GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Ekaterina (Katia) Carra is an eMBA Student at Télécom School of Management following the eMBA program: “Leading Innovation in a Digital World”. With a her classmates, she completed a study trip in Finland, reviewing creative approaches that Finland develop to nurture innovation. She presented an executive briefing on November, out of which she shared with us some astonishing innovation take-aways from Finland.

1) Among the different charts and figures you’ve analyzed, what were the most meaningful signals announcing Nokia’s decline?

[KC] What happened to Nokia? They obviously missed the smartphone wave surging across the market. One explanation is that Nokia was focused on hardware at a period where software was bringing the main new functionalities and innovations. The board didn’t anticipate that change, and how can we change a company that has always developed hardware?

This loss of shares on growing mobile market is due to missed innovation opportunity. Nokia did not follow the right strategy at the right time. Another signal was that their brand value fall down was -15% in 2011 vs 2010 according to Interbrand.

2) What are the triggers for Finland innovation ecosystem? Where is rooted its dynamic?

[NB] In your Executive Briefing, one can feel the importance of Education, Collaboration System & Culture, the idea of going global from the beginning, the teaching of Open Innovation, and a culture familiar with reboud. Some of it resoantes with Israël innovation culture. Does another DNA come to your mind?

[KC] Finland is innovation leading country according to market analysts. The R&D level of spends is more than 3%GDP which is high. The country is small, and English speakers ratio is significant. These 2 criteria lead automatically Finns to think worldwide.

Moreover, Finns are also leading telecoms market. Finland is a success story  shifting from local activities to global business.

• First, their domestic mobile technology cluster with the related software industry succeeded transformation to globalization of business and innovation in the 90’s;
• Then Finland completed a transformation process from a typical telecommunication business made of a lot of hardware and embedded software to a digital services internet economy composed of cloud, internet of things and big data. This has been made acquiring new competences.

Finland is a nation that has learnt to bounce: it’s in its DNA! In fact, it’s a young independent nation that lived under the Swedish influence until 1809 and then became a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire until 1917. So the death of Nokia is like an anecdote.

Its education system is also one of the most recognized over the world, with its deep links with the corporate world, hiring private sector experts as teachers and teachers moving from universities to companies very often, enhancing creative learning and teaching open innovation.

The Finnish innovation ecosystem is a very original model linking startups with big companies, universities and public bodies. Funds are typically mixed private (Digile…) and public ones (Tekes).

Today, Finland is one of the start-ups hot spots in Europe.

Additional triggers may be the following ones, centered on digital commitment:

• Government: digital agenda for Finland 2011-2020,  100 Mbit/s access for all citizens by 2015, ICT 2015 programme;
• Tekes public agency supporting start ups from which 68% are SME. In the heart of Tekes strategy are digitization and intelligent environments strategy: programms like TRIAL – test environment for cognitive and radio networks 2014, Ubicom – embedded ICT 2013, Digile;
• Finnish participation in European Research Area in the ICT sector;
• University-industry collaboration: active transfer of research results and new technologies to industry through R&D projects conducted in collaboration with companies; and fertile breeding ground for innovation and knowledge-based companies.

3) Is innovation processed differently at Finland innovation flagships: Aalto Design Factory, Tampere Tech University, Demola Tampere New Factory?

[KC] ECT ICT specials:

• Core mission is to drive European leadership in ICT innovation for economic growth and quality of life;
• International , mainly european, presence;
• Research & innovation areas covered : future cloud, cyber-physical systems, future networking solutions, urban life & mobility, health & wellbeing, privacy security & trust, smart energy systems, smart spaces;
• Strong focus on business development boosting entrepreneurial reasearch;
• Shared investment model:40M€ EIT; 130M€ non EIT.

Aalto Design Factory is built in different spirit: perhaps the spirit of Alvar Aalto, this famous Finnish architect and designer who died in 1976. Its 3 000 m2 look like a.. factory. The electroshop and machineshop are creative environments with large selection of electronic and hand tools. A great place to conduct a wide range of electronics, artistic and engineering experimentation. The factory is equipped with a rich set of equipment that any company can rent. Its main concept is based on the mixing of students from different backgrounds in order to create disruptive innovation; what would be better as mixing engineers, managers and designers? It’s just an explosive mixture!

Demola new factory interfaces with 3 big universities based at Tampere, and representing 38 0000 students: Tampere University of applied sciences, Tampere university of Technology, and University of Tampere. It is operated by Hermia, the leading Finnish innovation agency in the field of ICT and mechanical engineering and a major networker in the energy industry. Demola provides collaboration and real world experience with leading companies, start-ups and public companies. Its moto is “make it low risk and move fast”. Demola started from Tampere in 2008 and now there are 6 innovation centers in the international network: Vilnius, Budapest, Oulu, East Sweden, South Sweden.

[NB]: Demola is an utterly slick initiative of open innovation: it’s a cocreation hub for students from various universities, and companies. Watch out one of the output.

4) Innovation contests and tech-hubs are thriving worldwide, what are the Finland success stories? Can you explain Start-up sauna program, summer of start-up, Slush conference?

[KC] The most successful and well know Finnish start ups are:

• Rovio – mostly known with its hit game called Angry Birds. Created in 2003, they started with mobile games, but extended to social, TV, learning. Nowadays, their licensing includes a worldwide large coverage. The city of Tampere is typically a hub hosting more than 60 software-game companies.
  

• F Secure – security solutions provided created in 1988. F-secure is one of the leading worldwide solutions for anti-virus. The company needs to deliver its code in real time so it has developed real-time feedback system where customers are deeply involved. F-Secure also participates to the Cloud Software Program with other 30 private companies in order to improve position of Finnish software industry.
• Futurice: mobile, digital and IT solutions provider. It was selected  n°1 employer in Europe in 2012. Futurice is a typical example to show that innovation doesn’t only take place in products and solutions but also in management and organization. The company has setup an interesting flat-decision-making organization with a 3H concept: Happy customers, Happy end-users, Happy employees. Futurice was founded in 2000 and now having premises at Tampere, Helsinki, Berlin, London.

Finland also launches a lot of initiative that foster innovation within students and professionals.

• Startup Sauna Program is a framework where early-stage startups get coached by experienced serial entrepreneurs and investors, in an intense one-month program in Helsinki;
• Startup Sauna Internship for university graduates to intern at high-growth companies in Helsinki and Silicon Valley. More than 60 interns have been employed through the program to date;
• The Summer of Startup is a 10 weeks regrouping 40 students program;
• The SLUSH conference brings together the early-stage startup ecosystem in the region to meet top-tier venture capitalists and media from around the world. In 2012, SLUSH gathered more than 3.500 attendees, 550 companies and 250 investors and journalists for two days in Helsinki.

Some other hot finnish start-ups >>

5) Accelerating Finnish ICT and digital business is the aim of Digile: tell us more about it, and can we replicate?

[KC] Digile is a private nonprofit company founded in 2008. According to Jakko Talvitie, director of Digile Business Ecosystem Creation, Internet is the only business growing at 8% per year. DIGILE is the Digital Business Shok owned by industry, universities and other Finnish innovation players.

Finland is active in national innovation system and has established 6 SHOKs for selected industry vertical to carry out industry driven research and to support industries’ competence development and renewal. SHOKs are industry driven public private partnerships contributing to the Finnish industrial innovation and growth.

Its services include cooperative research programs, facilitation of business concept creation, coordination in international research activities and newly created Forge Service Lab where private companies can easily share part of their software development following open source and open innovation rules.

Founded in 1979, Télécom Ecole de Management is a business school with a renowned expertise in information technologies. Accredited by AACSB and AMBA, Télécom Ecole de Management is supervised by the French Ministry of Economics, Industry, and Finance. Télécom Ecole de Management is the business school of the Institut Mines-Télécom, the leading group of engineering schools in France. Télécom Ecole de Management has 1,300 students, 76 full-time faculty members and over 5,000 graduates.

Because of their double expertise in management sciences and IT, the students gain unique managerial skills:

• They understand the engineer’s world in order to work efficiently with them;
• They master information systems, which have become the organizations’ nerve center;
• They know about digital technologies and how the web economy functions.

image credits: bertmaes.wordpress.com, Nokia, presseurop.eu, raileurope.com, Aalto vimeo, moves.com, rovio.com, enevo.com, businessinsider, sodahead.com

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Navi Radjou is one of the eager promoter of frugal innovation through his book ‘Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth’. Jugaad, a Hindi-Urdu term used in India and Pakistan, means an improvised arrangement or work-around, triggered  by lack of resources.

Frugality is the new wealth

There are multiple sparkling frugal initiatives:

• Grassroots innovations are community-led solutions for sustainability: ‘researching sustainibility from the bottom-up’ entailing limited resources;
• Honey Bee Networks, founded by Anil K. Gupta, aims at dissemination of local and traditional knowledge, carrying stories of local ingenuity, and ensuring acknowledement of the innovators. It operates over 75 countries;
• Frugal innovations are designed by average citizen entrepreneurs: designed by the people for the people; relying on individual self-starting capacity, they tackle village motors, urbanism, water filtration, vaccines, and the famous clay fridge—the Mitticool;

• Jugaad might not be an African word, neverthelsess African frugal innovation is not left behind. Inventive prowess are surging, transforming life in Africa: affordable housing, mobile money, solar lamp kit, solar wifi station, sms national polling, waste recycling into fuel, fly factory producing larvae for chickens, ultra rice fortified with vitamins and minerals, fonio express husker.
• Are low-cost car, $100 laptop, $300-house, frugal innovations as well? They differ slightly: though they include low investment characteristic, they rather involve corporations than individual people, and do not harness ideas in a bottom-up move as in Jugaad innovations.

Practicing frugal innovation

Navi Radjou defines frugal innovation as a context of limited resources, paired with a commitment to ‘transform scarcity into opportunity through ingenious solution’. Less is more!

In a way, it meets Chinese philosophy of building on situation potentialities, detecting favourable drivers, rather than sticking to a rigid model and combating front-on, turning challenges into opportunities, as relates François Jullien in ‘Conférence sur l’efficacité‘.

Navi Radjou stresses 6 practices inspired by emerging countries:

1. Seek opportunity in adversity;
2. Do more with less;
3. Think and act flexibly, and iterate rapidly;
4. Keep it simple, stick to basics;
5. Include the margin (excluded from consumption);
6. Follow your heart.

Adopting frugal innovation for corporations

Frugal innovation outputs are amazing, and Navi’s enthusiasm is communicative: could we bring back frugal innovation in developed countries?

Navi Radjou believes so: large corporations shall reconnect with agility and frugality, learn to develop with less resources, turn limites into opportunities, to reach a new growth formula, both inclusive and sustainable.

Though I agree with the general outcome, I don’t think the transformation can be achieved at lightening speed:

• Frugal innovation is a cultural pattern made of ingenuity, self-starter mindset, in a context of struggle for life: that’s the reason why its innovation outputs are stunning. Powerful innovation is cultural design, and cultural change are difficult, if ever, to perform;
• Frugal innovation is rooted in local individual ingenuity, not in corporate systems: bringing in individual ownership in corporate companies requires exceptional leadership.

I would suggest a blended track, by setting-up collaboration platforms to scale frugal innovations from local to global. They could act as exchange hub where top-down and bottom-up initiatives cross. The $300 house is one form of this blended creation space.

Cooperation across borders is a demanding path, involving trust, transversality, time, and a networking culture. But when it comes to digital, APIs seem the perfect tool to complete collaborative innovation jigshaw: they present ‘explicit knowledge on the shelf’, and allow new businesses to form instantly by linking.

Chet Kapoor, CEO of Apigee, summarizes APIs impact as ‘driving entreprise inside-out innovation, shaping, and enhancing behaviour at scale’. What a ‘domino effect’.

As an illustration of API blasting effect, let’s take the case of mobile, a transformative tech  in Africa. The trigger there is individual entrepreneuship and start-ups propagation. Orange ‘API’ Toolbox is clearly designed to support African Mobile Entrepreneurs in their venture: we provide the tools, and you create!

Unleashing individual frugal innovation

In addition to translating frugal innovation’ benefits to corporations, one can breath Jugaad at individual or community level.

FabLabs (fabrication laboratories), 3D Printing, and DYI are currently dashing. Combining power of open source cooperation with freedom to conduct personal project, FabLabs are empowering individuals to create smart devices for themselves: FabLabs foster ‘personal innovation augmented’.

They now cover connected objects, rapidly becoming hackable devices: one can compose a customized connected object by assembling a set of components, as demonstrate Linkbot, Hello World DIY Kit, or SmartLamp.

Hacker-expert journalist Amaelle Guiton assumes FabLabs facilities will be ‘neighbourhood mini-plants’ in the future: one will design its electronic blueprint at home, and come to the nearest district FabLab to 3Dprint it.

With FabLabs, mixing low resources, individual initiative, and collective knowledge sharing, aren’t we tweaking Jugaad innovation, in a distinctive yet relevant, ownership, based on our cultural identity? Are FabLabs the Western side of frugal innovation?

Innovation is not duplication, and neither the negation of the past. Relying on our culture is the capability to create meaning for innovations no one can imitate.

image dredits: Solar Bottle Bulb, Miticool inndesign.fr, $100 laptop laptop.org, €300 house, cardboard bike, Vision Mobile, LinkRobot

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

‘How do you design things? Is there an expeditious path to frame an innovative venture?’ asked me a friend of mine while we were visiting a Tech-Hub in Tel Aviv.

Most importantly, I guess, is to be convinced that creating is not a solitary act. Innovation is a collective move, where knowledge flow is the seed of success. Embed it in your mindset, and arrange your invention machine accordingly.

Step 1 is to found creativity: select a growing domain, something that is shaking, emerging vivid technologies, evolving social behaviours, or market disjunctions. Detect pains, scope problem to solve, define your innovation intent. Match newness with social imaginaries, find roots in your culture: innovation is not the negation of the past. Forge your belief, shape your goal, draw a metaphor: these are qualifying foundations for the journey that will lead to shaping your innovation identity.

Confront your ideas. Chat with parent business units from the outset: innovation is not a combat sport, it’s a team sport. Create necessity for change for them, capture weak signals, find relay, provide context. At that early stage, listening, and potentially tweaking your innovation intent is easy.

Concurrently compose the team, find sharp skills and complementary mindsets. Adjust your belief to become a shared one, let team members develop their own view: a sign of belonging is when they start moving their autonomy.

Step 2 is the creative iteration process: select features, stage experience (whatever you call it: mock-up, pre-totype, or MVP), and open dialogue with users. Figure out the product’s effect on your customer, catch the killer app. Refine, extend, and test again. Ensure continuous knowledge circulation within the team along the loop process. Keep in touch with your relays in the BUs, and share what you learn .

Step 3 is about engagement with your innovation: prepare your product for market and a cooperative ecosytem.

Design API platform to let people bring value, providing a toolbox for design to partners. Indicate direction, express meaning, and let go: design the outcome, they will craft the outputs. Use your API to build your own product.

Follow up on connections on your platform, iterate, learn, and expend thanks to cross fertilizatiling users feedbacks: be what redHat calls a ‘maintainer’, someone who maintains the consistency across the community.

Market your innovation, leverage social media, expand the conversation with customers. Prepare to scale.

If you can’t be agile, try to stick together to weigh in the scrum: less arrow, more wood.

Go on the road to evangelize, innovation by influence is the way to start a movement. Over time I realize how it is less vital to design things by myself, and more impactful to sense the trend, and inspire.

image credits: softpowernetwork.ning.com, YHPyourhiddenpotential.co.uk, Ferrari, spiral road shangai hothdwallpaper.net

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

DemoAfrica is the launch pad for African start-ups.

Attending Demo last month, I was once again amazed by African start-ups creativity and energy.

African innovation is rooted in mobile stunning expansion, and Demo selected a range of 40 tech-entrepreneurs at early stage, offering a chance to ‘witness technology at its birth and to report on the next big thing from Africa’.

Mobile first!

Considering the mobile-equipped market they’re aiming at, most tech African start-ups are designing ‘mobile first’: they’re crafting a bespoke service for mobile device. Africa is embracing from the outset the Internet mobile wave: entrepreneurs are not designing for PC screen, and then adapting to smaller devices, using framework such as responsive design; they jump straightforwardly to mobile and tablets experiences. Africa’s Internet somehow prefigures our future, where mobile and tablets will have outsmarted PC usage.

Going global… from the start

Going global from the beginning came to the fore: African start-ups are clearly enticed to do so by the various speakers. VCs want naturally to invest in players targeting a global market, corresponding to soaring growth, and return on investment for them.

What an opportunity for a global player like Orange:  helping startups to extend their reach by means of access to its network capabilities is the goal of the Orange API Toolbox for Africa. Local marketing support, in the different markets where the start-up open their service, would be much appreciated as well.

Networking African Tech-Hubs

Tech communities are widespread all over Africa: there isn’t one Silicon Valley sun shining over the continent and, there is a constallation of tech-hubs stars, and it’s much more exciting this way. Linking African tech-hubs in a cooperative community would represent a tremendous asset for African start-ups in a fierce digital competition.   AfriLabs is committed to build this network of creative African labs: ‘AfriLabs supports growth of communities around African technology hubs, and encourages expansion of the network by providing tools and resources for new and emerging labs’.

Information at hand

Various niche services presebted at Demo target information provisioning, crossing in-depth database with social communities feedback. They cover various domains such as: job search, touristic travel places, housing market, hospitality service including menu update, city transport, bus ticketing and schedules, PO box delivery notification, education (multi channels lessons service inclusing quizz interactive testing), reporting fraud, events management, blood donation, diabetes personal management, residents association portal, mums social network, investments groups, small business local market place, and a transversal portal dedicated to African mobile services.

Internet entrepreneurs are working hard to make accurate information available, most of the time including a mobile access through mobile Internet or USSD service. Thus they extend their reach, and deliver information in any place in real time.

Let’s communicate & entertain ourselves

Start-ups offer communication systems tweaked for African context: low cost solar BTS (radio station for mobile network), Internet streaming box, cloud storage, mobile VoIP app, transparent stickers transforming screens into touch screens, portable box embedding content, instant messaging platform to communicate with customer, and solar lamp charging a phone account.

Entertainment on mobile devices are not forgotten: mobile streaming TV, mobile software player, mobile gaming.

Mobile money platform

Thriving on the dizzying adoption of mobile money, money platforms develop slick add-on features: save to buy, billling software, online payment platform for retailers (demo was performed with Orange payment!), mobile money transfer.

40 Start-ups Pitches shaking stage

All start-ups detailed data sheet and contacts are on VC4Africa/Ventures.

Related post

image credits: CNN, Orange Money, AfriLabs, Guardian, Vivifi

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

It happens everyday:  process slows down innovation which turns out a grueling race. Don’t get me wrong: innovation is a process that needs to be managed (‘Creative Tension’). But stage process don’t flow without meaning.

Going through a fictional innovation story detailed below, we sort out 2 lessons  around ‘Feature Team’ and ‘Leadership’, that would be worth tested in your next innovation challenge.

September 2012 –> February 2013 : getting approval

1. Because you need to dig into the concept, define a strategic positioning, investigate business model, produce a deck of slides, and get the various marketing teams aligned on a joint baseline (>> November);
2. Because the project must be approved by the Innovation Committee, that another file format must be fulfilled, a slot found in the agenda, and that it’s not so easy in this period of year, at end of year (>> February);
3. Because the boss’s boss wants to make sure all marketing teams are on the same page, and as he’s not available at Innovation Committee meeting, you have to set up a dedicated meeting with all stakeholders (>> March);
4. Because the presentation to the boss’s boss would be completed without appropriate support of relevant resource such as the innovation project leader, and, in a budget cuts context, would drive to one-half approval, the one that the boss’s boss figured out, and which had been previously approved by the Innovation Committee (>> April);
5. Because the team corresponding to the budget cut got then demobilized.

‘Can we go for development now?’ asked the innovation project leader. Hold on, you’re almost there, just a few more things besides:

September 2013 –> on-going : getting ‘buy-in’

Now that the mock-up stages the concept in a resounding way, innovation project leader shall seek buy-in and delivery support from the national business units, which brings additional :

Feature Team and Leadership

How well documented a stage-gate process might be, it doesn’t grant you for success, and neither for speed. For innovation to step-in, meaning must prevail: product development rules are relevant when they add value, not chasing smaller and smaller, suppressing autonomy to lead to dull or hollow upshot; otherwise innovation flow must find ways to circumvent to match market speed. In the long run, the best rules are the ones which are collectively shared and experienced. Activating collective intelligence is innovation purpose and span:

1. When innovation team is not a fully dedicated Feature Team (assembling all necessary skills such as product marketing, design, development, customer experience, device supply), one is going to stop and queue at every trade desk. Never will you form a unified team, bonded in faith and deep conviction. Furthermore, moving from one desk to another, breaking things in pieces, your risk losing the consistency of the innovation story;
2. Without Leadership, innovation is governed by budget regulation, committee without inspiration, and work service planning, which only fits for incremental innovation. Without vision and conviction, collaborative innovation ends up to contractual agreement instead of sharing competencies fruitfully, unraveling flexible open innovation, fostering creativity and disruption.

image credits: radioscopy-choq-fm, letsgo-com, fastcompany.com

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Harvey Cohen is the Founder and President of Strategy Analytics. He spends a lot of time with CEOs, and one of the concern he keeps hearing is: ‘How can we speed-up disruptive innovation?’

Meeting for breakfast in Paris, we chatted freely over this topic. From this casual conversation emerged a few tips, and 4 pillars we would use to build a smart innovation unit.

Autonomy

Disruption cannot happen in the mainstream. What Vijay Govindarajan calls the ‘performance engine’ is built for efficiency, not for innovative breakthroughs.

Neither can you turn an orthodox into a disruptor. Look at incumbent operators: their DNA is made of quality of service, reliability, and an historical sense of public duty, it’s unnatural for them to follow up with ‘quirky software’ that start-ups invent.

You need new skills, somehow an ability to forget the past in order to create the future. You need born a disruptor, concurrently stubborn and flexible, focused on the innovation challenge.

Innovation thrives on autonomy, because autonomy is mother of motivation: when innovators feel the creative initiative is part of their belonging, you’re running for feat. Once trust established, let the team lead the team.

Creative Tension

Creativity path is facilitated in a framework mixing stretched goals and inspiring disciplines.

Stretched goals mean ambitious expectations, and short deadlines. Speed has an intrinsic virtue: the faster you are, the better you become. One can always say: we could have done better, should we have had more time… but we might also not have gone the whole hog, and lost our way.

Innovation teams take internal forms (skunk works, innovation unit, creative lab, intrepreneurship, mentoring start-ups in a corporate incubator) or incubate externally (spin-off, essaimage that you will later buy in like Cisco, innovation contest, open innovation on demand, innovation community).

Small is beautiful: small innovation teams hit the nail. By aggregating all necessary skills to design a functional module (feature team), you move much faster (rugby approach) akin to sequential tasks transferring from one department to another at idling speed.

Feature teams impact is magnified by team spirit. By assembling product marketing, design, development, and customer research talents, not only is your innovation timeline sky rocketing, but you are framing team’s spirit and identity. Collective intelligence is tremendously activated. Success is at hand.

True innovators are willing to become innovation experts, committed to ‘learn to dare’. Innovation is cultural design:

• It is rooted in culture of innovation: risk-taking, environment of trust, creativity as a corporate values;
• It rises on top of substantial innovation literacy, and borrows to a startling cohort of innovation leaders and passionate thinkers.

Innovation management is a disciplined experiment and a collective endeavor: innovation is about testing assumptions, translating results into shared knowledge, measuring progress, and iterating. Relentlessly keeping simplicity in mind, and nurturing an open dialogue with users (design thinking, lean start-up).

Shrewd leadership strives to translate concept into elegant experience, orchestrate collective intelligence, look up for allies and partners, and ensure knowledge circulation in closed loop.

Strategic alignment and pollination

Once idea captured, and concept staged in a demonstrator or ‘pre-totype’, a tricky part is to bring innovation’s value inside the corporate co: fear from cannibalisation, overfueled roadmaps, unpredictable results, there are numerous reasons for resisting change.

Prepare necessity for change from upstream, through permanent connections, in parallel to development of your venture. Gain decision makers sponsorship, and maintain an open dialogue.

Capture needs and problems of the mainstream. Figure out the corporate innovation strategy, aim to strategic alignment:  understand your company’s roots, innovation right chemistry brings change while remaining yourself. Innovation unit performance shall be measured on a dedicated yardstick. Nevertheless it is worth sharing a selection of innovation goals with corporate, and raise parent investment in your initiatives.


Corporate must have a clear view of your innovation unit. Your identity reflects in your innovation portfolio. Balance Disruptive Projects which are your ‘raison d’être’, with Quick Wins which will build your credibility, and exploration mock-up, Design Probes, which will feed the dialogue and your pipeline.

By launching parallel innovation streams, you’ll be in a position to harness value connecting the dots. Winning formula might result from combining attempt #1 and attempt #2. That’s wise innovation portfolio management.

Active portfolio requires license to kill, and learning how to die: celebrate failure, fail fast, learn fast, and bounce higher.

Product innovation goes hand in hand with business model innovation. Let your service find its audience, and seek to monetize value once it gets traction. Test different models on small scale, be inventive on this dimension as well. Look up for a bold business model sticking your new product, following Amazon’ steps.

Spread innovation culture: set-up idea contest, innovation hub for advice and conferences, and co-creation challenges to pollinate creative mindset and infuse innovation literacy.

Modular design

Autonomy, expertise and good will are sometimes not enough to let the innovation flow move forward. Relevant tools unravel collaboration: that’s the whole point of API, designing with, rather than designing for.

Design a component or functional module, embedded in multiple services through an API, letting others spring back, and build value on top of your platform. ‘Eat your own dog food’ by testing your API in your demonstrator.

API design is not technical only, it’s a  ‘design thinking’ approach:

• Reflecting an enticing Vision, Meaning, and Target;
• Bottom-up vs Top-Down Break-Down;
• Organic, Expandable vs post-service Exposure;
• Staging innovation intent;
• Cornerstone of Innovation Ecosystem.

Collaborative platforms are now whopping because they unleash:

• Agile service infrastructure;
• Radical adjacency moves;
• Externalisation (limiting management complexity);
• ‘fluid core‘ (skills adapting with times, seeing new roles in new markets);
• Multifaceted cooperation.

‘Elastic enterprise‘ is when businesses connect in automatic ways via platforms, points out Haydn Shaughnessy.

When combination of product experience,  business sharing, and API platform drives upwardly customer base with fulfillment, prepare to scale.

Search for the self

Are you the defendant of a collaborative model, designing an open platform, a product aimed at generating creative developments, like Android, Google Glass, or mind-blogging APIs like Amazon, NetFlix, Facebook, Twitter unwind? Or is your mindset more like ‘I’ve anticipated every customer need, and designed corresponding experience’ device?

Do you enjoy relying on others, be surprised by them, or are you wielding control freak influence, and holding the secret? Are you Google, are you Apple? Are you Jeff Bezos, are you Steve Jobs? Innovation journey often resembles a search for the self.

Credits: sheownsit.com, famili.fr, austincc.edu, varshadaswani.com, terresacree.org, pelerin.com, yourstory.in, foxnews.com, yelomart.fr

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Dear Son,

Please take time along your ‘daily rush’ to discover a melting pot of various reads, and borrow from my own experience these 6 ‘mantras’ that I learned along my innovation track.

I enjoy meditating over them regularly: because I feel on the same page, they shine as a light house or sometimes a shelter where I can find calm and serenity, and the right lift when my battery goes flat.

I’m happy to share them with you: enjoy, take care of them, and most of all, mold your own.

1. Find what you love to do: follow your heart, people will buy what you’re committed in;
2. For things to become a reality, dream them first: imagine, innovate with meaning, fill your design with identity; even working in a terrible place, you can start-up a new place in your head;
3. A strategy is required but in all likelihood, it’ll be wrong: prepare to seize unanticipated opportunities, and build on situation potentials;
4. Connect the dots, unleash autonomy and activate collective intelligence: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts;
5. Create time for what counts for you: list the ‘don’t’, the things that you clearly want to avoid in the future;
6. Happiness is a mix of courage (take action where you can influence), humility (openess, ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’), and generosity (give if you want to receive).

P.S. Ingest video of Steve Jobs speech at Stanford

image credits: boston.com; let’s travel to tibet: let’s travel somewhere

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Editor’s note: USI – if you are unfamiliar – is the self-acclaimed “Annual Forum of Geeks and Bosses for information technologies that transform our societies.” It took place in Paris on June 24-25.

Of course, there was no problem at USI 2013 event!

It’s just a play on words on ‘Houston, we’ve got a problem’, with regards to stunning speech delivered at USI by Jim Lovell, one survivor of the turbulent Apollo 13 flight.

By the way, Jim revealed the true story. He actually said: “Houston, we’ve had a problem” as he was the second cosmonaut to raise the issue. A first cosmonaut had called Houston a few minutes before, stating ‘we have a problem’, but with no response back.

Below is a selection of presentations I enjoyed particularly, and ‘best of’ Tweets and quotes shared during the session. USI 2013 definitely confirms its singular positioning, at the crossroad between designing future of digital technologies and sharing rewarding and deeply humanist management experiences.

What’s happening on Internet, Vincent Cerf (video)

Cerf co-invented the architecture and basic protocols of the Internet: that’s it!

He shares his view about the future of Internet:

• For many people, first Internet experience will be on mobile. 38% of media interactions happen on smart phones;
• Email is natively social: first distribution lists on Arpanet were about science fiction and food ‘miam miam’;
• Internet future trends: GoogleGlass, RFID on each bottle, sensor on the cork, the Internet of things, Google Self Driving Cars, ‘self-driving cars are much safer, they on’t get angry’, smart grid consumption, smart monitoring;
• Major issues regard privacy, cyber security collusing national security; ‘we need a cyber fire department to call before calling the police’;
• Interplanetary Internet?
• Internet freedom: ‘you don’t have to get permission to bring a new product, this has to be preserved’;
• Innovation: ‘Silicon Valley works well because of educated people and access to capital’; ‘tolerance for failure is a mark of experience, not incompetence’.

Apollo 13, a succesful failure, Jim Lovell

Jim Lovell was Apollo 13 commander. He’s an amazing storyteller, featuring a breathtaking narrative of Apollo 13 perillous adventure. Following on-board explosion, reducing oxygen supply and electric power, the spacecraft crew had to find the ‘free return’ flight from moon to earth. Here is what Jim tells about it:

• I was not worried, the stars, the sight, the sound, even the smell sound so familiar to me… But you know that sensation you get when you’re in deep trouble? That’s how I felt looking at the empty oxygen tank;
• Team work and leadership are the secrets to sucess; Another one is: always expect the unexpected!

• I had to learn in a short time to maneuver, you’d be surprised how quickly you learn when you’re in deep trouble;
• “Copy the instructions before we lose communications” said Houton… It was maximum stress for me, while my companions wanted to take pictures of the far sight of the moon, the sight you never see: they had camera in their head!
• When things get quiet, you start to think: how do we do a safe landing on earth? This was visual maneuvering: operating the landing according to the sight on earth across the window;
• Following Apollo13 long series of disasters, I shouldn’t be here to tail you the tail; there was no “we’ll put you on the next flight” this time;
• There are 3 types of people on earth: one makes things happen, one watches things happen, one wonders what happened. Every business you’re in, you have to be motivated, be someone that makes things happen;
• Apollo13 shows that the actions that you take, really determine the chances of success or failure.

La métaphore des jardins, Christian Monjou (video)

Christian Monjou is litterature Professeur at Lycée Henri IV khâgne. He draws subtle links between Art and leadership. Here is the case study of garden architecture.

• Pour son château de Vaux le Vicompte, Fouquet pensait que l’on dirait: “Qu’il est grand le roi qui a un tel ministre … “. Peu de gens comprirent et notamment pas Louis 14, qui fit embastiller Fouquet. Nul leader ne maîtrise la manière dont ses messages sont décodés’.
• Dans les jardins à la française ‘tout converge et tout part du château’. Des notions d’optique permettent à Lenôtre de créer des perspectives aux dimensions équilibrées en regardant les jardins depuis le château, respectant le principe de Descartes: “L’ordre n’est pas dans la chose observée, mais dans l’oeil qui observe”.
• ‘On est très décoratif en France, dès que c’est utile, cela nous embête un peu, ça nous fait peur.’
• ‘Tout part et revient au roi: le centralisme à la Française. Voir le roi et être vu par lui est l’essentiel. Cela a-t-il changé ?’  Pourtant, ‘le boulot d’un leader c’est de faire surgir ses fous. Un politique doit intégrer l’œil du fou. Je me tue à leur dire depuis des années.’

• Quelques agréments de la balade dans le jardin : ‘an eye catch, a fabric, vista, un point qui vue attire dans le jardin, qu’on atteint par des chemins détournés et deouis lequel le regard est attiré par un autre eye catch’. Le ‘ah, ah !’, une petite rupture de gazon, sur laquelle on trébuche en s’exclamant ‘ah, ah’.
• ‘Savoir reconnaître du #Palladio dans l’architecture de l’époque, c’était ça les #Geeks de l’époque’
• Passons au jardin britannique : ‘Les organisations britanniques ont l’air naturel, comme leurs jardins. elles sont beaucoup plus complexes en réalité’
• ‘Des grands conquérants, de grands penseurs : si vous n’avez pas un poète, vous ne ferez pas une entreprise’
• ‘Le challenge du jardin c’est l’équilibre entre l’énergie et la lisibilité’ #leadership

Comprendre ce qu’est le temps pour mieux le vivre, Bruno Jarrosson (video)

L’entame de Bruno Jarrosson est on ne peut plus élégante : ‘il n’y a que le silence qui sait ce qu’on peut dire après Christian Monjou’. Puis Bruno, consultant philosophe, nous livre des réflexions profondes et percutantes sur ”Le temps de mieux vivre’ :

• ‘Saisis-toi de chaque heure, empare toi du présent’ nous exhorte Sénèque #CarpeDiem;
• Mais le temps est un sujet douloureux : ‘un joueur qui gagne sans tricher’ #Baudelaire #rétroviseur;
• Un élément rare : ‘Le temps est tout ce dont nous disposons avant d’être mort’;
• Angoissant : ‘L’angoisse : la possibilité immédiate du pire’ #ComteSponville;
• Pénible : ‘Le temps mon pire ennemi, toute souffrance s’éprouve dans le temps’ #kierkegaard;
• Frustrant : ‘Le manque de temps une notion moderne’;
• Trop long : ‘Si l’ennui fait paraître le temps long, est-il précieux ?
• Comment garder la maîtrise ? ‘Ce qui m’arrive dépend-il de moi ? Lucidité sur ce qui ne dépend pas de moi et courage sur ce qui en dépend’ nous dient les Stoiciens #chronos;
• Distinguer entre ‘Temps mesuré, chonos, et temps ressenti, tempus : nous avions un problème d’accès, nous avons un problème de tri’;
• Le sens du temps : ‘Ce qui donne sens à l’information, c’est de m’être intéressé au domaine’;
• Le temps du bonheur ? ‘Le temps est mon meilleur ami, la seule ressource qui me permet de comprendre le bonheur’; ‘Tout passe sauf le temps’; ‘Lorsque l’amour donne du sens au temps, on ne se plaint plus de manquer de temps’;
• ‘Comment rater son temps ? Considérer que votre temps ne dépend pas de vous’ ;

Autrement dit, 2 questions de fin de journée différentes : Ai-je traité toutes les infos ou ai-je utilisé au mieux mon temps ?

Pour conclure, Bruno nous livre les 3 secrets du temps heureux :

• Courage : agir en volonté;
• Humilité : cultiver l’ignorance;
• Générosité : donner du temps.

Google Art Project, Amit Sood

‘To show art in the most amazing way is what the Google Art Project is about’ says Amit Sood. Google art project is an experience, it’s something immersive, deeply into the painting: ‘you can be looking at a guy staring at you, or discovering invisible parts of the Harvesters painting’.

First indoor video recording was completed with a kind of Google street view camera.

As 250 institutes agreed between 2011 and 2013, you can now:

• cross-visit museums: select “gold” and browse pieces across all museums collections in a raw;
• set-up your own gallery: 350 000 user galleries have been set up worldwide;
• compare side by side paintings from different museums, become Art curator;
• read stories through archives: La Dolce Vita, Football in Brasil.

‘Though crowdsourcing is a worry for museum, as well as copyright’, Amit Sood hits the nail with his enthusiasm and dynamic commitment.

Enchanted Ojects, David Rose (video)

David Rose raises the question of the relationship we want to have with technology: a terminal world (MS), prosthetics (GoogleGlass), social robots, enchanted objects?

He spots 6 reasons to enchant an object: omniscience, communication, protection, health, teleportation, expression. A few triggers to drive your imagination are about changing the obkect’s capacity: glance-ability, wear-ability, use-ability, love-ability, tangeability, learnability, expressibility, gestureability, ingestability, affordability, sociability or smoke- ability!

David presents a range of Internet connected objects incredibly creative and purposeful: energy clock (running against yourself is utterly motivating), Amazon Trash Can (automatically reordering an item when you trash it), a family clock (keeping tracks of every family member), an augmented pen camera and audio, a tangible wallet, an ambient furniture, an indicator tracking bus at the bus pole, a mirror superposing blood pressure on your image, and a wearable camera with automatic tagging.

One of the most amazing object is an Internet connected pills cap: Glowcaps is a medication box that makes ringtone when it’s time. Pretty fun and a huge opportunity for Telcos (distributed by AT&T)!

Decalogue for a ‘senseable’ Smart City, Carlo Ratti (video)

Carlo Ratti’s talk on “sensible,” smart cities is smart, humorous, and absolutely fascinating. He illustrates with several projects involving data viz of human boundaries based on how we connect, and knowing in real-time what’s happening with wide dataset:

• Following data trash around the world;
• Computing taxi data, allowing people to share taxis, and traffic cut by 30%;
• Analyzing stress when driving a car;
• Quantifying the impact of WiFi on the Boston MIT campus activity;
• Projecting an imaginary city where we manufacture products ouselves;

SmartCities are not about technology, but about social places and good environment.

All projects presented are here: https://t.co/UdaE506syd.

Innovation et sortie de crise, Marc Giget (video)

image credits: gtwallpaper.com, gearshift.tv, answers-com, planetejardin.net, Google_Art_Project commons, artobserved.com, fastcodesign.com, senseable-city-lab, Les Mardis de l’Innovation

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Patrick le Quément is a world famous Car Designer. Patrick’s motto is: Design = Quality; as SVP Renault Corporate Design, his structural changes were to develop an independent and innovative formal language, turning Renault Design in an effective brand name. Patrick is now working as independant Designer, and President of the Advisory Board “the Sustainable Design School”.

This article was submitted by IX contributor Nicolas Bry

I attach a great deal of importance to my working environment. When I arrived at Renault in 1987 I was placed in premises devoid of any charm whatsoever. It’s fortunate that I discovered the facilities after I had signed on the dotted line as I might have had second thoughts and moved on somewhere else, it was that bad. The first thing that struck me was the carpet! Now the French like to poke fun at their British neighbors for the world of their own that they have developed, over the years, when it comes down to carpets in provincial hotels. Well this was worst, a carpet that even my English dog would have have felt offended, had it lined his proverbial dog house.

Design Centre industrial Loft

Not only was the Design Centre depressingly boring and uninspiring, it had the added attraction of being too small. This was a plus point in some ways, because a request for a move was more than justified. Being a financially fragile company, we had to find a solution at the lowest possible cost. We managed to take over 20,000 square meters in an old abandoned factory down by the Seine for our operations: the same place where Louis Renault had set up the company back in 1898.

What we ended up with may have been out of step with the rest of the company, but it soon became the-must-see area within Renault : a real cultural hotspot and then some more. And yet the environment was metallic and bare bones industrial, but we had plenty of zenithal light, plenty of space, as well as an abundance of colors and high impact graphics, all done with a minimal budget… A significant contribution to the recipe for a creative renaissance.

Environment and creativity is what this is all about. A nice comfy environment is not the objective, neither is an overwhelming decor that dwarfs the individual, nor a sound system permanently calling «Mr Dupont to the reception», nor hard rock music that rocks you away from that thought you had just a moment ago, just before that headache hit you, and that you just cannot remember.

What did I give as an objective to the interior designer who took the challenge of transforming this mechanical cemetery into a creative hive? First thing first, to encourage a sense of pride for all the design community who would enter the Design Center each morning. Entrances are there to communicate who you are, what you are, and what a clever bunch of innovative people work there, and that : whoever is entering the place has to know that they are dealing with people who are simply demanding in terms of excellence. As I often said : «Good enough is not enough if you dream of becoming great».

Where else was our attention directed to? We’d found that, by a bit of luck, our building was delivering «Northern light», the best according to generations of great artists and draughtsmen. We had the space, we put in many plants to break up the rigorous man made structure, we put lots and lots of display areas to pin sketches and internal chit chat… is that it? Of course not!

The most important is yet to come, we gave all our attention to that all important area in a design center, the coffee spot. Where else do you exchange with others, from within your studio or from another studio, or the studio engineers or the cleaning lady who comes from Senegal and whose son wants to become a rap singer?

The coffee spot is where minds relax, where minds are receptive, exchanges take place, informal evaluations follow up, advice is given to the new recruits,  the color and trim girls and boys with their unusual feathers, remind you to think color as well as form and function or feasibility, or cost or performance, or that innovative hinge mechanism that seems to continuously grown in size… We set up a sketch corner where every studio were asked to display renewable work, a place was also given for the outside world, be it new trends, hobbies, events and «just out» on the market.

The Technocentre

A few years later in 1997,when we decamped to our brand new design home west of Paris, at a place called the Technocentre, to house all the creative teams and units of the company, able to accommodate 8,000 people, included the 270 that then made up the Design team, (the Design team then grew to a total of close to 500 within the next 10 years).The key advantage of the Technocentre was that it enabled the Design team to rub shoulders – one could say brains – on a day to day basis with literally thousands of colleagues beavering away in product and process engineering, purchasing, and so on. Well this was the theory, it turned out not to function as well as some thought, most technically minded people still looked upon designers like a chicken looks at a fork.

On the down side we were away from the busy, exciting life in the city and now more likely to meeting grazing cows on the way to work rather than the real changing world of our customers.

And then there was the building… very clean and almost clinical, modern to the last visual criteria of the day, functional and rational as well as desperately lacking in warmth and humanity. I quickly understood that we had left our future in the hands of the architects and  that we were in danger of losing our souls, our joie de vivre, the spring of the cuckoo clock was broken.

It also turned out that this physical move came about at the time that we were living a technological revolution, and very quickly this resulted in a major process shake-up through the massive arrival of digital equipment, power walls, and all eyes on the computer, with what we aptly had named : G3D, for Global Digital Design Development.

Studios were silent, designers listened to their own music, earphones riveted to their ears, nothing on the display boards, some boards still had their protective covers… Each studio had set up little coffee corners… The ice age was upon us..

It took an enormous concerted effort to melt the ice, to alter the route of this sea mammoth, and it started with an analytical comparison between our old lively studios and our newly appointed, deadly boring, thinking shops. What we did find led us to implement a 5 point plan, here it is :

1 – Are we in Design?

The entrance to the Design Centre was the subject of much attention, we imagined it like a decompression chamber, a long corridor welcoming the visitors with soft music in a darkened environment where projected images led to the message «The future has never been so close»…

Changing exhibitions, be they technical, or product related were regularly organized to add interest and provide exchanges between design staff and visitors.

2 – What happened to our identity?

None of the new studios had an established identity, so we organized that each entity should define their specificity, through color, graphics, texture, lighting, plants.

3 – How about communicating?

This became the most significant part of the project which was continuously refined, we established weekly presentations, we insisted that a minimum number of paper images of  in progress projects be displayed to encourage exchanges. Design and innovation are propagated through exchange, by creating sparks that result from rubbing brains together, which eventually becomes a little flame, before becoming a roaring fire.

4 – How about getting together?

All studios were encouraged to set up speak easy corners, fitted with soft furniture, close to the coffee machine, surrounded with a well run trend corner, and a screen showing the latest trend missions that had been undertaken.

5 – Can I give you a hand?

All new designers were assigned an experienced designer, a volunteer, to help out in their integration, this becoming all important in the digital age, when each designer had his or her eyes riveted to a wondrous screen.

Epilogue

Progressively the design activity once again found its lost impetus, the spirit was back, it did so at the same time as it confirmed the impressive reduction of product development time, 20 weeks all in all, associated with a design development cost reduction of 51%, thanks to the intensive use of a highly innovative digital process, G3D, thus aligning itself on the world’s most efficient manufacturer in the area of speed.

Clearly the actions we took to rethink our environment, making it more human, softer, better, as we moved into our new digital world made it possible to find a new balance, yes we had lost the plot for a while, but you know : it’s never too late to live happily ever after.

Credits: www.thurocleanmbsc.com, www.codelyoko.net, features.conceptcar.co.uk, Cityfeet.com, www.bonissimo.com.au, www.20minutes.fr, www.tapeciarnia.pl, www.materialiste.com,www-telegraph-co-uk1.com

Good reads

‘Great workplace is not espresso or sushi launches, it is stunning colleagues: we help each other to be great’ by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (Blue Ocean for your innovation commitment).

‘Pushing people out of offices, employees run into each other, generating ideas and solutions’ via @johnsonwhitney (Why Innovators love constraints).

‘Google London show-off funky office’ by @lucykellaway (For creativity, forget the funky office).

‘If you’re working in a terrible place, then start-up a new place in your head‘ by Brian Millar, strategy director at Sense Worldwide.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Clayton Christensen is a well-known innovation HBS professor, researcher and doer. His ‘Innovator’s dilemna’ book from 1997 had a resounding success, raising the famous notion of disruptive innovation. It was followed by several others: Seeing what’s next, the Innovator’s DNA, … As a doer, Clayton cofounded several ventures: Innosight, a consultancy in innovation, Rose Park Advisors, and CPS (Ceramics Process Systems Corporation).

I discovered another talent last Monday as he was speaking at Innovation management chair of Ecole Polytechnique: Clayton is a fantastic storyteller. Watching him unrolling his line of argument about innovation was like listening to “A Little night Music”!

Based on notes taken, here is a sum up some of the stories and lessons he delivered during his terrific speech named ‘Rebuilding Creativity’.

While innovation can be tricky (too many products, business plan failure, lack of new idea, …), ‘there are a few things that, if you get them right, increase the probability of success’:

1. Watch out the bottom to prevent competitors from killing you;
2. Seeking for growth, invest in ’empowering innovation’;
3. Understand the job to be done;
4. Have a strategy, and catch unanticipated opportunities;
5. Revise your financial dashboard.

Watch out the bottom to prevent competitors

For years, dominant model was: ‘you want to be sure competitors will not kill you, and that you will kill them’ But disruptors don’t rule their pace thinking of competition: they leverage an innovation, focus on customers, and take position.

Clayton exemplifies the story of the steel industry: while mini-mill brought a 20% lower cost than integrated-steel, no existing steel company built a mini-mill factory. Why didn’t incumbents catch the cue?

Mini-mills started crammy, tackling the lowest part of the market, a 7% margin business while incumbents were making 20%: incumbents were happy to leave that unattractive part of the market.

But mini-mills with lower cost were making a lot of money, then they attacked a higher segment in the pursuit of profit, a 12% margin of which integrated-mills were happy to leave, and so on… Today in Europe, mini-mills occur for 75% of market, all integrated steel got bankrupt but one.

In the 60’s, Toyota came in the US with the smallest car, and started riding up from the bottom, like mini-mill. GM and Ford were making bigger cars for the higher-end of the market. Now Toyota is at the top of the game.

If you’re coming at the bottom of the market, the leader will not fight but flee to the higher-end of the market.

Seeking for growth, invest in ’empowering innovation’

If it takes every time longer to go back to prior peak after a crisis, that’s because we have lowered our investment in ’empowering innovation’.

What are ’empowering innovations’? ‘Empowering innovations’ transform complicated, expensive products into simpler and more affordables ones, opening new markets, and thus creating growth.

Innovation often starts at the center of the market where there is money. Then a new population can have access when price decreases: Mainframe computers transform into PCs, Smart Phones get better and cheaper, etc…

At the beginning, Smart Phones were not very good: ‘sustaining innovations’ are the kind of innovations which make good products better. ‘Sustaining innovations’ create very few jobs while ’empowering’ create plenty. Toyota Prius is a sustaining innovation, replacing another Toyota car.

‘Efficiency innovations’ are process related: same product, same customer but cheaper processed. Walmart is an efficiency innovation, it eliminates jobs but frees up capital. Assembling a car in 2 days instead of 60 is a process innovation freeing susbstantial capital from the balance sheet. You can use it for empowering innovation.

At a time were capital was costly, ‘efficiency innovations’ were in high demand, introducing a bias: if efficiency would create capital,  why should we invest in ’empowering innovations’ which take roots in 5 or 10 years? If we invest in efficiency, return is much faster. In America, in the last 2,5 decades, we reinvested 1/3 of capital in ’empowering innovation’, and it’s even worse in Europe: these are a wash of capital, creating no growth.

3 types of innovation

Look at Japan to see what the future holds in store: Japan invested a lot in ’empowering innovation’ in late 90s, making affordable products, enlarging markets, then it stopped. The Nintendo Wii is the only disruptive innovation delivered in the last 25 years, and Japan is in a dead end.

So go back to your office, and check wether investments are only for ‘efficiency innovation’.

New technology can be used in the market profitably, but don’t deploy it only in the center.

Let’s look at the story of the large transition from vacuum to transistors. Transistor succeeded combining ’empowering and sustaining innovation’ against the vacuum. Initial pocket radios produced by Sony and using transistors were a crammy product… but infinitly better than nothing! The same with portable TVs using transistors. Then transistors started to be good enough to build big TVs for the living room, and all vacuum companies got blowed up.

One has to look after the untapped market: solar energy is not cost competitive, it works because government subsidizes it, and wants to make the new tech sustain the old one. We discovered solar made of glass in Mongolia: there is no power access over the grid there, sole electricity is a huge non subsidized business.

Don’t force new tech with sustaining innovation, don’t lock it to be better in every dimensions, let it start unfolding unexplored market potentials with its genuine features.

Empowering products is about letting customers do what wasn’t possible. If you want to go following the current business model, it won’t work. You have to let start up address the new segment, a new unit in your core co acting as a start up can be an entry point.

Let’s consider electrical vehicle and its specific features: is there a larger population of people that would love to have a car hat won’t go far and fast? The parent of small children who need a car to go from home to schools. Avoid competing against traditional cars. It is such a different business, it has to be profitable on a different measure.

Moving from ’empowering’ to ‘sustaining’ and ‘efficiency innovation’ will afterwards make the market bigger. Once you’ve done that, you need to look to what next ’empowering innovations’ will come first.

Understand the job to be done

Deep market understanding is what mirrors how customers experience life. Characteristics don’t propense me to buy a product like ‘Le Monde’ (French daily newspaper)! It is what it confers, through the analysis, opinion, thoughtful interpretation it offers, which is important. I buy this product because I need it to get the job done.

Don’t understand the customer: understand the job.

Editors’ note: In other words, customers often do not want the product itself, but rather the effect that it produces.

Clayton explains the success of the milk shake people buy early in the morning: at that time of the day, a milk share hire is not primary for what it tastes, it’s for a long and boaring drive! Customer could hire bagles: but they are so dry; if he buys donuts, when the phone rings, he surely will ruin his pants. Milk shake doesn’t flow out, it does a better job than any other competitor.

How to improve to nail the job perfectly? Faster delivery, gas up and go, and during the drive, reengage the user with a piece of fruit.

When I have to furnish an new appartment by tomorow, Ikea odes the perfect job. Nobody has copied ikea, competitors can copy products, but not the way they integrate to provide experiences to do the job perfectly.

Whole Foods has no competitors, the ambiance attact their customers.

When you think of transportation, you can say the job has not changed but the way to do it has, from horse man & chariot, poney express, telegraph, railroad, to airplaine mail, and email. Adopting the new technology can improve the way.

When job is done, you don’t have to change your business model. Once you understand the job to be done and stated to something, shape the experience in purchase and use to do the job perfectly, integrate in the deeper deeper way, build a purpose brand.

Have a strategy, and catch unanticipated opportunities

You got to have a strategy but in all likelihood you’re wrong: reality will not turn out as planned. Start with a deliberate strategy, define resource allocation, products, understand and refine prioritiees, and prepare to catch unanticipated opportunites.

Editors’ note: Take advantage of the situation potential (François Jullien “Conférence sur l’efficacité“, Chinese way of forging strategy).

In an established business, watch out the opportunities out of the deliberate strategy.

Revise your financial dashboard

Finance can create problems for innovation. If you want to convince finance in the basis of data, you will start when the game is over!

Evaluating investments on marginal rather than full biases incumbent leaders to leverage what they have, instead of building what they need.

The only option for steel was to build the mini mail themself: the finance argued to use the free capacity showing a low marginal cost, and integrated-steel never build a mini mill. Marginal cost makes all the sense to use what you have instead building something new.

Other ratios can be misleading as well: NPV (Net Present Value) doesn’t take into account what happens if we don’t invest in innovation.

If the cost of capital is zero, the concept of return on capital becomes irrelevant. You can’t reverse the filling up of he world with capital.

Instead, the investment in good people will be the next measure: and in results, we will have good finance.

The way the world used to be won’t be the same.  Teaching people how to think instead of what to think. Just like teaching your children what to think doesn’t work, leadership is not teaching managers what to think, it’s about helping them how to think.

image credits: www.newyorker.com, blog.iese.edu, goaustralia.about.com, delcampe.fr, www.alimentaonline.ch, www-softpedia-com

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