Paul4innovating Innovation Views

I wonder who is withering on the innovation vine?

This week I tuned into the Pipeline virtual conference for product development practitioners and gained an encouraging feeling that innovation is progressing along nicely.

Packed all within a day there was plenty of material ‘fodder’ to feed off of and learn from.
A really good conference but what quickly followed was a strong dose of that withering on the innovation vine.

I read two consulting surveys on innovation

I’ve been suddenly pulled out of my virtual bubble back into the harsh realities of where innovation really is. Just simply how innovation is struggling and that lies far more at the top of our organizations than below, those below who are simply trying to ‘get on with the job’ but with at least one hand (or even two) tied behind their backs.

I have been reading two sets of observations, one from Fahrenheit 212, the other from Innosight and my mood began to change. I’m suddenly back in reality where we have this huge gap between those ‘working’ innovation and those at the top simply not engaging with innovation or still failing to understand it or even failing to connect the dots.
Continue reading “I wonder who is withering on the innovation vine?”

Traversing across into horizon 2 for new breaking innovations

Within our ‘business as usual’ attitudes lie the seeds of destruction. Today there is a relentless pace; we are facing stagnation in many maturing markets.

We place a disproportionately high amount of our resources in the ‘here and now’ to defend what we have and what we know. A potential ‘big mistake’
We actually subvert the future to prolong the life of the existing.

We constantly look to make it more efficient and more effective but this is in the majority of cases just incremental in what we do, both in innovation and our activities. These are often simply propping up the past success instead of shifting the resources into the investments of the future.

Spotting signs of innovating decay

Within the Three Horizon framework for innovation the horizon two is beginning to address some of the current decay arising from the core within the existing activities (or system). Here we have the highest tension point as it is the place for transformation to take shape and form.
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Make Virtual Room In Your Innovation Pipeline

So what are you doing this Friday, June 6th 2014 to help in your innovation pipeline thinking?

Fancy joining me and up to 2,000 others that are expected for an Innovation virtual conference.

One that has been constructed around an agenda, made up of a seemingly good mix of practitioners, a key-note or two and product development experts working through the end-to-end product development process, or selected bits of it, in a one-day event.

Crossing over the crossroads of conferences
Innovation conferences are for me at least, at a crossroads. I find many jaded, struggling to justify the costs and commitment of time we need to put in to participate, often in one way dialogues.
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Building an innovation framework that has real capabilities as its formula as its heart.

I’ve strongly believed when you begin to think through a framework for innovation, see my last article as an example, you also should equally need to recognize the capability framework that you will need to build into this.

Working through these as essential combinations can become the real enabler.

Here is my solution that I think is worth working through, to firstly absorb and then consider for applying to your own innovation building activity. Try it!

I have worked on a formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE for this. I have never published the make-up of this in the public domain before, although I had briefly outlined it in a past post here.

In that post I outlined my thinking and I do not think it needs repeating, does it? So onward…….
Continue reading “Building an innovation framework that has real capabilities as its formula as its heart.”

Are we moving towards integrated software for innovation management?

What is striking me recently is the upsurge in the software being specifically designed for managing innovation within our organizations.

The competition seems to be warming up in the more ‘standalone’ out-of-the-box segment and the innovative tools being provided are certainly accelerating the innovation process.

The software being provided is going well beyond the simply mining and capturing of promising ideas. The solutions are moving into sound idea enrichment, evaluation processes and managing a portfolio of innovation in more holistic ways.

The providers here, namely Hype, Brightidea, Spigit, Imaginatik and a growing group of others have been significantly improving their ‘front end’ offerings to capture and develop concepts

They are increasingly turning their attentions to the ‘back end’ and support with a greater focus on governance, knowledge repositories, campaign cockpits, evaluation and dialogue exchange mechanisms. Mobility has also been a growing feature to capture innovation ‘on the go’.
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Combining the higher-value impact points for innovation intersection.

Two years can feel like a long time, exactly two years ago I wrote a post called “Making the appropriate impact” discussing my nine different impact points for innovation that needed combining.

I wrote at the time we can have a surprisingly strong influence on impact, as we are in a highly connected world. It is through our organizing and influencing abilities we can all partly determine our innovation future.

I suggested we have nine impact points to consider:
Continue reading “Combining the higher-value impact points for innovation intersection.”

So what drives value creation?

I seem to be reading a lot about the concept of value creation recently.

It seems to have the same ‘heady vaulted position’ as innovation in that we all talk far more about the ‘promise’ of it. So what is behind value creation?

What drives it? What will allow us to stand out as the place to invest in?

So what is value creation?

Value creation is highly dynamic, it is going on all the time and can increase, decrease or transform in different ways when you exploit your different capitals that will change and reflect your organization’s business activities and eventual outputs.

This is when you can begin to see the value created by the use of deploying all the capitals.
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Are we measuring what really matters?

Today, it is the non-financial performance, made up of mostly the intangibles within organizations, that is accounting for upwards of 80% of present investors’ valuation of our organizations so are we measuring what really matters?.

Yet do shareholders really have the knowledge to judge the real source of value creation inside our organizations? I think not but they should. Does Management actually themselves, equally I often think not?

We lack a real line of sight into the true value of our organizations.
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Getting the Business Model Story Right.

Framing the business model needs a compelling story so that it can be quickly and well understood by others. This is absolutely core. So, how do we go about it?

Recently I provided this contribution to Patrick Stähler’s blog that forms part of fluid minds, a think tank and consultancy for strategic and disruptive innovations. They focus discussions on their very distinctive version of the Business Model and its design.

This was on some thoughts on how to explain your business model through a story or your business narrative. The original post is here

The hard part comes after designing your new Business Model when you have to explain it. Continue reading “Getting the Business Model Story Right.”

That sheer consulting muscle hopefully delivering global momentum

Has consulting changed over the years? Certainly the business model behind them has, big time.

I really do wonder where it is all going inside the business organization.

Consulting has become a huge business dealing with our global and local organizations and governments.

Just take a peek around the board room doors, just who are all those strange faces, bulging muscles, huddled in meetings with the boss? Ready to take on the world.

Following on from my recent post on “the value of the visiting consultative fireman” this further post explores the external reliance on the consultant our organizations have become accustomed too. It got a little long, my apologies for that. Continue reading “That sheer consulting muscle hopefully delivering global momentum”