Paul4innovating Innovation Views

The Pathway Curve of Innovation Understanding

The pathway curve methodology is a well structured way to move up in innovation understanding.

One of my recent articles outlined a three horizon framework for innovation, let me extend this a little further into a pathway of innovation understanding.

I’m sure we all agree Innovation needs to be worked, it needs to be understood and often many people do get confused by not taking a more measured approach to the need to break innovation down into its manageable parts.

Innovation does not just have a time axis that the three horizons framework refers to but it has a complexity and scope axis in learning as well.

By taking a more systematic approach to any innovation you achieve a greater understanding over time of what is involved. Continue reading “The Pathway Curve of Innovation Understanding”

The Three Horizon Approach to Innovation

The three horizons for innovation thinking

Thinking through the management of innovation have you ever considered the Three Horizons approach? It is likely through this approach business leaders can adopt an evolutionary perspective across the entire innovation business portfolio.

If you are using a three horizons type approach to innovation, it becomes clear that you need to continue investing in innovative activities across all three time horizons, even if you’re in the middle of a present day crisis. To do this effectively, you need to have some idea of where you’re heading in the future, and that’s why I think it’s a useful tool for linking innovation to strategy. Continue reading “The Three Horizon Approach to Innovation”

Drawing fresh innovating oxygen into the body

This must be the time of year for all those innovation reports to resurface for fresh innovation thinking. Recently I went back to the OECD report (opener here. http://bit.ly/buIiv8) and began to breathe in more innovating air.

Not bad from the OECD but that is one of their purposes in life I suppose. Why? A number of points stand out and using OECD summary headings, these were:

Policies need to reflect innovation as it occurs today.
We all do get stuck in repeating old ways yet the world and how it explores, experiments and investigates is constantly changing. It has become highly interactive and a multidisciplinary process with so much more need for collaboration across a diverse network of stakeholders.

Although it is getting more complex focusing on performance through innovation is very much a today thing.

People should be empowered to innovate Continue reading “Drawing fresh innovating oxygen into the body”

Will we ever learn to manage innovation to make progress?

I was asking myself when are we ever going to really learn about how to manage innovation as we seem to make so little progress?

Reading through the latest global survey results from McKinsey entitled ‘Innovation & Commercialization, 2010’ at http://fwd4.me/cRK and you must wonder with all the activity (and hype) surrounding innovation why we do not make the type of positive progress you should expect in innovation management.

There are very positive signs innovation is emerging stronger than ever from the recent bout of economic ‘flu’ we all have been going through. The report starts on a high note “84% of all executives say innovation is extremely or very important to their companies’ growth strategy”- yippee!

The darker side is the ‘but’- “little has changed in the way they generate ideas and turn them into products and services plus many other challenges remain remarkably consistent”- oh dear!

Do we ever learn? Continue reading “Will we ever learn to manage innovation to make progress?”

The National Innovation Institute argument

Further to my last blog post on the need for a National Innovation Institute, I’d like to expand on this further as I’m presently here in Singapore and feel this is even more topical.

Always Singapore provides you with a positive impression when it comes to development. It is a country that consistently experiments and explores its options to grow its economy. Innovation is within this mix but I still think it should be more central, visible and coordinated to extract that little ‘extra juice’ often needed today.

Visiting Singapore on this trip I’ve been examining where innovation ‘fits’, and there are plenty of examples of experimentation backed up by investment seed money, but for me, innovation still lacks a certain coherency and consistency of purpose within policy.

I feel with the changing nature of innovation and its increasing value creation aspect it does need to be given a greater sense of attention, so further investments can build innovation deeper into the fabric of society.

A national innovation body can bring this coherency of purpose that Singapore strives for. Continue reading “The National Innovation Institute argument”

A Need for a Ministry of Innovation

I am presently busy preparing for a visit to Singapore. I balance my time between Switzerland and Singapore as my business base and as they are ranked 1 & 3 in the WEF’s Global Competitive Index, it is sometimes hard to get even deeper attention to innovation as this sort of ranking gives a certain belief, yet I often wonder why. I think countries often get blindsided in the pursuit of what they know and ignore what they seemingly can’t capture.

Let me be perfectly clear both countries I operate between, take competitiveness seriously; they both have a real need to maintain their attraction to foreign investment for their prosperity, as they have limited resources to call upon if you compare them to the USA, China, India or Germany for example, and do set about creating the right environment for this but they have their blindsides it seems to me still. Continue reading “A Need for a Ministry of Innovation”

Sustaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation

A formula for sustaining competitive advantage through a structured innovation framework

Sustainability is central to innovation’s future progress

Today’s challenge for me is not only to be building the innovation capacity but also to be establishing clear ways on how we should set about sustaining it.

Increasingly it is necessary for organizations to have the capability and capacity to sustain Innovation so it can provide the stimulus for lasting growth. To get there though, it does seem this must be through continued learning so your capabilities become stronger, evolving and more unique, thus making them more difficult for competitors to understand and imitate.

Let me outline an innovation framework that builds capability through a sustained approach.

When you set out to build capability to be sustaining you need to consider there are two types of capabilities, distinctive, which are the characteristics of the organization which cannot be replicated by others and reproductive, which can be bought in by the competition but always need to need to be appropriate to any objectives you are trying to achieve. Continue reading “Sustaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation”

The Amplified Individual for Innovation

Amplified Individuals for Innovation have four important characteristics.

I have been reading a fascinating report compiled for Nesta (www.nesta.org.uk) entitled “Amplified Leicester- Impact on social capital and cohesion”, written by Thilo Boeck and Sue Thomas of De Montford University (www.dmu.ac.uk)

As we all struggle with the increasing needs and complexity of innovation capacity it is the power of combining a greater diversity that holds real promise in the future

In this report, it explores at the intersection of difference, amplification and transliteracy the achievements of a city-wide experiment in Leicester to grow the innovation capacity across the city’s disparate and diverse communities and to share new skills which are fast becoming essential in 21st-century workplaces and communities.

It looks at social capital and uses emerging social media and provides a framework that allows for a diverse group to move towards cohesion and amplification. Continue reading “The Amplified Individual for Innovation”

The yin yang of innovation understanding

Can we recognize yin yang as a dual force of innovation?

Scholars tell us that there are two natural complementary yet contradictory forces at work within our universe.

The Chinese call these ‘Yin Yang’. Yin is regarded as more passive, receptive, more outside-in, whereas Yang is more active, creative and inside-out. These are seemingly opposing forces but interconnected and interdependent; one gives rise to the other, they actually reinforce each other.

Yin & yang seemingly have the following characteristics: they are opposing yet equally rooted together; they have the power to transform each other and eventually are balanced out. Continue reading “The yin yang of innovation understanding”

Exnovations place in the innovation life cycle

I was some time back reminded about the term “exnovation” in an interim report prepared for NESTA by the City University, London and the Work Psychology Group entitled “Characteristics & Behaviours of Innovative People in Organizations.”

Exnovation is if you were unaware, is at the end of the innovation life-cycle, where it “discards” or even purges existing practices to allow the organization to adopt different and fresh thinking to any new innovation activities.

A number of writers have discussed exnovation but its first use was attributed to Kimberly in 1981, who described innovation as a series of processes which in combination define an innovation life-cycle (Fiona Patterson, City University for NESTA). Continue reading “Exnovations place in the innovation life cycle”