For my final post of the year, I went back to some of my thinking through, those around the building blocks needed in developing the core competencies for innovation that we need to have in place for realizing its true potential.
For me, the bedrock of innovation is built upon competencies, capabilities, and capacities and all these involve people as well as technology. They go hand in hand in our connected world.
Building these is the core of my own innovation offering in consulting, in advising, mentoring and coaching. My work constantly “maps” back to this essential three “C” of competencies, capabilities, and capacities.
Let me offer some thoughts that build around a framework I work through.
I recently participated in a survey for APQC that was looking to identify the hot topics within product development and innovation. One or two hot spots surprised me, others less so.
In the round-up of results almost two-thirds of survey respondents have placed refining the identification of customer needs and remaining competitive in terms of profit at the top of their product development agendas. I like the increasing emphasis on identifying customer needs
Among the potential research areas respondents were asked about, they felt that developing talent to drive innovation was the most important. The second one was around rapid product development: How to Move Products to Market Faster.
The one that really caught my eye was organizations have allocated the most funds to improvement in developing talent to drive innovation. This is heartening but also a worry.
This post follows on from my recent one of “the Innovation Journeyman.” We do have a real journey still to travel to understand the dynamics within innovation. Here, I want to lay out a possible path that might advance us towards achieving this. This includes a fairly ‘intensive’ nine step approach outlined below.
The innovation fitness dynamics
What we do need to do is constantly evolve our innovation capabilities to perform in more dynamic and flexible ways. We need to acquire that consistent aim of achieving a more adaptable and adjusting approach to innovation in all its parts.
We need to meet the changing circumstances and challenges we are all facing to regain the real growth needed from our economies and organizations, making what we do at the same time, more sustainable. Delivering better innovation outcomes is central to this task.
Continuing the innovation journey searching for the framework to deliver the dynamics of innovation by focusing upon achieving a certain innovation fitness.
My personal innovation journey started way back in 2001 when I got ‘hooked’ on innovation and what it could deliver in its impact on a business.
I believe it is for greater engagement within the organization and increased identification through their people, with the potential for learning and improving their capabilities.
Progressively I learnt about innovation, studied it as part of my Master’s degree and began to practice the parts others were prepared to pay me for, either to listen to, or offer advice.
This innovation journey took on a shape that eventually became 100% of my focus within my advisory practice at Agility Innovation Specialists by systematically building my understanding of innovation and providing this knowledge to others through advisory, coaching, writing and mentoring services.
It still is a long continuous journey twelve plus years later.
I’m constantly learning, reading, absorbing and interpreting what I understand and then attempting to provide my thoughts to others, those willing to listen!
I’m comfortable in much, totally restless in so much more out there to explore and work through, so as to achieve potential solutions, through experimentation and prototyping until they become recognized as relevant and applicable.
Investigating, researching and reading all required a significant amount of time, all alongside needing to practice innovation, working to clients’ needs or pushing for their attention to changes taking place within the field of innovation management and what they needed to do about it.
I do so enjoy doing a wordle (www.wordle.net), they make you feel a whole lot clearer on what and where any focus might be, or has been, from a perspective of my business and how it is evolving in content and areas of value for any innovative offering to clients.
Towards the end of a calendar year I like to always look back and reflect, to see where my innovation activities have headed. Did they add value, did they move innovation and my thinking forward? I think initially exploring these within a wordle does help make the critical focal points stand out.
For my final post of the year, I went back to some of my thinking through, those around the building blocks needed in developing the core competencies for innovation that we need to have in place for realizing its true potential.
