring systems that focus on inputs, throughput and outputs.

We need to shift to the greatest judgement criteria. Our measures and metrics all need to become outcome-based solutions as the only really measuring point. In successful outcomes, we come closer to solving the real needs, tackle the problems and opportunities you find in innovation as others measure success seen and judged on the outcome.

The ultimate outcome from innovation that understands the real customers need and then understood, constantly iterated, translating what we learn and building with increasing speed and scale towards the lasting solution – and we all get paid or rewarded far more on the value of the result from successful ultimate outcomes judged by focusing only on the result.

The post Shifting to Ultimate Outcomes first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

In this fuzzy front end of innovation where ideas are generated, there are many places we can ‘discover and listen’ to the voices that will provide concrete ideas and concepts.

Let’s take the time to recognize these and ask you, the reader, do you have a systematic plan to capture all these voices?

The Voice of the Customer
The most talked-about place to find the ideas that are closer and relevant are the search for new ideas around the jobs needing to be done (jtbd).

We get closer to these voices when we use a variety of techniques that give this voice its chance to speak.

We do this through customer focus groups, user panels, customer surveys, lead-user research, direct observation of the user in their environment, and allowing ourselves to become fully immersed in a customer’s experience.

You can read What if customers evaluated your company’s ideas? posted by Hutch Carpenter or Want to be Successful at Innovation? Start exploring your Customers’ “Jobs to be done”! posted by Elena Ozeritskaya  over on the Hype blog and so many more around “jobs to be done” or “ideation” but please don’t forget the many other voices that need to be heard and the thinking behind these voices captured as they are equally of potentially great value.

The Voice of the Value Chain

We can gather plenty of ideas when we have visits to our suppliers and listen to their engineering, their specialists that work with our products or the production of the materials, even work alongside their product development staff as they often have broader industry exposure than we do, within our own organization. We can construct more formal cooperative and technology agreements and exchanges with our suppliers to find new ways to collaborate.

Also by spending time ‘in the field or marketplace’ we can discuss with the many players in the distribution system (distributors, wholesalers, customers, final retailers or those closest to our final point of sale. We can then look at all the stages along the value chain for opportunities to innovate in different ways. Just imagine all the collaborators working with your company that has knowledge that would contribute.

The Voices within the Organization
The more your innovation strategy is known internally the more likely you are to focus your opportunity investigations and draw out those rich ‘nuggets’ that lie somewhere within your organization’s experiences or insights. You can deliberately organize an operational capabilities audit to see what it might reveal in improvements or fresh ideas.

The attraction of brainstorming both within your functional and cross-functional groups can offer so much but the brainstorming techniques need to generate excitement and be seen as well worth the time and engagement, otherwise, these can fail badly. Often we miss the chance to systematically and equally on ad hoc occasions talk with the sales team in some structured ways to reveal their insights.

We should also remember many of the employees at the company might be users and will certainly offer an opinion that might provide some very frank and honest feedback.  Of course, there is that tried and tested new product idea suggestion scheme or contest but these do need to really offer something, besides money to gain real contributors value. Lastly you might want to build or tap into a company idea bank.

The Voice of the Industry

We often ignore what is going on around us, many companies don’t really have good intelligence gathering systems, and they tend to stay within very limited silos. There is absolutely no reason for this as the capturing of trends, of new patents, reading the prospectus or annual reports can yield much that can generate fresh ideas and point to future directions. Often a company belongs to numerous professional associations yet those attending fail to pick up some possible ideas as they feel this is not their job, we need to make it theirs.

The number of technical conferences that people within the organization attend gives such a productive source of insights but are they actually being ‘fed back’ into the system or just stay with the attendee alone?

Then how often is your organization participating in different standards committees, where you are often given great clues of the ‘collective’ thinking of trends, issues, and roadblocks that might all lead to breakthrough ideas to gain real competitive advantage.

The key to all of these being well-captured is putting to use the idea management software and making it mandatory for those that attend and engage to come back and ‘file’ an ideas report for those responsible for product or service development to get the chance to ‘touch and feel’ the ideas emerging around them.

Voice of the Experts

So many consultants, training professionals, and advisors are interacting daily with your company, are you tapping into this source of knowledge? Do you consider setting up focus groups with industry experts; take time out to tap into a consulting practice for its broader expertise deliberately for extracting ideas. Do you work with universities or individual facility members who can contribute different thinking and provide a rich source of knowledge?

Do you think about setting up some specific dedicated time for ‘walking around’ ideas with your research companies or consultants? Do you ever allow for providing a dedicated time that puts the product ‘brief’ on one side for the moment and just talks and exchanges? How often do you make contact through venture and equity funds that specialise in your industry and how these can offer up some very focused insights into your thinking.

Lastly, within our experts the relationships with government labs and private R&D labs are very engaged in leading-edge concepts and knowing and understanding these can dramatically alter your own perceptions.

Then we have the voice of Secondary Research

It always staggers me how academic papers are shunned and discounted yet offer such a rich source of insights and investigation. Of course, Google and the many different internet search engines can yield some interesting ideas but how often do we never dedicate the time or fail to go past the second or third page.

I have found on page 8 or even ten often a search item that dramatically alters my thinking. These searches take time on the internet and you do have to stay focused and disciplined to extract all that you can as the ‘search strands’ can often take you so widely off course you wonder how you got there.

Of course, you have trade articles, white papers; competitor’s analysis, and trade press clippings, but I wonder how systematic you really are in these? You should be.

Lastly, patent scans can be deadly boring, try doing those across twenty or so countries in multiple languages, it can be tough but thankfully these searches are getting easier, just go and visit the Pharmaceutical or Computer / internet related organizations to understand their leading practice in this and how strategically import this is to them. It will make your efforts seem minuscule in comparison.

Ideas can come from so many places – are you systematically listening?
We think of idea management systems in such narrow ways. Strategically across your organization, you should find ways where all ideas can get captured, where everyone working within the organization knows contributing knowledge, insights, intelligence and thinking can make a contribution.

Do you have a clear and precise plan to capture all those ideas that are whirling around or are so many ideas just left ignored, never captured or simply drowned out by your fixation and focus only upon the sources that might just be scratching the surface?

Perhaps you should give the many voices the chance to be heard? 

*******

Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide-ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, its well worth the visit.

The post Are you hearing all the voices for ideas? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Can you imagine the CEO sitting opposite the consultant, explaining the organization’s present difficulties to regain growth.

They explain no matter what they are doing through the existing practices and the assorted business approaches they have taken for many years, they still seem to be ‘treading water’ or even losing ground. They are beginning to worry seriously about their future.

The consultant has heard this already so many time before  across many worried organizations. He looks right into the CEO’s eyes and (sort of) snarls back: “You can run but you can’t hide”. This was a famous quote attributed to Joe Louis before one of his boxing fights back in 1946.That might get a CEO’s attention! We are in a digital transformation evolution.

The consultant quickly goes on to explain: organizations are running harder than ever yet they seem always caught out in what they do, other existing competitors are second guessing, anticipating their next moves and executing faster, new ones are constantly emerging.

The organizations ideas are just not gaining the traction; they just always seem caught out by others, more nimble, increasingly exposing the weaknesses. There is this certain time of recognition that much has to change, the organization needs to transform itself completely too firstly survive, and then hopefully thrive.

What the consultant is recognizing is the need for change the CEO certainly needs to consider, one that gives a more focused approach on all aspects of digital and what it might provide.

One that is a massive transformative one, as the current approaches seem to be running flat-out, all the time, twenty-four by seven, yet this is not helping the organization to stay competitive as everyone else has got them in their sights, sensing their vulnerabilities. They are missing new options to transform their business. New innovation options through digital knowledge.

Then the consultant discusses how does the CEO break out of the constant current ‘dog fights’ he is constantly embroiled in and constantly reacting too, that are equally sucking up most of his top team’s valuable time?

We are close to a future that will work very differently from the past.

The consultant begins to outline some radical options. Yet he starts with yet another famous boxing quote “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” by Mohammad Ali. Mohammad went on to say: “His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see. Now you see me, now you don’t. George thinks he will, but I know he won’t”.  Perhaps the CEO is already running for “cloud” cover.

The emerging world coming out of the clouds offering digital revolutions.

Welcome to the world of digital opportunities that technology is bringing in an array of possible solutions, that the cloud is enabling faster than we can individually absorb. We need to see the value of connecting the digital pulse into innovation through new business models, its all around us.

We often look at fast-moving start-ups, jealous they are not burdened down by legacy systems, outdated policies and entrenched silo’s.  Yet fast growing companies are not limited to start-ups, there are growing stories of organizations becoming more nimble, highly focused on core areas and being extremely innovative.

They are rapidly learning to capture and translate the emerging business benefits faster and turning their organizations into better innovation machines. These changes are stretching across many different industries.

One missing transformational key for nearly all organizations is embracing digital that combine social media, mobile technology, analytics and embedded devices to change customer engagement, radically alter internal operations and adopt different business models.

The need for recognizing this is down to the leadership drive and recognition of the considerable changes already under-way affecting all business activities.

The CEO really does need to exercise their leadership if they see a radical transformation as necessary as they will face obstacles all the way. This will call for strong transformational management intensity which is hard to sustain without outside help and expertise as many close to the top will be themselves dramatically impacted.

There are really important times for that  need of external help

I am beginning to see one external consulting company make an impact as they have re-invented themselves.

The one consulting company throwing its considerable hat into the digital transformation ring is Capgemini Consulting and well worth exploring how they are setting about this.

They argue digital change is with us all in business but to bring about the changes they are suggesting you have three change ‘intensity’ points that need addressing to bring you to a realization that something radical has to replace the existing.

These intensity points for necessary change are based on being open and honest about your abilities to manage the transformation taking place within your business sector, as going ‘digital’ is equally needing to be worked through across all business sectors. There is a need for a more cohesive set of solutions to this.

Capgemini outline here their thinking in this short video clip of digital transformation and where they can help support this. I think it provides a useful understanding.

They argue that being absolutely clear on the transformation, having a well thought-through roadmap towards this transformation is essential and this is being driven by three drivers of change as the need:

 1) Understanding, really understanding the customer experiences going on and what is needed,

2) The level of internal transformation that needs to really take place and

3) The extent of the business model changes you must make.

The key question is “how do you want to use technology to transform yourself?” Then it is driving the answers to the new business outcomes you decided were needed. To make this ‘transformational’ these will not be less than approaching this with a highly radical solution that evolves the learning, step by learning step.

A recent set of reports from Capgemini discusses much of this digital transformation need and their approach to this

Some of the critical steps suggested by Capgemini  I thought I’d summarize here:

• Capgemini talk about your ability to “absorb” and “adapt” and these come by putting in place a strong transformation management set of capabilities, that align the digital efforts under a common vision and coordination structure and set about engaging the organization in making this a reality.

• This ‘transforming’ approach needs a clear vision to frame the journey and result in people’s minds of how the organization will be different in the future and why that is seen to be important. This vision also helps people to understand what former assumptions may no longer be valid.

• The value of ensuring clear digital governance is in place is equally essential to deploy effective investment rules and make sure there is effective coordination mechanisms to keep the transformation moving in the right direction.

• Getting that essential engagement in this vision and fostering a culture of change is never easy in any transformation story but this must be one shared to give the vision the reality it needs. The level of re-defining, challenging existing practices, especially in IT related ones are significant.

• There is a need to structure a new collaborative balance between the CIO and business executives. This is where the CEO needs to work hard to achieve this new set of working relationships at the top, where nearly all will be caught up in these changes.

• To begin this transformation Capgemini argue that you must put the organization into motion as early as you can.  To have in place a wide array of digital channels for continuous two-way communication channels between the leadership wanting to enact change and the organization. This can include broadcast, web, video and social networks to break down the hierarchy and ensure the correct message is going out not sabotaged by ‘vested interests’.

• The organization needs to encourage, explore and identify changing practices and what these opportunities can bring in faster response times, greater understanding of value recognition by customers and the opportunities to deliver innovation that matches the expectations or unmet needs discovered.

• Clearly anything transformational has many aspects to consider but you need to be absolutely certain you have the right skills available, bridge the gaps and coach existing personnel in exploring and experimenting on the different digital channels to gain experience and growing insights. All these can be in rapid sprints iterate and improve with the learning from these being open and honest.

None of this will be easy but the CEO today is recognizing he has to rip up the existing structures, rid himself of the legacies of the 20^th century and define a new set of business models, those built far more on agility and responsiveness and finally, focus the innovation capacity in highly focused, intense ways to ‘absorb and adapt’ quicker than the competitors.

Capgemini is shaking a few trees and will be interesting to watch for digital solutions.

For me, we are seeing Capgemini embracing digital transformation in far more open ways as consultants, in their thought leadership pieces, their clarity on their site and their own focused view of their own future, channelling their growing expertise on where they core business lies. They themselves are perhaps living at the edge of discovery.

 I sense they are ‘walking the talk’ themselves and presently very focused, moving away and gaining clear distance from many existing consulting firms, still intent on adding more one-stop capability just when the business world needs intensive focus on tough issues, and digital is certainly one of those.

Innovation and technology need to combine more, digital transformation will matter in this for sure.

This digital transformation space that is transforming before our very eyes the shapes of the future organizations to adapt around new challenges that technology is bringing into the business value generating equation that drives innovation and the growth.

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