designing the future of innovation

Innovation needs to be designed differently, it is through a more collaborative approach and placing platform and ecosystem thinking into your process and understanding will deliver improved innovating performance

An innovation framework that offers a formula for sustainable advantage

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A formula to build a framework for sustainable innovation

Here is my solution that I think is worth working through first to absorb it and its combination. Then apply it to your innovation-building activity as a framework for innovation. Each time you are reviewing innovative activity, run through this formula in your head to see if each of the parts is embedded into the work.

I have worked on the formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE for many years.

In that post, I detail the make-up of the formula, made up of the combination of positive relationships between the following interrelated parts.

We are or need to be, in search of a sustainable future where we can constantly build upon innovation capabilities, capacities and competencies that can be refreshed, strengthened and sometimes reduced to meet the circumstances.

The formula SCA = II + OC + EE + MLC + RNE makes sense to me. How you build out these yourself further adds more uniqueness and source of advantage.

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The linkages of innovating purpose

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The linkages of innovation purpose

Whenever I get into conversations about innovating, we always hit difficulties on the question, “how can I build this well and be sustainble?” Hence, I often try to build an extended narrative for what makes up the innovation capability building and understanding for the future. I frame this as the linkages of innovation purpose.

This opening narrative becomes increasingly important when you argue the move from our present way of thinking and building innovation systems, often linear and spread across different teams and islands of internal knowledge. into future ones built far more around innovation ecosystems in thinking and design that are integrated and connected, to open up conversations and exchanges, seeking common points of value in a broader network of solution providers.

I outlined in a post in May 2022, “linking sense of innovating purpose“, my ten points of linkage need, and I want to build on this further here in some explanations for each of the linkages..

I want to go deeper into these ten linking parts, breaking them down a little further.

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What makes the Innovation Ecosystem different?

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In the past few months, I have been writing consistently on the need to change our innovating process, thinking and designs into Innovation Ecosystem ones.

What makes the innovation Ecosystem different? Source: tmforum.org

In October, for example, I wrote, “Why do we need to change our thinking about innovation“. I continue here with some more arguments of “why” we need to move towards an innovation ecosystem in design and thinking.

I continue to gather, reflect and construct the “how and what” structure of this redesigned innovation (ecosystem) process/system. This will be my initial view of how this needs to be shaped as the overriding architecture of an Innovation Ecosystem. I’m coming closer to the point of sharing this in the coming weeks.

I am focusing here on arguing for changing our innovation process on the Business-to-Business or Industry-to-industry, not the retail or consumer ecosystems and their designs.

Let us first provide the top view of the difference in need and the offer of new values.

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Barriers to innovation, the cause and effect.

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Seeing the barriers, the causes and effects.

I am on a personal mission to convince innovation software providers, corporations and innovators to change how they undertake innovation.

In some recent posts, I argued that we need to adopt a broader innovation ecosystem thinking and design. I stated in one recent post, “We must promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for innovating purposes, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.”

I do think we need to restate the current barriers to innovation.

These barriers do not ‘magically’ change by delivering what I believe moves us to a better system for innovation, that of an ecosystem and platform architecture. Still, barriers do need to be consciously built into any new thinking as ones “to be resolved” in any new solution design.

Recognizing the present and ongoing barriers to innovation needs solutions to be built into any future design. Let me outline many of these here, building further the case for necessary change.

Today most organizations have barriers towards creativity, ideas and innovation.

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Why do we need to change our thinking about innovation?

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The Innovation Ecosystem Cascading Effect

I have been arguing in recent posts about the need to change how we approach innovation. We need to think about designs around innovation ecosystems.

In a series that builds the argument so far, I have provided the essential context within this post” Please, we need a different innovation narrative” followed by “Building out our innovation ecosystem in design and thinking.”

My personal energy is drawn from all the challenges we face, looking to help find solutions.

We must promote more dynamic environments and the constant desire that organizations and their people have to be fit for innovating purposes, adaptive and fluid in such highly challenging and confusing times.

Achieving this innovation ecosystem thinking does require a profound shift in how innovation is viewed and approached in the business landscape today and in the future.

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Building out our innovation ecosystem in design and thinking

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Finding the new building blocks of innovation ecosystem design and thinking.

Why change our thinking and designing around innovation ecosystems?“

For me, ecosystem thinking and design offer fresh ways for accelerating mutual learning, and through this innovation, outcome potential for sharing and knowledge building.

As we build an understanding of the power of digital platforms and ecosystem thinking, we can see gains and new values and realize different opportunities denied to us in the past by a lack of clarity, depth of understanding of what was in front of us but not appreciated, as we were looking at it differently and not seeing its potential in a combined value or bundling.

Today we live in a more connected world; technology has enabled this.

We are becoming far more networked and have a growing awareness of hyper challenges that we are in part resolving. Still, we face many blurring boundaries across market positions, competitors and global trade that need combining our talent and expertise to provide a new set of solutions, delivering on promise and impact. We are in a more complex world, needing different approaches within business organizations.

We hold the promise of liberating potential in resolving wicked problems and opportunities, providing we embrace the potential to combine and share outside our organization and tap into the rich diversity of knowledge, equally keen to collaborate and cooperate to achieve a more cross-cutting innovation that provides solutions to these more complex problems.

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A new normal is upon us, the paradigm shift that will change the World.

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There is a real increasing pressure to totally reinvent my business. The past business paradigm of reaching out, providing value, and making money is still there. Still, it is how we all undergo the changes needed in a radically different set of economic circumstances.

We all are seeing the world in a very different light, in some ways a very harsh one, where the old normals are breaking down. The change in our world is even a little scary, it actually is giving me a little “angst.” I need to put some reorder into my world.

Firstly as many of you know, I have been investing my time in growing my understanding, expertise, and thinking over three “core” topics. My Innovation intent has been central to this for twenty years, but this has ‘funneled down’ into recognizing the value of ecosystems as the business design for innovation to thrive and deliver more significant value creation. In the past two-plus years, the whole Energy Transition has been my vehicle to apply my innovation learning and ecosystem thinking.

We must hold on to much of what we have, but we really will be forced to abandon so much of our accepted norm.

My search or questioning is not about abandoning what I have invested over these years, it is how can I redirect it. To shift its position to actively contribute in new ways, to adapt and adjust to the ‘new normal’ we all must seriously recognize is coming towards us.

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The immediate shift in work and social norms needs innovation

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Being in a personal crisis is one thing, but being in a global one is a whole lot different. So much is totally out of your control. You can rant and rave at some of the decisions have been made, or likely to come on some current performances.

Often you are left wondering where the insights or collective thinking was trying to offset the events that were unprecedented and scary but have now put us into such a massive economic downturn.

The decision to throw a protective shield around our health systems made sense, but the human suffering unfolding is going to be very tough on those that made these decisions, as it is to nearly everyone else. Facing this economic collapse is mindblowing.

We all are coming to grips with what this means in our working lives. We are in for immediate shifts in our working environment as we emerge from “lockdown.”

Innovation is going to become central to overcoming huge global problems of keeping our distance, inventing, and implementing the solutions to keep our “social distance” and know we are safe or not..

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We all need a different Social Media profile? Now.

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We are in a very different time, a social distancing time that might lead to a different type of work, one that you will have to be forced to stand out from the crowd as a socially engaged person.

A growing reality might be that many people will be forced to stay at home until a vaccine is found, due to their risk of infection. Travel might become off-limits for many.

As we come out of the present crisis, we need to look at our social engagement and influencer profiles as we need to engage with the world differently. We will be in a greater world of virtual management, earning our “daily crust” from what we do at a distance.

This crisis period has become even more dominated by Social Media. What can this teach us?

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Focusing on moving from disorder in today’s world

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To borrow and adapt a phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald and those over at Cognitive Edge: “The test of (complex adaptive) intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

I wanted to go back to one of my favourite frameworks, the Cynefin framework for partly thinking through the “known-unknown-unknowable” in our present world. We are seemingly more in the “unknown or unknowable” at present, perhaps in a world of disorder, in our understanding and actions relating to the current global worry, this coronavirus, as it became a global pandemic.

The Cynefin framework is from Dave Snowden through Cognitive Edge. The positioning of Cognitive Edge is “making sense of complexity in order to act.”

I start by suggesting we need to find ways to navigate ourselves back into some (new) order; to stabilize the chaos we are in. What we first need to do is make sense of what is going on around us, we need to determine what actions to take and the level of action, resource and support each part needs. We need to constantly ask: is it clear, complicated, complex, or chaotic, or even worse, highly confusing. The Cynefin framework significantly helps us to determine what particular parts we are dealing with, in the decisions needed.

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