Today, our innovation activity needs to transition through collaborating and co-creating, applying ecosystem thinking and platform designs for business. We increasingly recognize the future value and impact for businesses to grow, is through combining innovation, and external collaborations, and ensuring solutions are more sustainable.
We need to have a new open architecture for undergoing this transformation that is scalable and built, combining technology and tools, for speed and effectiveness.
Making Sustainability central to innovation capability building requires a new ecosystem-designed way that connects the parts.
Let me tell you my story of what I believe; it continues to evolve
Today’s challenge is to build the capacity, competencies and capabilities to be different, more resilient and resourceful. These need to be built upon a deep appreciation of what innovation can provide; the stimulus for creative solutions that have sustained lasting growth.
It is through continued open learning and collaborations we build, capabilities so they become stronger and resilient, and increasingly difficult for competitors to understand and imitate. Capabilities grow through use and application in increasingly intensified ways. Knowledge explored offers new knowledge gained. We need to continue to learn, simply in growing within ourselves and what we are inspired to work upon.
Ecosystem thinking is becoming central to our future as we open up to greater co-creation and collaboration opportunities, exploring broader open innovation initiatives. I believe co-creation spreads out risk and accelerates ideas into higher-value solutions through the diversity of thinking and contributions, by building out ideas and concepts within the connections and relationship network.
We gain by increasingly “looking outside our lens on the world,” that increased awareness and focus, which have that “combination and connecting-up effect.” This greater potential to give impact and value in returns is attuned far more to customer needs or market trends as more “eyes” are involved in finding gaps and searching for new solutions to fill them.
Building the capacity to innovate in more open, ecosystem ways can consciously strengthen the business pathway to a sustainable future. In a world of complex challenges to share with highly collaborative partners increases confidence in common needs and solutions, but this requires a different toolset and mentality to undertake.
It is through value creation that is increasingly built on a collaborative approach you look to achieve greater sustainability from the investment made and solutions offered to meet customers’ needs, so often motivated by spotting “first mover” advantage in the designs and solutions achieved.
Today the aim is to build distinctive capabilities, which draw out the characteristics of the organization, attract collaborators that are like-minded and driven by shared learning and find greater value in combining expertise, curiosity and knowledge. Working together through this diverse expertise it increasingly becomes harder to be replicated by others. It is through this sharing and integrating across the organization and with other like-minded collaborators we can find greater value and impact in the solutions offered.
We all are required to make transitions in our work
I am finding myself re-positioning to a “transition advocate” recognizing the combined effects of applying innovation, in ecosystems designs and thinking, looking to support clients for future sustainable solutions. has an increasing value and appreciation
Specifically, I am focusing on the needs and solutions within industrial and energy systems that have the potential to radically change our world.
Combining innovation, ecosystem and sustainability is a step change for many.
Here is how I see this emerging new way of support I am undertaking:
- Transformational insights need to be explored at the front end of our transitions, looking for those different edges and gaps that offer real new potential. Facing many unknowns, I support that front end by providing the “stimulus, fuel and insights” This opening position underpins my supportive advisory & mentoring services to clients.
- We cannot stay “static”, we need to continue to evolve. It is seeking out these “dynamics” that nurture an understanding of what is evolving, and what impact and growth opportunities this has for a business to explore and exploit. Often we need to search for the spots where ideas collide, my job is to help facilitate and stimulate these dynamic moments.
- We need to find increasing time to leverage interactions and conversations far more. We need a greater exchange environment and this is where ecosystem thinking and designs emerge. I look to be a catalyst and triggering point to build out the necessary critical conversations.
- I break my business out into dedicated focal topics looking for the “big transforming” points of impact or emerging interest. By applying my understanding and insights that are, in my mind, complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections, I am looking for growth potential that has value-adding impact and business model change.
- I provide insights, knowledge, fresh perspectives and outlooks through coaching, mentoring and advising to complement and add a different momentum.
- In my view, it is by taking the innovator’s perspective into the assessment of the need of a client’s transition, you provide a different understanding, to offer fresh insights coming from my ongoing research and investigations and diversity of experience.
What I firmly believe is the combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach has arrived, capitalizing on the value points of digitalisation combined with technology and human ingenuity that is searching for sustainability in all we deliver, for lasting value creation and business impact.
So I come back to my positioning “My primary role is advising and coaching within these areas of applying innovation, and ecosystem thinking to deliver sustainable solutions. The principal focuses is to support and build internal capacity, competencies, and capabilities to undertake any transformation journey with external collaborators for greater impact and value-creation“
Repositioning has been a journey of comprehension and recognition.
I run a specialized advisor and mentoring business called Agility Innovation; it has an intensity of focus on its client’s needs and always looking to contribute to a client’s own specific journey
It is in the past two-plus years of work I have been seeing this combining aspect of innovation, ecosystems in thinking and design for sustainability, to shift my focus even more firmly into this position.
Working individually I suppose this does have the real advantage of being small, nimble and, yes, agile (in my own way) to provide a different fresher perspective than many others. My connected model by investing in research, exploring constantly the evolving landscape and exchanging, writing and practising the advice given, keeps me totally engaged in what I do.
The end result is bringing together many strands of thinking, in a ‘living and dynamic’ newly designed innovation touch and value, that evolves constantly over time in ecosystem thinking and design.
The real value is becoming (more) adaptive in design and capability understanding, which is constantly looking to see what fits clients’ immediate and longer-term needs. Ones that build up a capacity that gives this flexible, versatile and malleable design; an evolving, living ecosystem that constantly adjusts to give a new sustaining future of seeking out in different places growth and future value creation impact.
I do enjoy my continued journey of discovery. My ongoing wish is to keep deploying this thinking in future client work on the combining of innovation, ecosystem thinking and design for providing lasting, sustainable solutions that offer value and impact.
If your organization is at the stage of needing to transition or you are simply curious to find out more, I am more than happy to exchange and share thoughts on how and where I might be able to contribute to your evolution.
**Initial thinking on this was initially outlined on my Ecosystems4innovating posting site in 2022.