value management - Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence

Unleashing the Power of the Voice Of Ecosystems (VoE)

@paul4innovating — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 13:24:52 +0000

In today’s interconnected business landscape, success is no longer just about listening to your customers or partners. It’s about understanding and leveraging your entire ecosystem.

In the complex web of modern business, success is no longer solely determined by individual companies, but by the strength and resilience of entire ecosystems. Just as we’ve learned to value the Voice of Customer (VoC) and Voice of Partner (VoP), it’s time we embrace the Voice of Ecosystem (VoE).

Enter Voice of Ecosystem (VoE) – the next evolution in strategic business intelligence.

VoE builds on the foundations of Voice of Customer (VoC) and Voice of Partner (VoP), expanding our perspective to encompass all stakeholders in our business environment. It’s not about replacing these valuable tools, but elevating them to a more comprehensive framework.

The Definition of VoE: “Voice of Ecosystem (VoE) is a comprehensive approach to understanding, analyzing, and responding to the needs, interactions, and dynamics of all stakeholders within a business ecosystem. It integrates insights from customers, partners, competitors, regulators, and other relevant entities to inform strategic decision-making, drive innovation, and ensure sustainable growth.“

Implementing VoE doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your existing practices– it builds on the work undertaken.

Start by expanding your VoC and VoP initiatives to include a wider range of stakeholders. Analyze the interconnections between different voices. Look for patterns and trends that emerge when you consider the ecosystem as a whole.

Why VoE matters:

VoE isn’t just a new buzzword – it’s a practical approach to thriving in complex, rapidly changing markets. By extending our well-established VoC and VoP practices, we can quickly implement VoE and start reaping its benefits.

VoE is not about replacing VoC or VoP, but rather enhancing and contextualizing them within a broader framework. It’s about listening to the collective whisper of market trends, regulatory shifts, competitive moves, and technological advancements that shape our business environment.

Why VoE matters and certainly in ecosystem building:

Holistic Understanding: Gain insights from customers, partners, competitors, regulators, and more – all in one integrated view. VoE provides a 360-degree view of your business landscape, helping you see beyond immediate customer needs or partner concerns.
Strategic Alignment & Foresight: Anticipate market shifts and opportunities by seeing the bigger picture It ensures your ecosystem strategy resonates with all stakeholders, not just your direct customers or partners.
Innovation Catalyst: Identify breakthrough opportunities at the intersection of different stakeholder needs. By understanding ecosystem dynamics, you can identify opportunities for collaborative innovation that benefit multiple participants.
Risk Management: Spot potential disruptions before they impact your business VoE helps you anticipate and mitigate risks that may arise from ecosystem-wide changes or disruptions.
Sustainable Growth: Align your strategy with the health and evolution of your entire ecosystem It guides you in building an ecosystem that’s not just profitable, but also sustainable and resilient in the long term.

Are you ready to amplify your strategic intelligence? Let’s explore how VoE can transform your business decision-making and drive sustainable success.

You need to hear all the voices

As you build your business ecosystem, remember that every voice counts. VoE provides the framework to listen, understand, and act on these voices in a coherent, strategic manner.

All voices are important in building out what needs to be listened too, by that VoC, VoP and this is no different with VoE- it brings clarity and direction to what is being undertaken in Business Ecosystem, Platform and Community building”

Clarifying differences…briefly

Comparing Voice of Customer (VoC), Voice of Partner (VoP), and Voice of Ecosystem (VoE) gives a better understanding of their unique characteristics, focuses, and applications. Let’s break this down:

Voice of Customer (VoC):

Focus: Individual end-users or customers
Scope: Narrow, customer-centric
Data sources: Customer feedback, surveys, support tickets, user behavior
Primary goal: Improve customer satisfaction and experience
Application: Product development, customer service improvement, marketing strategies
Timeframe: Often short to medium-term focused

Voice of Partner (VoP):

Focus: Business partners, suppliers, distributors
Scope: Broader than VoC, but still limited to direct business relationships
Data sources: Partner feedback, performance metrics, collaboration effectiveness
Primary goal: Enhance partnerships and mutual value creation
Application: Partner program development, supply chain optimization, channel strategies
Timeframe: Medium to long-term focused

Voice of Ecosystem (VoE):

Focus: All stakeholders in the business ecosystem (customers, partners, competitors, regulators, etc.)
Scope: Comprehensive, encompassing entire business environment
Data sources: Wide range including market trends, regulatory changes, competitive landscape, technological advancements, as well as VoC and VoP data
Primary goal: Drive sustainable growth and innovation through holistic understanding
Application: Strategic planning, innovation initiatives, risk management, new market entry
Timeframe: Long-term focused, with considerations for short and medium-term impacts

Balancing the Three Voices:

While VoE provides the most comprehensive perspective, it doesn’t negate the importance of VoC and VoP. Instead, a balanced approach integrates all three:

Use VoC for immediate customer-centric improvements and to ensure products/services meet user needs.
Leverage VoP to optimize business relationships and create mutual value with partners.
Employ VoE for long-term strategic planning, innovation, and to identify emerging opportunities or threats.
Ensure that insights from VoC and VoP feed into the broader VoE analysis to maintain a connection between immediate stakeholder needs and long-term ecosystem health.
Use VoE insights to contextualize and prioritize VoC and VoP findings, ensuring that actions taken to address customer or partner needs align with broader ecosystem trends and opportunities.

By understanding and effectively balancing these three voices, organizations can create a robust framework for decision-making that considers immediate stakeholder needs while also positioning the company for long-term success within its broader ecosystem.

Can VoE be the overarching Voice and VoC and VoC “sits” underneath feeding into VoE for VoE to assess the impact made by both? I believe so

This “feeding up” is an insightful way to conceptualize the relationship between Voice of Ecosystem (VoE), Voice of Customer (VoC), and Voice of Partner (VoP).

Positioning VoE as the overarching voice with VoC and VoP as components feeding into it is a powerful framework. Let’s explore this structure:

– VoE as the Overarching Voice gives that holistic perspective, a strategic lens and a longer-term focus to build a more sustaining long-term networked community

-VoC and VoP feeding into VoE enables rich data sources, granular insights and constant short to medium-term feedback

Can we assess the impact of VoE? No doubt

Contextual Analysis: VoE can assess the broader impact of actions taken based on VoC and VoP insights within the larger ecosystem context.
Ripple Effect Evaluation: It can evaluate how addressing customer or partner needs affects other ecosystem participants.
Alignment Check: VoE can ensure that actions taken based on VoC and VoP align with overall ecosystem health and long-term strategic goals.
Trade-off Analysis: It can help in understanding and managing potential trade-offs between meeting immediate customer/partner needs and long-term ecosystem sustainability.
Trend Identification: By analyzing VoC and VoP data within the broader ecosystem context, VoE can identify emerging trends that might not be apparent when looking at customer or partner data in isolation.

Reemphasizing the Benefits of this Approach and its Potential:

+ Balanced Decision Making: It allows for decisions that balance immediate stakeholder needs with long-term ecosystem health.

+Strategic Coherence: Ensures that all voices are heard within a coherent strategic framework.

+Improved Prioritization: Helps in prioritizing initiatives based on their ecosystem-wide impact rather than just customer or partner satisfaction.

+Innovation Opportunities: Identifies innovation opportunities that arise from the intersection of customer needs, partner capabilities, and ecosystem trends.

+Risk Mitigation: Helps in identifying and mitigating risks that might not be apparent when looking at customer or partner data in isolation.

Summary

By structuring VoE as the overarching voice with VoC and VoP feeding into it, organizations can create a more robust, strategic approach to understanding and responding to their business environment.

This suggested approach ensures that while customer and partner needs are met, decisions are always made with consideration for the broader ecosystem impact and long-term sustainability, something far more important in today’s highly interconnected world for customers, partners and businesses need to leverage all their value points to seek real competitive advantage.

Ecosystem integration and strategic evolution offers the future focus

#VoiceOfEcosystem #BusinessStrategy #Innovation #StrategicIntelligence #VoiceofCustomers #VoiceofPartners #InnovationEcosystems #Ecosystems

The post Unleashing the Power of the Voice Of Ecosystems (VoE) first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Dynamic Ecosystems provide the real power for Future-Ready Organizations

@paul4innovating — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 08:48:35 +0000

Dynamic Ecosystems are core to Business Ecosystems

I have published a number of posts on Dynamic Ecosystems and wanted to provide a concise summary of each, capturing key takeaways and suggested action points to encourage readers to dive deeper into each topic. Each summary will focus on highlighting dynamic ecosystems core aspects and operational strategies.

Introduction: Dynamic Ecosystems are becoming increasingly central in shaping adaptable, resilient, and collaborative business environments. As ecosystems evolve, this series has highlighted essential learning points, actionable strategies, and a future-oriented approach for embedding dynamic ecosystems at the core of business strategy.

These are shared across my two primary posting sites of paul4innovating.com and ecosystems4innovating.com . Just type in the search box on the right side “Dynamic Ecosystems” for exploring this subject area.

I continue to explore dynamic ecosystems such as this recent post “Why Dynamic Ecosystems are the heart of managing Business Ecosystems“

Here’s a brief handy look at the most critical themes within the Dynamic Ecosystems series, simply summarized
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1. Embracing the Power of Dynamic Ecosystems
• Key Takeaway: Dynamic ecosystems are the ultimate framework for resilience and adaptation in today’s complex business landscape. Unlike traditional ecosystems that rely on static collaboration, dynamic ecosystems enable continuous evolution by fostering a network of participants who share knowledge, resources, and insights to create collective value. They serve as a living system where agility and innovation are not just encouraged but essential to thriving.
• Action Point: Build an adaptive network by establishing real-time data flows and open channels for collaborative problem-solving. Use this framework to support fast decision-making and risk mitigation, enabling your organization to respond dynamically to market shifts and disruptions.

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2. Recognizing the Value of Innovation Ecosystems
• Key Takeaway: Dynamic ecosystems amplify innovation through shared intelligence and collective experimentation. They provide a unique space where businesses can test new ideas, integrate diverse perspectives, and drive breakthrough solutions. This collaborative approach accelerates the innovation cycle and brings a fresh dynamism that isolated innovation hubs often lack.
• Action Point: Cultivate an innovation-first culture by embracing co-creation with ecosystem partners. Organize cross-functional workshops and shared projects that allow teams to experiment, learn, and iterate together. Encourage a mindset where failures are seen as learning opportunities, setting the stage for transformative innovation.
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3. Dynamism and Knowledge Insights are Crucial to Unlock Future Success
• Key Takeaway: Knowledge-sharing and continuous learning are the foundation of any successful dynamic ecosystem. By building a culture of curiosity and knowledge exchange, organizations can adapt to change more effectively and maintain relevance. In a dynamic ecosystem, insights and data flow freely among participants, creating a virtuous cycle of learning and improvement.
• Action Point: Implement regular knowledge-sharing forums and access to shared resources to ensure all ecosystem participants benefit from collective intelligence. By facilitating open dialogue and cross-functional knowledge exchange, you reinforce a culture of adaptability and resilience across the ecosystem.
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4. Defining and Exploring the Dynamics of Ecosystems
• Key Takeaway: Dynamic ecosystems are not just static systems of cooperation; they are dynamic, evolving networks that transcend individual business goals to generate collective, ecosystem-wide value. By cultivating shared goals and aligning resources, dynamic ecosystems enable businesses to work together in highly integrated ways, supporting each other’s growth while collectively advancing the ecosystem.
• Action Point: Set up a framework for ecosystem alignment, where participants regularly review shared objectives and adapt strategies to remain relevant to the ecosystem’s evolving goals. This alignment fosters unity and strengthens the ecosystem’s capacity for collective resilience.
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5. Building the Nine Stages of a Dynamic Innovation Ecosystem
• Key Takeaway: A dynamic innovation ecosystem requires a structured, staged approach. Each stage — starting from understanding stakeholder needs to building an innovation fitness machine — is designed to reinforce ecosystem adaptability, collaboration, and resilience. This nine-stage approach offers a roadmap for businesses looking to build dynamic ecosystems that prioritize sustainable growth.
• Action Point: Follow the nine-stage journey to create a dynamic, innovation-ready ecosystem. Begin by assessing the needs of diverse stakeholders and progressively build out capabilities that support collaborative innovation, flexible decision-making, and rapid adaptation.
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6. Dynamic Resilience Network: Sustaining Excellence in a Changing Environment
• Key Takeaway: Dynamic ecosystems embody resilience through diversity and redundancy, enabling organizations to withstand disruptions and thrive amid volatility. A dynamic resilience network draws strength from its collective resources and adaptability, helping each participant adjust to change more effectively.
• Action Point: Develop resilience within the ecosystem by ensuring access to a broad range of resources and partners. This diversity acts as a safeguard, allowing the ecosystem to flexibly reallocate resources or pivot strategies in response to challenges, thus maintaining continuity and stability.
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7. Thriving in the Dynamic Ecosystem of the Hierarchy of Business Ecosystem Needs
• Key Takeaway: The hierarchy of business ecosystem needs places dynamic ecosystems as the nerve center, emphasizing their role in driving adaptability and collective growth. Positioned as the third interconnected layer within a broader ecosystem framework, dynamic ecosystems link innovation, business, and entrepreneurial initiatives, facilitating a comprehensive, agile response to industry changes.
• Action Point: Leverage the dynamic ecosystem as a bridge between innovation, business, and entrepreneurial layers. Establish processes that enable seamless flow between these layers, ensuring that insights and resources are shared to maximize value and collective adaptability across the ecosystem.
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8. Why Dynamic Ecosystems are Critical to Any Ecosystem Design
• Key Takeaway: Dynamic ecosystems are essential in any ecosystem design because they provide the foundation for adaptability, continuous learning, and sustainable growth. By enabling decentralized decision-making and fostering a culture of openness, dynamic ecosystems ensure that businesses are not just reactive but proactive in navigating complex challenges.
• Action Point: Integrate dynamic ecosystem principles into your organization’s core design. Embrace decentralized decision-making structures, open communication channels, and adaptive workflows that allow each participant to operate flexibly while contributing to the ecosystem’s overarching goals.
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9. Breaking Down Complexity to Allow Dynamic Ecosystems for Innovation
• Key Takeaway: Dynamic ecosystems excel at navigating complexity by breaking down organizational silos and promoting agile structures. They allow businesses to address challenges collaboratively, integrating various skills, perspectives, and resources to tackle complex issues more effectively.
• Action Point: Simplify complex organizational processes by encouraging network thinking and cross-functional collaboration. Empower ecosystem participants to share resources, insights, and best practices in real-time, creating a responsive network that adapts and innovates collectively.
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10. Dynamic Ecosystems as the Core of the Interconnected Business Ecosystem Model
• Key Takeaway: Serving as the core layer in an interconnected ecosystem framework, dynamic ecosystems drive continuous flow and responsiveness among the various layers — innovation, entrepreneurial, business, and enterprise ecosystems. They act as the “nerve center,” keeping the entire system agile, informed, and interconnected.
• Action Point: Position the dynamic ecosystem at the heart of your organization’s broader ecosystem design. Establish bidirectional flows between all ecosystem layers, ensuring that knowledge, resources, and capabilities move seamlessly throughout the organization for collective agility and sustained growth.
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Each of these summaries provides an insight into the core themes of dynamic ecosystems from each post in the series, paired with an actionable recommendation to deepen engagement with these concepts.

Dynamic Ecosystems as the Future Core of Business Ecosystems
Dynamic ecosystems are more than providing a networking of interconnected organizations; they are the decision-making and adaptability core that drives modern business ecosystems. By embracing these principles — real-time sensing, decentralized governance, continuous learning, and proactive risk management — organizations can transform their ecosystems into resilient, future-ready hubs for growth and innovation.

Summary and Value
With the right strategic focus, dynamic ecosystems offer a pathway to sustainability and relevance in an unpredictable world. As companies invest in these systems, they lay the foundation for a new era of business ecosystems where adaptability, collective intelligence, and innovation are at the heart of enduring success.

To understand more detailed exploration of how dynamic ecosystems can transform organizational design and drive future growth I can suggest you visit my dedicated Ecosystem web site of ecosystems4innovating.com or paul4innovating.com for exploring this more for further ideas and concepts that inspire and frame Ecosystem thinking and design

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Constructing Innovation as Value Management

@paul4innovating — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 16:27:08 +0000

Innovation needs to create value, both short-term and progressively over time. It fuels the growth and fires the imagination.
Yet our innovation activities are constantly coming up short for the leaders within our organizations, who continue to remain disappointed in its final outcome to stimulate and drive the growth they want to see.
It is actually the classic “chicken and egg”. Aristotle (384–322 BC) was puzzled by the idea that there could be a first bird or egg and concluded that both the bird and egg must have always existed. Leaders need to lead and are they the chicken, they are the resource for how can the people charged with innovation can lay the ‘golden eggs’ needed, if they are incapable of laying? Or should the innovation egg come first for our leaders to become more confident and build further, believing in innovation far more?
There should be no dilemma we can’t treat innovation lightly anymore, it needs to develop its uniqueness for each of our organizations to evolve. We need both the egg and the chicken to be ‘producing’.
What I’m driving towards here is that innovation is evolving is my 1st point

It is impossible to reach a certain desired outcome because a necessary precondition is not satisfied.
We have got caught up in the word “innovation” and not given it the depth of thought it requires to deliver on its expectant promise. There is a need to change this.
Firstly, we all need to realize that innovation is going through significant change. The chicken that lays the egg is changing; it is evolving right before our eyes.
There is this increasing need to understand and incorporate ecosystems, platforms, and the greater use of analytics, big data and reliance on technology into our innovation thinking.
There is increasing emphasis on thinking through new business models, combining design thinking, lean management, customer development, prototyping, experimenting outside the lab, collaborating with clients, finding different partners, the different exploitation of research techniques are all breaking out in different forms and combinations.
All these are crowding in and adding more into our innovation activity. Leaders of our organizations need to understand this evolving is specific to them not just surviving but thriving. It is the case that the chicken needs to lay eggs, the egg needs the chicken.
To shift innovation we need to think this is our value creation point.
We derive our value management from much of the innovation we are creating but we seemingly can’t get the required attention of the leadership to innovation to attract across the resources and determine the risk profile to achieve the value needed. We are back to the ‘chicken and the egg’ again.
So we need to change how we view innovation. We need to make it THE value creation point.
I’ve written previously three blogs that I feel are very relevant here. I will not bore you with extracting points or quoting from them. I’d like you to go to them and actually (re)read them.
The first is “Where innovation value resides”. The second is “So what drives value creation”” and the third is “Exploring the value of your innovation capital”.
Making a case for redefining innovation into the value focal point
I want to move on, actually we all need to move on in innovation and its management, so to make the case of redefining innovation, making it central to the value management we require within our organizations, so here is a thought or two.
To help me here I want to acknowledge the work going on over at the IIRC with their reporting. Integrated reporting will progressively change the way organizations will be reporting in the future. The pressure is on, for a more integrated thinking to be conveyed to stakeholders, linking stronger, wider governance that takes a far more whole business perspective into account and report on it.
This integrating requires a significant linkage across the organization and greater understanding of where the true value lies. This is innovation’s opportunity to become ‘front and center’ the absolute essential core to build.
I do not want to step out of syncing here; I want innovation to be ‘in sync’. Value management is discovering, realizing and optimizing to achieve a greater performance. That is the same stages we go through in innovation and its management. Some of us might call them differently but we seek out to discover, we realize our ideas and concepts and we set about within this a growing optimization.
Building up our competences is in four needed parts.
Like we need to break down our innovation into four parts that need really critical attention.
The first is the vision for better innovation, the second is the clarity that innovation not only is required for the short-term performance but is critical to have IM creating value over time.
The third part is determining what is needed for value creation and communicating and reinforcing this in time, attention and resources. The forth part is turning our creativity, our ideas into the value management required to grow the organization and sustain it into the future. Lets tackle each part.
The vision thing
Our leadership really does a poor job of providing a compelling innovation vision. They might give it a bye-line in the broader corporate strategy, they might extend this out but are they making the innovation vision, mission, goals and objectives clear enough. I think not.
Can they articulate the drivers of innovation in how they see the market going? Can they describe in sufficient detail the objectives and contribution of innovation, can they set about purposefully shaping the structures? Do they clarify the terms and conditions, establish the common language innovation requires?
Can they describe the relationship between all the interconnected parts, as suggested in the Executive Innovation Work Mat approach or similar? Finally can they really offer a determined view on innovations place within their needs to grow the organization?
The creating value over time
To do this they need to present the benefits of where, what and how they see innovation needing to contribute into the organizations plans and cascade this message out. They need to articulate why innovation is in the interest of the organization and begin to clarify the longer-term value creation that comes from this integrated innovation thinking.
Can they help guide how value is created, explain how value creation can differ and allow for different perspectives to bubble up and shape each person’s perspective.
How will they define and encourage a growing understanding of each of the innovation capitals? How these each can link, constantly be recombined in different ways to create the value through their unique properties that require constant attention to nurturing each of these capitals, making them all contribute to learning and value-generating capitals that build a growing competence and capability to innovate.
Integrated thinking evolves over time. As the leadership explains its role, determines and allocates the roles within the organization, not just delegate all of it down to others, the result comes from change management. This is about openly discussing and recognizing different barriers and purposefully setting about breaking these down and establishing a more system thinking approach, in managing all the connectivity this requires.
Communicating the value creation coming from innovation
Innovation creates a lot of tension points. It requires good governance, not a heavy-handed one, that is rule-bound or individually determined, but one that is well-framed and reflects this integrated thinking.
Governance of innovation is vital. It requires clear guiding principles, it has to have a future orientation, it needs to establish boundaries but establish the ways to step over these in controlled ways.
Innovation is full of day-to-day interactions, it is through these we gain insight; we can advance or determine what is next for that specific innovation concept. The engagement process becomes important to allow it to move up and down the organization to deliver on the interactions the necessary decision. Innovation needs a collating point, so as material aspects can be ‘flagged’ and resolved.
It is the setting about of exploiting and exploring innovation we can build a common cause and clarity of our mindset to undertake the task, building a clearer sense of purpose and over time a clear vocabulary of learning. We can learn to determine risk and opportunity the more we engage, not hide from it. Risk management of innovation needs a stronger focus and determined view on what is acceptable, what needs more work and what is not possible,
We need to think more on outcomes and less on outputs. We need to encourage exploring the different types of innovation we are capable of exploiting. We simply need to disclose more openly both up and down the organization.
Finally the turning of innovation into value management.
If we can identify the conditions to innovate that can lead to (likely) better outcomes, identify the barriers and work towards reducing them by describing and driving towards their reduction and explain the challenges in open, realistic and inclusive ways, then within the role of senior managers it can determine the innovation sense of mission, of their ‘collective purpose.
This should become a constantly updated ‘living, breathing innovation capacity’ determining the health, conditions and environment of the innovation ecosystem.
It is the recognition that this more integrated thinking allows for the conditions to seek out increasing value, managed in a purposeful way.
So what are the possible benefits for all this additional and ongoing work?
We can look towards an increased understanding of all that connects to make innovation the value creator required. We gain a better cohesive whole of understanding of how the organization sets about and creates value.
Integrated thinking applied to our whole innovation system will (eventually) rise decision-making, allowing confidence and knowledge to flow. It begins to put into place the balance between short-term exploitation and longer-term exploration by supporting both, it signals where risk lies and what is tolerated or encouraged.
It will definitely raise engagement, it will encourage a greater collaborative thinking. It strengths the connections between vision, goals, targets, missions and objectives and the organization, being clearer on going about its business and recognizing the importance of innovations value contribution.
In conclusion
The case to think of innovation in a more integrated way has been stated many times. Innovation as we seem to know can create real, often substantial value, capable of adding significantly to the growth of organizations. It is the growth enabler.
We need to unlock innovations prospective tangible value from its many intangible capitals that form unique and constantly evolving relationships.We need to evolve our innovation thinking, we need a more integrated approach.
The more we are explicit and articulate our value creation, giving it clarity and context, the more we are treating innovation as the central point of driving our value creation management. Organizations need innovation, it is, or certainly should be unique, strategic and working at the core. Innovation has transforming power.

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