During this week, commencing 15th October 2023, I am discussing and explaining a framework for building innovation ecosystems on my ecosystem4innovators.composting site.
I have been exploring for some time a transformative concept to move innovation into the world of ecosystems. I outlined my proposed innovation framework in the building blocks necessary. The extended series of posts over thirteen or so, are all here on this posting site, summarized in this post of “The building out of the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework.”
The focus was on proposing to single entities, and now I want to extend this into the future need to build innovation ecosystems that enable and connect the essential components required.
Exploring the interplay between Humans, Technology and AI for design thinking
Why is design thinking regarded as so crucial to the future of innovation in a world of accelerating interplays between humans, technology and generative AI?
By embracing Design Thinking principles differently in the future of innovation, organizations can foster a more profound culture of creativity, empathy, collaboration, and user-centricity. This can lead to the development of innovative solutions that address real-world problems while considering the interplays between humans, technology, and generative AI.
Firstly, we have the interconnected global marketplace as our context
The change toward an interconnected and conscious global marketplace has been of significant importance, reshaping business strategies, consumer expectations, and societal values.
Energy is a vital part of any country’s ability to be competitive, and we need to recognize that to innovate is the critical enabler to a clean energy future. Today half the world’s capital is invested in energy and its related infrastructure, which is the backbone of any industrial and urbanization strategy.
We need to keep pushing for discoveries, experimentation, and demonstrating. We must nurture innovation and continuously look for ways to facilitate its pathway in the Energy Transition we are presently travelling.
Our economic prosperity will be determined by transforming the energy sector, and it is through innovation we will achieve this. To avoid the predicted consequences of climate change, the global energy system must rapidly reduce its emissions.
Most global CO2 emissions come from the energy production sector, our buildings or transportation systems, and the making of “things” still from fossil fuels. They all need a purposeful design of a new, cleaner energy system.
Innovation needs to be at the top of its game, to be accelerated and scaled.
During May and June 2023, I worked through and concluded my thinking on why we needed to change our Innovation approach from far to often a linear one, and consider a new, more up-to-date, and dynamic solution for managing innovation, one that recognises the non-linear nature of so much of our undertakings today in innovation, from discovery to commercialisation.
I have called this the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework– here is why and what went into this proposal that I feel should be adopted for managing innovation in the future.
As the investigation, validation, and viewpoints were built up over several posts, I felt summarising the series here gives you the appetite to delve into the posts themselves.
We need to shift our innovative thinking from static to dynamic.
We have been in very static, traditional approaches to innovation, very segmented and often insular, and as so often happens in innovation, it has complexities that seemingly grow and multiple changes, partly from what we discover in the development of new solutions but partly from far more rapid changes in the business landscape and our current innovation process often breaks down and limits the ability to manage this across the whole development to delivery lifecycle.
We need systems and processes that are flexible, adaptable, and can enable continuous improvements but are fully connected, transparent, and integrated across the entire business. We need to approach innovation differently through connected agility, have speed and automation more central, and provide roles for a great diverse set of participants.
A system that encourages forming strategic alliances, partnerships, and knowledge sharing to drive innovation and create shared value in open, thoughtful, and collaborative ways. This is where technology enables these connections and triggers different thinking in the quest for moving toward more extraordinary valuable solutions—the “connected” value of behaviours thinking ecosystems and operating on collaborative platforms.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
