Tag: external contributions to innovation

Where consultants contribute to innovation

Consultants contribution to innovation activity.

I have been concerned for quiet some time about the ‘state’ of the consulting industry when it comes to innovation. There are simply far too many out there offering pieces of the innovation equation. If I was a client I’d be getting fairly hacked off- different people, different approaches, styles, methods of working and that nagging feeling it does not fit any bigger picture.
How do we resolve this?
Combining all these islands of knowledge into some form of combined force would be a healthy step but before we go there I was thinking about what does an innovation consultant contribute and where?
Here are my opening thoughts on this: Continue reading “Where consultants contribute to innovation”

Critical intervention points of innovation peer-to-peer engagement

I’ve been reading a fair amount recently about the “lack” of innovation leadership within organizations. Where there is smoke there has to be fire I suspect, but does it need to be so?

Internal leadership of innovation suffers from exactly the same critical problem that the people working on innovation suffer from, of a lack of time and opportunity to study alternatives, as all are caught up in ‘driving’ their innovation through their internal system.

This “alternative voice” is often missing and this can so easily come through external advocacy. This is unlikely to come from the innovation consultant brought in to undertake ongoing work as that is very different, this is more critical, more specialized, even strategical supporting role, involving peer-to-peer engagement.

This peer-to-peer helps  explore those critical issues relevant to you and where your organization is. Its aim is to offer a different perspective, so as to alter opinions or build new insights, that often cannot be evaluated without considerable deflection from the daily managing innovation that is taking place in often complex and challenging situations.

Yet alternatives need to be considered so knowledge can evolve. Continue reading “Critical intervention points of innovation peer-to-peer engagement”