Sustainability | Paul4innovating Innovation Views

Pitching Business Ecosystems opens up the possibility of real change.

Designing the Business Ecosystem Approach

I have been looking at different ways to pitch Business Ecosystems recently for some evolving and hopefully sustaining work.

You can “pitch” to clients in several different ways. Some know their problems, while others don’t recognize them until they are prompted or confronted. If you have a tried and tested way to solve problems, you can become a little blocked from considering something that looks on the surface as radically different, but underneath might be the pathway (to salvation) for new sustaining solutions.

Pitching business ecosystems has to gain attention and be seen as a (radically) different way to tackle growing complex and challenging business problems. The problem for many is that it does “confront” them in considering the multiple layers of what this might mean regarding changes in mindset, organization thinking, and design, rethinking trust by opening up to others outside your existing network and adapting to a new way of design and thinking.

I will tackle different approaches over several posts, but first, let’s look at organizational strategies and the distinct advantages Business Ecosystems can have compared to the more traditional ways of tackling challenges today.

A Profound Shift towards a Hierarchy of Business Ecosystems?

Building Resilient Business Ecosystems

As I begin my outline of the Hierarchy of Business Ecosystem needs, I believe it is essential to place this appropriately into the context of why.

Business Ecosystems have emerged as powerful catalysts for driving transformative change and fostering collaborative solutions in today’s complex and interconnected business landscape. As organizations open up their thinking and embrace ecosystem approaches, they experience a profound shift in perspective, recognizing the value of diverse partnerships and the need for new management models. Ecosystems provide innovation activities to multiply.

In this opening post to support this Hierarchy proposal, the critical point is today, ecosystems and their role are all about delivering increased value, building synergies, and addressing complex challenges while increasing the need for collaborative solutions rather than stand-alone ones offered by one organization.

By fostering collaboration, knowledge exchange, and co-creation, ecosystems offer a pathway to sustained growth and impact, unlocking untapped potential through co-creation and cooperation that bring more significant impact and return.

Fusing Human and Technology to Enable Innovation Ecosystems to Thrive

“Making something harmonious” often means we have to reconcile differences to balance out the tensions and issues to enable and make them compatible to work.

“Fusing” human engagement with technology enablement involves creating a harmonious integration of human collaboration and technological tools to enable an ecosystem’s successful development and operation. Is that possible?

How do we go about evaluating all the possible needs of customers, as they are mostly our success arbitrators? We must gain insights and refer through multiple information sources- digital data and direct human responses – than ever before; these insights are becoming essential to our businesses.

Calibrating the right way to use technology to create mutual benefit is an increasing theme across businesses, which means we need high levels of interdependence.

Deepening the Thinking Around the Innovation Mandate – part two

Building out the clarity of any robust innovations mandate needs a depth of thinking

Following on from my first post “Constructing the Innovation Mandate” we should look further into aspects of the innovation mandate that need considering and clarification

Any innovation mandate needs to consider what is meant by the following and provide explanations:

Corporate Objectives: The innovation mandate should clearly align with the organization’s corporate objectives and business strategy. It should articulate how innovation will contribute to achieving these objectives, and what specific goals and metrics will be used to measure the success of the innovation program.

Value Goals: Innovation should create value for the organization in various forms, including revenue growth, cost savings, improved customer satisfaction, and enhanced brand reputation. The innovation mandate should clearly define the value goals for the innovation program and how they will be measured and tracked over time.

Innovation Policy: An innovation policy provides guidance and direction for the innovation program, defining the types of innovation that will be pursued, how innovation projects will be prioritized, and how intellectual property will be managed. The innovation mandate should articulate the organization’s innovation policy and how it will be implemented.

License to Operate: License to operate refers to the organization’s social and environmental responsibilities and obligations. An innovation mandate should consider how innovation can help the organization fulfil these responsibilities and enhance its reputation as a responsible corporate citizen.

Achieving engagement outcomes from cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

This is the fourth and final post discussing cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations. It is primarily dealing with the benefits of collaboration and bringing up to a ‘given point’ a compelling value proposition for potential collaborators in understanding the basic building blocks to consider, for achieving the engagement outcomes required.

Within the series of four posts, I have been emphasising that cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need collaborative resolution, the necessary parts need connecting.

Yet to get to these cross-sector collaborations you do need to take a very considered holistic view of what is needed in any collaboration, let alone ane cutting across sectors to generate a successful outcome. All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities and behaviours are important in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that might need to be involved.

Approaching Cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

In a series exploring cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations, this is the third post discussing different aspects and the approach to this that needs to be taken as my suggested starting point.

All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities and behaviours are important in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that might need to be involved.

Clarifying the design and common points is essential

We require a more dynamic view of Innovation understanding.

So why is finding the right skills and competencies for innovation a real challenge but so essential?

How do we know the critical skills, competencies and capabilities for innovation? Also, what are the additional dependencies for sustaining innovation capabilities that are becoming vital to understand so an organization can place the appropriate resources behind them, build upon a sustainable future and leverage these innovation dynamics?

We often miss or fail to ask which skills or attributes are critical to providing a more significant impact for a successful innovation solution. What naturally occurs can be only having access to a fundamental building block, like a dedicated innovation team. This will often stay limited in outcomes as it may lack the necessary skills, understanding, or capabilities to tackle complex challenges. The result will provide a limited impact on finding the best solutions to these complex challenges and problems we often need to tackle.

We stifle and lose the real potential by not having the correct dynamics of innovation on offer. Recognizing the skills, competencies, capabilities, and capacity needed does constantly differ by the problem tackled. We must identify what is needed and the gaps to be plugged through a comprehensive fitness framework that can be applied constantly.

Completing transitions through innovation, ecosystems and sustainable approaches

*Completing transitions through innovation, ecosystems and sustainability thinking*

Today, our innovation activity needs to transition through collaborating and co-creating, applying ecosystem thinking and platform designs for business. We increasingly recognize the future value and impact for businesses to grow, is through combining innovation, and external collaborations, and ensuring solutions are more sustainable.

We need to have a new open architecture for undergoing this transformation that is scalable and built, combining technology and tools, for speed and effectiveness.

Making Sustainability central to innovation capability building requires a new ecosystem-designed way that connects the parts.

Let me tell you my story of what I believe; it continues to evolve

Today’s challenge is to build the capacity, competencies and capabilities to be different, more resilient and resourceful. These need to be built upon a deep appreciation of what innovation can provide; the stimulus for creative solutions that have sustained lasting growth.

Fears of those unknowns

*The fear of the unknowns explodes upon those not ready*

When the established order begins to creak and dismantle, seemingly in front of our eyes, those fears of the unknown can kick in, especially if you have been used to managing in an established (slowly) evolving way for most, if not all, of your business life.

We seem confronted with rapid change, and it is primarily within the business world related to technology and market uncertainty that is driving this. We need to counter “fear” with a different approach, recognizing most of what we feel might be the ‘unknown’ is actually ‘known.’

We need to recognize our unknowns, search out others who might be experts in that point of not knowing and gain their help in piecing the parts that might be fragmented together to bring that need for recognition and clarity in our mind.

Fear can immobilize us.

In a recent exchange I had within one innovation community discussion, it was suggested that Innovation Business Ecosystems did not have the expected uptake because of this “fear of the unknowns”.

What initially prompted this was my post on making the business case for “Thinking about Innovation Ecosystems” Well, we need to address fear to get past this mental blockage of the “fear of those unknowns”.

So this short post is on tackling fear and dealing with the unknowns.

Innovation comes in different forms and problems, all requiring financial support.

*Innovation & Finance needed for the Energy Transition in developing countries*

Innovation has a very tough job of attracting the necessary money to take a concept or idea all the way through to commercialization. There is always that constant asking about the economic return and the associated risks.

Financing game-changing investments, replacing something existing or simply providing something new have tough financial questions always to be answered.

Here I am taking an innovation need in a different way than most are used to reading about. So what are right conditions to invest and realize innovation?

The Energy Transition is one of the toughest innovation challenges ever. We must remove fossil fuel as a source of energy, decarbonize our planet and replace it with clean energy alternatives of solar, wind, hydropower, nuclear and green hydrogen solutions. To make the transformation in just under 30 years is a massive task. So far, we are doing a poor job of this as markets, solutions, opinions, and financial support are all highly fragmented.

Tacking emerging and developing markets is even harder to achieve an energy transition.

Can you imagine what it is like in a developing country that lacks sufficient energy and infrastructure yet is faced with the sizable task of expanding its economy to meet growing population expectancies and the need for rising incomes to give that essential potential for growth that having energy available can provide?

Category: Sustainability