Category: Innovation strategy

Often we can’t self-disrupt as we feel constrained

In the past few days I enjoyed listening to a webinar by Clayton Christensen and Max Wessel for the Forum for Growth and Innovation, a Harvard Business School research centre initiative that confirms to me we struggle to self-disrupt often and become constrained in ourselves.

The Forum for Growth and Innovation seeks to develop “breakthrough theories to help businesses become more successful innovators and create new, robust sources of growth”.  The webinar was all around surviving disruption but discussed also “looking beyond the horizons”.

The Theory of Disruptive Innovation

To offer a quote from the Forums own website (www.thefgi.net.):  “Disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors”.

“An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.

Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in their initial stages, can include: lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services that may not appear as attractive as existing solutions when compared against traditional performance metrics”.

The webinar raised in my mind many unanswered questions. Continue reading “Often we can’t self-disrupt as we feel constrained”

Taking ownership for innovation – the litmus test.

There is always a healthy debate on who has ownership of innovation within any organization. Often it can boil down to where the innovation concept is along the pipeline or who has been designated with manoeuvring or piloting the innovation through its different stages.

The reality of lasting ownership is much tougher; there are huge, often yawning gaps, in innovation accountability. The right answer should of course be everyone but making that statement on its own is a little bit of a cop-out, an easy answer to a complicated dilemma. So let me offer a connected way.

Working through the Executive Work Mat , jointly developed with our friends at Ovo Innovation, this Work Mat was designed for many reasons but principally to gain leadership engagement within all things involving innovation.

One of its overarching principles was the quest to gain alignment from the top, at the board level, through its interconnected structure and their strategic inputs so as to establish and make the critical connections all the way down and throughout the organization.

What we needed also was putting in place a fairly rigorous ‘litmus test‘ to establish if this is achieving the positive reaction required and the Work Mats intent.
Continue reading “Taking ownership for innovation – the litmus test.”

Heat-seeking innovation that comes inbound from a panel discussion

I’ve been listening to and watching some of the discussions and panels coming out of the World Economic Forum and the value is worth the investment.

I’ve saved the $40k that it is estimated to attend this annual event and I can certainly find the time to absorb what is being said in my own environment.

Perhaps the messages are more salient because of this, I don’t know, as I’m highly unlikely to be attending this forum as you have to be invited.

So what has caught my attention is not surprising for its relevancy, to what I do and think about, around the issues of innovation and its ability to lead us out of our present adversities

The one discussion that was valuable on this involved a panel that spoke at length about risks in uncertain times. It was headlined as “Leading through adversity” but focused on the uncertainty being faced and where innovation can help in reducing unfamiliar risks and giving us some clarity. Continue reading “Heat-seeking innovation that comes inbound from a panel discussion”

Building a Core into the Capabilities of Innovation

I think most would agree there is a continuing need is to build the management of innovation into a clear organizational capability, where innovation becomes a continuous effective innovation process. If you don’t agree, then I’d suggest you don’t bother to read on!

The struggle to date is that innovation remains hard to manage well; we strive to systematize it and then attempt to replicate any success we then have achieved. Often this does not work as the variables that make up innovation can be different for each innovation event or activity.

The make-up of innovation

I think we all recognize that innovation is made up of both tangible and intangible assets. It is the marriage of these two that makes innovation a unique capability to manage in well-structured ways. It is the people engaged in innovation activity that make it work.

Everything else, the process, structures, technologies and management systems are just the contributing enablers. Continue reading “Building a Core into the Capabilities of Innovation”

Innovation and the Deepening Linkage

For me, 2012 was a defining year. Much of what I wanted to achieve in bringing together a growing but fairly comprehensive innovation tool set has seemingly materialized.

The collaborative work that Jeffrey Philips and I undertook has been a significant contributing factor, and I owe him a big thank you for being such a great collaborating partner.

Also during the year I have tried to keep a consistent update on the flow of this work through this blog: paul4innovating.com and wanted to keep publishing selected aspects in association with the recognized leaders in innovation knowledge.

I often like to think out loud and it is specifically motivating when others respond positively to what I’m thinking – thanks for that, it is motivating and encouraging.

You may not know but I work through innovation being central to my thinking through www.agilityinnovation.com that is 100% focused on innovation around subjects important to growing organization’s capability in today’s world but keeping innovation central to the framing solutions.

These combine and underpin my advisory, coaching and consulting work. These need more shaping but do have all the essential content, perhaps too much! Continue reading “Innovation and the Deepening Linkage”

The weak influence of strategy over our innovation activities

All too often strategy is not influencing the behaviours and outcomes around innovation, it is simply allowing them to be left to chance.

Innovation is often being pushed down the organization for others to interpret and offer their answers. This lack of alignment and top leadership engagement is one of the main causes why many organizations seem to just simply ‘limp’ along in their innovation activity.

Then those in leadership positions start expressing their disappointment over final innovation results, yet the answers simply lies more often than not as in their hands to resolve. Top leadership in organizations needs to shape innovation and be more involved in its strategic design.

We need to resolve this innovation leadership gap of misunderstanding. We need to explain what their essential place is and provide the strategic frame to allow it to be understood. Then the contribution for innovation might be ‘allowed’ to deliver far more on its potential as it achieves that greater strategic alignment. Continue reading “The weak influence of strategy over our innovation activities”

Journeying across the darker side of the innovation moon

When you decide to make any trip, you need to have some sort of roadmap to navigate yourself by. The difficulty is when you decide to step into the other side of the often known, into the lesser-known or completely unknown sides of innovation, where there seems to be no decent roadmap, the enjoyment is partly in setting about it and trying to create it, to piece it together.

I wrote about the dark side of the innovation moon in mid-2012 and why it should always make us curious. Within my blogs that I’ve written here on this site I have kept coming back to its initial stated aim of “building the DNA of innovation” This has become a real journey of ‘stated intent’. Continue reading “Journeying across the darker side of the innovation moon”

Innovation from a buzzword to the imperative

I keep coming back to the leadership of innovation; we need to move it from the peripheral to a more central one. This is not so much in a leader’s desire and need for innovation, which always seems well stated, but in their ability to lead it, to have it not just in their mind but in their real follow-through, in action and attitude, in their deepening engagement and involvement to it.

“Leadership for innovation can’t simply be delegated”, so tell me how many times have you heard that one? Yet it always seems to be pushed down the organization when you look a little closer.

Running a day-to-day business, reacting to the events, achieving the performance to maintain the momentum, planning the future is demanding but innovation is absolutely central to sustaining and securing the future but does it really get enough of the CEO’s time? I think it should figure more in their time but how can this be achieved?

I certainly don’t envy global leaders in trying to balance all that is crowding in on them, that is making up their daily, weekly and monthly agenda’s.

Something always has to give and innovation is one of those malleable parts whereas other more pressing ‘demands’ are more real, tangible and definitive and  innovation gets constantly squeezed out at the top.

Regretfully for many it does seem innovation ends up as important but not urgent for them to focus upon.

The management of innovation is the management of attention. Continue reading “Innovation from a buzzword to the imperative”

The essential innovation vision

In a recent leadership study on innovation by Capgemini Consulting, one of the study’s top-line concerns was the lack of a well-articulated innovation strategy, and then beyond this, a lack of organizational understanding of the linkages required.

It is amazing how many organizations lack a clear innovation vision and an explicit set of statements from the Chief Executive or their designated C-Level Officer on innovation.

One great visual paints a thousand words
This visual I came across some years back, and for me, it 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. Continue reading “The essential innovation vision”

The Innovation Rubik Cube Approach

I’m sure we have all come across the Rubik Cube, a 3-D mechanical puzzle, invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik as one of the world’s best-selling toys.

The classic cube has six faces covered by nine stickers each offering a solid colour (white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow). The cube has a pivot mechanism enabling each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours.

For the puzzle to be solved you must achieve that each face is to be made up of one consistent colour.

It was suggested the cube was originally built to aid students to understand 3D objects but actually Rubik’s actual purpose was solving the structural problems of the parts moving independently without the entire mechanism falling apart.

Innovation is equally a puzzle with moveable parts Continue reading “The Innovation Rubik Cube Approach”