What has been changing in how we approach innovation, and have we taken the opportunity to radically revise the innovation system and process accordingly?
Many of our innovative approaches or systems are based on very often just an internal perspective, restricted in available resources and limited knowledge and insights, often constraining the evolving new solutions and then limiting the impact and outcome.
For many years open innovation has been encouraged to be adopted to break out of this very narrow internal focus. Having a real diversity of opinion with this greater access to different knowledge and experiences does open up our thinking, but it is, on its own, not enough to make a real difference, especially in times of acute change. We need to put to use a different innovation model or approach.
We are at the cusp or already into significant changes to how the world, society and we as individuals will manage or engage going into the future.
This is my second post discussing the belief that we are being to see a real contagion breaking down how we have been operating and living in the world.
We are facing the potential of unprecedented change, and we need to recognize how a different approach to innovation can help offset or mitigate many of the destabilizing aspects and provide a pathway to managing differently in a new environment that will inevitably come from this contagion.
In my first post.” the fear of business contagion required different innovation response.” I focused briefly on the four interlocking conditions.
These interlocking conditions are prompting this potential shift in our approaches to undertaking business, how we engage with government and institutions, our place in society and where we as individuals can adjust and thrive in a different environment we will be facing.
I argue how we undertake our innovation in this significant new set of conditions needs changing.
Our ability to perform differently will provide new avenues of innovation discovery and eventual value to offset or bridge the need to make a change we will be forced to make in these different market and society conditions.
The four interwoven catalysts to approaching innovation are discussed here.
These do not stand alone, they make up the new strength within the fabric of innovation management, hence my interwoven application.
The four interwoven catalysts are recognizing we are moving from complicated to complex; we have different collaboration tools to be more agile and adapt, we need to adopt a clearer mindset to working in innovation ecosystems, and we need to leverage the digital transformation we have been undertaking.
Let me explain these a little more for the remainder of this post.
Moving from complicated to complex.
We have seen, over time, that much of what seemed simply complicated has increasingly become complex. We need a new innovation approach, it is intrinsic to achieve and find solutions to these complex problems outside just what we know. There are so many connected parts that one individual person or entity simply cannot find the right answers; they need to seek out others to complete the map and connect the parts.
Recognizing complex acknowledges the volatility and disruptions that are constantly occurring. There are many interconnected (constantly moving) parts. We often need to approach change in a non-linear fashion as no recognized patterns or present system approaches or behaviours work. The need is for a very fluid, dynamic, constantly evolving approach to design and solutions. Knowledge flows are constantly changing and often surprise us and need adaption to what this means. Systems today need to be designed to be self-driven in design, which needs us to often simply let go but carefully orchestrate such an adaptive thinking approach.
Connecting up and Deploying Collaboration Tools
To achieve a fluid, dynamic design in any new innovation solution recognizes our growing reliance on different collaboration tools. These are known and adopted in many organizations today but must be valued as the backbone of any new innovation collaborative system. To apply these effectively across multiple organizations, we must talk the same common language of understanding and approach.
These tools are lean and agile, design thinking, rapid experimentation and prototyping approaches, accelerate and elevate innovation hacks, engagement in crowdsourcing approaches and deploying our limited resources in dedicated “living” labs that seek out partners that have a commonality and shared ethos to what innovation can provide in impact and value to challenges and complexities. It is the ability to “string together” and leverage the different collaboration tools to maximise innovation discovery and execution.
To break down the complexity, you need to be highly collaborative
Complex problems are typically defined as those that include the ability to approach them from multiple, sometimes competing, perspectives and which may have multiple possible solutions.
I suggest this as a way of thinking through the complexity as a building block*
Peter Sjulstad wrote this* to break down complex problems and offer a very extended version. I have taken my own simplified approach to his suggested ways to make complexity simpler.
Working in innovation ecosystems
Today we promote innovation ecosystems, they extend the open innovation thinking further. They coalesce across innovation partners and innovation centres and seek to work with start-ups and established companies, focusing on a market activity that provides insights and knowledge.
Ecosystems accelerate learning and innovation; the organisms associated influence each other and shape the terrain of discovery can combine to offer a profound shift in business landscape potential, attract further resources to tap into, and harness the creativity and intelligence of all within the ecosystem.
We need to question differently and often the “why change?” and “what can be gained?” and need to encourage activism to “collide and build”, to “network and engage”, and “relationship builds” around a common purpose and desire.
I wrote this, and it might have value to read: “are you ready to thrive in a world of innovation ecosystems?” I wrote in summary:
“Ecosystem thinking (combined with platform management) has a very transforming effect. It opens us up to a highly fluid, changing world of possibilities. It can help you match and possibly get ahead of all the volatility swirling around us. We can develop strategies and innovations that keep pace as we connect with a broader community.”
I believe ecosystems are the new organism of the business world. We need to explore these increasingly in their design and management potential through increased platform moanagement.
Digital Transformation
In the world of digital transformation, when applied to innovation. I wrote a piece “the backdrop of digital transformation and its consequences.”
Digital transformation will keep pushing us to become more efficient and effective but also enable us to become more adroit and innovative. We will need to take a ‘dual’ mindset to constantly balance these often conflicting tensions to harness all the different power sources of digital and structure the business and organization accordingly.
Digital enables so much, but it can build the relationship mechanism with customers, which is vitally important in times of volatility.
We are all aware (or should be) that customers are increasingly choosing products and services based on the quality of the experiences they have with them; digital connections help inform and determine positioning and appeal.
The pressing need is to address a competitive risk if you are not mapping and understanding the channels, touchpoints and shifts taking place in technology solutions that capture, evaluate and determine customer experience. In any contagion environment, we need to know the points of value to bring new innovative solutions into the marketplace to overcome these shifts in behaviour and need.
You need to ask, can digital transformation help you meet your customer needs, do you fully understand their motivations and associated behaviours to design a better range of innovative solutions? It is through a digital transformation we can make the connections tangible, achieve relevancy and provide a new difference that is “seen” to bridge needs and gaps found in often rapidly changing market conditions.
Digital transformation can build all the connecting points in a value chain, deploy the technology needed (on platforms and through the ecosystem), and give what I call “the connected fitness”. Data today is more relevant the closer it is to its point of creation.
A digital environment enables human and artificial intelligence to combine in new, exciting ways to give innovation a completely different dimension.
The journey of discovery is the digital transformation one we all are undertaking.
Digital transformation and maturity must be understood through the lens of business focus, prioritising investments and defining success. It knows what outcomes you wish to achieve will help enable that transformation process, but this is not a “static” process; it is dynamic, highly interactive, and our ability to listen intently, interpret and learn, so we all evolve along the journey of digital discovery is vital.
The four interwoven catalysts to approaching innovation are our way to deploy and offset business contagion through new innovative approaches.
As I said in opening this post, these four do not stand alone, they make up the new (underlying) strength within the fabric of innovation management, hence my interwoven application.
The four interwoven catalysts are recognizing we are moving from complicated to complex; we have different collaboration tools to be more agile and adapt, we need to adopt a clearer mindset to working in innovation ecosystems, and we need to leverage the digital transformation we have been undertaking.
As I opened in my first post: “the fear of business contagion requires different innovation response.”
In summary
We are presently facing a profound set of changes in the conditions that businesses operate within the immediate years ahead, that of the fear of business contagion; these will need a different set of innovation shifts and responses to counter this and seize new opportunities.
In these two posts together, I have offered my view of the four interlocking contagion points and the different four interwoven catalysts to approaching innovation differently in this changing and highly challenging environment that is ahead of us.