This “run” is the time when salmon migrate from the ocean and swim to the upper reaches of the rivers, where they spawn on gravel beds.

This event is an annual run where grizzly bears, bald eagles and sports fisherman all “feed” off the struggling salmon as it attempts to make it “upstream”. It is one of the natures more arduous journeys.

This set me thinking about the innovator within a company. They face the same “salmon run” or gauntlet when they try to bring to life a new innovation. The innovation equally has to swim “upstream” of validation, encountering all sort of obstacles along the way to get approval. Actually can we make a further parallel here?

You can replace the “grizzly bear” with the CFO, wanting to catch you out in your lack of hard, quantifiable numbers or not wanting to commit the level of investment into this project as it seems, in their opinion “very risky”. Then you have so many “bald eagles” swooping in to attack your idea as it disturbs their status quo, it challenges the existing business model or it would not fit within the current organization’s ways. They attack the idea for fear it “steals” from existing resources, it risks canabilizing the current product, it simply means more work for them. These “bald eagles” are constantly diving at you to pick your idea off. Then you get the “sports fisherman”, constantly casting his line wanting to snag or catch you, to reel you in and make your idea his or just simply being the one enjoying the “sport” of the catch, stopping you from moving further upriver with clever questions designed to impress others with his insights.

The innovator constantly has his “run”. He builds up his arguments and validations, he collects facts, trails and builds prototypes but then he has to go and sell the concept to management. This is my equivalent of an innovation salmon run.

If you regard the role of being the innovator as similar to a salmon struggling to get upstream to spawn, to undertake some hatching (in this case of ideas) then you often do have to face as the tortuous journey. They constantly face the “innovation run”, just like salmon, there are so many obstacles to their run.

Innovation is seen as counter-intuitive to the majority of the work undertaken in established businesses

The approach to Innovation is counter-intuitive to what we’ve been taught in business schools and undertake in daily organizations that have been taught and came up the ranks managing predictable businesses based on metrics. Most of the folks at the helm of organizations or working in them at senior level, starting with the MBAs or finance types, set about managing risk, seeking out greater productivity and efficiency as the ladder to progress

The innovator, on the other hand, is working in random, exploratory ways, exploring new thinking not relying on established practices.  We’ve thoughtfully designed the modern organization to produce predictable outcomes, increasing reliability and reducing risk. Innovation is an unnatural act within the current system and metrics-driven mantra. T

Understandably so, executives who take a “show me the numbers” approach to innovation see expensive experiments, lots of novelty, lack of planning and worst of all, no defensible numbers and set about wanting to disprove it. The antibodies that lie in weight for the innovator.

We know Innovators face significant barriers to get their ideas into realization.

These form many of the barriers to not achieving a successful innovation environment. Let’s list many of these. This handy list from Miriam Lourdes Filgueiras  Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana, José Antonio Echeverría shows how hard it is to “swim upstream” to hatch a new innovative idea.

Like Salmon, innovators must build up their body mass ready to take on the innovators run for approval. They must be ready to defend, validate, to prove the potential value of their new concept and its future value to the organization. They do not have the solid foundation of “repeating hard numbers” they have to build them through a series of steps, of validations, proof of concepts, customer engagements and shaping the original concept towards a commercial outcome.

Salmon, once they arrive to spawn have spent so much energy and physiological change to get to that point they die. The innovator certainly does have a greater chance to survive but we do see the turnover of the innovation manager in many cases is getting shorter and shorter, in many of our business organizations. Sometimes between 3 to 5 years and they move on or simply out. So the innovator does equally have as a innovators lifespan a short life. Is this because the innovation salmon run takes its toll on them, or have they simply become the next grizzly bear, bald eagle or sportsman challenging the next innovation run? Or perhaps, they learned something themselves about the innovation run to help clear the way for the next innovators salmon run?

The post Facing The Innovators Salmon Run first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I certainly think these reflect the struggles within innovation that need working upon constantly, so it has a better chance to succeed.

This revised thinking I feel has upgraded my own focal points as areas I will be exploring even further in my work in the period ahead.

What do you think? Do you think the list is missing something?
My upgraded thinking on the 20 top innovation aspects to master and resolve.

1. There seems so much ongoing difficulty to identify the real opportunities for innovation as there is often no structured approach to this, or even worse a poor recognition of any well formulated strategy, so allowing so many opportunities to fall through the gaps.

2.   Not generating and managing ideas that deliver real growth, mostly due to a lack of any effective decision-making process, organised governance and structure to manage this.

3.   A on-going failure in not effectively seeking out external insights in clear ways and lacking a capturing structure to achieve this, so simply restricting the real awareness of the external environment to the necessary person internally within the organization.

4.   The inability to draw down from a diverse set of networks, partners, systems and people and then connecting them in a ecosystem to acquire, transform or exploit this new knowledge for new innovation.

5.   Not setting the appropriate focus on innovation activities for value creation and making those critical points explicit enough within and across the organization, so leaving it too open to personal interpretation and fuzzyness, resulting in often disappointing end results.

6.   Not having a clear alignment to the Corporate Strategy for innovation, often missing the connections between formal and informal mechanisms needed for managing innovation.

7.   Having poor implementation that fails expectations as the ‘need’ of the end result was left far too vague or compromised somewhere between discovery and delivery.(see 5 also)

8.   Failing to recognize and build innovation capabilities across the organisation that deliver the appropriate mix of skills and experience by often not appreciating the significant differences between the types of innovation necessary and their unique characteristics to execute through these.

9.   Building the competencies to further strengthen change is based far to much on existing organizational cultures that focus on effectiveness and efficiency, failing to recognize this is often in conflict with innovation, that is requiring a far more open ended, adaptive approach.

10. Having different expectations and behaviours across the organisation, divergent opinions and significant disconnects of self-interest and petty politics that override innovation intent.

11. Continually having changing priorities and conflicting responsibilities by not successfully managing the conflict between short and long term needs that are required to be managed in a more structured, thoughtful way.

12. A lack of concerted effort to encourage collaboration across and outside the organization I would suggest is limiting organization design in flows and effectiveness for innovation success.

13. Diverse systems that restrict the flow of knowledge sharing and don’t capture and share those aspects that would, if overcome, would trigger fresh insight and growing awareness of valuable alternatives.

14. Inadequate understanding of consumer and customer needs as the front line engagement process is not alert enough or trained to discover these, or often don’t have a system in place to report these back in the knowledge and incentive that these are seen as important by the customer.

15. Localised innovation that does not engage the whole organisation and continues on a silo basis, pushed by local managers as their pet projects, starving more critical ones and not being well picked up due to a lack of a comprehensive innovation portfolio management system.

16. Largely being reactive to competition and not being proactive, due to this constant struggle to fully understand the external environment and failing to anticipate those future trends and where they fit in their implications for the organization and its innovation focus.

17. Lacking a leadership perspective of the “ideal” culture and climate to inspire innovation and really appreciating what real differences do motivate people at the different levels for them to participate and actively engage in innovation activity or simply not.

18. Not having enough time, resource and resolve to grow innovation activity, as innovation and its appropriate management has not been fully designated as a clear function, with designated accountability, well resourced and integrated within and across the organization.

19. Failure to exploit the know-how and IP within the organisation and explore its potential with partners, so its potential can be fully exploited and commercialised instead of often just left ‘gathering dust’ as simply a protected patent not being exploited.

20. No clear and distinct measures and metrics to drive the innovation process effectively across the organisation and for the individual to relate to, that align the efforts with promoting and exploiting innovation as part of everyone’s responsibility.

The implication of this list or even simply parts of it

The effective tasking of innovation activities today cannot be left to chance; it has to be designed into the organization from top to bottom. By not having designated people fully involved and accountable for innovation is likely to inhibit growth. Having a well-designed innovation structure and governance is essential but still not well understood

Having an honest conversation at the board level is a good starting point.
Reflecting on these twenty points alone and being open enough in addressing them can make a dramatic difference between success and ongoing disappointment.

Leaders or those tasked with innovation need to have this honest conversation, if they come up short then they need to ‘reach out’ and seek fresh external advice on how to resolve these gaps so as they can quickly understand their gaps.

Gaining a deeper understanding does make a real difference
I would argue executives should not be afraid to ask. Having a deeper understanding can often come from a dedicated focus often not possible within the confines of one organization.

The external advice offered can help move them towards a more successful innovation management structure to succeed in those innovation efforts and go closer to match their desires and growth goals from innovation.

Sometimes it is well worth reaching out for fresh perspectives and even, a dose of reality.

The post Twenty critical questions on innovation to be resolved for succeeding first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.