Category: Building Innovation Capability

The Case for Re-engineering Your Innovation Process (part one)

Real innovation is slowly grinding to a halt in many organizations. If the top leadership are not totally engaged in driving innovation it struggles, it grows in complexity; it gets bogged down in the internal politics of self-preservation and delivers only a ‘watered down’ end result, seen far too often to be a lasting sustaining solution, which it is plainly not.

When are we going to recognize that innovation, as we have it organized within many organizations today, is failing to deliver on its promise of providing the growth expected and so often talked about by the CEO?

Larger organizations, let’s face it,  are so caught up in the incremental trap. Risk mitigation rules at every level of the management of innovation, as it ‘churns’ slowly through the complex innovation process, built up over the years.

If an organization is totally happy with spending all its knowledge and internal resource on providing incremental products to its customers and gets away with it, then fair enough but does it have to be so? Continue reading “The Case for Re-engineering Your Innovation Process (part one)”

Establish a different global thinking for your innovation.

When you read through a paper on transformative innovation by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) at www.executiveboard.com that offers in its conclusion: “Innovation teams have been reorganized, de-layered, downsized, and (increasingly) dispersed, weakening the underlying structure of many companies ’innovation efforts” you do stop and reflect.

Then you read in one of the latest McKinsey Quarterly’s articles about “the global company’s challenge” (http://tinyurl.com/8yvwsrv) suggesting many issues are needed to be faced within large global organizations, you get even more of a confirmation that all is not well for innovation.

Innovation’s future seems to need some wholesale changes to take place and those innovation leaders are facing multiple dilemmas and choices that can’t be ignored for much longer.

The issue is “are the leaders of these organizations up to the challenges?” Continue reading “Establish a different global thinking for your innovation.”

Hacking away in the undergrowth, moving towards innovation

So you have your trusty machete, sharp, well-balanced and honed to cut through all the undergrowth that presently ‘pins you in’ and move towards the innovation land.

You plan to beat a path to the promised land where you have heard it is full of milk and honey from the occasional traveller that was passing through and telling you wonderful stories.

So you begin: you chop, you clear, your slash and you burn. At the end of the day you feel proud of what you have cleared, you put your machete away for another day. Tomorrow you will again attack the undergrowth that holds you back from innovation, the promised land.

Sadly when you awake in the morning, you wake up with an aching back, tired muscles and a realization that for all your hard work, you seem to have made such little progress.

You look around and you feel a little inadequate with all that hard work you had thought you had put in, yet it seems so little in achievement.

You certainly spent a lot of energy but seemingly for such a little return or so it seems, one little cleared patch still in the same forest you have lived in for years.

You face a critical decision.

Do I go on, with yet another day, upon seemingly day of equally hard work, of back-breaking endeavour in the belief that this ‘promised land’ is going to be worth all this effort, or do I return to the present existence that has got me to this point so far? Continue reading “Hacking away in the undergrowth, moving towards innovation”

Interpreting the Strategic Discussion for Innovation

The struggle for innovation alignment is one of those real challenging issues that are seemingly very hard to resolve, or so it seems.

I’m not setting out a comprehensive solution here, well not in this blog, of the suggested ways to address this strategic/innovation alignment issue, as that is far more complex.

All I will offer at this point of time is this alignment concern is becoming increasingly top of my mind.

Constructing an innovative conversation framework

What I am offering here is an innovation conversation framework, on how we can approach different strategic value propositions, and where we might need to debate these across the organization, as the points of impact so we can make this move towards a higher degree of innovation alignment. Continue reading “Interpreting the Strategic Discussion for Innovation”

The essential innovation vision

In a recent leadership study on innovation by Capgemini Consulting, one of the study’s top-line concerns was the lack of a well-articulated innovation strategy, and then beyond this, a lack of organizational understanding of the linkages required.

It is amazing how many organizations lack a clear innovation vision and an explicit set of statements from the Chief Executive or their designated C-Level Officer on innovation.

One great visual paints a thousand words
This visual I came across some years back, and for me, it is outstanding in providing the feedback loops that go into developing the right innovation vision.

To get to a definitive endpoint of having an innovation vision you are faced with some complex challenges. These are well shown here. Continue reading “The essential innovation vision”

The four framing technique for critical innovation questions

Often we do get a little muddled on our framing assessments for any innovation activity we are considering, and we then often don’t ask the appropriate questions at the right time.

I think there is a neat four-box approach to this which hopefully you might see has value to your rating and judgements of the innovation opportunity.
The four framing criteria

  •        Formulation Principles
  •        Formulation Risks
  •        Execution Principles
  •        Execution Risks

So the need is to ask critical questions in given boxes of enquiry. Continue reading “The four framing technique for critical innovation questions”

Putting the “R” into Innovation to shed legacy

Shellfish poisoning, have you ever suffered from it? There is rule that when there is not a “R” in the month you should be more careful on eating clams, oysters, mussels or scallops. Today with more commercial harvesting that risk or rule has been greatly reduced.

I gather in the months of May, June, July and August- the northern hemospheres (usually) warmer months- there is higher potential where algal blooms and also in European climate, some shellfish are less palatable as oysters, for example, are spawning at this time. This raises the risk that can spread toxins and lead to a possible poisoning.

Now you might be wondering what this has got to do with innovation? Well, I’m off to Singapore for ten days in early May and I certainly will be ‘hitting’ the shellfish buffet but really innovation is top of my agenda for this visit and one thing that I will remind people about is to focus on the “R” in innovation.

What do I mean by focusing on the “R” in innovation? Continue reading “Putting the “R” into Innovation to shed legacy”

Twenty critical questions on innovation to be resolved for succeeding

Some time back I compiled a list of those critical areas that I felt need addressing for innovation to have a chance of success. Going through them again today and in light of different insights picked up on the way, I added more of a descriptor to each.

I certainly think these reflect the struggles within innovation that need working upon constantly, so it has a better chance to succeed.

This revised thinking I feel has upgraded my own focal points as areas I will be exploring even further in my work in the period ahead.

What do you think? Do you think the list is missing something? Continue reading “Twenty critical questions on innovation to be resolved for succeeding”

The Innovation Rubik Cube Approach

I’m sure we have all come across the Rubik Cube, a 3-D mechanical puzzle, invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik as one of the world’s best-selling toys.

The classic cube has six faces covered by nine stickers each offering a solid colour (white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow). The cube has a pivot mechanism enabling each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours.

For the puzzle to be solved you must achieve that each face is to be made up of one consistent colour.

It was suggested the cube was originally built to aid students to understand 3D objects but actually Rubik’s actual purpose was solving the structural problems of the parts moving independently without the entire mechanism falling apart.

Innovation is equally a puzzle with moveable parts Continue reading “The Innovation Rubik Cube Approach”

A No Better Moment

When you have some sun on your back after a long period of those winter months, you just always begin to feel life is so much better going forward.

Life seems to reawaken within. I often wish we could capture the ‘sense’ of spring and what it promises to bring from this change of season. Those of us who witness the change of seasons are so lucky.

I’ve also been reminded recently about the phrase offered by a number of leaders to explain a positive encouraging shift after a tough time, it goes like this: “we do see some green shoots that are offering some early signs of growth and recovery.”

Spring captures that growth moment. It is often talking to us of renewal. Innovation needs that capturing opportunity as well.

Freezing the moment to listen Continue reading “A No Better Moment”