learning innovation | Paul4innovating Innovation Views

Piecing innovation together

When you look at all the (broken) parts within innovation it takes some time to figure out how you can piece it all together to make it a better whole improving on what you had

Innovation and its management is just this place this needs to be pieced together. It often cries out for it.

Most people that work in our business organizations are spending their increasing time in piecing their part of the innovation equation together to make innovation work and trying to improve on the existing conditions to deliver new products and services.

People are spending a greater part of their time have to work on fixing the system and its many faulty parts, let alone finding time to work on any new concept or learn differently. Is it not about time we stepped back and really thought through the design of innovation and its managing? Why is this so hard to do?

Continue reading “Piecing innovation together”

Reducing confusion, promoting diffusion for new knowledge in innovation

The third and final part of exploring knowledge and education for innovation.

Part three – the value is in changing, doing and exchanging

How are we going to engage more people within the innovation process? Getting people involved is getting people “doing”. We learn far more when we are doing and gaining experience yet organizations are always in seems to me consciously or unconsciously reducing the experimental part to any persons learning.

We need to reverse this and simply encourage the exploring of new skills, gaining new experiences and probing established rules to value them but also to challenge and push them. Innovation is certainly not a friend to rules, established protocols and traditions.

‘It’ looks to attract the diverse opinions, the people willing to speak up and be heard as they often have observed and feel something can be changed and ‘itch’ for the chance to explore and learn from this.

Coupling, uncoupling and recoupling in complex systems
Innovation is a complex system where the coupling, uncoupling and re-coupling of technology, design, product, organization, art and science, to name just a few of the parts, that need to constantly engage for good worthwhile innovation to happen, is important for us to recognize.

Organizations have real difficulties with this ‘fluid need’ to allow innovation to evolve as the natural tendencies are to apply, traditional, established ways to track, to attempt to ‘file away’ something that can be related too within the experiences.

This is why encouraging enquiry, by pushing experiences you ‘form’ less and ‘allow’ more to evolve before you make the judgement. Innovation needs to be allowed to stay ‘fluid’ as long as possible before the final commercial ‘freeze’ moment when all the combinations emerge as new to the world. Continue reading “Reducing confusion, promoting diffusion for new knowledge in innovation”

What is your capacity for innovation really like?

In a series of articles I’d like to explore the value of knowledge and education for innovation.

Part one – an opener to innovation change

How do we advance the learning needed for innovation? In my last article I wrote about the need to prepare ourselves for some forthcoming standards for innovation.

In a number of earlier articles, I have also written on a range of contributing factors that will advance innovation in its learning and adoption. In this series I want to go deeper – an emerging treaty for innovation advancement.

I have to be clear here, I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the seemingly lack of advancement in our understanding of innovation. Today we have a real challenge, all of us, in boosting our capacity for innovation.

We need to achieve this ‘boost’ as the outcomes we can gain and are required are both economic and social in the potential value. We need to move beyond the existing and tackle the blockages to the preferred, when it comes to innovation achievements.

We face many challenges within a highly competitive world
As we seek out fresh opportunities, locally and globally, we are becoming increasingly challenged. The world is highly competitive.

The key driver to meet these ‘twin’ challenges is innovation, not just for the short-term results businesses are so obsessed about but the critically important need to simply find the pathway to sustainable development through re-occurring innovation activities. Continue reading “What is your capacity for innovation really like?”

Will we ever learn to manage innovation to make progress?

I was asking myself when are we ever going to really learn about how to manage innovation as we seem to make so little progress?

Reading through the latest global survey results from McKinsey entitled ‘Innovation & Commercialization, 2010’ at http://fwd4.me/cRK and you must wonder with all the activity (and hype) surrounding innovation why we do not make the type of positive progress you should expect in innovation management.

There are very positive signs innovation is emerging stronger than ever from the recent bout of economic ‘flu’ we all have been going through. The report starts on a high note “84% of all executives say innovation is extremely or very important to their companies’ growth strategy”- yippee!

The darker side is the ‘but’- “little has changed in the way they generate ideas and turn them into products and services plus many other challenges remain remarkably consistent”- oh dear!

Do we ever learn? Continue reading “Will we ever learn to manage innovation to make progress?”