Category Archives: Molecules

single components, more one offs

Recognizing an innovation need

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Increasingly I am noticing that Organizations are facing the increasing dilemma of how to organize and manage within their present systems and structures their innovation activities.

Innovation is becoming far too complex for the innovation process installed within the (one) organization. It is far too self-contained and not open to the collaborative environment we need today, where others outside the one organization can freely exchange and collaborate on the same platform.

I have argued for some time we do not have an “innovation fit-for-purpose” system, we still are focusing far too much on having separate solutions for the front end (IP discovery), then idea generation, and then keep separately the pipeline and portfolio management. We are still randomly applying a range of tools that individuals have collected for themselves to complete their part of the job and the outputs can’t be shared. We continue to exchange across different social channels, often seen as a necessary evil to be bridged, as often systems do not “speak” to each other.

We fail to connect up all of our innovation process and design. When will we have a fully integrated, end-to-end innovation system? Some software solution providers seem to be working towards it but tend to keep adding pieces and not stepping back and designing a fully integrated process. Why? We are managing innovation at often very sub-optimal levels of effectiveness. Continue reading →

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Your Future Lies in Occupying the Innovation Job and Using the Skills it Provides

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Source: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2018.

We all need to begin to grapple with what is redefining work in knowledge, skills, our experience, and our necessary abilities to be viable and useful

We continue to hear and begin to see the effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It continues to impact skills, tasks, and jobs.

The implications are a growing concern that both job displacement and talent shortages will impact business dynamism and societal cohesion. It is the pervasive power of technology integration that will change the business models of all industries.

Yet we are recognizing it will also giving rise to a number of emerging jobs yet to be identified or formulized to be trained in. A proactive and strategic effort is needed but based on what? We need to manage reskilling and upskilling to mitigate against both job losses and talent shortages but prepared the future workforce to be more nimble, agile and fluid. Here is where innovators are going to be well-positioned.

Working within the innovation space will be one of the best launching pads for being more comfortable for the future of work. Let me explain why Continue reading →

Recognizing it is all about Value Creation

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I am reading a lot about the concept of value creation recently, it answers everything but tells us so often nothing about how it is made up or it is truly present. It seems to have that same ‘heady vaulted position’ as innovation in that we all talk far more about the ‘promise’ of it, we want it but still are not prepared to put the real effort into it to make it happen.

So let me try and explain my thoughts on value creation. So what is behind value creation? What drives it? What will tell us this is an organization where value creation seems to well invest in, nurtured, built and protected?

So what is value creation?

Value creation is highly dynamic, it is going on all the time and can increase, decrease or transform, in different ways, when you exploit your different capitals that will be in constant change and adjusting to reflect your organization’s business activities and eventual outputs. This is when you can begin to see the value created by the use of deploying all the capitals to build new growth and what I call “stock” that along with “flow”. I loved this explaination of the two.

Continue reading →

Nesta’s Landscape of Innovation Approaches

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You sometimes need to kick yourself. Well in my case that seems to be increasing by the day. I have to confess I have drifted in and out of checking on Nesta, based in the UK. Different reasons, different focus areas partly although innovation keeps us together, well me checking in on them, I’m not so sure it is the same their end.

Nesta is an innovation foundation. They state: “For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality. It also means changing lives for the better. This is what keeps us awake at night and gets us out of bed in the morning” They work in areas where there are big challenges facing society, from the frontiers of personalized healthcare to stretched public services and a fast-changing jobs market. They cover a lot of ground and provide some very sound advice along the way.

One of their team, Bas Leurs, who is their head of learning experience design, has been working on “A Landscape of Innovation Approaches“. I read version one in February 2018 and did not pick up on version 2, published as a blog in December 2018. Hence, why I kicked myself. Continue reading →

So CX + DX needs IX for the transformations we need

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We are on the brink of a transformation, a global one that connects us into information, knowledge, and insights in ever-powerful ways. thanks to the digital internet. We are also exploring the use of Artifical Intelligence (AI) more than ever.

BCG suggests that nine out of ten companies in their recent survey for the report “The Most Innovative Companies 2019” are investing in AI. BCG also suggests that 30% of those surveyed believe AI will have the greatest impact of any innovation area on their industry over the next three to five years.

We are also seeing the emergence of platforms and ecosystems radically changing how we collaborate and invent, design, solve issues from a changing shift in cooperation understanding. Platforms are fueling new business initiatives as they learn to engage across the whole value chain spectrum, from customer to delivering back the needs of that customer.

It is our technology being applied through new approaches that are galvanizing the new potential within innovation.

As we learn to orchestrate the underlying technologies, learn to build helpful applications, establish these software platforms this is beginning to become attractive as a new place for integrating, exchanging and collaborating. There is the talk of “the network effect” (Metcalfe’s Law) whereas more participants engage on platforms or in ecosystems and exchange, the more the value goes up and the community participating gets increasingly more out of the value of the “combined” thinking, data and insights. It has huge potential to generate new levels of innovation, ones that are more connected, more seamless and more what the customer wants.

So we come to CX + DX, it needs IX

Continue reading →

Finally a framework to manage holistically Industrial Revolution 4.0

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Introducing the Smart Industry Readiness Index Prioritization Matrix

I was really pleased to watch the official launch of the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) with its addition of the Prioritization Matrix at Hannover Messe on Monday 1st April 2019.

This will become a very useful and relevant management planning tool to help manufacturers worldwide to determine and prioritize their necessary areas of focus with all the digital initiatives, based on an Industry 4.0 Maturity and their current performance.

This tool or readiness prioritization index has a real potential to finally bring organizational wide awareness and common language identification. It can help implementation in a number of significant ways.

This has been pioneered by The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), a very formidable Government entity within the development of Singapore over the years, and in consultation and growing support, from McKinsey & Co, SAP, Siemens, and TüV SüD.

The framework is a very systematic and I feel, a robust way, to focus on what matters to you in your own Industrial Revolution 4.0 journey (IR4). So often organizations do not have a clear vision, strategy or can develop a systematic roadmap for this form of transformation. It becomes overwhelming and a real challenge of where to start. Often the more you read, seek advice, the more you get confused. Continue reading →

We Require A Shift of Innovation Management Solution Providers

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There is still a real reluctance that the supplier of innovation software solutions has to change. They have had a model of a constant growth success for years, yet it is getting harder, as the market is fragmenting and looking for greater flexibility within the range of solutions on offer.

I think with the recognition that innovation occurs across the whole organization the innovation management (IM) providers have to radically alter their business model or recognize they need to broaden out their target market inside organizations.

Innovation is occurring in all corners of the organization today. Secondly, if open innovation has gone way beyond a one to many relationships into a many-to-many then does the reliance on single entity software provision makes sense, focusing on single point of entry into companies? No, we have to think total enterprise software for our innovation management solutions.

Far too much IM solution providers think their models, components, upgrades and yearly showcase upgrades, as the big event. No question any “staged” release is welcomed by clients as they either have been asking for it for long enough, or have been finding their own ways of completing “workarounds” to overcome gaps, then updates are always welcome, as long as they are relevant, not just cosmetic changes. So often client solutions and their needs have considerable lag. Continue reading →