Preparing for Digital within your Innovating Disruption

April 7, 2021Posted in4th Industrial Revolution, Designing Innovation, Digital Innovation, Digital Solutions, Disruption

Four years ago, I downloaded an article that I keep coming back to. It was called “Managing Disruptive Change Be Ready for What Is Coming”, written by Estevao Seccatto Rocha. At the time, Estevao worked for KPMG in São Paulo as a transformation and turnaround advisor. Today according to Estaveo’s LinkedIn, he works for Stone Partners, still in São Paulo.

I think he wrote this article while studying at RWTH Aachen University, and he references Professor Malte Brettel, the head of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Group.

I kept coming back to this and decided to try and pick out some of the points here in this post. The work is either Estavao’s or Professor Brettel. I am trying to translate it in a way that works for me, and hopefully, you as a reader of this posting site to bring disruption far more central in your thinking.

Digital is one of the most disruptive forces we have to face. This is why I decided to summarize some points, remind myself and appreciate what we really mean when we advocate and encourage going disruptive.

Understanding the basics of disruption

Disruption is constant; it simply disturbs all we do. If we ignore it, we lose what we have; if we determine how to meet disruption, we have a chance to survive and even come out better, certainly differently.

Digitalizing has a positive impact on our innovation activities in IIoT

February 4, 2021Posted in4th Industrial Revolution, Achieving Outcomes, Designing Innovation, Digital Innovation, Digital Solutions, New Innovation Era
Image David Reyero

Digitalizing has a positive impact on our innovation activities, it opens up new exciting possibilities. The first question of what, how and why are we doing this, we can start by looking at the data to begin to see there are potential ways to change something existing or improve on our idea or concept. As we gain insights then we can apply that innovative thinking with a greater technology application understanding.

We then begin to make the changes within the process, be those incremental, radical or even revolutionary to change the processes operating today.

We have distinctive ways to treat data and digitalization that leads to distinct new value points for innovation.

Success in any digital transformation is a journey of discovery

January 24, 2021Posted inAchieving Outcomes, Digital Innovation, Digital Solutions, Ecosystems

How do we find answers to knowing what measures give us for success in any digital transformation? Are today’s measures relevant to tomorrow, are they still based on our legacy system of measurement, when a business was operating in a stable, predictable environment?

Yes, we can measure success in our progress but these are in both multiple and equally personal ways.

Each organization is unique. Never has this become crystal clear that when you face your own transformation journey. You can learn from others, you can adapt but you need to clearly understand where you are in your own evolution and capacity to undertake change as it is simply your journey.

This digitally transforming has not been as well recognized as it is today when we attempt to make any transition, from the old ways of doing business to the new one; that is highly connected, collaborative and based on our growing reliance on technology and ‘everything’ digital. It can become life-changing, changes the scope and opportunities within the business and it is highly individual.

A new cycle of innovation design

December 28, 2018Posted in4th Industrial Revolution, Digital Innovation, Innovation DNA, New Innovation Era

We really do have this compelling need to have a new cycle of innovation design.

A more integrated solution that takes our understanding of innovation and how to manage it, into the realms of ecosystems and platforms in its design and thinking.

To achieve this we need to recognize a significant change we must undertake in our present innovation management. We need to open up our thinking to embrace a new era of digital innovation

Does it make sense? You judge as you read.

Extract what makes sense for you, explore where there are thoughts that can be applied to your current innovation set up. Just remember a new innovative design needs to be radical, totally connected, and resource-rich.

Achieving agility within your innovation work

December 1, 2018Posted inCapabilities and Capacities, Dynamic capabilities, Impact & Scale, Pathway dependence curves1 Comment

How can we map a new pathway for shifting current practices so as to transform them?

How can we bring increasing agility into our innovation work, that requires both stable and dynamic moments to deliver better outcomes?

Where do we focus, what do we recognize as organization practices, that can begin to transform the organization and re-equip it for a different future?

Agility for me is vital, it allows us to increasingly be adaptive in an uncertain world.

As innovation continues to be central to growth far more in the future it is our ability to adapt and adjust to all the uncertainties and this requires the ability to be agile.

A report provided by McKinsey “How to create an agile organization” has been part of a broader ‘agile’ series from them but this one specifically gave me my necessary anchor point, to move forward with my own design thinking for agility and innovation.

The Rise of Platform Business Models

November 18, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

The rise of platform business modelsWe have seen an incredible rise in digital platforms that have become part of our everyday lives.

Whether it’s Apple, Google, eBay, Amazon, Android, Facebook, Microsoft, Alibaba, Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb, PayPal or one of the many others, they all have become some of the hottest companies that consumers value.

These companies have built out their businesses on powerful platforms that drill down on what we value and allow us to connect. They (B2C) have connected the consumer like never before. Now we see the surge of the industrial platforms (B2B), the IIoT world arriving in force.

Adopting a Rapid Digital Innovation Process

November 18, 2018Posted inAdvancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Shifting dynamics in innovation

As we start to think about the next year, (is it here already?) it is a time of reflection and some forward thinking. We do need to make some real changes.

From my standpoint, I am simply amazed at how the world seems to be spinning faster and faster. I am convinced my working days are shorter or the clock is moving faster or worse still, I am being “deflected” even more by everything “digital”.

I never seem to finish what I had intended to complete by the end of a day or week. I then get caught up in the spillover effect. Something always gets in the way, something has to give. So we make a resolution to change something to improve on this constant catch up state we find ourselves in. We all seem to be spinning faster but equally slowing down. Often our innovation activities face the same dilemma.

Innovation needs time, it needs evolution and resolution but also speeding up

Here are some thoughts for our future. The need for innovation results has sped up considerably. The belief that lean management principles will get the innovation out of the door quicker, has been one of those management adoptions that often trick us into believing we are achieving more than we actually are. Reality is, we have only been tackling part of the innovation process and the end results often remain the same – a slow process of innovation follows as lean hits organization reality, it gets caught up in internal roadblocks, countless discussions, and debates.

Certainly, in the majority of cases we have found nothing wrong at all with applying lean management, as it tends to lead to improvements in a final outcome, but does it actually speed up the process? I’m not sure it does. Leans slows down and becomes increasingly burdened by fat being layered on, further down the innovation execution process.

For me, I think the real need is in speeding up of the whole innovation process, approaching the whole innovation in a systematic way, as the only path to tread in the years ahead. We need to broaden out the whole process of rapid innovation application beyond the two current favorites of lean and design thinking. That requires it to be fully connected up and that means making the innovation process one that is fully digital, on a platform and accessible by all, those that can bring value and meaning to the process to deliver greater innovation outcomes. We need a greater innovation rapid prototype approach to the whole innovation process- test, learn, adapt, adjust, iterate, refine at speed and rapid scaling.

Coping with Digital Transformation: Adopting a Rapid Innovation Process

August 24, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

coping with digital transformation with adaptive innovation processes.jpg

As we start to think about the next year, it is a time of reflection and some forward-thinking

From my standpoint, I am simply amazed at how the world seems to be spinning faster and faster. I am convinced my working days are shorter or the clock is moving faster. I never seem to finish what I had intended to complete by the end of a day or week. I get caught up in the spillover effect.

Something always gets in the way, something has to give. So we make a resolution to change something to improve on this constant catch up state we find ourselves in.

Forget Best Practice, It Is All About Next Practice

August 20, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

digital transformation for businesses.jpg

Often you hear the request made:

“can you give us a best practice snapshot; we would like to get a sense of where we are”.

The trouble with best practice is you are looking at someone else’s practices and these are highly individual, made up of different groups of methodologies, processes, rules, theories, values, and concepts. These together have provided that specific company a level of success that others – mostly competitors – begin to notice.

As the famous line in the film When Harry met Sally as Meg Ryan was faking it, went “I’ll have what she’s having”. No, there is no such thing as best practices, you can’t simply pick up and plug and play, as one organization’s initiative is never the same set of conditions or positioning that others can simply copy.

We desire the “one-size fits all” as a comfort blanket. Many consultants love this request, as they do not need to apply the real skills of discernment, subject matter expertise, and the difficult challenge of peeling away a client’s practice to understand how they can rebuild them to become unique, into a leading practice that cannot be copied.

Here does lie a true competitive component and so many organizations seek to apply someone else’s practice so they can end up as “same” practice.

Delving into a complex world; finding research to help you learn and adapt

August 16, 2018Posted inInnovation DNA, Innovation Knowledge Understanding, New Innovation Era

“The world has never been as complex, dynamic and uncertain as it is today and the pace of change will only increase.” We hear this consistently, our continual problem is trying to make sense of it.

To attempt to keep up to date we all need to invest increasing time in acquiring a better understanding, a deeper knowledge of all the interconnected parts. Even if we are “time-starved” we simply must try and keep moving along in this understanding.

As part of my job, advising others on all things swirling around innovation, I invest significant time in researching, learning, and applying what I feel is important to others to understand or at least to raise their awareness.