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
Pitching the reasons to change to Innovation Ecosystems in thinking and design
So after working through the values of the Innovation Ecosystem over a series of three posts I asked Chat GPT to help me in making a pitch for the change from existing internal orientated innovation processes and structures.
I wanted to go way beyond just “open innovation” here, I wanted to provide a compelling set of reasons to make this move or accelerate this into reality.
Does this resonate with you? Are you moving along this journey of change seeing the reasons and lasting potential?
Unlocking the Full Potential of Innovation: Why an Innovation Ecosystem Outperforms Traditional Internal Innovation Structures and Systems
Following on from my last two posts related to recognizing the importance of Innovation Ecosystems we need to ask what makes these dynamic, interconnected and engaging, from a diverse groups perspective?
An innovation ecosystem becomes impactful and particularly effective in driving growth and value creation because it aims to leverage the collective strengths of its diverse participants to drive continuous innovation economic growth and societal progress- today’s dual need.
By fostering collaborations, by pushing to accelerate innovation cycles providing resilience, scalable options that address complex challenges, you can create sustainable benefits for all stakeholders involved. This becomes that interconnected and dynamic environment that offers a more widespread, equitable and long-lasting potential
Lets break down this view of Innovation Ecosystems even further
What distinguishes an Innovation Ecosystem from Open Innovation?
Within a short series about Innovation Ecosystemsthis post asks what really are the distinct differences within innovation ecosystem thinking and design, to provide a set of common distinguishing points to move from “just” open innovation.
What distinguishes an innovation ecosystem and makes it a must-have, is its ability to create a highly interconnected, dynamic, and supportive environment where innovation can flourish.
Is it access to knowledge, markets, opinions or is it spreading risk and resource sharing or enabling the flows in knowledge, ideas, capital- what else really distinguishes it and makes it a must to have. What sets an innovation ecosystem apart?
What truly distinguishes an innovation ecosystem and makes it essential are several interrelated factors that together create a unique environment where innovation can thrive.
Embracing Innovation Ecosystems for Evolution and Revolution
My definition of innovation ecosystems is that they are dynamic, interconnected networks of diverse actors and resources that come together to collaborate to drive innovation opportunity and create a more compelling value.
They are progressively replacing “just” innovation as this tends to be housed in one organization, to be developed and delivered on the resources and insights they have.
Innovation Ecosystems are richer due to this diversity, different knowledge and market intelligence that a broader group can bring into the creative thinking and market realization.
This interconnected community find ways to bring new ideas to market, built on their shared vision, having a collaborative and supportive environment to use, such as a shared platform, and able to reach out to a variety of resources that become accessible to all participants.
During May and June 2023, I worked through and concluded my thinking on why we needed to change our Innovation approach. A radical change from far to often a linear one, into a new, more up-to-date, and dynamic solution for managing innovation.
This solution recognises that innovation discovery all the way through to implementation is now so often non-linear and that is causing plenty of problems connecting all the understandings fully up in one manageable place
I have called this the Composable Innovation Framework– here is why and what went into this proposal that I feel should be adopted for managing innovation in the future.
As the investigation, validation, and viewpoints were built up over numerous posts I am summarising the series here
We need to shift our innovative thinking from static to dynamic.
Open up your CEO’s innovating thinking to make the jump
Innovation must rely increasingly on interconnected organizations organized around a central focal point of value and impact. An ecosystem design should be in thought and design so that organizations can act differently on strategies, business models, leadership, and customer engagement to build new value and worth.
If we fail to recognize that innovation is vital to our business, to sustain it, and to enable it to grow, we eventually die. Today, more than ever, it is becoming an evolving collective endeavour. Increasingly, we are faced with growing complexities and challenges to resolve.
We need to foster collaboration between individuals, organizations, and institutions, creating a symphony of ideas that resonate far beyond the boundaries of any single actor.
Building Partner Ecosystems Progressively through Three Horizon Thinking
Thinking Partner Ecosystems in design and delivery. There is a need to resolve immediate, mid-term, and long-term issues to show progressive thinking on how to grow collaboratively. How to collaborate to deliver impact, and create value when building your thinking in products, services, or new business models on any Partner Ecosystem design and thinking. One methodology stands out for me: the three-horizon framework
Partner ecosystems are highly valuable for delivering on these ambitions. Partner Ecosystems enable you to go beyond addressing immediate and surface-level issues to tackle deeper, systemic challenges and position clients at the forefront of collaborative and co-creative approaches.
In my view, this requires a progressive mindset that considers growth, impact, and value across various time horizons. This mindset lends itself really well to applying the three-horizon methodology.
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.
