Tag: sustaining innovation

My innovation wish for 2015

2015 Innovation WishI would like to see emerge a different ‘sustaining’ capacity built around innovation as the continuous core, constantly evolving, adapting, learning and adjusting, in perpetual innovation motion.

A truly integrated innovation solution that sits in our organization to allow innovation to be fully leveraged and exploited.

We need to recognize innovation has many touchpoints and a myriad of dimensions that need to be aligned and integrated. I genuinely believe we need a solution provider, who takes a more holistic view of innovation management that can make a significant advancement on where we are today, in our processes and systems.

These need a total integrated solution as the approach. this has its complexities in the challenges but we do have the potential through technology deliveries, platform constructs, and using the flexibility and adaptability found in the cloud.

If we combine these technology enablers with our innovation management understanding, then we can begin to construct this systematically and thoughtfully. It is very achievable and necessary for our organization’s abilities to absorb and translate knowledge into innovative growth, something missing for many.
Continue reading “My innovation wish for 2015”

Navigating the future landscape by developing adaptive innovation skills

So where are we focusing upon to make sure we are developing the right proficiencies and abilities we will need to manage our innovations of the future?

For me innovation capabilities and competencies needs to be far more adaptive and aligned to the different emerging skills we should be bringing to bear, so we are able to find better innovating solutions for our collective futures.

The issue is this: if we do want to reshape much of what we are struggling with today – poor growth, diminishing futures, disconnected communities, stagnating economies or ones struggling to emerge from devastated and austerity measures inflicted upon them.

We do need to change our skill sets to reflect a more realistic and up to date need to navigate and transform knowledge to tackle these. Often our present skills are not equipped to manage in these more “disruptive” environments. Continue reading “Navigating the future landscape by developing adaptive innovation skills”

Innovation Job Chasing – A Race Needed To Win

There are times when we all have to “up our game”. We are entering one of those periods where we have to relearn how to compete, how to win. The world is in the throes of some dramatic changes and the innovation gloves have to come off. Innovation capacity in many countries needs a new, more robust solution.

I wrote about “The present jobless innovation era we face” raising up the theory that Professor Christensen points towards, that we are working on the wrong types of innovation to create jobs.

We are measuring our businesses in financial metrics that were more designed for periods of scarce money supply and not what most of our companies have today, cash in abundance, sitting on their books and a world ‘awash’ of cheap money. Professor Christensen calls this theory of his “the Capitalists Dilemma.”

Risk-aversion is dominating our Western thinking
The present situation is that we are in a period of risk-aversion where the innovation ‘bets’ are more incremental, more short-term pushing for greater utilization of existing assets that are designated by Professor Christensen as “sustaining or efficiency” innovations. He believes we need more “empowering innovation” – those that create jobs and invest capital across longer-term horizons than today. Continue reading “Innovation Job Chasing – A Race Needed To Win”

The Present Jobless Innovation Era We Face

Over the last few months I have kept going back and forth on Professor Clayton Christensen’s paradox he has named “The Capitalist’s Dilemma” and been relating it to this jobless era we seem to be at present.

This idea ‘hit the world’ when he wrote a piece in the New York Times last November, 2012. I gather this has been one of his best, if not his best read article ever.

As I’m sure you are aware Professor Christensen must be regarded as if not the top, then one of the top experts, on innovation. For me he sits at the top, so when he explores a theory, you stop to think about what he is trying to explain. It takes some of us mere mortal awhile to grasp and relate to these ideas and theories.

Theories into solutions sometimes is a long wait for wrong reasons

Firstly an aside, I need to get this off my chest. Although I suspect a book will eventually emerge, perhaps only next year 2014, far too often this is a little later than preferred or when really needed. The ‘currency’ or present day relevance often suffers from this parallel world of academics, moving on a much slower level.

They are still working within the publishing strictures and structures where a book has to be firstly written, reworked, proofed by editors, printed, bounded and distributed.

As you might guess here, I just wish some of these breaking theories that emerge from the academics could be sped up, they are seemingly just caught up in the dogma of rigour, validation and peer review. Weighed down in this legacy they often fail to provide the valuable insights that can alter the present day where the theory or dilemma has arisen.

That valuable thinking to address the very problem we need a solution too is today not having even further debate after a book comes out, sometime in the future. We need to begin to travel the road, not just survey it! Continue reading “The Present Jobless Innovation Era We Face”

The Real Need Is Achieving Innovation Fitness

So how do we achieve a greater innovation fitness?

This begins to show you the way www.innovationfitnessdynamics.com is new and perhaps your possible innovative workout gym.

Firstly stop and survey our world from a new advantage point

Can you imagine standing on top of a mountain, looking out across a vast expanse of nothing but mountains and valleys stretching out before you? If you squint hard enough you can just make out that somewhere in the hazy distance, the endpoint of your travels.

The distance you have to travel towards that much-needed innovation understanding, that is made up of so many different dynamics that make you and your organization that much fitter to compete in today’s challenging world seems really far off, or actually is it?

Exhilaration can quickly turn to reality.

Clearly, while you are on top of this mountain you feel exhilarated to have even got up to this point. To even get there you have already made a decision that you and your organization need to become more innovative.

One that needs to look beyond what you have, to what is possible, you are curious to explore this further, you have to, innovation is a strategic imperative for, adding value, growth and improved wealth creation.

You have innovative choices Continue reading “The Real Need Is Achieving Innovation Fitness”