gaining innovation momentum | Paul4innovating Innovation Views

When to Act? Davos is Back!

Keeping our global leaders safe, behind the barbed wire of Davos.

So the annual meeting in Davos is currently taking place. Those of us who are peering through the barbed wire trying to understand and pick up on current thinking by many of our global leaders are scratching our heads, wondering

We hope we can deepen our understanding of these trends, wanting Global leaders to turn their talking into real action and also be ready with applicable supporting solutions or at least readying ourselves for these possible changes. Our leaders do need help.

Listening and watching you do question who is actually tuned-in to the current trends or not. Oh yes, Davos is back full of conflicting signals and potential promises.

PwC have produced their annual global CEO survey (download here) and lead with this as the suggested conclusion from interviewing 1,344 CEO’s across 68 countries:

“The global economic recovery continues to be fragile, but with immediate pressures easing. CEO’s are feeling more optimistic and gradually switching from survival mode to growth mode.

As the latest PwC Annual Global CEO Survey shows, the changes they’re making within their organisations now have less to do with sheltering from economic headwinds and more to do with preparing for the future”

So how are CEO’s responding?

Continue reading “When to Act? Davos is Back!”

Innovation is like a tropical rainforest constantly needing attention

I describe innovation as very much like a tropical rainforest, needing constant fresh attention, similar in its management,

There is my need to cut down certain trees, clear away a lot of the floor covering to allow the sunlight in and permit those ‘selected innovation trees’ to be allowed to grow stronger.

We all have those times where we need to choose, to pursue clearer pathways we believe are better for us. To be more selective in what we do, to be more focused and hopefully achieve a better, lasting result that hopefully offers a more satisfying set of outcomes, to both clients and to ourselves.

Within this comparison I am presently making of innovation being like a forest, I really began to see so much more of a connection in what is happening around innovation that it can be compared to understanding a tropical rainforest. There are many comparisons, let me outline some of these here.

The ecosystem within the rainforest is also needed for innovation to work effectively Continue reading “Innovation is like a tropical rainforest constantly needing attention”

Struggling with the sums of our capital

Organizations have been focused for far too long on the importance of financial capital but forget it is the sum of all their capitals that really counts.

The combined capitals determine and drive organizations’ destinies.

We are caught in a constant focus upon our achieving a return on our (financial) capital as our measuring criteria. Organizations strive for improving their ROCE, RONA, IRR, EVA and a host of other financial measures.

As Clayton Christensen has been arguing the agenda of organizations begins and ends with the “search for numbers”. I think there is a time for changing this, we need to search for the knowledge that makes-up eventually the numbers.

There has been a distant voice for some time putting forward the need to appreciate and value the other capitals sitting within organizations.

Much of the discussions have been housed under the term “intellectual capital” which denotes the sum of knowledge made up and contributed by our human assets, our organizational structures and our relationships that are developed.

These are the ‘capitals’ that transform into economic value through organization action. It is the financial capital that simply finances this.

Continue reading “Struggling with the sums of our capital”

Agility and Innovation in an Increasingly Open World

Can we reset the clock? Or do we look afresh? How can we plug innovation back in? How does Agility figure in this? Knowing the answer to evolve innovation in an increasingly open world is never easy.

Can you drawdown and still rely selected parts from the past or do you need to step back and see emerging patterns in different ways? Can you make new connections but recognise the value of past learning but combine these differently? I think yes.

I’ve been taking some time out of the daily innovation business to look towards where I’d like my future direction for innovation to head. These are early days and as I learn, I sure I’ll pivot to emerging market needs within the innovation advisory market place.

I feel there are nine primary components that are making up my shift in my innovation focus for my future focal points. These are not, at present “written in stone” but I feel can move my innovating work towards a higher maximization of value for my advice to clients. Perhaps this will also allow me to have a sharper focus.

Let me share these:

Continue reading “Agility and Innovation in an Increasingly Open World”

The Coming Age of Innovation in 2014 and Beyond

In May 2013 Imaginatik fielded an on-line survey to 204 business decision-makers across a wide range of industries and from these results produced a report “The State of Global Innovation, 2013” just released.

On Points — Wassily Kandinsky 1 — On Points by Wassily Kandinsky

I have found this report to be really an excellent understanding of critical issues that still need to be addressed for innovation to deepen its position within organizations.

I’d written my own predictions for 2014 before I had only just read this report just recently released. This was in my last post “Heading for 2014, will innovation change?” I see an even sharper agenda emerging for me.

To Imaginatik, I really can only offer the highest compliments for a well-structured report, thoughtful in its views and tentative forward-looking conclusions. It helps me greatly.

**For me this is the outstanding innovation report of the year 2013**

The report covers a variety of questions around Strategy and Execution

Continue reading “The Coming Age of Innovation in 2014 and Beyond”

Heading for 2014, will innovation change?

So we are heading into 2014. We are in the final month’s countdown before it arrives and it is that time to think about what 2014 is going to do and be, for us working within the innovation space.

Is Innovation finally moving beyond the previous constraints and boundaries we have been recently applying? As organizations really start to ‘ramp up’ their efforts for growth what will this mean?

Today and in the future we certainly know that innovation is about open, inclusive, full of exploration and harmonization to extract the best results across all that are engaged within their organizations. Getting engagement up in organizations is going to be top of the agenda and innovation can be a significant contributor.

We seem to have really grasped and recognized the combination-effect that comes from the myriad of different linkages that is propelling innovation activity and bringing increasing confidence within the boardroom. Innovation is within all our grasps, if we really want to grab hold of it.

Let’s look at some of the possible top-level trends I think we might see in 2014

Continue reading “Heading for 2014, will innovation change?”

Client Engagements – Full of Whipped Cream and Lumpy Gravy

So why did I call this blog post “client engagement- full of whipped cream and lumpy gravy?” Often both are ‘heaped’ onto the poor (final) solution found underneath the client- consulting engagement process. Both are layered on to mask the truth that the ones responsible don’t really understand how to make this process really work.

Managing innovation suffers from this an awful lot. We do need to understand all the ingredients that make up innovation, often we just try to’ top’ them off, failing to understand everything that needs to become part of the final solution.

I’m sure many of you have witnessed or been involved in poor client- consulting engagements. Often the root cause of poor end results within this process stems from a poorly structured engagement briefing process – my lumpy gravy.

This creates the effect of creating many problems in delivering back not the best advice or solution to the real problem, offering up the lashings of whipped cream to cover up the bland solution dish underneath.

The engagement process does still rankle for me as it causes many of the difficulties and tensions within the emotions that many projects seem to swing through – trusted and distrusted — loved and despised — all in equal measure where many variations could be reduced with a little thinking and challenging.

Avoiding some of the pitfalls

So I thought I’d take a look at some of the problems within the client – consulting engagement process that can mask what is really lying underneath.

Continue reading “Client Engagements – Full of Whipped Cream and Lumpy Gravy”

Finding our true purpose

Finding True Purpose Don’t let anyone tell you it is easy to run your own business, it is far from that. I thought I’d write about what and where it has meaning for me in this “finding our true purpose”.

Here are some of my thoughts, some a little raw, others well-baked, even some half-baked!.

Running your own business is full of uncertainty, doubt and risk. Equally, though, you have a level of independence and this does permit you to respond quickly.

It can offer higher degrees of flexibility, allows you to pursue what you think clients really want, not what others above you are imposing as template solutions, or their personal views.

Finally, you can explore the options to deliver, as in my case, services, in your own unique style that often work far better for clients needs.

You are not accountable to anyone, apart from the wife and the bank manager, always looking a little harder at you, that small business owner needing to deliver. Continue reading “Finding our true purpose”

The transforming tide in digital for innovation.

Can you imagine the CEO sitting opposite the consultant, explaining the organization’s present difficulties to regain growth.

They explain no matter what they are doing through the existing practices and the assorted business approaches they have taken for many years, they still seem to be ‘treading water’ or even losing ground. They are beginning to worry seriously about their future.

The consultant has heard this already so many time before across many worried organizations. He looks right into the CEO’s eyes and (sort of) snarls back: “You can run but you can’t hide”. This was a famous quote attributed to Joe Louis before one of his boxing fights back in 1946.That might get a CEO’s attention! We are in a digital transformation evolution.

Continue reading “The transforming tide in digital for innovation.”

A time for new innovating buttons and threads

Ten years ago I was in a collaborative effort with one of the major consulting firms on a concept called button and threads.

This concept caught my imagination and a number of important people in the Singapore authority the Economic Development Board , as well, as those responsible for providing the focal point in economic development where business, innovation and talent are nurtured. The “button and thread” concept was considered, partly for its simplicity in concept but its significant underlying value.

Regretfully the proposal died around the boardroom which was such a pity as it would have been years ahead of others. The idea was the more buttons you had connected, the more threads were created. It was through the integration of technologies and market creation, the missing ingredient is the means of designing them to help shape (and speed up) more effectively business evolution.

The idea was working on harnessing the intelligent use of the growing connections through better ‘adaptive’ agents to co-evolve, building connected relationships, adding to better judgement and decisions, positioning the organization into far more adaptive enterprise working in a thriving ecosystem. Continue reading “A time for new innovating buttons and threads”