Category: Fresh thinking

For whom the bell tolls

I felt the heavy sound of the bells tolling away coming through two articles I have been reading and it reminded me of For Whom the Bell Tolls a famous novel by Ernest Hemingway.

I read two short articles over this weekend, one was entitled “Avoiding Innovation’s Terrible Toll” written by Spencer E Ante, published in the Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/zJ9IIT ) and the other by Jeffrey Phillips “When executives talk about innovation, watch out” in his innovate on purpose blog here (http://bit.ly/wpaqWu)

The first was the sad demises of Kodak
If you have not seen the day of Revolution in a small town where all know all in the town and always have known all, you have seen nothing.- For Whom the

Bell Tolls
Rochester may not be the ideal place to live, the headquarters for Kodak but it was the place where thousands of people earned their living by being associated with Kodak. They worked there, they supported it in the community, and they mostly benefitted from it.

What saddens me of course is that they at Kodak did not have that ability to react to such dramatic changes within their industry. Continue reading “For whom the bell tolls”

Re-ordering the organization’s genetic code for innovation.

As we enter 2012, what really disappoints me is that we still have not cracked the innovation DNA code sufficiently to embed this within the organization’s genetic principles, structures or systems for completing an everyday innovating business. Why is that?

I see no reason why innovation cannot be a clear (integrated) management discipline, shared, taught and fully aligned with an organization’s strategic intent and execution.

It needs to have a set of molecules that carry the ‘genetic’ innovation information in logical and a comprehensive arrangement, of its separate elements. These need to be strung together like all living cells by a set of clear rules.

The code order defines the sequence, the “alphabet” of the organization’s ability to innovate. Well, that is how it should look if we want to allow innovation to enter the present DNA of an organization. Innovation cannot sit outside or be run in parallel but it needs to form part of the essential organizational code.

I am convinced innovation can be implicitly understood but I still feel there is an awful lot of conflicting advice being offered that must leave many confused. Let me add to the confusion! Continue reading “Re-ordering the organization’s genetic code for innovation.”

A Christmas Story looking out on Innovation

Jim turned from staring through his microscope, rubbing his eyes, and looking out the window. It was dark and the snow was really coming down.

The lamppost had turned that funny yellow colour, as more and more snow was falling in the car park and building those little domes of snow on top of everything.

It was the Friday before Christmas, the last day in the office for three days.

Jim was looking forward to getting home tonight, so he could share some time with the family after having been on a frantic trip to four different cities, on three continents, in seven days, to meet with his different team members.

This was quickly put together to coordinate the project they were all working upon, compare notes, and set some goals for the coming weeks. Continue reading “A Christmas Story looking out on Innovation”

My one word is ingenuity for 2012

Some weeks go better than others; I’m sure we all have found that and I can say that this last week has been a good one for me as my focus become fixed on where ingenuity fits within the innovation thinking.

I think my weeks are getting better the more I read and explore other peoples thinking or find that ‘precious’ time to have a good conversation or two- they simply spark and strengthen my identification with critical points for innovation and its need.

This week I was talking to Jeffrey Phillips in one of our regular exchanges and he was asking me if I took some time out, straight after Christmas, to reflect on the past year and also begin to sketch out some of the thinking for next year.

I love mind maps to capture these evaluations but I also like to ‘squirrel’ away lots of insights into a folder (scraps of paper, articles, insights, references and visuals) that sits on my desk, for one of those moments I need reminding or prompting me to get back on track.

That folder can stay unopened for weeks but it is a constant ‘drop box’ for those reminders.

Unrelated connectors often occur for gaining new clarity.
 Continue reading “My one word is ingenuity for 2012”

Multiple Use of the Business Model Canvas

Recently I was having a ‘conversation’ with Alexander Osterwalder concerning the limited adoption of the Business Model Canvas within large organizations. I was asking him if he agreed and if he had any thoughts on this.

Now if you know Alex, he is either jetting off to somewhere in the world to keep spreading his Business Model gospel, or about to get immersed in his next idea associated with it, so these conversations are grabbing him through twitter or short email exchanges.

Short and sweet
”Excellent! One thing I’ve seen: once the Canvas is in an org it spreads organically, virally without my intervention… interesting research topic!”

Those of you in the business world that have either been hiding under a rock recently or obviously as it seems, in a number of larger organizations, the Business model canvas comes from the pioneering work Alex did for his PhD.

This was published not just in his thesis but in a bestselling book, as lead author, called ‘Business Model Generation” http://amzn.to/uY9U4b. Also take a look at his site : http://bit.ly/m4DNC1

The books claim of “You’re holding a handbook for visionaries, game changers and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models, and design tomorrow’s enterprise” on the cover, it sets itself up for the imaginative person striving to alter the status quo within their business. Continue reading “Multiple Use of the Business Model Canvas”

The Innovating Power of Eight Words

Lately eight words have come up more often than not as the new imperative for business, not just for the start up but the more established business to measure themselves against.

We live in ‘volatile’ times and they reflect what we have to constantly remind ourselves to do and they just are keeping me buzzing at present.

These are: Adapt, Investigate, Agility, Speed, Scale, Impact, Experiment, and Execute.

Here is my take on the power of these eight words that need to be in our innovating lexicon Continue reading “The Innovating Power of Eight Words”

Tacit Knowledge- Rich in its Innovation Implications.

Imagine if we could understood tacit knowledge better—what it was, how we can set about to capture it and organise it effectively, once acquired how it can be built upon even further.

How can we learn to recognize it more actively as as essential part of our lives, when to trust it, how to teach it to others, how to share what it has offered to us, as individuals, to others.

Then imagine what it could provide us for this knowledge to be leveraged within any broader community use, so it is knowingly valued by others as something they can gain from, not as we often do, simply reject it as not within ‘our’ experience.

That could be pretty valuable. It could give us a deeper understanding and empower us to function better in many sorts of situations. Then surely we must search for understanding this more and what it means, as in this case, for relating it to innovation.

Let’s start off by stating tacit knowledge is inherently inefficient, so is good innovation; it is messy, often unstructured. Why do we continue to not give this TK sufficient ‘head space’ in our thinking? I

s this because it is not tangible, that softer aspect that we reject as we don’t have time for it or simply we don’t ‘trust’ it like those ‘hard’ quantifiable measuring points? Continue reading “Tacit Knowledge- Rich in its Innovation Implications.”

What’s hot and what not in Innovation currently?

So what is hot, what is not in innovation at present? Any thoughts?
What do we need to remind ourselves about as we go about our ‘daily’ innovation business?

Some of my top of the mind quick thoughts:

  • Innovation is not the preserve of the (selected) few but the domain of the community. Driving this message home yields a real upsurge of new, often exciting activities that you would have missed out upon without engaging the broader community.
  • This absolute growing need to move on from the reliance of symbolic projects to justify innovations’ existence. Stop dipping your toe in the water, just jump in and get wet. Get everyone involved and want to contribute.

Continue reading “What’s hot and what not in Innovation currently?”

Plan your innovation resolutions early for 2012

For many October is the peak month for bringing together their strategic and operating plans for 2012. Meetings get frantic, issues get raised, and plans get drawn up, rejected and redrawn. The period becomes a fever pitch.

Where does innovation figure within this? In new products, new services and plenty of noble entreaties to adding to the growth I am sure. One aspect you might want to consider within all this activity and planning is to develop a resolution list of issues that need resolving.

I mean really, finally, actually resolving in 2012, to allow innovation to have a greater ‘hold’ on future thinking. Achieving a consensus, a clear focus, and a corporate commitment is what strategic plans are about so draw up your list of innovation resolutions needed to be resolved in 2012 and commit to them within the plans. Be upfront and bold.

Make sure you choose ‘soft’ as well as ‘hard’ innovation resolutions within any mix

One thing I would recommend when you draw up your list. Most corporate executives find the ‘softer’ aspects of innovation harder to work through.

There is this certain ‘hard wiring’ that everything has to be clear, measurable and tucked away  in the accounts or ‘ticked off’ in each person’s mind.

Softer aspects of innovation often don’t conform to this orderly view of the world and it is addressing this inconsistency ‘head-on’ has great value. Continue reading “Plan your innovation resolutions early for 2012”

Understanding innovation – the W L Gore way.

Once in a while, you have to stop and reflect. Why do I keep banging away at innovation, along with countless others?

Often I feel we are preaching to the converted, or the ones forced to listen just in case they miss something and are suddenly banished to hell, a non-innovating organization.

A place where no one will ever listen to them and this would have been the message to free the shackles and bring them back to innovation salvation.

So here I am standing in the innovation pulpit giving the weekly sermon on innovation beliefs and principles, offering this weekly reading on the (next) ten steps to avoid in that particular sin which we all know you are certainly committing!

Sometimes at the end of the sermon (or article), someone comes up and leaves an offering (comment) that sustains us a little more during the week, as we go about our business, in my case consulting, advising and researching on innovation.

What a hard life we seemingly lead!

So it is one of those rare occasions you recall something truly inspirational and this is what happened to me in going back to one of the best examples of true innovation practised and preached, the “W L Gore way”
Continue reading “Understanding innovation – the W L Gore way.”