building a lasting innovation engagement | Paul4innovating Innovation Views

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.

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.

Recognizing the Building Blocks of Innovation

Recognizing the value of having building blocks of innovation underrstanding

I finished my last post, “Are we EVER going to embrace innovation?” With the argument, we need to change the innovation narrative and significantly update the innovation approach and processes to meet today’s and tomorrow’s business challenges.

I am working through what I think this should become in design and application, involving providing the key innovation building blocks as components of the innovation stack, using the innovation stack to guide platform development and the platform to support this innovation stack.

It is the “fit” of this framework that needs more of my time as we need a new powerful innovation engine that leverages the strengths of each but to ensure innovation flows across organizations transparently and openly so collaborations can utilize all that we have in proven innovation thinking to take advantage of and build this out in new ways of thinking and design.

To look forward, I would argue we always need to look back and account for the progress made in managing innovation over the years. The need today is not to dispense with this but to link it fully up.

So this post reviews many great contributors to advancing innovation over the years.

Are we EVER going to embrace innovation?

Why have we not embraced innovation?

I will not apologize here; this will partly be a “rant” and then begin to suggest a way forward on embracing innovation fully.

I was thinking of having the headline “Innovation as our eternal doom or shame” or “innovation groundhog day”. Let me begin in why.

I really am fed up with constantly seeing claims that “innovation is core to our business” and that we are “constantly seeking fresh growth” Both of these are simply bullshit statements from the vast majority of our businesses.

Is managing innovation too complex or fragmented? Do organizations have a clear understanding of their innovation activities?

How many people are full-time employed in the innovation team, and how many in driving strategic growth? Ten, twenty, perhaps fifty out of thousands in medium to large companies.

In the bigger scheme of things, thousands within large organizations are working on innovation. These are from different functions such as R&D, Engineering disciplines, Technologists, Designers, Application and Digital. Do they work on standard innovation platforms or individually, left over from a legacy position or have they individually found a given application more suited to their specific needs?

Deepening the Thinking Around the Innovation Mandate – part two

Building out the clarity of any robust innovations mandate needs a depth of thinking

Following on from my first post “Constructing the Innovation Mandate” we should look further into aspects of the innovation mandate that need considering and clarification

Any innovation mandate needs to consider what is meant by the following and provide explanations:

Corporate Objectives: The innovation mandate should clearly align with the organization’s corporate objectives and business strategy. It should articulate how innovation will contribute to achieving these objectives, and what specific goals and metrics will be used to measure the success of the innovation program.

Value Goals: Innovation should create value for the organization in various forms, including revenue growth, cost savings, improved customer satisfaction, and enhanced brand reputation. The innovation mandate should clearly define the value goals for the innovation program and how they will be measured and tracked over time.

Innovation Policy: An innovation policy provides guidance and direction for the innovation program, defining the types of innovation that will be pursued, how innovation projects will be prioritized, and how intellectual property will be managed. The innovation mandate should articulate the organization’s innovation policy and how it will be implemented.

License to Operate: License to operate refers to the organization’s social and environmental responsibilities and obligations. An innovation mandate should consider how innovation can help the organization fulfil these responsibilities and enhance its reputation as a responsible corporate citizen.

Constructing the innovation mandate

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.

We require a more dynamic view of Innovation understanding.

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.

Completing transitions through innovation, ecosystems and sustainable approaches

*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.

What value does an Innovation Ecosystem offer?

*Converging ideas and thinking brings out creativity and different innovative solutions*

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

Greater access to a wider range of resources and expertise through the bringing together of a diverse set of organizations that can bring together technologies and customer insights from different perspectives, drawing in different resources not usually available to one organization to offer a greater potential to innovate more effectively, in choice, options, shared thinking and risk.
Increased collaborations and co-creation through innovation ecosystems can foster the greater potential for collaborations and co-creations between associated parties that can “trigger” innovations that feed from these growing cooperations forming between the parties
Greater scalability and speed. By leveraging the resources and capabilities of other organizations, the potential to scale the innovation efforts in new ways, across different channels, not open to one organization and give different levels of speed from the establishment and reputations the partners have built up in their respective markets.
Greater flexibility and adaptability in different, more collective and imaginative ways. Multiple alerts to market changes, conditions and customers’ needs can stimulate a growing adaptability and solution design, more modular or progressive in response
Greater potential for sustainability and social impact. Innovation ecosystems increasingly need to be designed to offer more sustainable and socially responsible solutions, having partners who manage different parts of the lifecycle, can create opportunities in designing redundancy and ease of replacement that extends and expands a product’s solution, giving an ongoing positive impact while achieving re-occurring business success.

Having a purposeful innovation ecosystem, well-designed and built for highly collaborative partnerships can yield very different results than managing innovation alone. These are not one-size fits, the understanding of what is needed to turn an ecosystem concept into a winning one may have specific needs for one group, compared to another. Multiple ecosystems allow for the ability to bring together the specific partners needed to achieve one goal but recognize these changes, depending on the challenges and complexities of any innovation concept requiring this collaborative approach.

Innovation ecosystems should be dynamic and highly adaptive, as participants join, others leave as different solutions are sought and evolve from collaborations, co-creation, new technology and new business model emerges

The key is to create an environment that encourages and supports the flow of open sources of ideas and resources among like-minded participants and enables them to collaborate and learn from each other in mutually beneficial ways to advance their specific business.

Innovation Walkabouts we all need for learning and testing ourselves

*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.