Getting back to the Future about Innovation

I have just finished the first of a planned series with one of my favourite long-term collaborators Jeffrey Phillips.

Here is the link to the recording. In this series, planned to be only of 10 to 15-minute conversations, we are picking up on many of the fundamental building blocks of innovation.

Jeffery and I go back within the innovation space a long way. We have actively collaborated and designed tools and frameworks over the years that we believe had some of our insights “baked” into them to offer valuable reference points to help us all work through connecting innovation in hopefully better ways.

We have often got into frequent discussions between us on the basics for innovation, those that we deem as central or the core. We will attempt to focus on one of these in each short video produced.

We started with Divergence and Convergence as our framing part

We both find the value of Divergence and Convergence thinking as not just a practical place for brainstorming but for allowing a conversation to firstly diverge and then converge in different ways to resolve and focus opinions.

I have used it many times in different workshop environments; here is a post of mine on this to bring opinions together and give a collective focus to build out a more collaborative future.

This approach can bring out the building blocks of an emerging understanding. You become more collective, selective and decisive.

Today diverge/ converge is actually on a continuous loop

We believe diverge/converge is today on a constant loop. As you finish converging to produce a final result, the chances are you are already on the diverging path of discovery for the next one. A new diverge/ converge set of discussions that promise to converge by opening up your thinking.

The importance of gathering all the different opinions, experiences and insights as you explore alternative options and diverse opinions get shaped. The shaping is influenced by insight, exchange of knowledge, not one dominating opinion.  Eventually, what emerges becomes visible in new exciting options, where collective decisions on choices can be made on intelligent data to prove a potentially new exciting innovation offering.

Then you go back and start again as nothing stands still; it is constantly evolving and looking for new points of value and growth.

Jeffrey and my opening discussion was outlining the series to come

The conversation series we are planning intends to discuss weak linkages across innovation and provide an organizing mechanism to bring these into a clear framework based on the work we have completed on the Executive  Work Mat approach.

We both have written extensively on this and its enduring value is planned to be drawn out in these coming discussions.

We touched on different issues and topics that will come up in our future conversations.

We have linkage gaps between innovation and strategy. Often innovation fails to map back into the strategic intent, which can fundamentally weaken the business in its plans for growth and new value.

We believe C.E.O’s and senior executives play a vital role in the success or failure of innovation. Unfortunately, those roles have often not been well-defined, and sometimes they are rarely well executed. We call this the engagement- alignment gap. Only an engaged, committed senior executive team can create the means to build a sustained innovation capability or disciplined approach by defining innovation’s role and contribution.

We are always in pursuit of alignment. To achieve alignment for innovation, we need an overarching strategic design to reduce the ‘disconnects’. Innovation needs constant alignment. One essential need is to provide a well designed strategic plan that will allow the connections and reconnects needed. We need to seek out alignment through clarification, through talking to each other, to working explicitly from the ‘same page,” the need to move from divergence to convergence.

Our second focus topic is where so much of our difficulties can go back to; having a lack of a common language for talking, applying and communicating innovation. We plan to discuss finding a common language that flows across an organization and out into its network of collaborators that gives meaning and context to what is being undertaken.

Language can have the power to unite us or potentially divide us. Developing a language to unite us in our innovation efforts goes some way to reduce disagreements and egos, to qualify individual interpretation or bias, often a critical inhibitor that can block a team’s success. It lays in a common foundation. It builds confidence and understanding.

Thirdly, Governance is becoming “super important” across organizations, and it is equally necessary to have strong innovation governance. It has become doubly important when we are focused increasingly on building a resilient and sustaining organization. Both resilience and sustainability should drive much within innovation today.

Our fourth topic centres around Structures and Processes. We often strive to improve a given process and sharpen the structures to undertake innovation, but we badly miss the point here. Each innovation activity requires different thinking, process and structure. Working increasingly with other companies in more of an open environment of collaboration, one process imposed simply can constrain.

We do have a reasonable need to understand the basics required in structure and process and their delivery needs, but this requires a highly adaptive, fluid and agility in what we wrap around the “idea” or concept to build it out successfully in both efficient and effective ways.

I wrote in a past post, “The solutions of fluid, agile and adaptive are aiming to develop highly flexible and responsive organizations as an attractive answer to manage in more uncertain times as the way to move forward.”

Each of these four focus areas is essential to building an effective innovation capability. The frame itself offers seven dimensions in it

Our conversations aim to recognize how a reasonable organization frame gives you those vital basic building blocks for innovation

The structure we will discuss offers individuals, teams and organizations a framework that provides four fundamental points of value:

•  It offers you a necessary innovation shape
•  The dialoguing mechanism for intervention and exchange
•  The framework for clear linkages that need to fit together
•  The communication tool and essential building blocks for all to converge upon.

Jeffery and I feel all of us do need to go back to the core, often revisiting all that is central to all innovation activities. We hope to peel away the layers, undo much of the tensions and confusions that so much layering can do.

We need to grow and scale innovation, but the foundations of any innovation work need to be on rock solid foundations that give confidence to the individual, team and organization, of what innovation truly offers- the pathway to the future.

Jeffery and I hope you find a really good value out of these short exchanges and all the material you can explore that support this part of our thinking.

Here is the link to the recording. In this series, planned to be only of 10 to 15-minute conversations, we pick up on many of the fundamental building blocks of innovation.

Watch out for future episodes; we hope these provide you value.