Category Archives: Molecules

single components, more one offs

My 5 S for future Innovation: Smart, Stacks, Scale, Storage, and Software

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Technology is radically altering our need for innovation. We see increasingly innovation is feeding off the “digital response rate”

Connecting technology and innovation is altering how we should re-access organizations ability to build out. We are in the middle of a technological-led industrial revolution It is becoming highly dynamic.

****I decided to revise this post as I originally got caught up in “conflation”. Two ideas merging as one and it simply lost the insights of each, simply attempting to fuse different thoughts into one entity. It honestly did not work and I struggled with what to do.  By splitting them up they become separate reads and more digestible and hopefully of better value. I have to admit this is not the first time I get caught in this  (or I expect the last!) and I apologize to you, as the reader *****

So here I outline a 5S framework to trigger some opening thoughts on breaking down technology design complexity. The other post, now over on my other site, deals with the growth of “apps” in IIoT “Great apps will deliver the future business value in IIoT” and is predicting a changing future based on some recent takeover announcements.

So getting that embarrassment behind me lets go back to the 5S idea.

Arriving at a designed outcome is getting complicated. Developers get caught up in the details, rightly so, to deliver on a connected world but you must always ask the “what for?”

The more I was thinking I was trying to cut through all this “unnecessary fog” as a non-techie so I started to build my 5S idea. Let me share it
 Continue reading →

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Innovation cannot expand without the 4th Industrial Revolution

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We are a long way away from fully capturing the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in an inclusive and holistic way. To do this, technology adoption and diffusion across the ecosystem needs to improve dramatically.

In a recent report, jointly from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey called the “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the factories of the future” they made a number of observations

“After a decade of flat productivity, the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is expected to create up to $3.7 trillion in value to global manufacturing. A few years back, experts noted that the changes associated with the 4IR would come at an unprecedented rate yielding incredible results for those who truly embraced them.

Still, the hockey stick of benefits has not kicked in yet – while all companies are making efforts to adopt technology, most of the production industry (~70%) remains in pilot purgatory (where technology pilots last for extended periods of time, and companies do not take the final step of scaling up viable technologies). Less than 30% of manufacturing companies are actively rolling out Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies at scale”

No wonder we presently have trouble attracting many businesses onto platforms when they are still very much behind in deciding or deploying a strategically thought-through IIoT digital design, that is connecting everything up.

It is equally holding a new form of innovation back, one that is highly collaborative where partners come together to work on more complex problems. Collaborators can achieve solutions only by being “fully” connected up, comfortable with their data, understanding and contribution, both within their knowledge and insights.

The power of multiple-connected ecosystems gives innovation a completely different momentum but it needs this 4th industrial revolution to be fully operative, for a digitally connected world in manufacturing and beyond. Continue reading →

The legend of the Gordian Knot and today’s organizations “knotty” problems

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Cutting the Gordian Knot

If you are not aware, it is worth reading about the Gordian Knot. “For people the world over, the Gordian Knot represents the difficult, the intractable and often the insolvable problem. Today’s systemic business problems are the modern-day equivalent of this seemingly impossible challenge, our Gordian Knots to untie or cut through.

According to Greek mythology, the huge, ball-like Turkish knot with no ends exposed was impossible to untie. An oracle had predicted that the first person to do so would become the ruler of all Asia. Thousands of people had tried, without success, to unlock its complex riddles. Alexander of Macedonia, son of King Philip II of Macedon, solved this puzzle simply and very creatively – by cutting it in half with his sword, exposing its ends and making it possible to untie. Alexander the Great went on to conquer all of Asia, just as the oracle predicted”.

So are Organizations Cutting their Gordian Knots?

So how can we cut the intractable knot inside organizations and thrive from it? Continue reading →

Ring Fencing Constrains Innovation

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It is the very act of ‘ring-fencing’ we have constrained innovation. We then can limit risk, as well as we are constantly separating it from the center of the company, even though many of us try to push it back towards the core.

Innovation remains separate for the clear majority of our companies even today as it is full of unknowns and question marks. Top executives just do not like the sound of this, so they seek to ring-fence innovation. One where they want to contain it, to try to tame it, so it can mirror their (mistaken) believe that our world is one of order, control, and stability.

Instead of embracing that the real world is actually an innovating world, full of opportunity, for those prepared to take a greater risk, will have much to gain. Regretfully we still see many companies operating with a 20th-century mindset. Thankfully the pressure upon companies to innovate, to get their growth back, is getting a very tough place to operate in today without tangible demonstration of innovation being realized. There is this need to “embrace” innovation. If not, rapid extinction is occurring for many that choose to ignore the sweeping changes we are witnessing in the business world, where more open and technology-driven innovators are connecting and collaborating. Those companies that only halve-heartedly attempting change are fearful and still want to “box” innovation in. A transformation where innovation and technology go hand-in-hand does have to be utterly full on to succeed! Continue reading →

Cynefin: A framework that grows for me all the time, in its value and worth.

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The Cynefin Framework by David Snowden, through Cognitive Edge

A good framework seems to grow, it becomes integrated into your thinking and application. You see increasing possibilities to apply it. One of these for me has been Dave Snowden’s Cynefin.

I also increasing apply the Three Horizons framework as well.

Both allow me to organize my thinking and provide options within any multiple evaluations to begin or shape thinking going forward. Both attempt to break down a growing complexity we all find in our word today.

One, the three horizons, attempts to sketch out our thinking about today’s world, of where we are and what we need to do to keep it going in a hopefully orderly state, and then looks to forecast out the changes we need to move towards, in a projected future and then identify the needs to get there. It passes through three horizons of today (H1), the near term (H2) and the longer term (H3).

You will find much of what I have written about on the three horizons story, within my “insights and thinking“ tab (shown above) and look for the applicable section. Equally, you can put into the search box “three horizons” and many posts will come up to explore this, if you are curious on its value, position and our need, to use this on a more consistent basis.

The Cynefin framework provides a wonderful way to sort the range of issues faced by leaders and us all, into five contexts, defined by the nature of the relationships between cause and effect. Dave Snowden has been explaining these consistently for years. Four of these five are; obvious (formerly simple), complicated, complex and chaotic states and requires us to diagnose situations and then to act in contextually appropriate ways. The fifth one is disorder, often overlooked or not fully appreciated. It is when something is unclear, it is in a disorderly, highly transitory state and needs to be rapidly stabilized into one of the other four to give it a more orderly state going forward.

So why do I see this Cynefin framework as growing in importance? Continue reading →

So I keep asking myself “What is the role of social media in innovation?”

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Social media haunts us all. For many years you first become aware, then very aware and then fully aware that social media is changing our lives.

Let me confess: I am not alone I am sure but I seem to be presently suffering from Social Media Return Dilemma. There I’ve said it, it is out in the open, “I suffer from SMRD”.

To be honest I am struggling with social media in innovation, struggling to get my head around it for my business, for me for a long time. It often seems overwhelming, do you feel the same? I worried about this years ago and still do. What is the best social media to have as part of your communicating strategy, how much time do you network?

It starts with a realization

I can see daily the amazing power that social networking can provide, it is certainly eating into my day, more and more. Is this a good thing or bad? What suffers, what benefits? The time issue has to increasingly be managed, and I have yet to come up with a repeatable plan to manage social media consistently each day into my work. I get so much from viewing, commenting, relating and learning.

I don’t have a clear enough strategy for it or where to direct my social media energy, does anyone? It continues to evolve in front of our eyes, are you cresting the social media wave or swimming like crazy to get back up on the surfing board?

I am still learning, experimenting, exploring through a combination of writing blogs, contributing to others, updating my connections, tweeting sometimes like crazy, publishing, promoting or simply clicking on a retweet or offer a “like” back to the author or the one that has publicized something that interests me. Often I do wonder all this frenetic energy leads to what end. It does nag away at me?

Continue reading →

Return Value Back to Knowledge

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“Let’s return knowledge back to knowledge!” “Let’s return value back to knowledge” This held my attention.

So now I want to draw this to your attention, the underlying story. I was recently invited to join the Future Shapers as a contributor and I was delighted to be accepted as a future shapers contributor. this is my profile link.

There are some strong reasons to add my voice to this group so I wanted to share this with you here on my main posting site

Normally I would not try to merge my posting site with others unless I have some growing level of involvement, contribution or strong identification with. Well, this is one of those but I first wanted to wait before I publicize it here, as the official launch of a funding project kicked off late last week in Madrid,(link) that radically gives it a really different meaning, one to draw to your attention as it is radically different.

So let me explain why, so I have provided the outlines of the story below in their words Continue reading →