Transformational innovation is increasingly needed to cope with the change needed in many organizations to find a new or repositioned value proposition.
Transformational innovation is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, to achieve. When you are required to become (really) different at the core, you face the inherent conflict that making change is where clear leadership can only bring about, guiding the changes required through this highly disruptive period and providing the compelling story of the compelling future that provides a fundamentally better state than the one occupied today.
We have many innovation outcomes to choose from, including incremental, distinctive, radical or disruptive. Today we focus more on open innovation where a greater external diversity combines with internal expertise to generate the potential for something fundamentally different. Today we have technology as an enabler and applying innovation ecosystem thinking in designing open platforms so this network of experience can be exchanged, shared and developed.
Yet transformational innovation does require something really different.
To become different, you have to go beyond adding innovation at the periphery, bolting new concepts onto the existing core, you need to dismantle the core fundamentally.
To become different has some ‘wicked’ inherent conflicts; to undo the ‘known and established’ into many parts of a potentially unknown end outcome requires a boldness of leadership. Championing transformational innovation needs a compelling story or narrative to be built, told and retold so that over a given time, you convince and persuade management and your organization to see the value, the time and commitment and potential to moving towards this different value proposition.
In the past few decades, we have seen so much disruptive change, in markets suddenly disappearing, products or services suddenly being rendered obsolete and replaced by these radical, highly disruptive models. These are the ones that change how we work, undertake business, or combine what was previously separated into a new business model to undertake a different way of working or thinking.
Smartphones have changed so much of our lives; we have rapidly adapted to combine all the different needs to travel in a one-stop/shop business model, where and how we decide on a business or leisure trip and all the options of where we can stay that cater to our individual needs. The solutions based on combining technology and human ingenuity have transformed our lives. They confront, conflict and compel change.
Confronting this level of challenge and change in business propositions requires this radical transformation within individual organizations to adapt quickly or die rapidly.
Adapting to these evolving realities within many marketplaces required transformational leadership. Leaders must spot, try to understand the emerging story and build the narrative to successfully guide the organization onto a different pathway to the future.
The hardest challenge is to persuade people to change, to bring together different groups to suddenly work together, each recognizing this compelling need to change. The status quo needs to be totally abandoned, and the potential rewards of embracing a new future must be sketched out within any story.
The value of analytical thinking becomes paramount.
Any compelling future needs to engage the full analysis of the changing landscape, the environment changes, the industry shifts, and alternatives of how to move from the existing position through steps or stages into a new one. We need to recognise that competencies and skill sets will change and what and how these will be acquired and blended into the ones that need to be kept, and how they will replace many of the existing ones.
The level of the change narrative becomes extensive.
The alternative choice of chasing cheaper, quicker and keeping the fast adapting mantra has only a limited “shelf life,” a transitioning one to allow greater time and learning to make the necessary fundamental changes.
Disruption passes through stages; it provides stepping stones to the emerging future. Yet it is anchored in two absolute essentials- the move towards a new customer logic and value and that the journey and story logic continue to evolve and be validated for a new business model to keep driving the changes needed.
So transformational innovation is built on a set of narratives that others can listen to, appreciate (or reject), assess their contribution and appreciate its coherence and logic. A narrative that builds on passion, courage, imagination and commitment to undertake needs to be highly compelling.
Have you ever listened to a good story or narrative of the need for an organization to make a radical change? In that case, you pick up fairly quickly on the central idea, the direction of travel, or it becomes the unexpected discovery at the end. Is it believable or not? You recognize many of the issues that form the potential plots, blockages or barriers. You feel the ‘spark’, the sense of change, and you identify this is a story happening around you. The identification brings all listening towards the understanding of the need to form a (new) community to build the change momentum. Otherwise, you reject it and become part of the blockers to change.
To build something up, you often have to make space and undo something existing. That letting go is really hard, but recognizing that there is a need to move towards a different compelling future and knowing you are sharing in this (ad)venture empowers. Transformation is scary, but it lies within us all.
Ingenuity is our fertile land for innovation.
We as humans do not want to stagnate; the idea of not growing or evolving is actually alien to us, it is just many don’t recognize their need to change; they need convincing. We actually thrive on this need to evolve in making progress. This gives us ingenuity, that fertile land where innovation grows.
Organizations cannot rely on improving incrementally alone; they must seek clear differences, which requires a more radical approach. To have innovation outcomes that are distinctive, radical and disruptive. Incremental innovation has a shortened lifespan than ever before.
Yet so often today, we need to face transformational innovation, doing something fundamentally different increasingly, even sometimes at an unrelenting pace. We are seeking different, often highly connected and networked products and services. To seek disruptive growth, we often need to change internally, in our organizations and within ourselves. We have the capacity; we need the leadership, guidelines, encouragement and support, a clear “sense of direction” and validation of our own beliefs this is necessary and right to do.
The Leader of the Organization becomes the storyteller.
The narrative of any transformational journey is becoming a compelling part of getting ‘all’ to see a different compelling future. The storyteller, often the CEO or board members, need to look at the world to see what is constantly emerging, what can give opportunity beyond the current order and evaluate the risks, the potential, relate the disruption this can and will cause, with the growth, impact and value transformational change can make.
This is where true leadership lies today, grasping the transitions eventually we are all being forced to make as technology, and the world is in constant transformation. Innovation provides much of the long-term survival; the more radical and transformational we are, makes us the hunter, not the hunted.
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**So much of Steve Denning’s work on storytelling and narratives have been influential for me over the years.
