Innovation Ecosystems | Paul4innovating Innovation Views

The Building Blocks of the Innovation Ecosystem Narrative

There needs to be a fundamental shift in how we manage innovation, which needs the power of ecosystem thinking and design. Not only in thinking and design but in how we structure its architecture, one based on platforms, open apps, and a marketplace where like-minded people and organizations go and participate in building new impactful innovation solutions together. This needs to be in open, highly collaborative ecosystems.

We need a better conceptual framework to build, one based on knowledge-based intelligence and well-grounded, driven by dynamic and constant interactions, events, and processes, so all involved can be engaged in building solutions that have fresh impact and value within the market space identified.

My mind map of the over-arching aims of a new innovation narrative is shown below.

Innovation & Ecosystems need to be our new thinking of design and delivery

An ecosystem approach on a common, shared technology platform that can significantly enhance the discovery, experimentation, exchange, exploring, and exploiting all the diverse skills and expertise from idea to commercialization and life cycle development and maturity.

The increased pace of change requires the ability to deploy, activate and utilize resources and assets to extract the potential through the diversity of the network formed within the ecosystem and the relationships engaged in the mutual pursuit

The end result needs to show actual robustness, genuinely dynamic and holistic in its dimensions and offerings, proving among its metrics faster learning rates, leveraging all that a technology-enabled platform offers, actual collaborations and shared engagements, supporting knowledge, data, insights, and people.

Open Collaboration needs to be top of mind

Innovation needs to rely increasingly on interconnected organizations organized around a central focal point of value and impact. An ecosystem design so organizations can act differently on strategies, business models, leadership, and customer engagement to build new value and worth.

We all need to recognize that Innovation and Ecosystems go together they make the potential for more sustainable solutions, they are the new combination that enables your thinking and design of new concepts and solutions to be “worked upon” in a more open, collaborative way where a richer diversity of thinking “comes into play” and the end result has that potential to be so much better than the sum of all the parts, it magnifies the sum!

Understanding cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

I completed a series of posts in April 2023, published on this posting site, on cross-sector needs when considering or working in innovation ecosystems.

To get to a good understanding of cross-sector innovation ecosystems collaborations, you need to take a very considered holistic view of what is needed in any collaboration, let alone cutting across sectors to generate a successful outcome. All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities, and behaviors are essential in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that need to be involved.

I have summarized the key points of these four posts; click on the links referred to. I have outlined the multiple needs to consider so you are more aware of the differences and needs of managing within an ecosystem of collaborators.

Visualizing the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

The design concept of the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

After a series of posts introducing and explaining the thinking and design behind the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework, I thought it would be a good idea to put this into a sequence of visuals that should take you through this to provide a decent understanding of its make-up and logic.

Organizations in today’s business environment need to adapt rapidly and dynamically, have the need to bring the innovation management process into a constant technological advancement, and be more tailored in its design by their own specific needs and not “offered” as a rigid set of solutions. We need to embrace a significant change in the way we “set about” innovation.

If you are interested in reading more in the series I have been posting then here are the links in the order of posting.

The importance here is recognizing the shift in mindset and thinking towards a Building Block approach to build up the Innovation Stacks. Each stack “sits” on a technology platform. Thinking through what this means requires understanding, relating, and putting a clear context of innovation, what you want to achieve, and how to set about this.

Building Up to the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework Validation

Introducing the Compüosable Innovation Enterprise Validation

On Monday 12th June 2023 I made a proposal that innovation is in need of a radical redesign. The post was my “The Final Perspective: A Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework“. This recommendation had been built out over the past three months toward this final conclusion.

Here I want to summarize the posts that were part of this build-up, that build the compelling business case for the need to change our thinking about innovation.

I looked at the present limitations of existing innovation software, emphasizing the value and contribution that having more of an innovation ecosystem thinking and design and then introducing different more technology-related concepts such as building blocks, innovation stacks, and key component relationships built on a platform approach were highlighted and explained in these posts.

The “final perspective” post proposed the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework as a comprehensive approach to addressing today and the future complexities of innovation management.

The Final Perspective: A Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

Introducing the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

In my view any new approach to innovation needs to aim to achieve interdependent and interlocking innovation, solving problems that have not been addressed before and offering sustainable value, impact, and returns to all involved or significantly improving on the existing solutions. Today we are missing a comprehensive structure or innovation process to achieve this, we need a radically different approach to managing innovation.

I am suggesting a vertical and horizontal design applying innovation stack and building block approaches, all “housed” on a technology platform. This post explains this thinking, and validation and provides the way I envisage this.

Nothing can work in isolation.

We need an Innovation Mandate calling for a Radical Re-design of how we undertake innovation management, it is needed to bring innovation management into the 21st century in design and approaches.

I believe today; the innovation management process requires this fresh mandate to drive change to bring the process into today’s more technical period where our systems need to operate seamlessly and flow across the organization and the entire innovation process.

Gaining a Different Perspective on Innovation through Platforms, Blocks, and Stack Designs

Building Blocsk and Innovation Stack Designs

Innovation is a complex process that requires effective connections and collaborations among individuals and teams.

Stepping back, I want to draw down on a series of perspectives I have found invaluable. A very inspirational article by Larry Schmitt on the Innovation Stack added to my thinking about innovation stacks. Then the depth of work Sangeet Paul Choudary has explored around Platforms and his Building Block Thesis is terrific.

Both of these contributions have helped me build further upon all the diverse viewpoints and strands of thoughts I have been researching for my solution framework, one of building out innovation stacks, building blocks, and the modular and component approaches for challenging the existing designs for any innovation management process.

My fun has been piecing these together to lead me to my suggested Vertical and Horizontal Framework for achieving a different innovation management design. I will go into the final proposed components in my next post. Here I offer a different perspective of innovation that leads to proposing such a change.

Identifying Key Component Relationships of Innovation Stacks and Building Blocks.

New Innovation Thinking using components, building blocks and innovation stacks on a teechnology platform

Introduction: Mapping out the relationships within an innovation management system is a challenging task. It requires understanding how individuals, data, and communications connect to contribute to innovation at every stage, from discovery to execution.

Regretfully today, many innovation management solutions, especially software solutions, have not successfully addressed this relationship problem across the full innovation management process.

In this post, I continue to explore the key components and relationships of innovation stacks and building blocks moving towards a solution that might address our current weaknesses in innovation management.

Building the innovation stack

The need to think of innovation stacks for new design concepts

Developing the innovation stack takes the view that innovation is a series of building blocks stacked on top of each other with different layers to work through. These stacks follow an established logic, such as working through idea discovery, relating to given problems, exploring solutions, and determining the final model or design and the execution delivery to achieve this. Combining these “building blocks” modularly in innovation stacks creates a unique design that adapts to your specific needs and goals.

Today, innovation processes are partly designed this way but are more rigid and hold knowledge often as “islands” within a possible solution. We can mix and match different emerging or established innovation approaches but sometimes miss valuable points and due to this lack of “being connected up” we lose flexibility, sometimes meaning and miss some of the potential value as the parts are not as well interlinked or dynamic; we screen out more than we add-in. Our approach today is to reduce complexity as early as possible and make decisions perhaps too early; we often stop the additional learning by further probing and gathering.

I believe in approaching innovation differently by combining the ingenuity of human and artificial intelligence in a more modern way, through the application of building blocks delivering specific API solutions, and innovation stacks that connect it all up, based on a technology platform that flows across all our innovation processes.

Are we EVER going to embrace innovation?

Why have we not embraced innovation?

I will not apologize here; this will partly be a “rant” and then begin to suggest a way forward on embracing innovation fully.

I was thinking of having the headline “Innovation as our eternal doom or shame” or “innovation groundhog day”. Let me begin in why.

I really am fed up with constantly seeing claims that “innovation is core to our business” and that we are “constantly seeking fresh growth” Both of these are simply bullshit statements from the vast majority of our businesses.

Is managing innovation too complex or fragmented? Do organizations have a clear understanding of their innovation activities?

How many people are full-time employed in the innovation team, and how many in driving strategic growth? Ten, twenty, perhaps fifty out of thousands in medium to large companies.

In the bigger scheme of things, thousands within large organizations are working on innovation. These are from different functions such as R&D, Engineering disciplines, Technologists, Designers, Application and Digital. Do they work on standard innovation platforms or individually, left over from a legacy position or have they individually found a given application more suited to their specific needs?

Achieving engagement outcomes from cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

This is the fourth and final post discussing cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations. It is primarily dealing with the benefits of collaboration and bringing up to a ‘given point’ a compelling value proposition for potential collaborators in understanding the basic building blocks to consider, for achieving the engagement outcomes required.

Within the series of four posts, I have been emphasising that cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need collaborative resolution, the necessary parts need connecting.

Yet to get to these cross-sector collaborations you do need to take a very considered holistic view of what is needed in any collaboration, let alone ane cutting across sectors to generate a successful outcome. All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities and behaviours are important in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that might need to be involved.

Category: Innovation Ecosystems