I wanted to depart from just focusing on innovation within this post. It is getting at me. I continue to read similar entreaties, it seems almost daily. Is this a symptom of a current malignancy or something that is going to be part of our future business lives?
We are extorted to disrupt our enterprises before someone else does. The constant threat of both known and unknown competitors could simply attack tomorrow. It is in our ‘complacency’ that we will be reduced down and lose our competitive advantages, even face extinction.
There is so much disruptive power being harnessed that we are all facing an exponentially more complex and challenging environment. Are you buying into this story of doom and fear?
The typical linear and often siloed mindset rapidly has to fall away when it comes to measuring and metrics within companies. The measurement of inputs, throughout and outputs needs to become far more focused on delivering speed and scale potential.
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 their potential value, and will be modeling far more the risks, and tracking the factors required to deliver within any outcome-based value promised.
The Cynefin Framework by David Snowden, through Cognitive Edge
A good framework seems to grow, it becomes integrated into your thinking and application. You see increasing possibilities to apply it. One of these for me has been Dave Snowden’s Cynefin.
I also increasing apply the Three Horizons framework as well.
Both allow me to organize my thinking and provide options within any multiple evaluations to begin or shape thinking going forward. Both attempt to break down a growing complexity we all find in our word today.
One, the three horizons, attempts to sketch out our thinking about today’s world, of where we are and what we need to do to keep it going in a hopefully orderly state, and then looks to forecast out the changes we need to move towards, in a projected future and then identify the needs to get there. It passes through three horizons of today (H1), the near term (H2) and the longer term (H3).
You will find much of what I have written about on the three horizons story, within my “insights and thinking“ tab (shown above) and look for the applicable section. Equally, you can put into the search box “three horizons” and many posts will come up to explore this, if you are curious on its value, position and our need, to use this on a more consistent basis.
The Cynefin framework provides a wonderful way to sort the range of issues faced by leaders and us all, into five contexts, defined by the nature of the relationships between cause and effect. Dave Snowden has been explaining these consistently for years. Four of these five are; obvious (formerly simple), complicated, complex and chaotic states and requires us to diagnose situations and then to act in contextually appropriate ways. The fifth one is disorder, often overlooked or not fully appreciated. It is when something is unclear, it is in a disorderly, highly transitory state and needs to be rapidly stabilized into one of the other four to give it a more orderly state going forward.
So why do I see this Cynefin framework as growing in importance?
Many organizations are struggling with their metrics and ways to measure the progress and success of their business, and from this writer’s point of view, their innovation, it gets caught up in plenty of unintended consequences, to put it mildly.
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, patents, end products). We also perceive innovation as an activity within just one company – viewed as linear, with considerations for services more of an afterthought (like ‘bolt-ons’). Production systems remain the driving force.
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.
Why is it we always seem to fail back into the same traps or pitfalls? Bad habits seem to always reoccur even when we work on trying to eradicate them.
For me, innovation has eight pitfalls or sinkholes that we need to consciously try to avoid. Some are in our hands, others are clearly out of our hands and all we can do is try to influence them as best we can, for what we believe is right and appropriate.
I always show a particular interest in statements claiming to have identified a relevant driver of innovation change, to think through and see if they are as applicable to my own situation. Often they are but the underlying force sometimes needs to be seen differently to incorporate this ‘driver’ into your innovation activities and thinking.
I try to constantly work around nine drivers of innovation change.
I periodically work through each of these and see if anything has changed or the fact I am focusing on this specific driver I can see a different angle or opportunity.
Let me share my nine drivers. If you think of any more ‘generic’ drivers let me know. These are my drivers for innovation change:
I would like to discuss the effect digital will be having on our innovation activities, be these presently opened or closed. The impact of digital innovation changes the paradigm.
Organizations can stay closed in their innovation activities but will move beyond simply themselves into a connected (closed) network, so the platform becomes the enabler and those that join share common ground but are pursuing separate value propositions. These provide a level of competitive advantage but these are increasingly transitory.
We will see a new wave of open digital innovation
So why do I say that? There are four aspects where technology will trend towards open (see more on that here: http://digitalsocial.eu/) so as to exploit our connected world to extract ever diminishing competitive advantage as the world just keeps speeding up, pushing us as technology continues to run ahead of our capacities to assimilate it.
So there we all were, getting very comfortable in our open innovation activities, learning to collaborate and co-create outside our organizations. We had worked through some of the cultural stuff; we had established the process, practice, and tools. We even had our legal teams on board, helping sort out all the conflicting positions open can mean when it comes to dividing up the IP spoils and even had our leadership tuned in, singing our praises and even (heavens forbid) getting engaged in the process.
When the world shifts, we all need too.
Then suddenly the world shifts on its axis once again, everything seems to be digital. The buzz is big data, analytics, smart mobility, and social media, with lots of talk of interconnected devices giving us the next big paradigm in innovation growth.
There is a real need to think through the modern engagement platforms we require, both externally with our customers and other stakeholders, and also for our internal needs and this comes increasingly from technology solutions.
The effectiveness of our management to win the hearts and minds of our workforce is getting to a very serious crisis. A global Gallup State of the Global WorkPlace survey some time back suggests only 13% of employees are engaged in their jobs.
They are emotionally invested in and focused on creating value for the organization they work for on a daily basis. They are even outnumbered by those who are negative and even potentially hostile to the organization at a rate of 2:1. That really staggers me.
It seems so simple doesn’t it – “bringing final ideas to market”. So easy to say, yet it does seem so very hard to achieve. Everything we should be aiming at is ‘successful execution’, it’s the last, hard five yards of all the work that went into something, which can be finally realized and come to ‘commercial life’.
Here in Europe it is often suggested that “Europe is the cradle of creativity”, perhaps but I think the “United States is the crucible of innovation”, it forges ideas and takes them to market far better. In the US there is this powerful push to make money far more and to realize innovation, as clearly you must focus on the ‘making money part.’
