We need a new Energy Mantra- innovate, innovate, innovate.

Energy is a vital part of any country’s ability to be competitive, and we need to recognize that to innovate is the critical enabler to a clean energy future. Today half the world’s capital is invested in energy and its related infrastructure, which is the backbone of any industrial and urbanization strategy.

We need to keep pushing for discoveries, experimentation, and demonstrating. We must nurture innovation and continuously look for ways to facilitate its pathway in the Energy Transition we are presently travelling.

Our economic prosperity will be determined by transforming the energy sector, and it is through innovation we will achieve this. To avoid the predicted consequences of climate change, the global energy system must rapidly reduce its emissions.

Most global CO2 emissions come from the energy production sector, our buildings or transportation systems, and the making of “things” still from fossil fuels. They all need a purposeful design of a new, cleaner energy system.

Innovation needs to be at the top of its game, to be accelerated and scaled.

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Focusing on the Learning Components of the Composable Innovation Framework

Within the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework lies the core, the different innovation stacks, and the learning components. Here, I want to briefly talk about the importance of the learning components that support the innovation design and especially the different innovation stacks.

The elements of the innovation stack are designed to support innovation’s core tasks, including learning, absorbing, assessing knowledge management, creativity, design, experimentation, and testing. By modularizing these tasks and their interfaces, organizations can assess their innovation progress by having a complete innovation system available to them, designed on specific stack elements to address knowledge operation requirements in the stage of development to commercialization.

The Innovation Stacks are ready to support different steps in the innovation engagement process

Additionally, with the upgrade in technology and platform approach, we can support the rapidly emerging human-AI collaboration needed for each building block and component and provide a step-by-step validation.

Yet it is the sequence of how we learn that becomes vital to “feed” and build the innovation stacks.

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The building out of the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework.

During May and June 2023, I worked through and concluded my thinking on why we needed to change our Innovation approach from far to often a linear one, and consider a new, more up-to-date, and dynamic solution for managing innovation, one that recognises the non-linear nature of so much of our undertakings today in innovation, from discovery to commercialisation.

I have called this the Composable Innovation Enterprise 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 several posts, I felt summarising the series here gives you the appetite to delve into the posts themselves.

We need to shift our innovative thinking from static to dynamic.

We have been in very static, traditional approaches to innovation, very segmented and often insular, and as so often happens in innovation, it has complexities that seemingly grow and multiple changes, partly from what we discover in the development of new solutions but partly from far more rapid changes in the business landscape and our current innovation process often breaks down and limits the ability to manage this across the whole development to delivery lifecycle.

We need systems and processes that are flexible, adaptable, and can enable continuous improvements but are fully connected, transparent, and integrated across the entire business. We need to approach innovation differently through connected agility, have speed and automation more central, and provide roles for a great diverse set of participants.

A system that encourages forming strategic alliances, partnerships, and knowledge sharing to drive innovation and create shared value in open, thoughtful, and collaborative ways. This is where technology enables these connections and triggers different thinking in the quest for moving toward more extraordinary valuable solutions—the “connected” value of behaviours thinking ecosystems and operating on collaborative platforms.

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The Building Blocks of the Innovation Ecosystem Narrative

There needs to be a fundamental shift in how we manage innovation, which needs the power of ecosystem thinking and design. Not only in thinking and design but in how we structure its architecture, one based on platforms, open apps, and a marketplace where like-minded people and organizations go and participate in building new impactful … Read more

Understanding cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

I completed a series of posts in April 2023, published on this posting site, on cross-sector needs when considering or working in innovation ecosystems.

To get to a good understanding of cross-sector innovation ecosystems collaborations, you need to take a very considered holistic view of what is needed in any collaboration, let alone cutting across sectors to generate a successful outcome. All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities, and behaviors are essential in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that need to be involved.

I have summarized the key points of these four posts; click on the links referred to. I have outlined the multiple needs to consider so you are more aware of the differences and needs of managing within an ecosystem of collaborators.

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Visualizing the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

The design concept of the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

After a series of posts introducing and explaining the thinking and design behind the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework, I thought it would be a good idea to put this into a sequence of visuals that should take you through this to provide a decent understanding of its make-up and logic.

Organizations in today’s business environment need to adapt rapidly and dynamically, have the need to bring the innovation management process into a constant technological advancement, and be more tailored in its design by their own specific needs and not “offered” as a rigid set of solutions. We need to embrace a significant change in the way we “set about” innovation.

If you are interested in reading more in the series I have been posting then here are the links in the order of posting.

The importance here is recognizing the shift in mindset and thinking towards a Building Block approach to build up the Innovation Stacks. Each stack “sits” on a technology platform. Thinking through what this means requires understanding, relating, and putting a clear context of innovation, what you want to achieve, and how to set about this.

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The Final Perspective: A Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

Introducing the Composable Innovation Enterprise Framework

In my view any new approach to innovation needs to aim to achieve interdependent and interlocking innovation, solving problems that have not been addressed before and offering sustainable value, impact, and returns to all involved or significantly improving on the existing solutions. Today we are missing a comprehensive structure or innovation process to achieve this, we need a radically different approach to managing innovation.

I am suggesting a vertical and horizontal design applying innovation stack and building block approaches, all “housed” on a technology platform. This post explains this thinking, and validation and provides the way I envisage this.

Nothing can work in isolation.

We need an Innovation Mandate calling for a Radical Re-design of how we undertake innovation management, it is needed to bring innovation management into the 21st century in design and approaches.

I believe today; the innovation management process requires this fresh mandate to drive change to bring the process into today’s more technical period where our systems need to operate seamlessly and flow across the organization and the entire innovation process.

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Gaining a Different Perspective on Innovation through Platforms, Blocks, and Stack Designs

Building Blocsk and Innovation Stack Designs

Innovation is a complex process that requires effective connections and collaborations among individuals and teams.

Stepping back, I want to draw down on a series of perspectives I have found invaluable. A very inspirational article by Larry Schmitt on the Innovation Stack added to my thinking about innovation stacks. Then the depth of work Sangeet Paul Choudary has explored around Platforms and his Building Block Thesis is terrific.

Both of these contributions have helped me build further upon all the diverse viewpoints and strands of thoughts I have been researching for my solution framework, one of building out innovation stacks, building blocks, and the modular and component approaches for challenging the existing designs for any innovation management process.

My fun has been piecing these together to lead me to my suggested Vertical and Horizontal Framework for achieving a different innovation management design. I will go into the final proposed components in my next post. Here I offer a different perspective of innovation that leads to proposing such a change.

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Identifying Key Component Relationships of Innovation Stacks and Building Blocks.

New Innovation Thinking using components, building blocks and innovation stacks on a teechnology platform

Introduction: Mapping out the relationships within an innovation management system is a challenging task. It requires understanding how individuals, data, and communications connect to contribute to innovation at every stage, from discovery to execution.

Regretfully today, many innovation management solutions, especially software solutions, have not successfully addressed this relationship problem across the full innovation management process.

In this post, I continue to explore the key components and relationships of innovation stacks and building blocks moving towards a solution that might address our current weaknesses in innovation management.

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Building the innovation stack

The need to think of innovation stacks for new design concepts

Developing the innovation stack takes the view that innovation is a series of building blocks stacked on top of each other with different layers to work through. These stacks follow an established logic, such as working through idea discovery, relating to given problems, exploring solutions, and determining the final model or design and the execution delivery to achieve this. Combining these “building blocks” modularly in innovation stacks creates a unique design that adapts to your specific needs and goals.

Today, innovation processes are partly designed this way but are more rigid and hold knowledge often as “islands” within a possible solution. We can mix and match different emerging or established innovation approaches but sometimes miss valuable points and due to this lack of “being connected up” we lose flexibility, sometimes meaning and miss some of the potential value as the parts are not as well interlinked or dynamic; we screen out more than we add-in. Our approach today is to reduce complexity as early as possible and make decisions perhaps too early; we often stop the additional learning by further probing and gathering.

I believe in approaching innovation differently by combining the ingenuity of human and artificial intelligence in a more modern way, through the application of building blocks delivering specific API solutions, and innovation stacks that connect it all up, based on a technology platform that flows across all our innovation processes.

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