Paul4innovating Innovation Views

Moving towards a more distributed innovation model

How are we going to really unlock the true potential of frontline managers, middle managers and the whole workforce for ‘seeing’ and engaging for their contribution to innovation?

Far too many organizations still don’t provide the opportunity for everyone to contribute to innovation. I think as open innovation moves from the labs and research centres then OI will be one of the ways for a shift in thinking to take place, not just with the outside world but within the inside organization for a number of reasons.

Critical needs of open innovation are the trust, the behaviors and the relationships that need to be at the forefront of thinking when you engage in more opening up to fresh avenues of innovation thinking. I think this changing mindset of how to manage within will permeate throughout the organization more and more as these (often dormant but available) skills get put into practice more.

We struggle to get rid of the ‘command and control’ approach to encourage more distributed sharing and exchanges to reflect the need today of being more agile and fluid in how we meet rapidly changing market conditions and counter threats or seize breaking opportunities.

How can we influence leadership in everyday contexts?
Continue reading “Moving towards a more distributed innovation model”

The innovation fitness dynamics for innovating capabilities

As someone who runs a small, independent consulting and research business that is 100% focused on innovation, the focus has to be on capabilities so I am always grateful for the continued involvement of the bigger consulting companies in producing sound, relevant and topical research issues on innovation and the building out greater, well-researched understanding.

Large consulting organizations ‘stoke the innovation fire within’, they confirm what you felt you knew but needed it to be validated. These great sources include McKinsey, Bain & Co, Booz & Co, Monitor, BCG, ADL and to a lesser degree Accenture for innovation research.

There are others but the ability to have access to C-Level thinking is this groups real strength and so they come more immediate to mind.

The emphasis is on distinct capabilities for innovation success.
Continue reading “Thinking over dynamic capabilities for innovation success”

Taking on the world; innovation as unfettered, different and holistic

Taking a little more time out to delve into the excellent articles provided by Europe’s top innovation on-line magazine, http://www.innovationmanagement.se one article caught my eye.

It compelled me to comment upon as it relates to Singapore which is dear to my heart. This was about the Singapore Management University (http://www.smu.edu.sg) and the new Presidents vision of its future place.
Inter-disciplinary research for equipping students for comprehensive solutions

Professor Arnoud De Meyer, the new president, recently made his inaugural address laying out the future of SMU. He stated “Inter-disciplinary research and teaching will be key to producing graduates who can give comprehensive solutions for a changing society”.
Continue reading “Taking on the world; innovation as unfettered, different and holistic”

Making untested hypotheses compatible to Business model innovation success

An email from Business model innovation hub (http://bit.ly/bnTd6G) landed on my laptop that stopped me to think a little harder on the whole momentum of Business model innovation. It summarized the ‘breaking’ collaborative work going on between Alexander Osterwalder, Steve Blank, Alan Smith and Bob Dorf.

This is around untested hypotheses coming out of new business models, that need a better structured and systematic way of exploring these to test assumptions, as early as possible within the lifetime of the model.

A breaking collaboration that seems really valuable

Steve Blank has summarized this first step in the collaboration in an entry on his site www.steveblank.com under http://bit.ly/9cElPf. He stopped me in my tracks (well briefly) with the statement that the “Business model canvas was at the end of the day a tool for brainstorming hypotheses without a formal way of testing them”- “a static planning tool”- the very thing I thought the canvas was taking us away from. Continue reading “Making untested hypotheses compatible to Business model innovation success”

Shifting to the 21st Century Business models

Gary Hamel is amazing, he is constantly thinking about the future and lays out how to get there; he has been doing this repeatedly for years, this time it is discussing the innovation drags we presently have and how they are holding back the 21st Century business models.

One quote of his seems to hit home for me especially “The real brake on innovation is the drag of old mental models. Long-serving executives often have a big chunk of their emotional capital invested in the existing strategy”

A real big challenge is changing old mindsets but how?

Today, the value of Business model innovation seems to be a critical part of breaking out of the old and finding new avenues to growth and prosperity.

The trouble today is the existing mindset of the manager is often the major block to challenging the existing business model and working towards a real change.

This lack of realisation is increasingly allowing the young usurper, the entrepreneur, into seizing the opportunities and seizes the initiatives of the very growth needed by existing businesses. Continue reading “Shifting to the 21st Century Business models”

Keeping it simple can often drive adoption. This week I had the pleasure of attending a Brightidea (https://www.brightidea.com/) “Birds of a Feather” event in Zurich. A pleasure clearly, why? Simply because it turned out differently than I had expected. Let me explain.

I have a tendency to be wary of claims or statements like “global leaders in innovation management” and “driven more success than any other innovation management solution provider” as it is hard to validate that from simply what I can read on Brightidea’s website, or through verification of independent research.

What can be said as a growing validation though is that they are clearly being increasingly recognised by many global customers as an important platform contributor to their collaborative innovation process. Continue reading “Simplicity drives Adoption often in Innovation”

Research, platforms and collaboration for Business Models

My last week was spent in the UK and it was a fascinating trip when it came to advancing my thinking on innovation. Innovating through new Business Models was constantly being discussed in the meetings, workshops and the conference I attended. It is becoming a lightening rod for growth and change.

Let me try and bring together this ‘convergence’ that is going on through the different dialogues I had, that in my opinion is bringing together the strands of research and collaborative activity needed for accelerating Business model innovation.

Firstly Technology Strategy Board’s Innovate 10 conference & networking event

I attended the Technology Strategy Boards (http://www.innovateuk.org/) Innovate 10 conference. Innovate 10 is a leading networking, conference and exhibition event for businesses to meet other businesses, government and academia with the aim of making innovation happen – creating opportunity and growth for the future. Continue reading “Research, platforms and collaboration for Business Models”

Are you innovating the Business Model

Missing opportunity with BMI, not seizing the day

There is such unprecedented change occurring in global business that Business Model Innovation is becoming all-pervasive in its need to understand, its real value and use in business, in innovating differently and why it can provide that consistent evaluation ‘power’ for exploring existing business models and competing alternatives in a more dynamic way.

Today the environment has become so much more forceful and we need tools to reflect that and capture breaking opportunities.

Intensity of Change

The incumbents’ already operating within the market need to be so much more proactive in seeking to extend and change what they offer. They can’t afford to sit still, to ‘freeze’ their business model, they need to keep moving, make the model more fluid and the organisation grouped around it increasingly alert and flexible to change.

If they don’t today they seem to face an onslaught of disruption through existing competitors, redefined industries, and new technology paradigms.

Let alone they need to simply not allow start ups and new entrants to capture those significant value points from underneath their very noses.

They need to constantly be questioning their value to the customer, known ones and those undiscovered ones that are out there lurking to engage. Continue reading “Are you innovating the Business Model”

Grounding innovation through convergence and intersections

Jobs-to-be-done seems to be a real convergence point for many innovation thinkers. This needs to be more central in our innovation thinking it seems to me.

Discovering intersections is where ideas collide, according to a theory brilliantly put together in a book some years ago by Frans Johansson called “The Medici Effect”. Johansson recommends we step into these intersections and then you can see how different thinking can meet head to head, as in this case from numerous innovation experts, to give you a deeper insight into your own innovative thinking.

I often have a habit of opening up a file on a subject when I feel it needs further exploring and jobs-to-be-done has become one of these. It is the convergence of many experts repeating sometimes their personal mantras has finally given me a growing realisation on how important this understanding of satisfying these jobs-to-be-done becomes too successful innovation.

Now this ‘light bulb’ moment of mine may not come as such a great surprise to some of you selected few but I’d argue it might be worth reflecting upon by taking a fresh look at this ‘idea’ of jobs-to-be-done a little deeper in your thinking also. There are many who tell you we should.

The power of many innovation thinkers Continue reading “Grounding innovation through convergence and intersections”

Business model innovation can really help Venture Capital assessment

I believe the Business model canvas, presented by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur in their book “Business Model Generation”, holds a very powerful way for Venture Capital to use in their assessments of promising ventures they are considering for investment.

Traditional pitches to VC’s are loaded with financial numbers, providing crisp, well written business plans pitched by teams oozing with optimism but much of this is still highly intangible in reality. There is often a decision made on the people’s chemistry more than anything else.

There is nothing wrong with that if you are the lucky ones, but tough on the countless thousands that face rejection after rejection for their ideas to attract the necessary funding needed to move their business forward.

Where the Business model canvas can fit in the VC pitch. Continue reading “Business model innovation can really help Venture Capital assessment”