Connecting technology and innovation is altering how we should re-access organizations ability to build out. We are in the middle of a technological-led industrial revolution It is becoming highly dynamic.

****I decided to revise this post as I originally got caught up in “conflation”. Two ideas merging as one and it simply lost the insights of each, simply attempting to fuse different thoughts into one entity. It honestly did not work and I struggled with what to do.  By splitting them up they become separate reads and more digestible and hopefully of better value. I have to admit this is not the first time I get caught in this  (or I expect the last!) and I apologize to you, as the reader *****

So here I outline a 5S framework to trigger some opening thoughts on breaking down technology design complexity. The other post, now over on my other site, deals with the growth of “apps” in IIoT “Great apps will deliver the future business value in IIoT” and is predicting a changing future based on some recent takeover announcements.

So getting that embarrassment behind me lets go back to the 5S idea.

Arriving at a designed outcome is getting complicated. Developers get caught up in the details, rightly so, to deliver on a connected world but you must always ask the “what for?”

The more I was thinking I was trying to cut through all this “unnecessary fog” as a non-techie so I started to build my 5S idea. Let me share it

Any digital inspiring organization has to deal with significant change, it becomes overwhelming for many making decisions that will determine their future. They are placing really big bets on getting the technology part right. Personal agenda’s get pushed, IT viewpoints are far to narrow, management gets caught in indecision. A technology strategy has to be designed around and into the business strategy and the future.

My simple thought here is asking different questions around a few simple triggers, perhaps this very simply 5S. They actually become very central to determining a way forward for a business in how it designs its technology infrastructure.

Firstly, how “smart” do you wish to be, through technology application, so then what then becomes your “software” needs, and where do your “store” all the inevitable data that will be generated and needing analysis (cloud, local). Then what does it take to “scale” ambition and the resulting business and finally what sort of IoT “stack” needs to be built and designed to support the ambition? So these “5S” is not a bad assessing framework initially. Let me go through these briefly:

Firstly Smart

We are moving everywhere in “Smart” be that buildings, agriculture, homes, mobility, grids, utilities, traffic, logistics, waste management, as well as in our personal lives with smartphones and how we use the smart speakers we are rapidly becoming reliant on in the home to tell us what we need to know. We are becoming highly reliant on everything connecting and enabling us to be “smart.” Every organization with a growth ambition has to look at what smart means for them

Smart dominates in the solutions we are working towards. IoT offers us that “pervasive technology” so we can optimize, exert greater control, improve, protect, have greater connectivity. Smart is offering us ways to optimize, integrate our lives in different, potentially more intelligent ways.

Smart APPS are innovative systems that gather tremendous amounts of data from sensors and other embedded equipment and through machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics, we are making information highly actionable for the user, with the aim to improve the experience, productivity, and understanding.

“Smart” needs to be central in your thinking through the end results you are looking for

Secondly Stacks.

I am constantly reading about “stacks” when it comes to technology design. The IoT stack is becoming the “Thing Stack”. Technology has layers that constantly are adding (stacks) of complexity. IoT stacks manage solutions for device hardware, devise software, communications, cloud platforms, and cloud applications. I keep being told “we are building a full stack” but I find that often hard to believe as new technology breakthroughs keep moving ahead of “physical” design. We are blending existing technologies with new ones.

There is an awful lot of engineering going on dealing with many unique challenges, built up over the years. The understanding of all the layers, how they work not just in the past but how they need to work in the future is demanding. Building the right technology stack is essential for delivering strategy and the underlying digital roadmap. Understanding all the stacks and their layering guides the creation of IoT solutions.

We are equally requiring “jobs-to-be-done” not just in one Enterprise but in the growing need to connect up in the IIoT Enterprise world, where connectivity and exchange become common to leverage new business values. Stacks need to tackle the hard-end in protecting and keeping the infrastructure secure and open enough for attracting in the user-end as well. That needs a real business grasp.

The IoT stack becoming the “Things Stack” is shifting our thinking. We need to build the physical with the digital. We need to understand the physical world of what we are trying to do or achieve, with the technology solutions that work with, or for the business. User interactions are increasing in their expectancies, wanting “greater connected experience” and demanding Enterprises are equally required to be very savvy about the markets they are in and wish to serve.

It does seem we are needing to think in different layers or stacks, in a more holistic way, dealing and understanding, solving and connecting the physical world, with the business abilities, the technology layers and the market changes taking place and the user experiences expected.

This rethinking “stacks” needs to build more of the interrelationships between these to get context, device and gain the best level of “interaction” to gain from the ability to connect up. It is not purely IoT to think this through and try to understand it, it is the understanding of the full business stack needed by all the relevant decision makers.

The world of Scale

A certain scale is a necessity it seems today. When you invest so much in revolutionalizing your business, pushing technology and digital transformation you need to achieve a greater return. The greater the investment, the greater need is to scale and cover the “sunk” costs. At present most enterprises are grappling with containing costs in operating expenses as they attempt to transition to a heavier reliance on technology. To build your own platform, you need to think scale. To grow your business, often it has to be able to quickly scale. Products, to successfully scale, need to move from trial to full execution and these need to have clearer “scaling” pathways and design.

We all are struggling to define our scalability parameters, so we can then recognize the solutions we need to manage our scaling ambitions. To scale is one of the toughest issues to handle. If you do not have the financial resources to “find solutions and resources to scale” you struggle. We are increasingly seeking scale through partnerships, in joining established platforms so we can leverage a network and take growing advantage of technology and communication scale. As we scale we need to find those greater “intelligent solutions” by converting our factories into “digital factories” so we can extract efficiencies and channel product solutions into scaling for those “economies of scale” these investments need.

Storage- where do you start

Data is growing at exponential rates. The more we connect up, the more we seek out and gather data, often to justify investments, we are requiring increased storage. Today, we believe the cloud solves our problems, I am not sure. When you enable one device so it becomes a connected device through built-in sensors the sell becomes what value you get out of all the connected data from that one device, some but not much. The power of data is when you connect up many. Processors, local storage, gateways, improved processors all have increasing cost implications. The more data you want to collect, the more it costs to store it.

No wonder “data is the new liquid gold” and those that manage the cloud for storage are the new valuable bankers in the world, look at Amazon or Microsoft in how they manage our storage needs.  Not only do you as a client need to “house” data but you then need to analyze it. The additional slicing, dicing and simulating, the belief this needs to be in real-time, all adds even more storage need and demand assessment. Managing your data storage inventory is a growing problem

Today through the internet we are streaming information constantly up to the cloud or to our own storage facilities. The type and amount of data you are storing are becoming mind-blowing. Storage is the “beast” that needs taming.

Then we finish up with Software in my 5S frame

We are working on the concept of “software-defined hardware” so hardware devices can serve multiple applications, depending on the software it is running. These device hardware and software work together to create the “smart device”.  This is the present pressure point – we can’t write code quickly enough to meet demand. Hence why low-code is currently such a hot item. The software does the talking. It glues it all together., the hardware, the device, the cloud etc. Functionality in software becomes the “golden ticket” and how we build our future applications will determine where you find yourself positioned in the eyes of your customer, or in extracting new value, to improve on what you have got.

It is recognized the building of hardware takes longer, especially in large Industrial solutions like grids, platforms, factories, utility solutions or transport. The growing question is how you accelerate software solutions so you can assist the physical side. We have seen the birth of the “digital twin” to help in this. Hence why Siemens, with all of their hardware solutions, needs the software solutions offering of platforms, connectivity, visualization, and application delivery to be in place, if it is to sell the digital solutions alongside their hardware solutions. It has multiple partners, but it is acquiring much to have internal competencies.

This in-house building has many advantages but can reduce flexibility and rate of response if some of the digital solutions (rapidly) change. In some ways when you chose to build your own platform solutions for others to come and join, the digital complexities simply “runaway” with themselves.

The platform provider needs to recognize the ultimate value is in the orchestration for others to “play,” so the supply side and demand side need equal balancing in any platform offering equation. I argue today we need to provide more value to create the demand side. Building smart apps and providing software building capabilities that accelerate solutions significantly moves towards this.

Forming a better understanding comes from breaking a problem down

It is going to be that combination of smart, stacks, scale, storage and software all combining to make the experience level that delivers the new business model and breaks down the complexity we are facing in understanding the essential needs My simple thought here is to start asking different questions around a few simple triggers, perhaps this very simply 5S. They actually become very central to determining a way forward for a business in how it designs its technology infrastructure. I know it is not that simple but it starts your journey to picking apart complexity.

***I decided to revise this post as I originally got caught up in “conflation”. Two ideas merging as one and it simply lost the insights of each, simply attempting to fuse different thoughts into one entity. It honestly did not work and I struggled with what to do.  By splitting them up they become separate reads and more digestible and hopefully of better value. I have to admit this is not the first time I get caught in this conflation (or I expect the last!) and I apologize to you, as the reader*****

The post My 5 S for future Innovation: Smart, Stacks, Scale, Storage, and Software first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I’ve saved the $40k that it is estimated to attend this annual event and I can certainly find the time to absorb what is being said in my own environment.

Perhaps the messages are more salient because of this, I don’t know, as I’m highly unlikely to be attending this forum as you have to be invited.

So what has caught my attention is not surprising for its relevancy, to what I do and think about, around the issues of innovation and its ability to lead us out of our present adversities

The one discussion that was valuable on this involved a panel that spoke at length about risks in uncertain times. It was headlined as “Leading through adversity” but focused on the uncertainty being faced and where innovation can help in reducing unfamiliar risks and giving us some clarity.
Watch the debate here http://tinyurl.com/a6lqm5h

There were lots of discussions on different types of innovation from Professor Clayton Christensen’s emerging view we have three types of 1) empowering innovation, 2) sustaining innovation and 3) efficiency innovation.

Another panellist Anand Mahindra spoke of two types of Pioneering cutting edge and the “More for less” movement found in frugal innovation thinking as the two that need us all to think through.

Both were good contributors to where innovation needs to fit but our difficulties persist as we all do not share a common language.

The Chairperson of Bains & Company, USA Orit Gadiesh kept reminding us that fear comes in two different forms: “uncertain”- which tends to freeze us until we resolve some of that uncertainty and “unfamiliar”- where many CEO’s and organizations are presently grappling with. Both are presently “scaring us to death” to quote Clayton Christensen in dealing with the “unknowns”.

Two comments sparked a thought- one by Martin Senn, Group Chief Executive Officer, Zurich Insurance Group, Switzerland was his “interconnectivity of risk” and the other one was dealing with the new issue on the block everyone is thinking through “Market transitions” and the effects in each economy on job and wealth creations started by John Chambers, CEO & Chairman of Cisco.

Preparing for innovation for the future.

These two comments lead you to begin to think about Innovation for the future. We are going to continue to live in unpredictable times and there is an awful lot coming towards us in new business model designs that are going to radically alter the competitive landscape.

We sense entire industries are being threatened. Toppling giants send shock waves throughout the world and certainly the corridors of our business leaders.

This continued uncertainly, this dealing in the unfamiliar, this feeling of something coming from nowhere made me think of “heat-seeking innovation”.

So for a little bit of fun I took a look at some of the comparisons between heat-seeking missiles and applied those to heat-seeking innovation. Ok, a little “left field” but it became interesting, so stay with me for a few moments of wandering. Too much listening to our leaders in Davos perhaps?

Stretching your thinking around heat-seeking innovation

So, I’m stretching our thinking, ignoring much within the design of heat-seeking missiles but looking at some of the commonalities surprisingly around us in different ways that we need to build into our innovation capability, building for future innovation to respond to in far smarter ways.

Heat-seeking innovation relies on piecing together considerable data, rapidly absorbing the individual values to ‘react’ to the unfamiliar and continue to manage the constant and familiar.

Let me explain some parallels with heat-seeking missiles.

With so many new business models occurring, they are out to destroy what is already in place and part of the incumbent CEO’s role is to avoid this fate or be the one to bring the new business model to fruition. They need to ‘seek’ more and ‘risk’ more.

As the name implies heat-seeking missiles home in on the hot areas of a target, the parallel is that our innovation needs to do the same job. Home in and do the job, disrupt (destroy) the existing and gain the advantage through new business models, products and services.

Heatseeker innovation requires us all to get a whole lot smarter.
We need to get a whole lot smarter with our innovation efforts, we need to build innovation systems that are “smarter” in discriminating targets and resisting the jamming effects, internally and externally often deployed to try and influence and alter their mission. We need to use the heat map to focus in and cut out this ‘background’ clutter. We need to stay the innovation course.

Firstly we need innovation combustion

It is the amount of innovative heat, the energy feeding into the system, to quote from one article on heat-seeking missiles: “the energy is in the form of a crystal lattice of vibrations that vibrate along the chain”. The more heat one omits you achieve a continuous band that raises the (innovation) temperature and increases the thrust and combustion.

All sources of energy (our people) emit the potential for innovation activity. The more you ’emit’ you achieve growing propulsion in new innovative energy so the more you vibrate (with innovation) the higher the intensity. You need to build the innovation engine that allows the energy source to propagate (our people and their ideas and actions) and champion its value and source of future growth.

Controlling the burn

Propulsion needs a controlled burn time. To get a better speed, to move organizations forward faster levels of heat-seeking innovation, there is a need to have a combination of proximity and impact infusing. Here the CEO needs to lay down all the “guidance systems”, and provide the positioning of targets and issue the necessary commands (the innovation strategy aligned to corporate goals) to achieve the desired flight path.

This relates to getting close to our customers, our markets and having available core capabilities to deliver desired results does need a certain closeness and determination to infuse the parts.

There also needs to be in place optical filters which I gather for heat-seeking missiles are made up of absorption filters that have wide bandwidth (scanning and assessments) and interference filters that design down to extremely narrow bandwidths (clear innovation focus) and both require good transmittance (communications) and reflecting unwanted energy (a design of a common language and intent) instead of absorbing it.
Reject what is not relevant to getting the heat-seeking innovation away (good governance and project management).

In other words stop unnecessary interference which comes from our own reflection (dogma and mindsets) and laser in on what secures your future. Push through the “flak.”

What we need to set up is targeted directional information to accelerate this impact infusing.

So we need to ensure the following to be put into place for optimising our heat-seeking innovation (missiles) to become operative and deliver their full impact.

We need seeker types

We call these innovation scouts. These are the source for detecting new innovations, targets to zoom in on, seeking out their heat and these targets allow up to home in on to defeat with countermeasures, provide the information to avoid, possible seek and destroy as threats, or rapidly learn from as these take evasive actions to improve our own innovation efforts.

We need scanning patterns and modulation

As we build our own capabilities in innovation it is the space in front of us becomes the one to scan for new targets (core, adjacent or new spaces). We need to amplify the signals (weak signals offer tomorrows innovation). The more we ‘do’ innovation, increase its frequency, the better we become at hitting the right targets more accurately.

Cooling effect
Heat-seeking missiles need to lock into increasing lower level signals and often the heat being omitted by much within the system can overpower the weak signal. We sometimes need to cool our systems to lock into these targets (portfolio pruning), especially over longer time frames and horizons (the three horizons of innovation)

Tracking

Heat seeking missiles have their seekers mounted on a gimbal. This allows the sensor to be pointed at the target while the missile might not be. Like missiles innovation cannot always be pointed at the target, we need to explore other trajectory paths, but at a given time we lock into the target (innovation value chain) and begin to control the direction innovation points in its execution and delivery.

The interesting point is the gimballed seeker needs to be able to track the target independently (stay true to course) until you make that decision to lock in and fully align in the final execution.

Hitting the target

We all like to take the most direct path to the intercept, to deliver innovation. Newer missiles are smarter and use the gimballed seeker combined with what is known as proportional guidance in order to avoid oscillation (our fear and doubts) and stay locked into the best, most efficient intercept path.

So maybe there is sufficient with heat-seeking missiles but in our approach to innovation I would argue we need to develop up a greater ‘design capacity’ for heat-seeking innovation so we can zero in on all that threatens us.

We take design to a greater height, take out what is currently known and leave us with the blue sky and the dawning of a new age, simply flying into the “unfamiliar and unknowns” this debate at Davos triggered in my “time out” moment.

Why have some guys in white coats just arrived at my door?

OK, I’m returning to my innovation real world but this had some heat omitting fun for me. I need to watch for others to home in and comment on this.

Time for some evasive action and drop below the visible spectrum where heat is generated, and stop emitting useless radiation and all this background clutter to return to the serious job on hand, building our organizations capabilities.

Although I do like the idea of “heat-seeking innovation”. Now let’s take the medication I’m being offered by these guys.

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