Innovation has entered its death spiral as many have known it.
I mean it, innovation is starved, bleeding from a lack of resources, finances and top leadership resolve. It is fighting nothing more than rearguard defense.
Forget linear processes, forget one company inventions, forget the reliance of all the internal parts of the organization to support you, especially if you are an outlier, separated from the core of the business, sitting in some remote part of the world searching for inspiration, you are operating in a time capsule of old innovation practices.
Innovation has changed, it is changing remarkably fast for some well beyond today’s general acceptance and understanding, and those “enlightened” are reaping the benefits of approaching innovation differently, working hard on connecting it all up and capturing the dynamics of the interactions, exchanges and data recognition.
Those (really) reluctant to change, not working on having the business case ready for radically making any change (in process, structure, reliance) is a huge mistake. The fear within that organizations is the hierarchy might not want to hear of the need to write off many of the current assets invested in innovation, especially in these leaner times. Yet we must make the case for innovation to change before it is to late
So what are many of those changing conditions in innovation practice?
+the acceleration into even broader, highly connected open innovation
+the shifts of how to apply agile methodologies with AI being leveraged
+ embrace of data-driven decision-making comfort and execution
+endorsement and leveraging of digital technologies
+fostering cross-agency collaborations
+empowering citizen to participate and see the value and return for this
+greater investment in different skills of the human capital deployed
+focus on achieving real solutions that provide value for sustainability and social well-being that add value not dilute it
+ethical considerations and responsible practices become hard-baked and clearer demonstrated in outcomes that give return, not face value
+international and global collaborations
+the seen vibrancy and value in the network effect
+working on platforms that connect all the parts fully up
I could go on but we do need to move towards innovation ecosystems in thinking and design. We need to bring AI into parts of the innovation thinking and processes as AI is the potential game-changer it is when aligned with technology as our capturing and accelerator platform that, we humans, engineer and transform and translate.
We simply MUST attract the leadership of our organizations with a revised, comprehensive value proposition of how, why , what and where innovation needs to “sit” and be central in its value, impact and contribution. Lets start by defining innovation ecosystems.
Innovation needs to come in from the cold for so many organizations otherwise it falls further down the attention list that is required to clamor for leadership attention. It needs to renew to make it central to change. It needs to re-find the pioneering excitement and future frontier needs that organizations require for future growth, impact, resilience and sustainability.