One where it is offering up a healthy mix of rain, stronger sun, a little flurry of snow and some heavy wind too.

It can constantly confuse us as it can rapidly alter within the same 24 hours to often keep the heating on, when it should be switched off and visa-versa. It can be an uncomfortable month of adjusting constantly, second guessing of what might be ahead.

On the innovation front I have been experiencing the same feeling of adjusting to uncomfortable days.

First, I was reviewing a report from Accenture, on how US big business was treating their innovation as more left to chance in their report, with my summary here on cloudy execution, my snakes and ladders. This ‘rocked’ some of my beliefs, ones where I thought we actually were making the progress on innovation understanding. It seems this is not the case, we are going backwards and then my month got suddenly worse from a report from Deloittes.

The Deloittes report was on how leadership within Boardrooms under  my”uncharted waters”, was about how our boards are struggling to get their ‘collective heads’ around disruption and how innovation can, or cannot, dig them out of the threats they are facing. They are being disrupted constantly across the business. They are caught between fear and uncertainty on what to do and clearly that is not a comfortable place to be.

Both reports, as I was reviewing them, left me a little depressed to say the least and it just continues…..like the April weather…. leaving me totally uncertain and then what pops up….

Adding to this innovation reporting mix- Innosight provides a further angst report.

So a further report, this time from Innosight, throws even more angst into the boardroom, adding further into this mix of fear, caution, grim reading on a lack of innovation commitment facing larger organizations. The report from Innosight is in their Spring Insights, called Corporate Longevity: Turbulence Ahead for Large Organizations it just added more worrying news from my perspective on innovation lack of top level progress.

I again buckled up for a further reading of unpredictable innovation resolutions, just like this April weather, all raining down on us from those not heeding, understanding or changing their thinking. In many boardrooms they are not wanting to tackle in fresh ways the future and work towards embracing all the disrupting forces swirling around at present. They seem to want to hold on and not let go of the past .I’m getting really innovation weary from all this

So three reports I thought “oh no”- the grim reaper is truly upon us.

Innosight’s report starts with “We’re entering a period of heightened volatility for leading companies across a range of industries, with the next ten years shaping up to be the most potentially turbulent in modern history.”

Reap what you do not sow Mr Boardroom member- uncertain futures, badly invested in

So we all know that 50% of the current S&P 500 will be replaced over the next ten years, didn’t we? Well I did from past readings (clever me) but it is never nice to be reminded again. Not because of its reality but because of the leadership we have in place in many of these organizations is in the denial it will happen to them.

That is what is for me so upsetting. They earn Squillions and screw the long term health of the organization totally up as more often the case, because they were not even focusing on any belief of the future, just taking in the rewards for the immediate present. They could have done something about it but seem incapable to show the level of leadership to achieve this, just why, why is that?

With so much additional disruption coming from technologies, from start-ups, from intense M&A activities and having this ‘being overtaken’ by more agile, quicker growing companies just piles on the pressure within the boardroom but ignoring its threat as “it will not happen to me” without the boldness, decisiveness and intent to reinvent the organization to catch the different ‘waves’ of opportunity is sometimes bordering on criminal, well for me- what about you?.

Innosight in this report has a great passage

“Viewed as a larger picture, the lifespan chart serves as a barometer for marketplace change. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Shrinking lifespans are in part driven by a complex combination of technology shifts and economic shocks, some of which are beyond the control of corporate leaders. But frequently, companies miss opportunities to adapt or take advantage of change. For example, they continue to apply existing business models to new markets, fail to respond to disruptive competitors in low-profit segments, or fail to adequately envision and invest in new growth areas, which in some cases take a decade to pay off”.

This sums it up pretty well for me. We have failures all around us going on due to this lack of imagination, a poor coherent longer-term vision, a lack of confidence to achieve any form of transformation lies within the organization and so it becomes incapable to undertake the transformation that it needed to undertake, due to continually miss the opportunities offered to evolve.

Leadership still lacks real innovation commitment, the linkage to growth, to fending off disruption, of tuning into current and future needs, the message of embracing it has simply not got through to those within the boardrooms; one that the comprehensive management of innovation can offer significant improvements on present performance and they need to fully take hold of it, to learn and leverage, to explore and exploit, in imaginative and breakthrough ways.

Innovation can offer a pathway out of the existing position that many organizations are facing, ones of poor growth, limited sustainability and growing erosion of their existing market positions, often spiraling down, with cutting existing costs seen as the only option. It can be so very different if they wanted to fully engage with innovation. Others are reaping the rewards of their own inabilities in the boardroom to commit the time needed to practice innovation.

The question is “will it change?” If so how, why and when- not with these answers.

The Innosight report points out in the organizations they surveyed of 91 companies with revenue greater than $1 billion across more than 20 industries across the world, the shocking news  that only 24% have a growth strategy with a time horizon of beyond five years, 16.5% report having no formal growth strategy or a growth plan at all as they are seemingly “too busy executing”, “really don’t have time to focus on it” or “we don’t have a good process for formulating a growth strategy that we are confident about”

Then you get the “but of course we are committed to long-term innovation” but it is our “day-to-day decisions that undermine our stated strategy to change” Oh for heavens sake can this really go on? To make substantial change when you are facing the type of change and threats occurring today can easily take up to a decade to fully realize.

So the future continues to be pushed off, growth stays morbid and we resort to simply cutting costs, lowering choice, quality and resources to handle this, we continue to outsource our future to others, who are more than ready to take it on and learn, so as to take your place eventually.

So let the bell toll- let’s say goodbye to 50% of who we know today, you deserve it.

It leaves you utterly sad, even depressed. Innosight offers these thoughts below as a worthwhile thought, when so many of these larger organizations are not heeding or reading about their serious lack of commitment to innovation and the future. They seem apathetic or incapable to comprehend what this eventually means to the future of their organizations.

So Innosight suggests: “Leaders have to confront what might be called tensions, balances, or, even in extreme circumstances, paradoxes. They must optimize today, and discover tomorrow. They must be decisive and bet on moonshots, and defer to experiments. They have to focus, and enable serendipity. They have to leverage the core, and break its constraints”

It seems many just simply do not have the appetite to grow, to look towards the future when their own investment and return is tied mostly to the present.

It just does not seem boards are confident in innovation. There seems a reluctance in wanting to take ownership for innovation, one encouraging and investing more confidently in an evolving/ learning series of experiments to evolve the future of their business in iterative, exploratory ways. It is not a ‘core’ discipline or focal point as innovation continues to have been left to others outside the boardroom. That needs to change.

We are left to judge each company by deciphering ‘the smoke and mirrors’ offered that are claimed to form their “unique” innovation culture, to attempt to determination the staying power and their true belief and undertaking in a future, and make our judgement- mostly it should be yank our money, run like hell, until this future can be well-articulated and well-backed in action.

As companies sadly stick to their historical core as the business, falling to take the risks, invest in the new growth ventures and experiments to build towards a better shot at the future, so I say “just simply go, fade away and leave a puddle as your mess or contribution, and forget the thrill of reinvention and providing a ‘sense of destiny’ and taking pride in exploring more than simply exploiting, often just for your own personal gain”

So Goodbye, many of you in leadership positions, as you do not serve innovation well for its potentially exciting future. You are simply letting down the communities, the stakeholders, your customers, our futures, by not heeding all these ‘darker’ messages coming out of Accenture, Deliotte, Innosight and countless others telling you to change or die!

The “Grim Reaper” is knocking on many boardroom doors. Let him cut away the dead wood and we can all move ahead.

The post No Company deserves to survive with apathy in its future first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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 need to shake out of our lethargy and really begin to attempt to solve the real issues of our time. Some organizations are clearly working on and trying to draw attention and gain greater engagement but we need a much greater concerted effort to focus on the big societal challenges.

Global warming, rising health issues, finally cracking cancer, malaria, dementia, finding different solutions to the ageing within society. How are we going to tackle the rapidly depleting natural resources, the future conflicts over water, food, or energy . These are big, hairy, audacious gaps to be resolved.

Many are avoiding the need too stare hard into the future as we are not re-equipping everyone with skills that combine inventiveness, innovation and creativity that contributes into their communities, we have got stuck in the “me”. A reality of depletion is racing towards us and it is not a pretty sight.
The growing radical innovation activity gap

We are facing the innovation gap as our problems keep growing linearly yet we must find ways to rapidly scale and deploy our knowledge in new, more dynamic ways. This requires society to learn how to apply effective innovation themselves, not just being whipped up, waiting for the latest gadget or incremental advancement to be put into their hands.

We need to build the desire of wanting to be part of rebuilding society; making our contribution to real advancement or feeling they were there, involved, part of the “times” when this shift to societal innovation was happening.

We need to be collectively moved by innovation and what it can offer.

Technology does hold a vital key, so does the emerging social media for reaching out to critical masses but let’s face it, today we are deploying the best resources (the best and the brightest) not in the area on solving big societal problems but in slavishly churning out the next technology or gadget.

These actually mean nothing unless they become increasingly part of the solutions we really do need urgently, to tackle the big societal issues.

We certainly need communications, platforms, different media techniques and mobility as part of the initial global building blocks to putting in place the infrastructures to solve these societal problems.

We need the tools, infrastructure, methods, and techniques to scale for solving societal problems not the latest incremental improvement for Apple, Facebook or Google. How about providing innovations that can deliver the parts that give us the power to tackle the problems of our time?

We need innovation tools, structures and methods that will allow us each of us to invent, to innovate, and to be creative in finding our contributions and solutions to societal problems. To go and apply these in practical solutions not just simply adopt them.

I liked what Eric Ries, author of the Lean Startup recently said:

“What’s going to make it more likely for someone to start a start-up in the first place?” “Open data is one such thing. If you give people access to the tools, the information about what’s happening in the world, you give them the opportunity to stumble on more novel solutions”

I’d add you give them the empowerment and skills, they will provide the desire and energy.

Then we have the hidden potential behind social media and big data
Can you imagine a world where we all can communicate and contribute into these global societal problems? Combine technology, the internet and social media and you have begun to connect up the parts or the whole planet. The exciting prospect is then ‘feeding’ all this data into finding patterns for solutions. Solutions that are relevant to you, your immediate community but also to the wider ones.

The ability to scale, glocalize, adapt and diffuse
Social innovation struggles today with scale and replicating success in one place and making it work in another. This replicating might be the barrier, perhaps we should not apply other solutions just extract the parts that can work for us. This extraction needs knowing what is valuable to you or applicable, what is not.

The need is to educate everyone to ‘break down’ the context and we need to teach numerous different skills to allow this to work. Then you need to work on where are the synergies that can be tailored and applied to local needs.

Diffusion and adoption comes into the picture here too.

Dealing with value creation and growth but in radically different ways
We seek value creation, most usually by creating demand, pushing for increasing consumption. Growth is measured by our productive gains. Is this the right way to measure ourselves and how we set about preserving our precious resources? No, we need to challenge this, a real paradigm shift that alters our lenses looking out on the world.

Changing our thinking for a new world of preserving our precious resources
Today’s modern economic activity does need challenging and it is through rethinking much of our view of judging success.

Success in preserving, in effectively trading precious resources needs a fresh set of thinking, a new economic understanding.

This thinking is way beyond my preserve, there are far better qualified people to offer suggestions than me on this. All I know is that innovation, creativity and invention must all play their part.

Some of my emerging thoughts relating to where innovation can fit are:

1). Stepping back and putting innovation to its better use
We have a world were transparency is finding its place. We ‘witness’ unfolding events faster than ever, they are nearly instantaneous. Governments are really struggling on this new transparency. We can manage this in new ways, instead of trying to control the flow of ‘selective’ data through repression. We need to open up all the positive activities occurring every day that others can learn from. We need to focus on the positives, not dwell on the negatives.

2). We need to provide places for experimentation
There needs to be places, instruments, resources, knowledge platforms that help us all to discover. We need a dynamic flow to discover needs, expose variability, enable experimentation to happen and construct ways to measure improved performance

3). We need to granulate and customize activities
The world is far to big to manage as one, even our countries struggle in adapting policies. We constantly reduce down the positive impact by this ‘crazy’ compromise of adjusting great ideas to meet the broader position. We need to segment down, we need to allow what has the best impact for a given community to be allowed to happen.

4). We need to put to use the non human aspects to speed up decision-making
Computers, sophisticated analytics, automated algorithms all can play their part in any redesign of our activities to preserve our critical resources. Modelling decisions that have impact within the world need to be more freely distributed. Not only knowing our ‘footprint’ on the planet but bringing together communities footprints and redesigning the sharing of the burden. We can optimize so much to help us develop better decisions, knowing the broader impact placed upon communities and beyond.

5). Innovating the future needs new business models, products and services
The growing movement in a number of more enlightened businesses towards only using renewal resources is gathering momentum. It is changing business models, products and services. We need to change from being a ‘throw away’ society into ones that re-use, repair and don’t chase increasing consumption but work to reduce consumption to save energy, water, critical resources etc. We do need a far more radical innovating agenda.

Connecting into the already under way experiments and improving them

There are many different ways we can apply innovation into tackling today’s real societal problems, there are lots of experiments under-way, we somehow need to connect into them in global ways.

We need to make the real efforts of connecting all these dots – we need to design a world where surplus has to be rapidly replaced with managing dwindling stocks. It calls for a concerted, connected and comprehensive manner where technology, ingenuity and our innate ability to be creative, innovative and determined to discover real breakthroughs that can contribute to solving societal issues.

The place our innovation focus has to go is in global engagement

We need to know far more of where to go, what to connect into, how we can contribute. We need to engage society across a broader agenda of our challenges. Today these are diverse, dispersed, dissipated and disparate set of activities.

We need to bring these together, perhaps to form a new ‘collective’ world organizational as a body that consolidates, connects and diffuses societal challenges. One that is not layered with bureaucracy and governmental nominees but one powered by a new social platform that allows each of us to connect and explore, to learn and engage.

This needs to be built more than likely by the millennial generation, who are clearly seeing societal challenges as their global innovation task to tackle and resolve. They are more than likely better equipped to understand social engagement and learn to connect and deliver the tools to do the jobs into everyone’s hands.

They understand the power of ‘connection’ through today’s application of technology, social platforms and application of the knowledge being learnt and adopted in practical use. We need them to engage and lead.

What do we need to do to lift innovation onto that slope of enlightenment?

We need to first acknowledge our growing global problems that need tackling through more radical applications and solutions.

We need to learn to scale, learn, deploy, apply– we need to put our own intelligence into innovation. We need to move the innovation needle significantly, individually and collectively.

Relying on organizations providing their solutions in a radically different world of challenges where they are stuck in delivering their steady state of ‘ever consuming’ incremental thinking is not good enough.

We need a new evolution and revolution, applying new innovation thinking by putting radical innovation solutions back on the global agenda that reduce our throw-away consumption and focus on preserving what we have.

We need to regain a collective sense of momentum and a belief that we are truly working on something that changes our lives and helps save the resources we need to live in this world.

The post We are not facing up to the big Societal challenges of today? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The innovation party presently feels a little flat.

The numerous delicious canapés to choose from are turning up at the edges as we are becoming disillusioned, just being fed on a present unexciting incremental innovation diet, lacking any real substance.

People are milling around with that bored look on their faces, some are also slumped down checking their watch or smartphones on when is the best time to cut out and find somewhere else to be, rather than be here. Has the fizz gone from innovation?

Are we being moved by innovation anymore?

Is innovation becoming a boring place to be seen for hanging out and being involved? Are we all feel that there is a less creative buzz going around?

Perhaps, it depends for each of us yet collectively you might agree we do feel something is definitely missing. The excitement has left the room, innovation has become too predictable.
I could blame technology or perhaps just Apple- should I?

Innovations have become the next novelty, entertainment or the latest talking point. Apple has become predictable in their format, their focus on sustaining innovation when we all are craving the next big thing. Perhaps Apple will burst into the room and the innovation party suddenly springs back into life. We need something to lift our moods.

Instead we get innovation that is simply thinner than before, faster than the last model, processors that allow up to multi task with even more capacity, increased memory, we hear this has new architecture, even a new retina recognition device and then we all applaud. “Oh wow”, then some stifle a quick yawn.

Then we quickly check our phones for any message from someone else telling us to” get over here it’s all happening” Nothing, an awful lot of innovation has simply become hype. Nothing seems earth-moving; it’s all getting fairly predictable.

Working to the predictable script is not helping innovation

Yes, Apple and Steve Job are to blame, they set the bar high, yet today Tim Cook likes to run the same ‘event’ parties based on the ‘sustaining’ theme, just like the supply chain, delivering on expected and increasingly the predictable promise. Where has the excitement gone in innovation?

Everyone seems to be playing it safe. The truth is we are all to blame, we have over-hyped the word ‘innovation’ and are under delivering on its potential performance capacity for our real need for some radical redesigns of today’s real challenges – global challenges we must solve to survive, let alone thrive.

We are already in or heading for a trough of innovation disillusionment
Where is the excitement gone? It all seems down to getting the news first

We are fed rumours weeks before launches on what we might expect that when we get to the big event nothing is surprising us any more. We are witnessing even more incremental creep; we have lost the effect of serendipity, the “wow” factor, the moment something happened that changed our world.

All we get is that feeling, that peer pressure we must upgrade for fear of missing out or to be seen without the latest. We are on an incremental treadmill and we are the mouse turning the wheel.

When you have been weaned on the bottle of excitement, when you don’t get it you feel flat, bored and start to blame innovation as simply “innovation is dead.” No, it is simply not being allowed to really work any more. Much has become totally underwhelming.

Our business organizations are loving the ‘playing it safe’ routine
Over time our organizations are finding increasing reasons to put off the more radical innovation that is needed.

Incremental innovation is safe, contains all the risks within acceptable levels, so as it allows the organization to keep its fixation on the short-term as its only line of site (and executive pay-off).

“Let others make the investments and ‘we’ can pick them off……hopefully later and we play catch up!”

It is funny how a good few are being caught out on this strategy though and are not learning often you never catch up, you just fall further behind. A fast follower strategy is really hard, think Apple actually.

So do we all have this growing feeling of a lack of real innovation?

The proliferation of advanced insights as news, the ability to spread the word in seconds, the ability to line up, pay on-line and receive your shot of instant update makes it all seem a little mundane, a little boring, where is the innovations of past generations that solved real society issues and problems?

The instant gratification indulges us but leaves us stuck on wanting more of the same – like the craving for sugar.

We are losing the appetite for adventure, we equally are losing the ability to wait, to speculate, experiment and discover. Innovation is being delivered up on a plate; all we have to do is consume it as long as we can afford it!

This loss of sudden discovery undermines curiosity and excitement

Innovation gets exciting when you stumble across something, totally unexpected.

Researchers in a lab suddenly make a connection, that changes and often challenges their thinking, and perceptions alter.

It becomes “game on”. It all becomes potentially exciting. We work for moments like this or should do.

Perhaps we should have a course on serendipity, where we are required to seek discoveries by accident, by learning to listen more to others and their problems so we can make the connections to resolve their problems.

No, lets take out discovery, lets offer up predictability, it takes out fresh learning through experimentation and trial and error. Let curiosity die in wanting to fix something, to figure it out, lets just simply throw it away and buy the latest replacement.

The organizations working on innovation love sequential order.

Sequential order, hierarchies, linear processes all allow for predictability, the ability to see what is coming before you, you can do rational analysis.

This type of thinking ensures innovation can be highly planned out, projects can be well constructed and everyone can fall in line and wait their part along the incremental innovation production line.

The mantra of it being “that much better than the last version” makes everyone feel part of the innovation road show and simply take the incentives being dangled like the carrot to deliver on this “exciting” development.

Innovation is simply missing the big picture, we are stuck in revolving doors.

It is all so marginal, we are back checking our clocks, looking to head out of the door, off to do something else. Again the excitement and buzz around innovation seem to be missing.

Why as we are utterly failing to tackle the real big problems of today and that is not “should we buy another smartphone or which holiday destination to book” or whatever we are being fed as innovation we need when there are really big societal issues that are racing towards us, needing global solutions and that is one hell of a party to get stuck into.

Those have got fizz and enough to get your innovative teeth into.

We need to lift innovation out of this current trough and recognize we have some major problems of the day, that will impact everyone on the planet.

Innovation can be one significant key to combining with others that unlocks all the creative and inventive forces this will require.

We all need some enlightenment, not the latest gadget. Applying innovation that makes a substantial and radical contribution is the party we all should be wanting to join.

The post So are we all all suffering innovation disillusionment? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.