Ralph and I exchange constantly and occasionally meet up together. Actually, we need another meeting Ralph to catch up and explore these mutual innovation value points.

Ralph in a reply to Jairo suggested this: “That’s why a portfolio approach is so important” – with his take here: bit.ly/1Rn5Svq  under his excellent Model for Integrative Innovation article.He ‘talks’ of cornerstones and offers different premises to anchor these a little more.

The different premise:  premise 1: Innovation management follows a balanced portfolio approach. The entire innovation portfolio is divided into exploitation-oriented and exploration-oriented innovation initiatives and premise 2: Senior management is committed to attributing equal importance to exploitation and exploration initiatives as both are vital for a company to thrive sustainably. Then premise 3: Exploitation- and exploration-oriented initiatives are separated in terms of organisational anchoring, governance and funding and finally premise 4: Fostering an innovation portfolio is enabled by a proper idea management system which allows to either assign an internal or external idea to the corresponding units or to reject it. Then he suggests the use of the three horizons as distinct playgrounds for innovation initiatives.

This brief summary does not do justice to Ralph’s thoughtful build up to this portfolio approach and use the three horizons as a framing for this.I do recommend reading this. The link again is here: bit.ly/1Rn5Svq 

Well Ralph’s article leads nicely into this visual I have used and I wanted to contribute further to this collective thinking around different approaches to planning out innovation and in particular in this brief exchange, we were recently having on twitter by giving it a little more context this through this visualisation.

This visual might help make a further contribution to the value and use of the three horizon methodology

I like this visual as it places the portfolio discussion into its degree of difficulty parts to build a portfolio up without assigning it to time at this stage. That comes next through the use of the three horizons where you are exploiting and exploring these opportunities over time.

Changing the annual plan thinking is critical to building a robust innovation portfolio.

The usual arguments of how do you fit these into an annual plan tend to reduce, you are focusing on the attractiveness of different opportunities and time becomes not the issue at this point, that can come back into the thinking later. As you evaluate the degree of difficulty you start assigning different resources and recognising a ‘span’ of different times to bring these idea concepts to realisation.

You will notice in the middle of this visual there is a key transforming point.

I believe if you are genuinely looking across different options and broader opportunities you can begin to see a transforming opportunity that has the potential to radically alter or drive your business in the future.

This sits in the middle as it becomes an emerging idea, that goes into the horizon two part. This needs really carefully handling and I have previously written about this horizon two specifically in an article here called Traversing across into horizon 2 for new breaking innovation.

Also, I would want you to go back and read two articles, firstly on why innovation needs a different time and thinking horizons and then drawing out the different voices within the three horizons methodology for innovation. That way I don’t need to repeat parts of them here.

Recognising our present day thinking are at odds with future thinking

So you get these clear sense that many are sceptical or pay lip service to the products or service offerings of the future as the thinking, judgement and value orientation are at such odds with the existing measures and metrics they apply to run today’s business and how they get judged.

We must move our thinking beyond the ‘here and now’ and push it into the future if we want to transform our innovation and that takes a very different mindset and where the three horizon framework can help significantly in balancing any innovation portfolio.

So to add to the short exchange on twitter I thought I’d share this visual that might help in plotting your balanced portfolio in a way that combines portfolio management and three horizon thinking for recognising time and allocating resource

The potential of using the three horizons to any blue sky thinking, or determine what makes up the portfolio, is a more classic positioning but why not, once you have determined your opportunities in the portfolio you place them back into the three horizons to manage them ‘going forward’.

Just an additional thought or two as you finish up here.

By the way in my insights and thinking tag on this site you have an extensive collection of thoughts around the three horizon methodology, including white papers and different ‘series’ collections to give you a fairly comprehensive view of this most valuable 3H methodology.

End note: Doug Collins has pointed out since this publication, that he was original source of this visual. I had lost this reference and I am happy to add it in. His original article adds well to this.

The post Applying innovation thinking in different horizons first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We place a disproportionately high amount of our resources in the ‘here and now’ to defend what we have and what we know. A potential ‘big mistake’
We actually subvert the future to prolong the life of the existing.

We constantly look to make it more efficient and more effective but this is in the majority of cases just incremental in what we do, both in innovation and our activities. These are often simply propping up the past success instead of shifting the resources into the investments of the future.

Spotting signs of innovating decay

Within the Three Horizon framework for innovation the horizon two is beginning to address some of the current decay arising from the core within the existing activities (or system). Here we have the highest tension point as it is the place for transformation to take shape and form.

We do need to challenge short-term thinking and balance this with this longer-term perspective and we do need to traverse into the future in clear thinking through steps (or horizons).

Our horizon one does begin to decay faster today than ever, it does not fully cover off the strategic fit we want and can begin to lose its dominance over time. We need to manage this transition, not let others manage it for us.

It is how we manage this transition becomes so critical.

We need to exploit developing trends that are emerging (h2) and begin to tune into possible options in the future (h3). Within these options will emerge the winners and become the more dominant systems or solutions that we should be moving towards, even from today. Some of these only have faint emerging signals but they need to be brought into the innovation portfolio activity to explore, often in novel ways.

The discussions that centre on often conflicting views of the future, compared to the existing realities and those providing the returns for today’s business. Often we can detect change but we consciously ignore it.

This is the place where the disruptor’s are at work, existing or new competitors, working at displacing your products and market positions.

They look to be more agile, they might have greater entrepreneurial ways, they are ready to explore emerging practices far more than the established leaders, they look to leverage different business models and are certainly not handicapped with legacy and mindsets stuck in the past. Increasing competition is today’s certainty.

Horizon Two needs a totally different mindset.

You need to see H2 with different metrics, with different perspectives, with more open minds. This is not easy. This needs to become the meeting point or “the space for transition” where you begin to let go of just protecting your core and open up your thinking to experimentation, prototyping, exploring different business models and begin to figure out how these will impact your existing core, to become more agile and adaptive than you are in the existing system or structures

These horizon (h2) concepts being explored really do need ‘ring fencing,’ so you can protect these from all the ‘vested’ claims that your horizon one focus will continually demand to keep, so as to bring in the results in this calendar year.

It is a real fight, these ideas or nascent concepts ‘give off’ negative results, they are still a mix of the tangible and intangibles where you can’t get the ‘hard’ fix on the ROI, on their real market value or potential.

The risk of internal executive ‘attack’
Many executives ‘defending’ the core will ‘attack’ or hold back any release of their resources to help these emerging initiatives. It is a ‘hard-nosed’ reality. It needs a very high level and conscious set of decisions coming from the top to determine these new moves.

Do not believe that when most executives ‘just’ react and shrug their shoulders regarding h2 as a natural, everyday occurrence, it is far from not.

Many have to come ‘kicking and screaming’ to supporting emerging activities. Far too much ‘invested’ interest comes into play. They see this more as a threat not an opportunity. It is not their sand box so why should they ‘play’.

This is why the three horizon approach has real sustaining value because if we don’t have this longer-term, transformational perspective we are just prolonging the existing until it gets disrupted by others.

This is where the working across different horizons for ‘thinking’ through innovation does need different tools and mindsets and these should be based on (h1) see and operate, (h2) adjust your thinking frame and solutions, (h3) more evolutionary.

Each has different techniques to explore as I’ve previously outlined in my navigation guide to this approach.

The tensions are not just visible but played out in many subversive ways.

Just take performance metrics, if these are solely structured on the calendar year, are you realistically expecting a dilution of focus as their compensation is totally caught up in this.

Horizon two poses a real challenge within any management of our organizations. If it provides current small bases of volume, no real meaningful profit from the investments made it can be a hard sell across the organization.

Projects that focus on the future work mostly are based on ‘best’ assumptions. Sadly it is often executives expect to see the same ‘hard’ metrics being applied as the existing business. We ignore significant differences and this is a huge mistake.

Recognizing our present day thinking are at odds with future thinking

So you get a clear sense that many are sceptical or pay lip service to the products of the future as the thinking, judgement and value orientation are at such odds with the existing measures and metrics they apply to run today’s business and how they get judged.

We must move our thinking beyond the ‘here and now’ and push it into the future if we want to transform our innovation and that takes a very different mindset and where the three horizon framework can help significantly in balancing any innovation portfolio.

The post Traversing across into horizon 2 for new breaking innovations first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have found that narratives are becoming increasingly important to explain ‘things’. I’m re-learning this ‘art’ to tell a compelling story.

Our stories can combine much, communities can identify or reject, we can begin to explain complex stories by presenting a well-designed narrative that presents the arguments. It can explain the connections and outline the issues, both in terms of risk and opportunity.

I think business narratives will become essential for our organizations to use to explain where they are and what they see as their future.

A good business narrative should fill a real knowledge gap

Organizations by making this move to open up, to spend more time explaining their ‘fit’ in the world will gain.  Those that stay closed down, secretive and selective in what they reveal will continue to ebb away and not valued as important for our future.

The business narrative is argued as the way to seek increased identity, allows a broader community to enact, to extract better cues for their sense of identity and offer a better way to draw them into this greater sense of identification.

I wrote about visualizing the innovating future through narrative reporting here and placing the business model as central to this narrative movement here.

We are in a constant state of being adaptive

We live in such a fluid world where we are all being forced constantly to be adaptive. It seems nothing is standing still and if it does it simply gets knocked down. We are all learning this new practice of being nimble and increasingly adaptive. Part of the growing complexity we all are grappling with daily is in the multiple voices that are competing for our attention.

Social platforms and having available the so many easy tools to participate are everywhere.  This has liberated these millions of voices wanting to express themselves. Cutting through these competing voices to sort out those that are relevant to you or the ones that will move you to action are tough. We need to go one step further.

We all feel the effects of this ‘sucking of time’ out of our days. We need to build a greater sense of connection, understanding the broader connectivity to put ‘things’ in context.

The story or narrative will increasing make the final connection and cut through this growing distraction noise. Getting more focused on the context and explaining this through a good narrative or story is becoming essential to go beyond ‘just a connection’ into prompting real identification and even action.

Anchoring ourselves through stories will help us regain that lost middle ground.

What we need to do, is anchor all these seemingly competing voices into our stories to explain where we are, where we believe we should be going and what, as we presently know it, will help us get there.

Learning the art of good narratives is becoming essential to tell our story and its place to help reduce conflicts and misunderstandings and help us all to navigate a little better in this more complex world.

We can tell these organizations stories in so many compelling ways, through the business model, and through sustainability reporting. A well-structured business narrative can offer the organization vision, it can enhance communication, it can highlight where the organization is critically capturing knowledge and putting it to work.

We need to spark more.

Narratives can spark our thinking in how this can encourage innovation and growth, so as to build a growing sense of community and identification, of engagement and identification. As new knowledge comes into us we need to increasingly sort it, to identify the relevant ‘tags’ and assign them in importance to us, our community and to the broader context.

Mastering the business narrative is becoming critical, in helping to connect the innovations we need to build our future and these need to be more connected by the power of the story.

Moving beyond just the sound bite or tweet

Our lives must move beyond the ‘sound bites’, they give us a feeling of engagement but this can be fleeting, lost in microseconds, we need to gain a greater sense of community and that comes from connecting the fragments of a story and piecing them together to give more lasting meaning. We need the ‘greater’ context, not just fleeting moments.

Business leaders need to practice the art (and science) of describing aspects that might be complex, into good narratives so we can identify with these and recognize ways we can contribute and support.

The post Describing the future by using the business narrative first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.