Category: Integrated Innovation Thinking

The dual forces within our cultural thinking

I lived for about fifteen years in Asia until a short while ago, and in the before and in the in-between period, I travelled there a lot and often felt the pull of different cultural thinking.

Participating in Asia, watching how Asia has evolved has been a real experience, that stays with you as something hugely valuable, as it partly shapes your thinking and how you look at things going on in the world.

Some events today set me thinking that resulted in this blog.

It was August 3rd 2010, exactly one year ago today,  I wrote one of my first blog entries for this site, entitled “The Yin and Yang of Innovation” (http://bit.ly/gXeWir)  and talked about the ‘fluidness’ in innovation that makes it hard to manage. How do you get the balance right in managing the innovation activity?

I described yin yang as polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces that are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only exist in relation to each other.
Yin and yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole
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Renewing Innovation through the Social Innovation Agenda

The challenges are growing in their social dimension across Europe, the United States and a host of other countries, both developed and developing, that are needing new fresh responses.

Social demands will inevitably increase as nations are being confronted with budgetary constraints, increased deficits and mounting debts to resolve.

Social needs will become more pressing and innovation, social innovation, will increasingly explore opportunities to extract ‘more from less.

Innovation can play an increasing part in resolving social challenges that are increasingly confronting us.

Starting a new movement on social innovation in Europe

Recently I became a member of www.socialinnovationeurope.eu . I certainly feel this is going to offer something exciting and vibrant. It is a growing community of thinkers, creators and innovators with the knowledge and skills to change the way we face Europe’s most pressing issues.

Contributors to the site will take a strong hand in shaping the direction of social innovation across Europe, breaking down silos and raising a unified voice. I need to find my own part in this, as there are multiple ways for contribution, which I’m still presently figuring out.
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Learning to absorb new knowledge for innovation

In a blog I wrote in November last year entitled “Moving-towards-a-more-distributed-innovation-model”( http://bit.ly/b38ixv)  I outlined some thoughts on the flow of knowledge in a distributed innovation model and discussed the Absorptive Capacities more from an internal organizational perspective.

Increasingly we are looking outside for new knowledge that needs internally managing.

As organizations seek increasingly outside their own walls, the appreciation of how they are managing knowledge, learning and interpreting this is becoming a critical aspect of open innovation to be successful.

There is a growing need to absorb, integrate and apply this in new and novel ways for accelerating innovation performance.

The more we seek, the more the knowledge increases in complexity as markets are rapidly changing. The more we are relying on knowledge flowing into the organization the more we have to strengthen our inter-dependence and collaboration efforts to extract the knowledge we are acquiring for it potential value.

Are organizations recognizing the value of structuring their knowledge flows? Do they have the right learning mechanisms to accelerate and exploit new potentials from this knowledge?

Organizations tend to be set up for incremental learning.
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The importance of managing our intangible capital is the key for today’s innovating business.

Today, we are valuing organizations in completely different ways than some years back as intangible capital grows in importance. In the past we were valuing organizations purely on their tangible assets, the ‘hard’ (easier to) quantify assets, shown on the balance sheets as the basis for the value of the organization.

Today that is not the case; it is more the off-balance-sheet bound up in networks, relationships, connections and the ability to manage the fluidity that is occurring constantly around us, and the organization’s ability to respond appropriately in seeking out improved, new value through better innovative offerings.

Intangibles are providing the new value system equation to focus upon
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The forming of new structures- the business innovation ecosystem

At present we are seemingly in a state of flux, we are learning to move from linear innovation models into more dynamic ones that are increasingly forming around innovation ecosystems to provide for new collaborative structures.

Our whole understanding of innovation is changing; we are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into open (external orientation) thinking for accelerating and improving our innovation performances.

Regretfully we are not yet fully equipped to manage within these new innovation ecosystems. We need to give the factors an increasing focus and lead into a better emerging theory of leading or good practice.

Measuring innovation in different ways is becoming important Continue reading “The forming of new structures- the business innovation ecosystem”

Looking beyond that certain innovation bleakness is hard.

I was appalled to read a summary of a recent report that nearly 50 metropolitan regions in the USA- or more than one in seven- are unlikely to bring back their regions to job levels lost in the recession until after 2020 which gives that feeling of real bleakness for all those caught in this.

Yes you read it right- 2020, nearly nine further years, well beyond this President further term of office, if he gets re-elected.

The report commissioned by the U.S Conference of Mayors are equally predicting 363 metropolitan areas would not generate enough jobs to get back to pre-recession peaks until 2014, based on current world economics.

When you add in that metropolitan regions account for 86 per cent of all jobs you realize how stark this is. So we are entering that twilight zone for millions that have a number of lost years ahead of them to face a difficult, uncertain future.

The issue is not just the economic job loss but the types of job losses are just not easily going to be replaced. Many are simply gone, moved somewhere else in the world or just vanished forever.

The level of re-skilling that needs to take place to move old-line factory jobs into technology-related, advanced manufacturing for protecting added value areas or service sectors is simply massive.

Can innovation as is often suggested simply take up the slack? I think it is unlikely. We need to think differently, we need to think radically and innovation plays its delivery part in this.

Across the pond, in the UK and much of Europe, I suspect it is no different
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Innovation is swimming in uncertain waters

Innovation is very often swimming in uncertain waters that rise and fall just like the waves in a sea: they are choppy, demanding and exhausting to fight against.

As uncertainty constantly arises as we discover more, and expend more energy, the very nature of our original starting point set down in a well-thought-out, and well-crafted strategy actually begins to suddenly have a realization that needs a radical change in direction..

Then we are left with more ‘open-ended’ questions than answers. Welcome to real innovation where faith and belief play an important part.

There often seems to be constantly arising critical unknowns and sometimes all you are left with as your innovation emerges is just actually and simply a new starting point.

A new starting point as the concept is so different to cause you to rethink dramatically. Innovation and its journey of discovery take you into so many new areas you never expected when you first thought of the idea or concept.

What do you do? Do you abandon this or press on? What helps us maintain a commitment and a course?
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Appropriate Innovation Makes Good Sense.

Innovation should always deliver on a specific purpose or promise, often it simply doesn’t. It needs to be suitable to our needs; it needs to resolve a given job-to-be done.

In the developed world we are consistently over-delivering innovation for many and there is a given cost to that, which we all pay for even though we often don’t really need it in the first place.

Take, for example, the software provided by Microsoft for its windows application, in its office versions, they all are over-specified for our personal needs.

The majority of these ‘sit’ on our computers taking up space and never used. This continued requirement which we are forced to constantly upgrade requires us to seek more computing power yet it is really inappropriate for most people’s needs.
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Sustaining is Pivotal to Making Innovation Progress

The greater challenge today with innovation is to build a more sustainable framework for innovation to be consistent, like a beating heart, day in and day out and pivotal to that is having a strong innovating driving framework.

The struggle is what constitutes the right areas to frame and build innovation capability upon? I argued last year in one of my previous blogs there was a formula. If you go to “A Formula for Sustaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation” at   http://bit.ly/95kCI1 it introduces this.

Now we need to align this further.
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The shaping of innovation- future directions

Rethinking innovation after a week where I have argued for a more common approach to innovation (see some of my recent posts )- as one that can be well structured and managed – I feel needs to be discussed next. I do fear if we don’t radically rethink innovation we are in danger of missing out on much that is coming towards us.

If we do not adopt and gain a clear understanding of (basic) innovation, its structure, process and differences in approaches we need, we will certainly struggle to move beyond the basics to the ‘promise’ of advancement that innovation should be offering.

I would like to offer some of the factors that I feel will be shaping innovation’s future; many are presently taking place but in pockets of expertise and experimentation, that we have to investigate more to understand the implications further.

What is holding innovation back?
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