Approaching innovation through the lens of innovation ecosystems
Approaching innovation through the lens of innovation ecosystems is a strategic and holistic way of fostering creativity, collaboration, and value creation within a complex network of interdependent players.
This perspective shifts the focus from isolated efforts to a more interconnected and dynamic approach where multiple stakeholders—such as businesses, governments, academic institutions, entrepreneurs, and consumers—work together to drive innovation.
I have spent a far amount in different posts on the importance of Innovation Ecosystems and this post is simply a prompter of its value points
Collaboration, Idealization and the enabling of innovation
I have have been looking back at innovation and how it has changed over the last twenty-five years. In a series of three posts, I have asked Google’s Gemini to answer five questions to track and trace the progress innovation has made and where it seems to be heading.
This is the second post looking more at collaboration and idealization and how and what has helped it evolve in this period. Hopefully, this change has enabled better value creation and learning how to innovate. (First post here)
So this post, in a series of three, looks at the answers given by Google’s Gemini on how collaboration and ideation evolved the organization’s ability to adapt and what helped.
I decided to hold a conversation with Google’s Gemini about how innovation had changed and hopefully progressed since I first became involved 25 years ago, when I lived in Singapore and was heavily involved in my MBA, which had innovation as an elective.
The MBA elective “hooked” me on innovation, and here I am 25 years later, still going on about innovation, championing, cajoling and encouraging innovation to be more central, disciplined and structured.
So I have taken the educational looking back from Gemini lense of perspective and broken this into three parts. I find it interesting and reaffirming. This is the first of these posts looking at the development, thinking and design of innovation from 1999 to today 2024, twenty-five years.
Innovation can be both highly frustrating and rewarding. It is good to gain a real sense of progress in these past 25 years; otherwise, where have I been?
I often feel innovation has not advanced in these past twenty-odd years, but having all the changes nicely summarized here makes me feel there has been a shape and purpose to be so actively involved in the evolution of innovation over these 25 years and been part of that evolution.
Firstly, this post outlines how innovation has evolved since 1999 and does a further recheck for 2019 until today. So, it covers a twenty-five-year period but recognizes that the last five years have seen a very different set of innovation accelerants.
I believe dynamic ecosystems require a richer understanding of the characteristics, environmental factors, and critical differences that can shape the dynamism of the business system.
This post highlights the essence of Dynamic Ecosystems and how they differ or provide active support for other ecosystem models, as they do have different roles to play in Ecosystem thinking and design:
Following on from my initial post, “Our Need is to Shape Innovation Dynamically, ” this post outlines the eight value-adding points that I can help build out and deliver alongside you in different delivery modules to fit your circumstances and budgets.
My value proposition is to work together to create something that shapes innovation for a meaningful change. To support you in building out your innovation competencies, capabilities and capacity that requires a deeper investment in skill development in a culture of continual learning.
It’s a journey, but it promises the rewards of being at the forefront of industry evolution and transformation. It is a journey of building innovation, fitness and dynamics drawn out in a new way of thinking and design within innovation ecosystems.
Within the value proposition, we actively shape these journeys, building adaptability, agility and innovation for long-term success in the changing business environment we all face today.
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.
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.
I started posting my thoughts on innovation in August 2010. I have written on this site alone, www.paul4innovating.com, by just coming up to a milestone of 700 posts focusing on innovation thoughts and opinions, so I just wanted to pause and think about all the different places I have tried to get the innovation message(s) out.
I always find the post-New Year to be a reflective part of the year of reviewing, deciding, and then setting new goals. This is a post about the sources of my knowledge that feeds my innovation passion.
Let me start. I often wonder whether the posts and articles I’ve written have been hitting the right buttons, helping solve the needs of those involved in innovation; I hope so. I have pushed out and explored various aspects, learning myself as I go. I have followed a number of great innovation thinkers and read different books on the areas of innovation.
It amazes me. How much is talked about, advice offered and sometimes that deep down nagging feeling, innovation understanding does not really change; it is the people managing it as they often seem to be simply passing through this innovation period onto other things or vanishing in pursuit of different career interests.
A formula to build a framework for sustainable innovation
Here is my solution that I think is worth working through first to absorb it and its combination. Then apply it to your innovation-building activity as a framework for innovation. Each time you are reviewing innovative activity, run through this formula in your head to see if each of the parts is embedded into the work.
I have worked on the formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE for many years.
In that post, I detail the make-up of the formula, made up of the combination of positive relationships between the following interrelated parts.
We are or need to be, in search of a sustainable future where we can constantly build upon innovation capabilities, capacities and competencies that can be refreshed, strengthened and sometimes reduced to meet the circumstances.
The formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE makes sense to me. How you build out these yourself further adds more uniqueness and source of advantage.
In the past few months, I have been writing consistently on the need to change our innovating process, thinking and designs into Innovation Ecosystem ones.
What makes the innovation Ecosystem different? Source: tmforum.org
I continue to gather, reflect and construct the “how and what” structure of this redesigned innovation (ecosystem) process/system. This will be my initial view of how this needs to be shaped as the overriding architecture of an Innovation Ecosystem. I’m coming closer to the point of sharing this in the coming weeks.
I am focusing here on arguing for changing our innovation process on the Business-to-Business or Industry-to-industry, not the retail or consumer ecosystems and their designs.
Let us first provide the top view of the difference in need and the offer of new values.
