Category: Building Innovation Capability

Getting back to the Future about Innovation

Paul Hobcraft and Jeffrey Phillips in conversations around 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 Continue reading “Getting back to the Future about Innovation”

Technology, inspiration and connected innovation

Visual from Siemens Digital Industries SPS Event November 2021 The recognizing of digital threads are connected to the new drivers.

I have been virtually attending the Siemens SPS Event this week taking technology, inspiration and connected innovation to a new level. Siemens does do these events well. I have been associated with Siemens for nearly four years in an external influencer group, #SIEx. This association provides me with a significant focus on what they are doing in a rapidly changing market for mobility, smart infrastructures for cities and grids, and their digital industries business.

The evolution (perhaps transformation) of Siemens in these last few years has been a significant one. Siemens has separated or spun-off companies, such as Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Energy, and reorganizing the remaining core businesses around these three core areas of mobility, smart infrastructure and digital industries.

The SPS Event Continue reading “Technology, inspiration and connected innovation”

We are falling badly behind on our invention in technology for the Energy Transition

No energy transition will be achieved without invention and innovation,  yet we are failing badly at present to fund research, development and deployment. We are losing the race to stop our planet warming as our innovative human endeavours are not at the level they should be, or we simply lack the “will” to make the changes we so desperately need to undergo to protect our planet.

My focus continues to get deeper and deeper into the Energy Transition from my innovation perspective, it is highly critical to our future.

I provide different perspectives and thinking, firstly on my innovating4energy.website for my offerings of service and a dedicated posting site for energy, innovating4energy.com  that provides a decent mix of thought leadership, news and awareness, for the Energy Transition.

Do visit these sites if you are curious and want to understand more about the Energy Transition we are all undergoing (really all of us in the World). Also, I can only encourage you to get in touch to see if we have areas of some collaboration opportunities.

So let me get back to what this post is about, providing critical reference points on technologies we need to improve and innovate.

One really rich reference site is the Internation Energy Agency, the IEA who provide some incredible, in-depth knowledge for “Shaping a secure and sustainable energy future for all.”

On their extensive site, they provide constant updates. This site is primarily a place I go back and constantly check when it comes to the progress on the technologies that need to be researched, developed and deployed.

Having the insights and their knowledge helps knowing if we are on track and going to be successful in transforming our Energy Systems. And make the dramatic contribution level for us to achieve the net-zero pathway we need to have in place by 2050.

Continue reading “We are falling badly behind on our invention in technology for the Energy Transition”

The essential five sense-making steps in any innovative transition

Today’s call is for more ‘search, scope, speed, stretch and scale’ irrespective of the challenge being worked upon. These are essential steps in any transformation work, in any innovation undertaken to take discovery through to commercialisation.

Applying the innovation lense to the energy transition requires a significant need for innovation in all it does to undertake the transformation needed. It needs to apply these five steps within any innovation thinking.

The five aspects of search, scope, speed, stretch and scale are highly relevant to the success of any innovation introduction.

So we need to think through the five essential needs within innovation when applying innovative thinking to the Energy Transition, a growing focal point of my work. Continue reading “The essential five sense-making steps in any innovative transition”

My multipliers for innovation at the Front End of Energy

Following my last post, “I aim to put more innovation into the front end of Energy“, I want to outline why I am focusing increasingly on this front end of the energy transition (FEE) within my innovation work.

For me, it is the ability to apply the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation that accelerates the understanding of where the potential growth and impact points of a new business opportunity can occur.

Today, we are all trying to piece together the Energy Transition.

The claim is that there are solutions abound to move us towards the Energy Transition we all need of clean, reliable, energy built upon renewables, but I honestly don’t share that current optimism; we actuaölly have an awfully long way to go in discovery, application and adoption. Continue reading “My multipliers for innovation at the Front End of Energy”

I aim to put more innovation into the front end of Energy

I see the front end of energy as the critical feeding-in point for the energy transition. So what does this mean exactly?

The front end of energy for me is the point of discovery and validation. It is the place I feel I can make the best contribution within the energy transition. The discovery is where the stimulus and catalyst point to take an idea to commercialization.  Continue reading “I aim to put more innovation into the front end of Energy”

The value of three horizon mapping for a Sustainability Journey.

Sustainability is one of the hottest topics in the business world at present. There is a hunt to find a new growth engine for a business and fundamentally show the pathway to a sustainable future.

A sustainable future that mobilizes action in searching for new economic thinking. One which incorporates a more circular model of management that builds a more purposeful recycling approach that has the objective to reduce the pressures on our use of precious minerals and resources and current consumption patterns.

Continue reading “The value of three horizon mapping for a Sustainability Journey.”

East meets West in understanding Innovation Cultural Orientation

East and West- the different meeting points in understanding

I lived for about fifteen years in Asia and the before, and in the in-between period, I travelled around the region a fair amount.

Today less so, but ask me where I want to go, and it is back to my city for twelve plus of those years, Singapore.

Some events today set me thinking that resulted in re-issuing this post, shortening it down a bit. Often we do not stop and think of the real differences culturally in how we want to0 engage and build relationships between the East and the West

Participating in business and engaging socially with Asia, watching how Asia has evolved has been a real experience that stays with you as something hugely valuable. It partly shapes your thinking and how you look at things going on in the world. Continue reading “East meets West in understanding Innovation Cultural Orientation”

The Cascading Innovation Effect.

Visual source; http://www.adaptivecircularcities.com/

We need to think about a choice-cascade integrative model for innovation. Often we fail to understand our role in contributing to innovation; we need a cascading effect. Here I want to explain my thinking behind this and provide the visual cascading steps I feel help us succeed in innovation.

For me, the “cascading effect” for innovation is “a sequence of events in which each produces the circumstances necessary for the initiation of the next”.

It presents an idea, a concept, a prototype, a piece of knowledge that provides the catalyst to be exploited in a broader community as the next step and so on. It cascades. It is where we fit understanding and fresh knowledge within the innovation web.

Getting innovation through any process of understanding is hard. Knowing what is required to generate innovation throughout an entire organization is even more so.

We need to deploy the cascading effect on innovation to support this supporting “effect.” Continue reading “The Cascading Innovation Effect.”

Our innovation era: creative destruction or destructive creation- which?

I keep coming back to the dilemma often faced in innovation- do we practice “creative destruction” or “destructive creation?

We are entering some perilous times in climate change and what this will mean in destruction in what we know, what we value and what we are used to.

I can’t imagine when Joseph Schumpeter outlined his groundbreaking efforts for explaining “creative destruction” he or anyone else could imagine this being flipped around to what we are facing more of today, that of “destructive creation”. We live in a throwaway society, and simply this is not sustainable.

Schumpeter saw “creative destruction” as the renewing, through innovation, society’s dynamics that would lead to higher economic development and welfare levels. At the same time, recognizing that this destroyed a few of the incumbents to benefit many more newcomers and increase value creation for broader society.

Today we are in a destructive creations world. Continue reading “Our innovation era: creative destruction or destructive creation- which?”