Fresh thinking | Innovating in the Age of Ecosystems

The State of Innovation Management in 2015 Just Released

As we come closer to the year-end it’s good to look back, and make some dedicated time to take ‘stock’, in this case, on innovation’s progress.

In a just-released “The State of Innovation Management in 2015” that I have authored and kindly provided by HYPE for free, I believe you will find something of interest that you missed during a busy year, coming to a close.

I certainly hope you will find time to go through it.

You’ll gain a valuable and quick insight into critical aspects that innovation managers and CINOs should be aware of. It is in an easy format of thirty-plus pages and offers a reference resource that builds a solid understanding of innovation today regarding relevant factors that will stimulate and support your innovation activity.
http://i.hypeinnovation.com/the-state-of-innovation-2015-report

The Surge of innovation reports in 2015
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Sinking the unthinkable

Innovation and the Titanic The days of simply having ideas moving through a pipeline and coming out the other end as finished product and services seems part of our great past.

I believe Innovation is becoming overwhelmed by all the changes we are applying into innovation activity and its management.

I would say the IM system is under even greater strain from the shifts coming from the multiple applications of technology, new approaches to design and modelling as well as all the necessary engagement and touchpoints.

Yet we are still expecting this deluge of change occurring to happily move our innovations through that past established, often manual processes, we have presently in place. I think not. We are deluding ourselves, that all is well.
There are such changes occurring.
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Risk and Innovation frustrate me

I have been really struggling in the past few weeks.

Partly a niggling health issue finally got resolved with a ‘delightful’ week in the hospital, a couple of operations later, with a reasonably speedy recovery now thankfully underway.

The plan of course was for me to really use this confinement period as one of those opportunities to catch up on an awful lot of reading around innovation, planning out some areas to focus upon in the coming months and year ahead.

My logic was at the time, well this is similar to a long train journey or flight, you use this time and climb into a number of areas that have been quietly ‘festering’ away in the back of my mind, sitting on my desk or tucked away in my computer.
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Building the new dynamics into our capacity to innovate

Do we know what are the dependencies and requirements for building and sustaining your organizations innovation success?

How do you sustain innovation, is it more through the structuring of everyday work, by creating a particular set of social rules and resources that foster specific routines? Or something different?

We work really hard at maintaining these re-occurring processes, never willing to extend and push them in different and new ways. We have actually become very static in our approaches and learning, we are not learning anew.

We often simply end up with incremental innovation that might just ‘nudge’ the growth needle but does little more than sustain us in the present and can be ‘contained’ in a tidy process that makes many, including the ‘bean counters,’ very happy until someone changes the game.

Then we need to think differently but this is usually far too late.. As demand is more volatile today we need to experiment, explore, learn and adjust. What becomes more important is the ‘work to be done, and how we go about tackling this and not the work done where we often simply ‘default too. Surprisingly Adam Smith identified this important difference in work way back in 1776.
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We are transcending traditional industry and product boundaries

It seems this is the era of the digitally savvy entrepreneur.

With the dizzy array of choices, combined with technical prowess and ‘plugging’ these into ‘seen’ customer needs.

These are setting about disrupting existing businesses and establishing new ones, on an ever-increasing global scale.

So what and how is the incumbent meant to react if it is an existing market?

What should they do when they realize the traditional markets where they have safely operated for years has suddenly been overtaken by a new market creation, one that has gone outside old borders in industry and product.

Markets that are in the hands of the technically savvy entrepreneur are to be sliced, diced and recombined, are providing totally disruptive approaches to existing business models.

If they get the factors right, hit the needs of customers in their design, understanding, agility in responding to learning and adapting, ability to be fast to market and capable of scaling up really fast, then they transform spaces, leaving the established players desperately struggling to find answers and catch up.

The whole world of business is changing radically.
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Innovators – are you thinking about Ecosystems?

Thinking about ecosystems certainly allows us to go out of our normal scope of internally generating new products.

It opens up a host of possibilities, that can add significantly to a new service design, new capabilities and solving more complex problems.

In opening up to managing within ecosystems, you begin to see your ability to contribute and tackle societal problems within a collaborative system.

You can see new opportunities that can allow you to enter new markets that would have been impossible as an individual organization.

You begin to see the power, scale and strength of having the collective collaborative ability to extend beyond more traditional thinking design. You go beyond the utilization of leveraging existing infrastructure, building on others’ specializations and leveraging through technology powerful new concepts to tackle increasingly complex innovation design.
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The Compelling Value of the 3H for Innovation Management

The Value of the Three Horizons of Seeing Beyond

Following on from my suggested Common Language approach to the Three Horizons, I would like to outline here its significant value, within any innovation management thinking.

Clarifying our options requires multiple thinking horizons – seeing beyond for all possibilities by listening to the different voices

For me, the three horizons have great value to bring together and map all the different thinking and possible innovation options over changing horizons.

You can frame innovation in alternative ways by using this approach. Innovation has multiple evolution points and working with this framework allows you to significantly improve all of your innovation contributions.

It goes well beyond the present value of ‘just’ fitting your existing innovation portfolio and directional management into a typical one-dimensional view of just working in the present.
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Most Innovation is Becoming Business Model Innovation

As we consider the interplay between innovation, business models and change, it becomes clear that many companies have a definition of innovation that’s far too narrow.

Increasingly we need to rethink the scope, depth and breadth of innovation possibilities, as well as the secondary implications of innovation.

Ignoring this broader definition of innovation means we can never achieve all of the possible benefits innovation has in store.

We believe ignoring the breadth and depth of innovation can also allow competitors and new entrants to disrupt your position or industry.

Fortunately, some of these definitions have been created for us.

Our responsibility is to understand the definitions and their implications, not stay constrained but seek and explore the broader options this can provide.

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The Interplay in 3 Essential Change Points for Innovation

There is always a certain impact that innovation brings, it should change habits, alter perceptions, improve our lives or alter the way we work and think.

Each change brought about by innovation does have different impact effects upon three important market constituents: customers, the markets and the industries themselves but also and often totally under-appreciated, internally on the innovator driving the change.

We need to understand the broader scope of our innovation

Until we understand the scope and impact of innovation we can’t fully grasp the nature and amount of change that innovation can unleash. It can alter businesses, shift markets and challenge customers to move away from their existing thinking into adopt this new product or service.
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The Interplay Surrounding Innovation

Innovation should be the primary source of real change. Often when exciting new innovations occur they have the power to significantly change our habits, and choice of product, preferences and ways we set about our daily lives.

Yet why is it we often ignore the power of change when we design innovation?

We often fail to fully appreciate the changes that are occurring from the innovation we produce, it often seems an afterthought, there is this lead and lag effect and needs, firstly recognition and then addressing in how we manage innovation going forward.

In a recent series introduced initially and given a feature of the week prime spot on www.innovationexcellence.com on June 7, 2015, we discussed the importance of the emerging interplays.

This series will be re-produced here as it is an important concept to consider all the aspects within any innovation interplay.

Category: Fresh thinking