Constructing the innovation mandate

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So often innovation struggles to be recognized for what it is. Innovation is a critical source of future competitive advantage. It is our ability to consistently capture, build and develop new ideas within organizations or in open collaborations with others that have a direct effect on revenue growth and the ability to provide future sustainability. So why is it not more central within an organization’s core?

This is part one of a two-part post around the construction of an innovation mandate.

We need to understand successful innovation actually touches all aspects of a business, by contributing to improving business processes, identifying new, often imaginative, ways to reduce costs, building out existing business models into new directions and value and discovering new ways and positioning into markets. To get to a consistent performance of innovation and creativity within organizations you do need to rely on a process, structure and the consistent ability to foster a culture of innovation.

The innovation mandate is often overlooked or undervalued.

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Achieving engagement outcomes from cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

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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.

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Approaching Cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

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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

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Specific skills and toolkits are needed for cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations.

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This month I am completing a series on cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations. This is the second post that I am sharing on both my dedicated ecosystem thinking site and also through my paul4innovating posting site, which has different audiences to discuss this with.

For me, cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need collaborative resolution.

Cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations do have real differences and my aim is to draw these out in this series.

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Cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations

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Collaborations form the essence of discovery, relationships, innovation and new knowledge exchange.

As we move increasingly towards more open innovation hubs and increased ecosystem management the recognition is that many of the challenges and problems have not just become too complex to tackle alone, or even in a single industry but require cross-sector innovation (ecosystem designed) collaboration (CSIC) in consortia-developed approaches.

Sharing in collaborative arrangements enables the potential for improved operational productivity, and shared application development, tapping into a wider ongoing customer engagement and skill enhancements for all involved to gain from.

When you begin to evaluate cross-sector collaborations, the potential in building out initiatives that can only be achieved with a diversity of partners, different industry entities and drawing in the varied business networks get recognized.

In a series of posts, both shared on my dedicated ecosystem thinking site and also through this, my paul4innovating posting site, which has different audiences to discuss this with.

For me, cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need well-organized and coordinated collaborative resolution

Yet we have to be careful as cross-sector innovation collaborations do have differences and can be complicated. I hope this post series helps in your thinking about these cross-sector collaborations

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We require a more dynamic view of Innovation understanding.

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The Dynamics for Innovation

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.

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Completing transitions through innovation, ecosystems and sustainable approaches

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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.

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What value does an Innovation Ecosystem offer?

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Innovation ecosystems are gaining good traction to build out a more robust innovation management system that can offer the interconnected network of organizations the opportunity to create and commercialize new ideas, concepts, products and services. Participating in innovation ecosystems does have a number of advantages Having a purposeful innovation ecosystem, well-designed and built for highly … Read more

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Innovation Walkabouts we all need for learning and testing ourselves

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photo credit: Walkabout (1971) film by Nicolas Roeg

How often do you pause for thought, testing yourself, questioning even simply for ‘just those few minutes,’  to allow yourself to openly challenge where you are and what you are attempting to do?

We keep relentlessly moving on, like a wandering herd of buffalo, always looking for fresh pasture, those new feeding grounds. It’s not good; we often hear and see things differently when we find the time to stand still.

Do you let those moments go? Do you ignore them, quickly pass over them, attempt to capture the issue as something worth investigating later, or just get them behind you in the here and now? We often do need to slow down and figure it out there and then.

Of course, I often get caught up in this restless pursuit of gathering more when I spend a growing amount of my time researching innovation. I keep coming across so many things that ‘trigger’ the thinking, pushing me to feel I am more often the “hunter-gatherer.”

By long-term habit, I keep reverting more into a hunter-gatherer, in my case, upon innovation insights, collecting the raw material that I am looking to translate and distribute as this growing knowledge stock eventually.

The outcome of appreciating both “reflective” moments and collecting more understanding I trust is moving me slowly towards becoming an innovation curator who, hopefully, is valued by others. Well, it’s a goal of mine.

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The power of ecosystem thinking for resolving the innovation complexity of today

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Applying ecosystem thinking to innovate complex and challenging problems

“Opening up our thinking towards ecosystems will have a powerful effect,

it alters the way we will approach problems today and in the future,

ecosystems offer a greater potential for collaborative growth, impact and sustaining innovating value”

Our understanding of innovation is changing; we are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into open and far more collaborative innovation (external orientation), with our collective thinking offering the acceleration into improving our innovation performances, leading to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success.

The search is seemingly on to find greater value, which will increasingly coalesce around different innovation ecosystems. In many different ways, we need to form significantly more relationships that increasingly matter to each organization, add value and insight, and bring external expertise inside to work on ‘greater’ innovation solutions.

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