Building Innovation Capability

Why Are We Losing to Companies That Aren’t Even Better Than Us?

by

This is a a different kind of piece than usually runs here. Less explainer, more mirror — one built that is being felt perhaps by you before it needs an explanation, it needs a recognition. More will follow, in the same register.

There’s a particular kind of unease that doesn’t show up in the quarterly numbers, at least not yet. It shows up first as a feeling: that the ground you’re competing on has quietly shifted, and nobody sent the memo.

You know your position should hold. You’re the established name. The safer choice, the proven track record, the relationships built over years. In any ordinary contest, that counts for something — often it counts for everything, because most buyers, most partners, most boards default to the name they already trust. Choosing the unknown over the known is supposed to be the harder decision, not the easier one.

Read more

The O & V Lens within the IIBE approach to Ecosystems

by
The Hidden Architecture of Ecosystems Revealed

The O&V Lens: What Optionality and Volatility Reveal That Existing Conventional Assessment Cannot Reach

An ecosystem diagnostic instrument within the IIBE framework — explained and why the gap between two scores is more revealing than either score alone

Most assessment tools read backwards.

Financial reporting is mostly reading the past. Results. Margin. Order intake. Return on capital.

All of it measuring how well an organisation executed the model it already chose. All of it useful. And none of it designed to ask the question that matters most at a strategic inflection point: what is the current architecture still capable of becoming — and what is it exposed to, hedged or not, on the way there?

That is a different question from any that conventional assessment asks. It does not appear in a quarterly results presentation. It does not show up in a Capital Markets Day deck or an analyst model. It sits in the gap between what an organisation says it  is building and what its investment posture is actually funding — and it surfaces in what the architecture is preserving or foreclosing before the consequences become visible in reported numbers.

The Optionality and Volatility lens — the O&V lens within the IIBE framework — was developed to read precisely that gap. Not to replace existing assessment tools, which do what they are designed to do well, but to reach what they are structurally not designed to reach.

Read more

The Compelling Case to Integrated Innovation and Business Ecosystems

by
Designing Innovation Ecosystems as Integrated Business Ecosystems

I continue to read one report after another concerning the latest state of innovation play. These seem always to be on a repeat button and this does frustrate me. It is like a record stuck at the end unable to be switched off, constantly repeating hopefully there will be some magic intervention. With a record at the end you simple switch it off or lift the “needle” to solve the problem. Let’s do that with simply “innovation”.

Why can’t we move on from talking “just” innovation. We should be highly focused on innovation ecosystems and where they fit with integrated, interconnected business ecosystems. We need to make the connection for todays world.

So let me offer up the compelling case of putting that tired old record about innovation not working finally away and redirecting you to the equivalent of spotify as a Ecosystem solution. Just a typical example- the “excitement” of the 29th PwC Global CEO Survey stating only 50% view innovation as a critical component of their overall business strategy. Well of course innovation is dead, it is seen through the wrong lens.

Read more

Recognizing the differences from moving from Value Creation to Value Co-Creation

by
Moving towards Value Co-creation

Value creation is what any business aspires too deliver. Simply put, a company designs, produces and delivers a product and service to a customer and the value is embedded within that offering.

Operating as a single company, most of the time the customer is seen as a passive recipient and the company’s goal is to maximize its own profit by controlling as much of the supply chain as possible. It is seen as a linear model of Suppliers > Company > Customer.

Value Co-creation brings increasingly levels of complexity with the real differences of moving from (within) the boundaries of a single enterprise.

It is a shift from firm-centric, transactional model (the value creation) to a network-based, collaborative model (value co-creation). that is fundamentally an interconnected business ecosystem.

This move beyond a single enterprise’s boundaries unlocks significant benefits and new ways of generating value that is simply not possible in a traditional, linear value chain.

The differences are recognizing a paradigm shift.

Read more

Why Dynamic Ecosystems become central to Industrial Metaverse Understanding

by
The Story of Dynamic Ecosystems enhances the Industrial Metaverse

In the past week I have been exploring the impact of Ecosystem thinking and design on the Industrial Metaverse. I am working towards a white paper and provided a “teaser” post “Are we holding the Industrial Metaverse back, is our organizing structure right?” earlier this week.

This post raises one of the important issues relating to the Industrial Metaverse highlighting a core problem of fragmentation due to wrong organizing structure. Ecosystem approaches solve that.

Today’s Industrial Metaverse efforts, while innovative, often resemble a patchwork quilt rather than a seamlessly integrated fabric that can lead to those high stakes of disconnect. For me, the current organizing structures (or dedicated focus on them) are insufficient to gain the optimum out of the Industrial Metaverse. The immense promise of the Industrial Metaverse, with its “always-on, vested IP, and mission-critical operations,” demands a different approach

Read more

Are we holding the Industrial Metaverse back, is our organizing structure right?

by
Credit Adobe. Industrial Metaverse & Ecosystem Thinking

As we look at the delivery of the Industrial Metaverse, it is inherently complex, has escalating stakes involved, and the current fragmentation underscore why , in my opinion, ecosystem thinking is not merely an aspirational advantage, but the essential recognizing enabler for the Industrial Metaverse’s successful evolution and long-term viability.

In essence, the Industrial Metaverse is the next evolution of Industry 4.0, moving beyond mere digitalization to create a truly interconnected, intelligent, and interactive digital realm that fundamentally transforms how industries operate, innovate, and create value.

The Industrial Metaverse promises to deliver but will it?

Read more

Principles for Bridging Traditional to Ecosystem Thinking

by
Feeling trapped, break out of the box with Innovation Business Ecosystems

I have been investing a growing amount of time in building my understanding of Business Ecosystems and from one of my AI chats I really do get some wonderful “nuggets” of thinking.

It does continue to amaze me within a stream of exchanges or prompts how you are sparked into another strand of thinking that continues to build your understanding or simplify a part that can be complicated to explain.

One of these “popped up” while I was trying to relate Natural Ecosystems with Business Ecosystems and I asked a follow on a prompt around mind shifts “What are the principles of the mind shift to bring structure to recognizing different changes in thinking from existing business thinking to make the bridge into fresh thinking needed for Business Ecosystem thinking.”

I simply loved this reply as so clear and defined for changing thinking.

Eight principles for bridging traditional thinking into Ecosystem thinking

Read more

Dynamic Ecosystems: The Adaptive Core of Business

by
The Story of Dynamic Ecosystems- the adaptive core

I am offering a different perspective here, one that explores dynamic ecosystems as a transformative organizational model. Sit back and listen.

I asked Google Notebook LM to look at one of my articles: “A fresh perspective of Dynamic Ecosystems”.

Expanding on the idea of Dynamic Ecosystems as the decision-making and adaptability core of business ecosystems involves positioning them as both the “intelligence layer” and the “adaptive engine” that powers business agility, resilience, and growth. This approach redefines their role from a passive network to a responsive, intelligence-driven hub that continuously senses, learns, and guides the ecosystem.

Let them tell the Dynamic Ecosystem story

Read more

Recognizing Dynamics Ecosystems are the core to Innovation change

by
Recognizing Dynamic Ecosystems are at the core of Innovation Business Ecosystems

The strategic shift to dynamic ecosystems as a decision-making core for innovation and business ecosystems reflects a paradigm shift towards intelligent, real-time responsiveness.

This approach emphasizes not only operational flexibility but also strategic agility, enabling businesses to anticipate and lead rather than merely respond to change.

So what is special or radical in making Dynamic Ecosystems central?

We live in a world that is highly dynamic, it shifts and alters constantly. We have pursued Innovation in linear ways and these always lag. Technology has provided us to escape from the past and respond on a constant ‘real-time’ basis.

Read more

Lets change the old record and sound on innovation

by
The old record and sound of Innovation certainly needs changing.

Recently I have been reading about how innovation management needs to get back to basics or how it needs to be given a fresh lick of paint in professional certification, revised and updated university training programs or short courses.

For twenty years, since I have been working in the innovation space, we have constantly complained about so many different aspects of innovation failure and offered solutions to why innovation management still seemingly fails to deliver on its promise to build new growth inside our organizations. Offering innovation advice is a big industry to consult and academically, to teach in.

We keep innovation management locked into a 20th-century paradigm and I believe we must break the “chains” and make a significant shift in our innovation thinking, into innovation and business ecosystems

Read more