gaining innovation momentum | Paul4innovating Innovation Views

Connecting innovating value comes from Ecosystem thinking

innovation comes from ecosystem awareness

Ecosystems can offer so much connecting innovating value out there to ‘form’ around.

We are witnessing a very radical change, driven by technology, increasingly disrupting and breaking down past traditional boundaries, partly built to defend positions so as to achieve economic scale.

There is a new economic logic to building even greater scale, it involves greater complexity, yet its value proposition is to strive towards offering greater customer experience and satisfaction, where the solutions are valued highly in social and economic value.

Ones that get closer to their connected expectations and daily needs for solutions to solve, in far better ways, than what is presently offered.

Innovative design has become paramount to these new offerings.

Ecosystem design will create new business opportunities. We need to make the business case
Continue reading “Connecting innovating value comes from Ecosystem thinking”

We are searching for new pathways

Ecosystems and Platforms are our pathways to a new innovation future. Ecosystems have suddenly become of age, as they can be formed around common concepts fairly rapidly, they can enable cross-cutting innovation to be delivered in highly collaborative ways. They can, through shared platforms achieve a closer relationship with the customer, to understand their needs and experience through increased collaboration, and engagement.

Connecting and collaborating opportunities for business seem to be really powerful networks of value-adding effect, for finding new economic opportunity. This calls for some radical rethinking of the existing business and deciding the design of the future business. We are at a critical point of change. Business needs to explore the future is far more highly collaborative ways.

This calls for thinking through a different designed structure for the business and different skills needed. The shifting from the current state to the future designed state is no easy task. It requires a radical redesign of the organization, as it significantly increases complexity and where any digital transformation has to center upon as the critical enabler to enable this shift.

Clarifying the new critical capabilities Continue reading “We are searching for new pathways”

Defining Innovation Capital

My definition of what makes up innovation capital:

“Innovation capital is the sum of all that promotes the development and changes required for achieving innovation outcomes, within one organization or its broader networked environment, for marketplace advantage.”

The capital of innovation has many moving parts.

“These are made up of the resources, processes, knowledge, and capabilities, that are constantly evolving and highly dynamic to build greater innovating capacity.”

“These build upon the capabilities of ‘sensing, seizing and transforming’ to build new capital that focuses more upon the dynamics within innovation, that provide the true value creation in successful outcomes in the final product, services or executing within business models.”

We need to value both “stocks and flows” in equal attention to build innovation capital.

The ‘stock’ of innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes, is a bundle of the firm’s resources/assets and holds the renewal capabilities and they possess attributes that make it a “strategic asset.”

Innovation capital is made up of many different assets that are often context-specific and interconnected, and this makes it hard to build without taking a broader, more holistic approach to developing your capabilities, capacities, and competencies to innovate. You ‘map’ and align these to fit your strategic goals and aspirations; these provide the basis for the “flows.”

Each company needs to build its own unique capital stock. Continue reading “Defining Innovation Capital”

A pathway to building more dynamic innovation capabilities

To build a pathway to enabling more dynamic innovation capabilities needs to go through Nine Stages. These nine stages are, in my opinion, needed for developing an understanding of your innovation capabilities, so as to make them more dynamic and, as a result, to be at the top of your innovation game.

This “step process,” I believe, gets you to the point of understanding what innovation capabilities are a better ‘fit’ for the purpose, to deliver on your innovation needs on a consistent, repeatable, and evolving basis.

Building innovation capabilities take time; they are complex, highly structured, and multi-dimensional. Any structured approach to tackling innovation takes time and considerable commitment. Any learning involves sensing, seizing, and then transforming.

We are searching for what makes up the present system and what needs to be part of the future to create a ‘best’ innovation capability environment that is sustainable in the longer-term. Those that can be continually ‘orchestrated’ and constantly adapted to meet the strategic need. Continue reading “A pathway to building more dynamic innovation capabilities”

Innovation needs the power of completing the 4th Industrial Revolution

We first need to recognize that there are twin forces at work, feeding off each other. We are facing greater disruption and an increasing innovation pace.

These twin forces are constantly seeking out for combining, relentlessly adding the new shape to our future. We are caught up in a very revolutionary period. The prospect of new innovation potential will eventually work through into the world of Industry 4.0 as a major game-changer “.

Innovation is ready for those accelerating and being fully committed to their 4IR journey. Then innovation can finally play its true part in discovering, leveraging and delivering new value and impact.

We have to recognize the days of simple product innovation are dwindling. where technology, digital solutions, greater customer insights, where a new breed of designers, engineers, scientists, and software talent are combining built through a platform and new innovation ecosystems thinking, are all emerging. Continue reading “Innovation needs the power of completing the 4th Industrial Revolution”

Do you recognize your innovators leaders position?

Recognizing your innovation leadership style

Often innovation succeeds or fails by the personal involvement and engagement of a ‘selected’ few. Recognizing the types of innovation leadership might help you manage the innovation work a little better.

So can you recognize the traits of your innovation leader?

Are they a front-end or back-end innovation leader? Here’s how you can begin to spot the difference.

Before we climb into this

I recall enjoying a book published a few years back, “Innovation Governance- how top management organizes and mobilizes for innovation”, written by Jean-Philippe Deschamps and Beebe Nelson. I can totally recommend it as it is so rich in thinking through much around innovation, placed within this governance framework. It lays out a clear improvement path for innovation to travel. I am drawing from this book on some thoughts about innovation leadership.

Continue reading “Do you recognize your innovators leaders position?”

Those that learn to frame the Strategic Innovation discussion are the big winners

discussion

Constructing an innovation conversation framework is never easy, we all come at it in different ways and when it comes to those strategic conversations, we feel a sense of panic and growing tension as our messages begin to fray at the edges and slip more into tactical, the more we talk.

If you just diving into innovations, this sort of strategic conversation can change the goalposts, alter the perspective, and can give the innovation a more focused framing to build propositions around. It enables you to stand out as you are able to articulate the “bigger picture”

The framing of an innovation conversation framework

Continue reading “Those that learn to frame the Strategic Innovation discussion are the big winners”

Taking Final Ideas to Market is the Hardest Part

It seems so simple doesn’t it – “bringing final ideas to market”. So easy to say, yet it does seem so very hard to achieve.

Everything we should be aiming at is ‘successful execution’, it’s the last, hard five yards of all the work that went into something, which can be finally realized and come to ‘commercial life’

Here in Europe, it is often suggested that “Europe is the cradle of creativity”, perhaps but I think the United States is “the crucible of innovation”, it forges ideas and takes them to market far better. In the US there is this powerful push to make money far more and to realize innovation, as clearly you must focus on the ‘making money part2 otherwise it remains a good idea but not fully market executed.

Europe has many good ideas but they seem to get lost in this final stage, the execution of the concept, turning it into something realizable and commercially valuable, or socially needed. Much of Europe’s hard work in the discovery and validation stages fail to gain scale due to this lack of sustaining commitment until the concept is firmly established. There is far more emphasis on this final step within the Horizon 2020 funds to show ‘proof of concept’ or commercial value than in the past and that is a good thing.

Putting more resources behind the likely winners, rather than on projects that simply stay ‘blue sky’ or conceptual, then get picked up by others to commercialize. It is the final go-to-market that makes a real difference in wealth creation and job creation.

Continue reading “Taking Final Ideas to Market is the Hardest Part”

Sharply accelerating clean energy innovation

Today the International Energy Agency (IRA) released a long-awaited update on where innovation needs to be in the energy transition we are undergoing.

At their own admission, it has been three years since they (IEA) released its last Energy Technology Perspective (ETP) report. Although they argue they have been reflecting on the critical technology challenges, it is way overdue.

In this new report, “Energy Technology perspective: Special Report on Clean Energy Innovation” released today, 2^nd July 2020, they have developed some improved modeling tools to bring a higher capacity to answer key technology questions in greater detail. This is good news.

IEA will further follow up later this year with a flagship ETP 2020 publication later in the year to keep a tighter and more consistent focus on the role and need of innovation to accelerate clean energy transitions.

They, the IEA are planning an IEA Clean Energy Transitions Summit really soon to convene ministers and CEO’s to the aim of driving economic development by this more robust focus on clean, resilient, and inclusive energy systems. Continue reading “Sharply accelerating clean energy innovation”

Seeing the Energy Transition in Different Horizons and Innovative Ways

The majority of my recent work has been in investigating and building a comprehensive understanding of the #energytransition.

It is, to say at the very least, complex and challenging, but for me, satisfying and rewarding. Let me briefly explain how I am going about this and why. Why am I seeing the energy transition in different horizons and innovative ways?

My research ‘intensity’ (If I can call it that) had to become well structured, and I turned to some of my favorite, perhaps old fashion tools to capture my learning and give me my points of reference.

Included in this structured approach is different tools to capture and translate my progress. I have been building out extensive energy mind maps, constructing a dedicated posting site set up under “innovating4energy- a transition in all our lives” to ‘reflect’ some of my learnings and then to test that translation of my thinking, hopefully for others to relate too. Then building up the content within Microsoft’s One Note. Finally, lots and lots of saved files in an extensive folder on “the energy transition”.

The Energy Transition and building the new Smarter Infrastructure and Systems is a fascinating area within my present focus and future work. Here is why and how I am going about it:

Continue reading “Seeing the Energy Transition in Different Horizons and Innovative Ways”