Category: gaining innovation momentum

Innovations linkages to Strategy is vitally important

I have just finished the second of a planned series with one of my favourite long-term collaborators Jeffrey Phillips.

The link to this conversation is here, it is just over 15 minutes long. as a conversation between us, where we emphasise the important linkage between innovation and strategy. You might believe this is a no-brainer but you would be really surprised that this ‘tight’ linkage is often lacking.

Our first conversation called the Fundamental building blocks for innovation success (13 minutes), links here, introduces the series and the areas of our focus. I wrote a post supporting this “Getting back to the future about innovation”

All of these short conversations are drawing out the value of having an integrated approach through the Executive Innovation Work Mat, our central theme of the series and solution to integrating innovation.

In this latest conversation, Jeffrey and I argue most problems or disappointment with many innovation efforts within a business can be attributed to a lack of alignment to the organization’s strategy, resulting in poor growth and impact from innovations contribution.

We need to resolve that issue within any innovation activity, it needs a “tight” linkage to strategy. Continue reading “Innovations linkages to Strategy is vitally important”

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”

Applying innovation thinking to Affordability versus Sustainability

I recently wrote a post, “Affordability versus Sustainability – a cause to be addressed.”

That post looked at the shifts that I felt were underway in moving from a society that accepts where it is heading, in expecting “affordability” is changing as our “choice” gets constrained.

I argued there is this growing recognition that a consistent amount of crisis points are causing growing anxiety and stress, and these tensions and pressures are not sustainable, they are shifting our attitudes.

Are we appreciating that there is a fundamental change happening, and we have to have an increased sustainability focus, one that is becoming a much larger part of our thinking in the future?

So how do you vote?

So if you are voting for a continuance of affordability expecting an abundant world, then our innovation stays locked into incremental improvements to keep forcing the price down and demand up. But we are deluding ourselves.

Presently we drive efficiency and effectiveness but progressively into a crisis of our own making. Demand outstrips supply. We are consuming more than we can sustain, and something, really soon, will have to give.

Choosing Sustainability then innovation has that real chance of being radical, distinctive and providing breakthroughs that can revolutionise and change our world. It can allow us to begin the pathway back to getting our planet and its limited resources into some semblance of balance.

Continue reading “Applying innovation thinking to Affordability versus Sustainability”

My own transformative dynamics of disruption

The Gordian Knot We Are All Facing

I can honestly say I have been back at school for the past months. This remote learning stuff has been hard, challenging but stimulating.

Let me tell you about this as it recognises how things are changing in our world and certainly in my world, in particular. It is a very disrupting, disturbing world.

We often make what amounts to a series of mistakes, constantly extrapolating the present and layering it onto a way we see the future, based on what we know or are reluctant to give up. I’m afraid that’s not right, sometimes painfully wrong in lost time, investment and sudden realisation.

We are doing nothing but constraining the change occurring all around us at a limited pace and speed by placing the wrong lens on this.

Continue reading “My own transformative dynamics of disruption”

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.”

Accelerating Clean Energy Innovation


“Without a major acceleration in clean energy innovation, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 will not be possible.”
A groundbreaking report, “Net-Zero by 2050: a roadmap for the global energy system“(referred to as NZE here) by the Internation Energy Agency (IEA), has been emphasising that this decade is pivotal to reaching net-zero by mid-century.
This 2050 target is in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, the foundations of global consensus to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5c. This requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems.
The report is the world’s first comprehensive study of how to transition to a net-zero energy system by 2050 while ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access, and enabling robust economic growth.
The report sets out a cost-effective and economically productive pathway, resulting in a clean, dynamic and resilient energy economy dominated by renewables like solar and wind instead of fossil fuels. The report also examines key uncertainties, such as the roles of bioenergy, carbon capture and behavioural changes in reaching net zero.
The role of innovation has a crucial one to play.
In the near term, the report describes a net-zero pathway that requires the immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies, combined with a major global push to accelerate innovation. Continue reading “Accelerating Clean Energy Innovation”

One great visual paints a thousand innovating words

One great visual paints a thousand words
This visual I came across some years back, and for me, 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.
Each influences the other and constantly loop back, making an improving vision success hopefully.

The critical feedback needs for constructing an innovation vision

The different challenges seen in this terrific depiction provide the sort of dialogue and efforts that needs to go into ‘crafting’ the innovation vision. It is hard, thoughtful work. Let’s look at each of these a little more.
The Time Challenge
 Continue reading “One great visual paints a thousand innovating words”