Category: Uncategorized

Self-inflicted wounds on innovation

Many organizations have made Stage-Gate or a mutation of it, their ‘go-to’ innovation process that all innovating concepts and ideas must ‘somehow’ pass through. We are often giving self-inflicted wounds caused by jumping hurdles and closed gate around managing the innovation process,

Squeezing all types of innovation through this, for whatever people claim is a linear process, is simply wrong.

You can simply say: “we destroyed much to get sometimes so little out as the final outcome, when initially it was seen to be so promising.”

The difficulty is that we are still struggling to find a real alternative, although there have been some recent noteworthy attempts, firstly by Jose A Briones and his Spiro-Level 3D approach and then by Paul R Williams, of the American Institute for Innovation Excellence, to move the discussions beyond the Stage-Gate process from this linear into more spiral concepts and beyond.

There has been an awful lot written on Stage-Gate, some people attacking it and suggesting it “guarantees mediocrity for your business”.

Clayton Christensen has suggested “the Stage-gate system is not suited to the task of assessing innovation whose purpose is to build new growth businesses, but most companies continue to follow it simply because they see no alternative”

Stage-Gate has certainly earned its place for product management. Continue reading “Self-inflicted wounds on innovation”

The dark side of the innovation moon

Have you ever wondered what is on the other side of the moon when you look up towards it? Do we really need to look beyond our own horizons in our daily lives? Should we question beyond our existing horizons in how we go about innovating, exploring, to pushing ourselves into the unknown?

What about the other side, the darker, unknown side of the moon? Are you ever curious about what lies behind what we can see? I certainly am. Continue reading “The dark side of the innovation moon”

The Accelerating Innovation Tide Across Asia.

Asia is moving towards the remaking of the innovation landscape, I have no doubt about that. Over the next ten years or so, along with a number of other wealth-generating activities, the centre of gravity for innovation will shift increasingly towards the East.

I have been lucky to see part of this taking shape in my 15 odd years being based in Asia until recently. For twelve years I was based in Singapore and it is still, like all of Asia, on my advisory radar. Innovation in Asia is quite different; here are some of the dynamics. Others will follow.

The combinations abound are ‘rich and heady’.

With the attraction of fast-growing markets, rapidly growing middle classes, rising education standards with millions of graduates emerging across Asia and plentiful state funding you have a powerful cocktail to ‘kick start’ innovation.

For many countries in Asia they are well passed the ‘kick start’ and more into the establishing and maturing of their specific ‘brand’ of innovation.

The West views Asian innovation through the wrong lens. Continue reading “The Accelerating Innovation Tide Across Asia.”

Building an Integrated Innovation Capability Framework

My real area of dedicated focus and wish to achieve, is in supporting organizations, teams or even the individual, to really build their integrated capability and capacity to innovate as a connected framework.

The critical design is of three mutually supporting capability building platforms do need to be put into place.

Within an organizational setting, you need to have in place three supporting capability building platforms; organizational supporting, knowledge and competency gathering, and a clear innovation process to channel new capacity through as final products or new services. All three need to be in place and integrated.

If you have these three platforms in place you can begin to move from more of an ad hoc set of capabilities through to a more integrated, synergistic and unique innovation capability framework to grow from. Continue reading “Building an Integrated Innovation Capability Framework”

Designing appropriate tension into the innovation process.

I’ve always loved this: “Appropriate adaptiveness is not a natural tension- it has to be designed.” OK, I can hear you quietly sniggering.

When you are dealing with the innovation process you naturally have tension. Often if you have no tension or simply too much slack built into the process, you don’t end up in achieving a good result. Results fall well below expectations.

It is often this lack of designed-in ‘tension’ that is not appreciated like it should be within the innovation process. The wrong tension is left to eat away at the innovation process. Getting the right balance of tension is critical to get the best out of the ‘system’ of innovation.

Firstly a cautionary warning here.

Now this is about to get into the realms of theory but I hope you stay with me on this. Why? Well knowing why innovation does fail can be useful (to your future) and what you can design into it, so as to reduce this risk has some value, I would think. So tune out or hang in, it is your choice. Continue reading “Designing appropriate tension into the innovation process.”

Clear trends are shaping the future of innovation

In the last week or so I took a step back to look at the emerging trends around innovation. It certainly seems to have a bright future but its management is growing in complexity.

It now needs a deeper understanding than ever. Are we achieving that?

My viewpoint on observing different innovation dilemmas:

  • Innovation used to be about product, technology and R&D but it is far more now about value and anything that carries value. It is about creativity and entrepreneurship and it is even more tied to a clear vision today than ever, so it does become a vital part of the culture of the company.
  • Innovation and its potential value generation have certainly broadened out in options and needs even more to be tightly integrated with the strategy- how different types of innovation are aligned is really critical. I think many organizations are failing badly on this alignment recognition.

Continue reading “Clear trends are shaping the future of innovation”

Dampening down Innovation Productivity risks

With many of the leading developed and developing countries experiencing a contracting economic performance we are getting caught in a ‘catch 22’ situation and we are dampening down our innovation productivity.

The more our firms do not expand, the lower the innovation productivity rate. The lower the productivity rate, the tougher it becomes to improve standards of living, boost skills, deepen capabilities, keep competitive and find those more distinctive new products to grow the market before competitors do.

Innovation productivity actually raises the competitive game

Innovation productivity is actually a sustaining engine for wealth and job creation surprisingly. The more you improve speed, efficiency and scale you attract others to adopt similar approaches.

The rise in productivity happens when others adopt improved ways to equally compete, the benefits start to spread and this drives innovation productivity.

It goes: the more efficient we become, the more effective and that leads to increased innovation opportunities. Continue reading “Dampening down Innovation Productivity risks”

There are two distinct parts to any Innovation Funnel

I wrote in an earlier blog called “the new extended innovation funnel” (http://bit.ly/hQTEJz) my reasoning for thinking differently from our traditional view of how the innovation funnel should look like. I feel it should look more like this.

Extended Innovation Funnel – are we really listening?

The ‘classic’ innovation funnel talked about is wrong for todays job!
Continue reading “There are two distinct parts to any Innovation Funnel”

The importance of managing our intangible capital is the key for today’s innovating business.

Today, we are valuing organizations in completely different ways than some years back as intangible capital grows in importance. In the past we were valuing organizations purely on their tangible assets, the ‘hard’ (easier to) quantify assets, shown on the balance sheets as the basis for the value of the organization.

Today that is not the case; it is more the off-balance-sheet bound up in networks, relationships, connections and the ability to manage the fluidity that is occurring constantly around us, and the organization’s ability to respond appropriately in seeking out improved, new value through better innovative offerings.

Intangibles are providing the new value system equation to focus upon
Continue reading “The importance of managing our intangible capital is the key for today’s innovating business.”

The forming of new structures- the business innovation ecosystem

At present we are seemingly in a state of flux, we are learning to move from linear innovation models into more dynamic ones that are increasingly forming around innovation ecosystems to provide for new collaborative structures.

Our whole understanding of innovation is changing; we are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into open (external orientation) thinking for accelerating and improving our innovation performances.

Regretfully we are not yet fully equipped to manage within these new innovation ecosystems. We need to give the factors an increasing focus and lead into a better emerging theory of leading or good practice.

Measuring innovation in different ways is becoming important Continue reading “The forming of new structures- the business innovation ecosystem”