Tag: Innovation and change

Exploring the Drivers of Innovation Change

ChangeI always show a particular interest in statements claiming to have identified a relevant driver of innovation change, then think through these.

Can these be valuable and be associated to the portfolio situation within an organization’s need, in seeking different viewpoints of product or service change?

Opening up our thinking to change can drive our business offerings very differently.

Often within these drivers, we do need to explore what is the underlying force behind them, it allows us to pause and think. As you think through what these different change drivers on what it might mean to extend your new product or service developments, these can prompt radically different and imaginative solutions to consider..

Using the different drivers can give you new insights into your innovation activities plus also can prompt significant changes to freshen up your innovation portfolio.

They are certainly a good place to start to get the creative juices flowing even more. Continue reading “Exploring the Drivers of Innovation Change”

Are we all upside down?

This is one of those rants occasionally I feel a real need to express. Forgive me, normal service will be resumed after this ‘break’.

Coffee in hand, soapbox set up, let me begin.

Today, we are all struggling to transform ourselves in our businesses, even just within ourselves, to adjust to the current economic difficulties we all seem presently to be facing.

We are not only confronted with the toughest downturn in modern times but with all the pressures with the speed of decision-making, and technological advances that seem to just simply ‘suck up’ more of our daily lives instead of helping to resolve it.

We have the pressures of global competitiveness and calls that constantly are urging us to never stand still because others aren’t.

We often become overwhelmed by the merging, acquiring, and rethinking that is going on constantly around us, the changes in processes, new alliances and the sudden emergence of a ‘new kid on the block’ who sees a weakness and rapidly fills that gap overnight.

Oh yes, and we still are not very good at being more innovative!

Lots more hotfixes or a more radical redesign?
These pressures compel us to focus on a host of ‘quick fixes’ but what we are failing to recognize is where all these changes fit within our long term plans.

Just finding the opportunity to take out precious ‘thinking’ time to synthesise and reorganize ourselves seems impossible, we are just getting caught up in the flotsam of life, just bobbing along. Continue reading “Are we all upside down?”

Shifting paradigms, refreezing the organization for innovation

I would like to continue on “unfreezing the middle” for innovation to really take hold and have a greater momentum in organizations, we often have to unfreeze them.  Largely it is about our ability to unlock those ‘frozen innovation moments or the assets associated with them.’

To radically redesign the approach to innovation that today is constantly occurring in ‘discreet parcels’ of innovation activity within organizations. It is this ‘selective’ approach I certainly believe needs changing.

To achieve this I believe the middle manager in organizations needs to make some significant changes within their perspectives of ‘how’ innovation must fit within the design of their organization.

This will allow them to achieve a fundamentally different organizational state than many seemingly need but perhaps are stuck with existing designs at present.

Perhaps they are not seeing a different perscribed pathway to take- the innovation pathway suggested here http://bit.ly/dnCj1m and built upon here http://bit.ly/ikgR4f can serve as thoughts

Innovation in organizations does need fresh perspectives.

Jeffrey Phillips argues in his recent blog that “middle managers need new perspectives, new skills and new directions”. “We need to unfreeze the middle so the rest of the organization can adapt and change. Only then can innovation become what is needed it to be”- taken from his blog: “From smooth and steady to rough and ready”.  (http://bit.ly/OVsuX)

The question is how to unfreeze what we do today and relearn? Continue reading “Shifting paradigms, refreezing the organization for innovation”

Unfreezing the middle, seeing a different innovating prospective

This past week we had a #innochat tweet session(www.innochat.com) around Jeffrey Phillip’s book “Relentless Innovation”( http://amzn.to/xXoHof ).

The chat was framed around a set of questions here (http://bit.ly/Awvh5E ) but basically the premise of Jeffrey’s thinking was “can it be possible to shift from business as usual (BAU) to innovation business as usual”?

He suggests that one of the most significant challenges for innovation is the fact that many firms have spent years, if not decades, creating business models and operating processes that are exceptionally efficient and effective but neglect the essential part that innovation plays.

Equally the middle manager is so focused on the delivery of short term results through effective organization and pursuing efficiencies they have little ‘slack’ within the system to learn and build innovation into it.

I would possibly argue the very people that we are expecting to manage the ‘dynamics’ within organizations, the Middle Managers, are seeking the very opposite- doing everything possible to keep it as stable and consistent as it can be.

So how can this change? Continue reading “Unfreezing the middle, seeing a different innovating prospective”