Sustainability is central to innovation’s future progress

Sustainability is central to innovation’s future progress

Building a sustainable competitive advantage

Today’s challenge for me is not only to be building the innovation capacity but also to be establishing clear ways on how we should set about sustaining it. Increasingly, organizations must have the capability and capacity to sustain innovation to provide the stimulus for lasting growth and resolve the complex challenges we face today and in the future.

To get there, though, it does seem this must be through continued learning. Hence, your capabilities become stronger, evolving and more unique, thus making them more difficult for competitors to understand and imitate.

Let me outline an innovation framework that builds capability through a sustained approach.

When you set out to build capability to be sustaining, you need to consider there are two types of capabilities, distinctive, which are the characteristics of the organization which others cannot replicate and reproductive, which can be bought in by the competition but always need to need to be appropriate to any objectives you are trying to achieve. Continue reading “Sustainability is central to innovation’s future progress”

Forget Best Practice, Think Always Of Learning Next Practice

Often you hear the request made: “Can you give us a best practice snapshot; we would like to get a sense of where we are”.

The trouble with best practice is you are looking at someone else’s practices and these are highly individual, made up of different groups of methodologies, processes, rules, theories, values, and concepts. These together have provided that specific company a level of success that others – mostly competitors – begin to notice.

There is no such thing as what they have it, you need to copy and have the same.

We all get caught up in best practices, you can’t simply pick up and plug and play, as one organization’s initiative is never the same set of conditions or positioning that others can simply copy.

We desire the “one-size fits all” as a comfort blanket, it makes our innovation lives easier. Many consultants love this request, as they do not need to apply the real skills of discernment, subject matter expertise, and the difficult challenge of peeling away a client’s practice to understand how they can rebuild them to become unique, into a leading practice that cannot be copied.

Continue reading “Forget Best Practice, Think Always Of Learning Next Practice”

A new normal is upon us, the paradigm shift that will change the World.

There is a real increasing pressure to totally reinvent my business. The past business paradigm of reaching out, providing value, and making money is still there. Still, it is how we all undergo the changes needed in a radically different set of economic circumstances.

We all are seeing the world in a very different light, in some ways a very harsh one, where the old normals are breaking down. The change in our world is even a little scary, it actually is giving me a little “angst.” I need to put some reorder into my world.

Firstly as many of you know, I have been investing my time in growing my understanding, expertise, and thinking over three “core” topics. My Innovation intent has been central to this for twenty years, but this has ‘funneled down’ into recognizing the value of ecosystems as the business design for innovation to thrive and deliver more significant value creation. In the past two-plus years, the whole Energy Transition has been my vehicle to apply my innovation learning and ecosystem thinking.

We must hold on to much of what we have, but we really will be forced to abandon so much of our accepted norm.

My search or questioning is not about abandoning what I have invested over these years, it is how can I redirect it. To shift its position to actively contribute in new ways, to adapt and adjust to the ‘new normal’ we all must seriously recognize is coming towards us.

Continue reading “A new normal is upon us, the paradigm shift that will change the World.”

Everything is changing faster- can we respond differently in our Innovation work?

Suddenly we are stopped from traveling; we are advised to work from home to keep us safe from this coronavirus and catching it.  We have the choice of “self-imposed” or “company-imposed” time at home.

Time takes on a different meaning; we are cutting out those (unproductive) meetings, the train, car, and flight times, and we have the luxury to do what?

Well, it is offering us that luxury of actually having time to think and reflect. Now that is dangerous as it takes us off our ‘chosen’ treadmill of pursuit.

I was pondering some thoughts around the quest for growth, the demands for change, and the need to become nimble, agile, and more dynamic in what we do. We crowd out our days and never stop to reflect.

So I started to think a little more. Now that can be dangerous, and I am not too sure it gave me answers, just more questions. My starting point was the endless journey of innovation. Continue reading “Everything is changing faster- can we respond differently in our Innovation work?”

Organizations suffer constantly from unhealthy Innovation tension

How often do you feel the tensions surrounding innovation?  A tough part of managing within larger organizations is in reducing the layers and competing forces, the underlying tensions that innovation (uncertainty) brings out?

Hierarchy so often dominates or dictates the speed of what we do. That is so often set in weird logic and a shrug of the shoulders.

Confronted by the need for gathering facts, innovation often struggles as much of this takes significant time and is often outside the organization’s present understanding.

It is in the pursuit of logic, and often this lacks real (hardened) facts that hold innovation back, as it runs on a very different ‘timeline’ too much of our everyday organization processes or approaches.

In this post, I aim to tackle the question of “Reducing the tension in the layers or structures for innovation.” It follows from a recent post on “peeling away the layers of your innovation reality.”

This is a more extended read than usual, about eight to ten minutes, so be ready for that, please.

Often we forget to reinforce the very design within our organizational structures, we leave role structures incomplete and uncertain, or we always seem to be changing them, before they have had any real chance to ‘form and storm.’

The constant re-organization is ‘killing’ the organization to form any rhythm. Innovation is often in that uncomfortable territory of ‘not knowing,’ it cuts across established structures, and so many time challenges the “status quo.” I often suggest that “innovation is a very uncomfortable bedfellow to have around. It does need separation, or it will never perform at its ‘very best.’

Let’s take a look at some of the consequences of these tensions.

Presently we see in large organizations this lack of “pushing for risk” or wanting to change the underlying business offerings. There is always a stated “we must be innovative to survive,” but we very rarely see what this means in real ongoing support to give that some framing, some guidelines, and clearly identified resourcing.

How many times do you see the organization set the deliverables in often ‘woolly’  undefined or impossible ways to truly measure the success of innovation.  Unable to meet the very system they impose of requiring KPIps by capturing and measuring what this means, so innovation struggles and often dumb-sized to meet arbitory measures, so it “fits” within the system..

This verbal remit never gets the underlying points to encourage those tasked with innovation to go and explore. This vagueness just further promotes uncertainly, delays any improved performance, and we end up with the same mediocre result, where safely has ‘ruled’ the day.

Organization layers grind against each other, like tectonic plates that force further disruption and upheaval.

Will we ever face up to the forces that immobilize our organizations honestly?

If we really want to work progressively towards an adaptive organization, we must stop the knee-jerking or react to short-term pressures. To bring a better level of clarity to the many left open, fuzzy, and still so unclear areas within organizations, leadership must find better ways to resist their impulses to re-organize constantly. Strengthening what they have, allowing the existing structures to expand outwardly, is sometimes better than breaking them into different structures that reinforce new silo thinking.

We still seem to love the ‘carrot and stick’ approach.

In leaving so much open to even ignoring critical parts of a business’s performance or operating model allows leaders one minute, use outcomes as the ‘whipping boy’ for unfortunate or disappointing results and, in so doing, slowly immobilize those underneath, scared to make a mistake or be associated with failure.

Adaptation to short-term performance works both ways. To the shareholder demanding immediate results but also to the management to hide behind this to create unnatural built-in tensions and often create a shearing effect. Innovation gets caught up in this. It can’t solve complicated product design solutions in thirteen weeks.

It can show quarterly results of progress, but that is often for internal consumption only. Innovation becomes a catch-all phrase, so it gets dumbed down to reinforce “our organization” is constantly undertaking it.

Innovation gets caught up in the needs of the reporting requirement so it can fit an arbitrary and stupid timeline that is required to adapt to a financial calendar year. Forced by the “bean counter” to be broken down into reporting on a quarterly result, as that is required by the system. No wonder we have tensions between innovation and an organization geared to this financial numbers game.

Organization structure ‘grinds’ against each other, like tectonic plates that force further disruption and upheaval.

They ‘freezeout’ creativity unless it ‘arrives’ from the top of the organization, then it is often super-imposed, but is that optimized to get the best out of the creative or discovery process`? Eventually, the organization dies if it cannot allow the natural generating new forms of creativity from within, this has been hollowed out by this constant demanding and imposing from the top.

The organizational design needs to change to allow for creativity to flow back in.

We need to ensure creative knowledge flows up and down organizations. We need to change our thinking from layers into a network of connected parts that we keep small, flat, and focused but constantly aware their existence is dependent on others outside their mini-ecosystem. The “ebb and flow” of knowledge gain and interactions need to be allowed to evolve, not forced, or simply being reliant on machine learning or automating the process.

Today these different layers actually require several levels of reconfiguration designed into the organization. Creativity and innovation are primarily human endeavors. We add layers onto further layers, and each time we are constraining the organizations or the individuals to explore, they stay ‘trapped’ within their space if we superimpose on them. We progressively build up an unhealthy tension.

Imposing the killer effect of time just because of a financial calendar is stupid – it hurts innovation significantly

Just look at how organizations impose time on us. One really critical one to address and to ‘kill off’ is the pressure of time. Imposing time as a condition for innovation can be a real killer. Time horizons to achieve different tasks often cannot be ‘legislated’ or ‘dictated,’ but sadly, they are forced on reluctant innovators responsible for the delivery of new concepts.

We need to re-establish the difference between goals within a specified period covered (one year), objectives – attained later but are progressed within the period and finally ideals– those unattainable but possible concepts that ‘advance’ at slower rates and go well beyond standard goals. Innovation works within this environment, actually it will thrive.

Not just the incremental, but the radical, disruptive, and breakthrough innovation craved for by the top management, can finally have a ‘decent’ time horizon to be managed through. Planning needs to account for all three horizons, and operating across these needs different mindsets, irrespective of the industry you are in, it does not matter if you are building planes or developing food products.

Managing innovation across the three horizon methodology helps reduce tensions, design innovations that can be more radical or breakthrough. The three horizon methodology spaces out the activity, thinking, and activity, it allows innovation to be defined and determined by its complexity and its time/value relationship in importance and complexity.

Tacking the incompatibles to ease the tensions

We really should stop pretending that innovation is not so hard and state it is often incompatible to much of what we perform on our daily business, it is really so often just incompatible, and we should recognize this.

The task of managing intangibles (unknowns) alongside the tangibles (known) needs a greater appreciation of their complexities and the difficulties of balancing the two for achieving a ‘decent’ result. The unknowns need far more investigation, relationship understanding, and evaluations to turn them from a possible discovery into a worthwhile one that can begin to be quantified.

In Leadership, I believe, would need to understand innovation far more in this demanding environment of inquiry. No wonder it is often ducked and just vaguely talked about as much of innovation understanding is still poorly understood in its impacts and effect. We do need to address this lack of acute innovation management within our organizations. It is not ‘business as usual.’ It is managing the process of unusual business inquiry.

Reducing activities and replacing these with outcome orientation

Innovation is no different from what we expect from efficiency or effectiveness; we want to see the outcomes, the results from all the investments, energy, and inputs.  Outcome orientation holds a precious key to think about far more.  We have struggled on many occasions to establish robust metrics for judging innovation. They seem to get lost within organizations’ obsession to judge the whole organization by the same KPI’s.

Often we find part of the innovation activities has been assigned to some other cost center, and organizations create cost center tensions in allocating resources or the necessary time. We should break activities down into outcome orientation ones. Were the activities contributing to efficiency accounting or actually progressing the innovation concept along? We need to judge these through the effectiveness of the outcome. Forget the allocation input, it is the successful innovation outcome.

Scott Anthony had pointed out in an old article “Negotiating Innovation and Control’ on the different ways to balance tension, there is one, in my opinion, that needs more in-depth investigation and development, and that is the ‘ambidextrous’ one. This makes distinctions but links the parts of the whole organization by developing competing frames, not competing forces.

Roger Martin suggests in one of his books, “The Opposable Mind,” that we need to establish “integrative thinking” as part of this need to change. The ability to understand the difference between exploring and exploiting is critical to how we manage innovation in its different needs of discovery and execution.

Innovation should be alongside as an equal partner to efficiency. It becomes efficient innovation and core to what you do and how you operate.

Seeking constant efficiencies is slowing down our organizations. We need to do the opposite, to speed them up and capitalize on finding innovation opportunities quickly and then knowing how to scale them equally fast. We need to do this by developing the competencies and understandings of experimentation, piloting, prototyping in fast, discreet and measured ways

The worrying thing is the slow components dominate any dynamics within the system, and the rapid aspects have to simply follow along. I see this an awful lot. In all organizations, it accommodates the slow, thereby reducing down the very effectiveness of the organization to adapt, respond, and grow to market changes. Slow holds everything back, and we can’t afford to keep waiting in a world where others are more adaptive or agile.

“Slow constrains quick, slow controls quick.”

The only way to ensure speeding up is to be coherent on purpose, clarify the bounds and governing principles that need to be enacted and evolve the organization design away from layers and hierarchy.

We need to build up a series of internal networks that depend on each other but continuously reach out to connect, share, and exchange but more within an organizational design that is flat but highly responsive and interdependent to work well. This needs orchestration, not a hierarchy in its managing. They need constant attention; they need to speed up, to be encouraged, and well-resourced.

We need to work a lot harder on all the dysfunction points in organizations

Only by consciously working on all the dysfunction points within an organization will undoubtedly reduce the tensions, reduce the ‘shearing effects.’ It allows the organization in all its layers, to ‘react’ by recognizing its tension points and set about addressing them, not allowing them to fester and continue.

Organizations somehow has to reflect far more on its continued lack of performance. It takes time to identify the ‘tension points’ and then to undertake the appropriate action to come back into a balance.

A balance where innovation sits equally alongside efficiency, especially if both focus on outcome orientation, and that certainly is not the current business way we often see today. We so often find much of the ‘tension’ is not favorable, it is debilitating.

 

Peeling away the layers of your innovation reality

So do we have a clear understanding of where we are in our current innovation capabilities?

We have to establish a way to map our ‘terrain of innovation reality’ is not just how we are performing but what lost opportunities have slipped through. Why well simply because we lacked the awareness to seize on these opportunities when we first spotted them.

We have significant gaps in our innovation capabilities and competencies. Have you ever really audited them? Taken them through a structured examination?

Continue reading “Peeling away the layers of your innovation reality”

Achieving a more dynamic innovating environment

There is a growing need for having some dynamic tensions within the organization’s innovation system; this helps generate better conditions for innovators to thrive.

We are continually learning more about all the different tools, techniques, and approaches available for innovation that will certainly help in putting the learning tensions into our work, making them more dynamic, linked, and increasingly relevant to the work-to-be-done.

We do need to embrace a more open, experimental approach to explore and then extend concepts, tools or frameworks that seem to work. I say “seem to work” as each situation often needs different paths to get the best out of any innovation work.

Yet before we jump into all the frameworks and tools that are available, let’s think about establishing the “common” environment innovation needs. Set this up, and you have the potential to create those dynamics out of your innovation activity. Continue reading “Achieving a more dynamic innovating environment”

Understanding the Innovation Landscape needed for Enabling Technologies in the World’s Energy Transition

During this September to November 2019 period, I deliberately chose to have a 100% focus on the energy transition that the world is committing to as an undertaking, of reversing the rising global climate temperatures through a shift from fossil fuels to increasing commitments to renewables.

Renewables that give us greater sustainability and clean energy and dramatic reductions in carbon emissions.

I wrote twelve dedicated posts over this period, including this one, to highlight the important place innovation has within the energy transition that we are undertaking. View all the opening introductions on the “home page” and scroll down.

To have any chance to reverse these temperature rises there is an increasing emphasis on innovation solutions within the technology that is required for the Worlds energy system. Solutions are needed to shift from the world’s present reliance on fossil fuels to renewable cleaner fuels to stop the growing pollution and harmful effects of greenhouse gases (GHG) that carbon-emitting fossil fuels are causing to our planet and giving us global warming issues that are deeply worrying.

I drew down on many different resources to get my more in-depth understanding of an area that is partly passion and partly a business focus, but one resource has stood out for their detailed work on innovation and the energy sector’s needs. Continue reading “Understanding the Innovation Landscape needed for Enabling Technologies in the World’s Energy Transition”

Focusing on Innovation for our Energy Transition we are all undertaking

When you are undertaking such a transformation in any system like energy, innovation becomes vital to inject new forces of dynamism and creative thinking to tackling such a change.

The energy transition that the world is undertaking is one of the most critical areas where innovation needs to be at its very best, that top of the game to make the level of change necessary.

The existing solutions found in wind and solar solutions jockeying to replace oil, gas, and coal, in our present electricity distribution, as well as our current customer solutions for managing our energy, will only take you so far in our need to change our energy systems.

If we are to meet the mandated Paris Agreement of 2015, where member states agreed to limit global warming to 2 degrees C versus pre-industrial levels by 2050, we have to look at every climate change mitigation we can find. We have to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 to 95 percent of the 1990 level by 20150. Today the solutions are centered on decarbonization, applying digitalization, and switching to an energy system that is more decentralized than at present and it is finding imaginative, innovating solutions that become essential to achieve this climate change through the energy transition we are undertaking. Continue reading “Focusing on Innovation for our Energy Transition we are all undertaking”

Checking for the global pulse of innovation

As a report, the 2019 Global Innovation Index (GII) is a whopper, at 450 pages, although 50% of this is detailed economic profiles and data tables for each country within the index.

This GII report investigates and reports on 129 countries and then analyzes and ranks them accordingly.

When you are caught up in generating innovation within a business these sorts of reports can often pass you by as not so relevant to your everyday job of innovation.

I can certainly understand that but as a barometer of the health and investment going into innovation, it will eventually filter through to you and has more relevance than you first imagine.

This report is mainly for those interested in forming national policy on innovation, or judging where they are within the global race on innovation, yet it tells us all some really important points on the current health of innovation.

Yet the innovation message is for us all. If nothing else read this summary. Continue reading “Checking for the global pulse of innovation”

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