I set out to engage 100% in innovation work, it has been quite a journey of discovery, relating and then translating the parts into solutions. I still get overwhelmed by the sheer information overload or advice that seems to be offered.
Just trying to stay your own course is tough enough but with all the diversity of views, it must be even more overwhelming for others, those who are asked to take on a role within innovation. Where and who do you turn too must be a real dilemma?
In recent years I have found I need to diversify away from one given ‘voice’ on innovation and channel this out into specialized and more focused areas of innovation activity. At present, I have SIX channels open on innovation advice or advisory service that has made my life partly more complicated but more importantly, able to separate my thinking into these parts, as they deserve a ‘deeper’ dive and/or broader exposure.
I thought I’d outline the six here in this post as the sum of the parts that contributes to the whole
I have two established businesses, one started in 2000 and one in 2008. They are distinct in what they provide as services. Let me illustrate this by a screen lift of their two separate “main menus”:
HOCA International Consultants(now closed)
It covers many of the adjacencies on innovation. You do need to find out more of the emerging Work to be done as it is a far more the dynamic place for innovation to happen.The Work-to-be-done is focused on connecting to the emerging dynamic future areas that your Organizational is facing today and then how to work through these so as to respond to the rapidly changing markets and diminishing resources. It’s areas of focus:
With the types of offering in HOCA had was looking at the roots of organizations values, build the interactions and strengthen the connecting parts that build a strong ‘network effect’ in relationships; explore the more emerging practices and seek to build the Enterprise Capabilities that place innovation and knowledge as the ‘beating’ heart of your organization.
Agility Innovation Specialists
Everything we want to do is 100% focused on innovating! Bringing agility, flexibility, adaptability and learning into the innovation equation. We provide the pathways to your future innovation growth through critical focal points of any necessary value creation.
Agility’s primary role is to support and extend innovation, in thinking and developing the capabilities and capacities, to match the client’s ambition and goals, by providing a real depth of innovation insight and advice.
“Our objectives are to identify promising business opportunities, develop innovation expertise and competencies, create value and grow competitive and profitable businesses 100% focused on our innovative support to you”
Agility Innovation Specialists aim is to offer a real “intensity in innovation” at its core.
Then I have broken down my posting on innovation thinking onto four sites.
I took this decision, not to make my life extra complicated, which it partly does, but to focus specifically on critical areas of innovation focus. Innovation thinking is diverse and I felt there was a place, space and need to separate my thinking to allow it to go deeper or wider.
Paul4innovating
The ‘flagship’ of my innovation posting world is this site you are on:
This I launched into blogs and posts in August 2010 and is nearing 500 posts which have built up an amazing library of innovation views, advice, solutions and exploratory work. Some of these I’m really proud of, others were attempts to shift conversations or simply the outlet for my innovation ‘rants’ or passions. I ‘house’ my blogging intent here, describe my own innovation journey and provide my collection of insights and thinking.
So this is my ‘core’ blog for “building the DNA of innovation” one that is allowing me to wander far and wide, as I see innovation as a living, evolving area of management, discipline, and knowledge. You have to stay open to change, ready to shape as well as rework what know that is in within our existing work, experiences, and activities. I continue to shape and evolve myself, as innovation management is certainly a “living thing.”
Innovation fitness dynamics
This has been the hardest dedicated site to work with. I have been working away on building a methodology for building innovation capability, capacity, and competencies for a number of years. It seems in permanent beta. This blog is about offering you a pathway towards achieving your own innovation fitness dynamics. The end goal of your journey is simply “the greater fitness you can achieve in innovation capability the more it can equate to a new value creation“.
There is, again a journey story, the nine stages to pass through for building innovation fitness and critically how innovation capital becomes the important area of exploration and exploiting. It currently has about 70 posts in the site related to this building of capability and capacity to innovation, through a designed approach to how you can achieve innovation fitness.
Innovation Ecosystems
This is a collaborative site I share with Jeffrey Phillips from Ovo Innovation. This is actually our fourth substantive collaboration together but this time we decided to turn our thinking into a regular viewpoint as the subject is presently evolving before us. We are entering the world of innovation ecosystems where broader, more complex innovation challenges, through greater collaborations can be achieved.
This site includes our thoughts on what makes up innovation ecosystems and the changes these can offer us in innovation opportunity. What is explored is ecosystems, the delivery mechanisms of platforms along with other collaborative methods and push towards the new need of today, to deliver a seamless total solution that provides customers what they are constantly asking for, to solve their needs and give them greater engagement and experiences.
This thinking is driven by a need for new products and services and experiences, otherwise, we believe customers will continue to turn away from discrete, disconnected products and services, increasingly over time. Shaping and introducing new innovation ecosystems is not easy but it has enormous potential to transform competition and in my view, it is ushering in the new innovation era and providing the principles of this shift taking place.
Guide4innovating
Advocating the practice and understanding of innovation
This is my recently launched site, in March 2017, dedicated to providing and advocating innovation advice to individuals, and innovation teams. The starting point is “Building a strong advocacy practice” and providing a learning platform, dedicated to personal innovation learning journeys.
My worry continues, even with all the insights and advice out there on innovation, that it continues to flounder. Innovation still gets treated often as an add-on, often overridden, to the more established practices within organizations. Innovation does need a different mindset, metrics, and operational practice to be able to yield its true potential.
I have thought for some time about the advocacy of innovation, turning my intent into purpose and positioning, by becoming a more dedicated source of essential knowledge for innovators as a guide, mentor, and catalyst for accelerating performance. Although it is early days for a dedicated site, it has been a significant part of my innovation practice for years. all I am doing is giving it a more dedicated focus for clients to visit, decide and then engage with me.
Innovation Advocacy needs strong guidance. As I would like to be positioned as a “go to” trusted authority that can influence, argue, advocate new directions, and provide clear options for change, I can push the ‘edges’ of today’s status quo, perhaps be your required catalyst to trigger ideas or offer different insights.
Many executives engaged in innovation are time-starved. They are constantly reacting to daily events, focusing and fixing short-term performance. This applies to the top executive down to the most junior. My intent is to help reduce this pressure to constantly advance and stay alerted to changing innovation practices. So in my own limited way, with those that want to engage and explore the ‘richness’ within innovation my intent is to help them in their innovation acceleration purpose.
In summary
So these are my innovation playpens or sandboxes. I also often write and contribute to many other innovation businesses in different media channels, specifically for innovation thought leadership. The combined effect of my work has been where this activity has been consistently voted in the top innovation knowledge providers since 2011, something I am incredibly proud to have achieved
I enjoy the returns this provides, in awareness, in engagements or leading through to different offerings, speaking, advising, in exchanges and deepening the contacts that I have gained in the years since I started in the innovation space, that was 2001/02, when innovation come clearly into focus as my path to pursue when I lived in Singapore. It has taken on a life of its own ever since.
I certainly believe I can contribute to the wider innovation community that we are all part of, to support the innovation activities we all need to undertake. Through my advising, coaching, writing and mentoring on innovation, as well as through my ongoing consulting and advisory work I attempt to offer a broad innovation service. My aim is to stimulate others to gain fresh insights and knowledge from these collaborative exchanges and explorations through innovation. Each engagement continues to equally grow my own understanding constantly.
I hope by having this multiple channels available, does give you a real value to explore and engage more with me, as each channel attempts to provide answers to your innovation needs to seek out advancement and different insights in the practice of innovation management.