GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

First things first: what we do all comes from us as humans, in our actions and our needs. This is also the starting point for innovation, pushing for something new; it is linked to experiences and questioning, seeking out and wanting to explore “all things possible”.

The powerful combination of designing and providing something that pushes our existing knowledge, our boundaries, understanding or expectations — and capturing it in thought, explanation, or detailing the discovery makes up the art and science of innovation. We just need to find even better and consistent ways to combine them continuously.

Science chases progress, Art really does not

Art just looks to make change, sometimes evolving, sometimes in powerful news ways and it does this from the evolving multiple perspectives and studies of much that is existing, both physical and within the mind to express this to others. Sometimes, Science is often constrained by a far too linear approach and this needs somehow changing where we need to think in less rigid, structured ways today.

We are demanding, no, expecting, more in the future. Art and Science agree they are both forms of exploration, one explores the imaginary more and then this challenges and pushes the scientific and engineers to find the answers. They both change our reality and innovation should be fueling this and always be pushing our expectations that little bit more, driving our determination to push out the frontiers of science and art..

Art and Science are the book ends for innovation

I was reading an article about the great disconnects between Art and Science by Kristi Charish, and I loved the way she explained her thoughts, in particular:

“Art leads to scientific innovation and science inspires art. Like a pair of book ends they work best in tandem and change the way we view the world. Without one you can’t have the other and there is a lot to celebrate in that!”

So have we fast-forwarded so much?

I think we still see art and science operating in different worlds, in different compartments and they often don’t combine as we would like. Yet Kristi Charish is right, they do prop up innovation but we do need to stop using them as the ‘book ends’ and bring them into the middle to combine more and more until they are ‘fused’ as one. The very best, the breakthrough, the new discoveries happen when we combine in today’s world.

Getting the ends to fuse!

It is these ‘emerging’ fusion points of art, design, engineering, and science coming together and coalescing that are giving us great innovation. Art and design provide innovation with analogies and compelling stories, alternative structures, inspiring techniques, challenging methods and knowledge to push our boundaries and our minds. It inspires us to then often push science, technology and engineering more and more to translate this.

Just think of architecture of great buildings, pushing the boundaries of function and design with availability or the technology and design of the iPad or iPhone that pushed those boundaries of the accepted, and changed the norm for measuring the future.

We need to rebuild and recombine

Specialization has a place but has it been pushed too far? Often we hear that the world is “complex”, or the issues cannot be resolved by the best minds in the ‘given’ area, well we need a new way based on total knowledge. Piero Scaruffi offered his view in a talk on “Bridging the gap between Art and Science” at Swissnex, in San Francisco in 2007. He remarked,

“The digital age is providing us the opportunity to rebuild the continuum …has enabled an unprecedented degree of exchange, interaction, integration, convergence and blending.”

Scaruffi suggests we are able to move out of the discrete spaces we have found ourselves in and finally recombine knowledge in new ways. He argues we live in a context specific world that is based increasingly on knowledge-specific society, so different from the last time art and science came together in a knowledge-deprived society to offer this new continuum.

Are we arriving?

Perhaps we are about to arrive at the age of the “rinascimento l’innovazione”, the innovation renaissance period. I hope so as it can be such a rich place for real progress, based on our understanding of the last renaissance period that challenged and changed our world in such powerful ways that made such advancement be realized.

We do need a period of real, dynamic and exciting growth, less destructive more based on being totally constructive.

image credit: sfsu.edu

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

I always show a particular interest in statements claiming to have identified a relevant driver of innovation change, then to think through these. Let me offer mine.

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.

It is worth constantly working around different drivers of innovation change?

Periodically I would suggest you work through each of these as potential drives of change and see if this changes your thinking or approach is taking is a real driver and you can really see a different angle or opportunity that might emerge that really does changes the thinking and offer up some really new innovation ideas .

Let me share my opening nine identified drivers for innovation change:

• Emotional Drivers.  as we learn, dream, create and get into a ‘freer’ spirit, it often opens up our thinking. I sometimes associate heroes and champions or relate recognized mentors and facilitators and look for what makes the emotional connection, then I ask: “can I use this or be inspired by them” to drive something within my innovation activities or not? What triggers different sentiments, warmth, excitement or feeling?

• Social Drivers – The more we seek interactions, they become (or should become) meaningful and enduring. These connections allow us to think and relate, deepen the association. As we also seek out others accomplishments, can this trigger ideas, principles or actions that we can apply in what we are doing. What can we offer that meets  different desires, aspirations, prompts dialogues and might reflect for instance, a more caring and sharing viewpoint. These are drivers that make us more socially relevant and connected.

• Technology Drivers – These tend to be better leveraged and understood, in collaborative methods and techniques, ones where we can demonstrate, connect the physical and virtual world, which moves us to better, clearer, even faster transactions. Technology is a really powerful enabler of innovation if you tune into the four fast-moving disruptive forces of social, mobile, cloud and analytics that are all driven by an explosion of data and fueling a new era of innovation for many. Imagine if you can harness technologies application and ‘raw’ power, there becomes a higher chance of finding the needle of useful innovation insights that lie within the binary haystack we all are coping with today. As you learn to analyse and sort these technology drivers, can give you new insights into different trends, patterns and needs, that might even radically alter the meaning within your business and how and what you offer, with even new business models emerging from the evaluations.

• Environment Drivers – these become critical. The more we encourage the right environment the more we create a culture that others can relate too and work within. One that encourages, and underlines the determination of bringing in diversity, collaborative and distinctly different behavioral patterns that encourages even more to join in, to relate and participate in generating ideas and solutions. By providing a welcoming environment you can drive growing awareness, trust and shared understanding that build a very powerful set of innovation drivers if the Environment thinking is right and tuned into the world of what needs to be reflected within your products and services..

• Measurement Drivers – We are all familiar with the classic input, process, outputs and outcomes we strive to find measures for, good or bad. I tend to look for measurement in the knowledge that is being driven through an organization in its absorptive capacities of accessing, anchoring and its eventual diffusion. If we measure actual utilization or assimilation then can we explore these in deeper ways, to draw out the aspects that make up both tacit and explicit outcomes needed. Measures can drive change if they are well thought through and connected, both into the business need but more importantly, into the individual’s own understanding of its relevancy. Make your measurements more dynamic, less static by ‘seeing them differently’

• Marketplace Drivers – Today it is all about speed and pace, accessing the changing conditions and pressures coming from the market place. We have this constant need in understanding the rate of change dynamics to work out your fit in new innovation offerings. We need to become far more tuned into pattern recognition, contexts of the forces at work. We need to appreciate the rivalry and competitive hunger. Above all it is figuring out the customers unmet needs and non-stated ones, so all these market force complexities can be worked through in your mind and ongoing evaluations. Tuning into the market forces gives an abundance of new thinking to work into your products and services.

• Design Drivers – approaching issues and challenges with more of a design thinking hat can help identify a number of hidden drivers. The more we experience and experiment, the more we tune into the power of stories, narratives and experiences. This heightens our awareness the more we practice looking ahead. Equally looking back it can reveal much more in our designs and what made up our thinking (at that time). Fashions and traditions, how we work today, how we worked in the past – and how differently in the future – will influence much in our innovation thinking. We need to open up to experiences far more. We do need to focus on function and form far more, that more human centred design need and always look for improving the ‘degrees of freedom’ and easy of purchase.

• Rational Drivers – Organizations survive by their rational drivers, be these strategic architecture, management systems and innovation processes. Those processes and procedures are where you are always looking to achieve and drive execution and results through improving productivity and creativity as well as working constantly at clarifying the interventions, controls and monitoring. The rational drivers, if well set up, can make such a difference to being ‘in control’ of all the innovation activities or not and should constantly be challenged for redundancy or improving upon. Innovation Governance is a classic place for constantly working through the rational drivers and keeping faith in the decisions made and guidance given. Having the rational opinion within your team has great value in keeping random thoughts more ‘grounded’ to the task at hand.

• Intelligence Drivers – The whole focus on knowledge generation and recognition, in awareness, competences needed and seeking diversity of interpretation. The underlying collection of intellectual capitals, our intangible source, that needs to keep feeding in the knowledge stock to allow ideas, concepts and outcomes to flow. Ones that drive to transform intelligence into tangible outcomes is becoming so important to yield fresh value and lead to improved commercial outcomes. Sadly it is often not allowed ‘it’s’ right amount of digesting time, to allow all the connections to be made to be pieced together as something completely different and so far more potentially valuable in new innovations. Listening to different people’s views values their intelligence and adds to ours.

To look around these drivers of change can yield very different thinking, prompt different actions and produce different innovation results. Get your team to discuss each of these change drivers to unearth new innovation possibilities.

Why not go and give these a ‘team test drive’ in exploring, focusing around each of these individually. Ask what can they do to alter their current thinking.

By getting into this regular habit of working around these different drivers of change will keep your innovation engine in much better shape, more in-tune to accelerate away with better innovation outcomes. These can be designed to stimulate and really trigger the imaginations, often with the result of you making some unexpected connections.

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

I wanted to depart from just focusing on extolling innovation within this post – a sort of sound off, of sorts.

It seems in all I keep reading that we are being extorted to disrupt our enterprises before someone else does.

The constant threat of both those ‘known to us’ and those ‘unknown competitors’ who can simply raise money based on a disruptive concept, provide a different business model and then attack tomorrow leaves us with not a comfortable feeling does it?

We are told actually it’s all our own fault, it is in our won ‘complacency’ that we are losing our competitive advantages, even face extinction from these that attack and tear down, replacing it with something different and supposedly better. Did we really need this?

Can we learn to adapt as fast as all that is seemingly coming towards us?

There is so much disruptive power being harnessed that we are all facing an exponentially more complex and challenging environment. Why is there seemingly this determination to tear down many parts of the fabric of our society by challenging institutions, businesses and government structures?

Are many of these organizations so bad – inefficient granted, complacent most likely, and complicit in holding onto what they have achieved, most definitely. So arguably many can be rightfully challenged but what will be the eventual price for this disruption that is occurring all around us?

Unhealthy shifts in the chase for economic growth

The shift has placed the emphasis on the role of destruction rather than creation in driving different economic activity in present times. Will that change? This is getting uncomfortable, is this good for you or me, perhaps not?

This is becoming the game for a few to make money, I mean big serious money and are these not so worried over the wealth creation aspects of creating jobs, building communities, cherishing certain values or just recognizing those communities built up over many years can just shut down and life moves on?

Whole communities are being disrupted, left derelict, with hope changing to hopelessness; we are seeing a lot of social destruction, wrought by much of this current chase for change that is blowing through our global businesses.

The balance seems out of whack but from whose perspective? The incumbent or the usurper? what about the employee or the society that built up whole communities, reliant on that firm for its very existence. What are we destroying in the name of progress?

We need to embrace transition as the future way of living, ok, ok, I get it!

My need, and I think yours as well, is to stay alert and be aware. In many of our jobs there must be this chance to evolve, or we should move on. I don’t feel we can stand still long enough; we need to chance it far more by taking a number of different risks. Keep moving is part of our futures.

I believe we do become far more empowered in any transition if we chose to actually make the change, instead of rejecting it on the premise that there is no need for movement. There is no hiding place it seems.

I just feel far better ‘in transition’ it is that feeling that I am still pushing forward, what I do is in my hands than the alternative, when that moment that I have stopped I am being threatened with disruption and destruction.

Both are a little scary and will get exhausting. Extinction is very threatening….oh just screw it, just bring it on… whoopee I’m jumping !”

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

In the past twelve months or even more, I think there have been some exceptional reports and thinking coming out of Deliotte’s group, from its dedicated practice centers, their University Press and the Deliotte Consulting LLP, mostly from the US practice.

I would regard their thought leadership as close to the top or even at the very top of any of the big consulting firms for exploring technology and helping to align innovation.

The CIO needs to become the Chief Integration Officer and a catalyst for change

As they point out in the Deloitte Tech Trends 2015 report, technology continues to transform existing businesses and their business models; the need is for the CIO function to evolve rapidly into a key for integrating these significant changes occurring into the core of the business mission.

The CIO’s need is to be the driving force of “intersecting” all that is needed to work in this rapidly connecting world.

Business strategy and technology cannot be separated, they need to be constantly harnessed and balanced as never before, in feasibility, resolving complexity and managing all the risks associated with the changes unfolding, leveraging all the potential of the existing with designing and exploiting the disruptive aspects coming daily at a business.

The level of collaboration and cooperation between all C-Level executives to the CIO is absolutely essential to respond in dramatically different ways than the past, it needs to radically be seen as a collaborative partnership not in adversarial ways, as often in the past.. IT has such a transformation role to play but it has to firstly ‘transform’ itself.

Overcoming political resistance and organizational inertia is critical for the CIO, starting with his own team

The following was a shorten checklist of suggestions offered for the changes that are needed to be brought into the CIO’s thinking, from initially getting their house in order and then being recognized as critical to shaping the business future:

* Work more like a venture capitalist by adopting a portfolio management approach.

* Provide visibility into the IT “balance sheet” for an understanding the assets and how they align to strategic priorities in projects, hardware and software, data, contracts, vendors and partners.

* Organize assets to address business priorities by striving for operational excellence by mastering that capability by delivering on what is needed and then that moves the needle to earn the right to help shape the business transformation.

* Focus on flexibility and speed to advance agility, responsiveness, being adaptive in experimentation and innovation.

Link the potential of tomorrow to the realities of today in the following suggested ways:

• Create a deliberate mechanism for scanning and experimentation
• Rapidly vetting and prototyping new ideas and optimizing for return on assets.
• Build a culture within the team and those associate that encourages failure by learning
• Think big, start small, learn and leverage fast and then scale quickly
• Collaborate to solve tough business problems
• Tapping into diverse thinking, assets and entities
• Actively engage with business peers to influence their view of the CIO role
• Focus on delivering on the promise of service predictability, reliability and efficiency’ as and when’
• Serve as the connective tissue to all things technology, linking the various initiatives
• Advocating platforms instead of point solutions, keeping adaptive and flexible
• Design continuously the architecture and its integration in optimal ways.
• Deliver ‘prime time’ to the business units the security, scalability and reliability.

Grabbing the present and future opportunity that technology is delivering

The ownership of a digital strategy is somewhere where the CIO can be and often is accountable for and needs to show a decisive position on that embraces all the present and future business needs. It’s design touches increasingly on every corner of the organization, increasingly in mission critical ways and its capability to deliver on time, in the right way is absolutely essential.

Technology needs to be elevated from personal, sometimes entrenched positions, into a comprehensive plan, recognized for its grasp, perception, understanding and knowledge of what the business requires. The managing of this really vital strategic asset, one of establishing efficient operations that can effectively do their job but equally lay in the foundations for the organization to respond to breaking and planned opportunities to grow the business effectively, as and when required is no easy task, it needs deep understanding and be conducted in a highly collaborative environment.

It is the CIO who needs to step up and takes on this challenge as the chief integration officer but he needs his colleagues to see he has at his disposal the tools, structures, solutions and architecture to deliver on the promise.

Solving the moment, delivering the future

There has never been a more defining time for the CIO to step up and fundamentally deliver on the promise of technology, by connecting an organization and aligning its parts into a cohesive whole. One that leverages ‘all things’ available to take the business forward in strategically valuable ways as well as operationally effective ones, to grow its sustaining value in how it functions, responds and adapts in our rapidly changing and challenging world.

Will it happen, it certainly needs too, the frictions often seen in the past has to be put well-behind all, as the organizations future is even more at stake than ever.

image credit: openfor.business

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

So more open, social digital innovation is coming our way. So why do I say that? There are four aspects where technology will trend towards open to exploit our connected world that might offer up more opportunities to participate and explore. (see more on that here: https://digitalsocial.eu/)

We will be looking to extract ever-diminishing competitive advantage as the world just keeps speeding up, pushing us as technology continues to run ahead of our capacities to assimilate it. Collaborative platforms are clearly the way to go to open-up innovation that allows more radical and complex solutions to be provided. We need to find ways to participate and learn from these as we face greater competition for these diminishing natural resources, open collaboration is certainly one of these.

So we need to keep moving towards open and complex solutions that require us to become increasingly collaborative to let (many) others help us on the way as partners so as to exploit competitive advantage that is increasingly transitory.

The way we will go

1. Open networks – those innovative combinations of networks, which continue to evolve new solutions and infrastructures and are very rich in bottom-up potential. These open networks are extremely dynamic and diverse, full of experimental pioneers and as they work at the edges, the rest of us need to stay connected, as these open networks will continue to suppliant what we have on a constant, evolving basis.

2. Open data – This explosion of new types of data analytics and machine learning means we all will eventually have access to analyze vast amounts of data. As we innovate ways to capture, use, analyze and interpret open data coming from multiple sources we need to find its value for what we do. Open data policies will emerge from government, local authorities and (eventually) within our business organizations. We will need the tools and skills to interpret all the open data coming in to us from people, our networks and simply from the environment and world we belong too.

3. Open knowledge – We are in need of co-production of new knowledge. We need to learn more about adoptive capacity where you acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit knowledge from its potential to a realized value. There is a greater trend to mobilization based on open content, open source and open access so we can understand, absorb and make comment (or not). Knowledge must be allowed to flow openly to allow us to grow individually. We will see an increasing mass-scale of social collaborations. We are all moving to blogs, wikis, social networking and hundreds of collaborative platforms of choice. These are beginning to manage (even take over) our lives. As we disseminate knowledge we get growing cross-fertilization.

4. Open hardware – The more we become curious, the more we want to build ‘something.’ More and more open source hardware is permitting us to build upon it. We are increasingly having the potential to study, modify, make, extend, distribute or design so these modifications take on our identity. The use of ready to use components and materials, tapping into established processes, open infrastructures, allowing unrestricted content and plugging into open-source design tools gives us all as individuals the ability to create something. The more we are moving towards a more open source internet of things to design, use and value within our lives.

All of this digital technology is seemingly all about ‘getting to know’. Our privacy and security concerns are getting caught up in this, for a time it will slow the pace down but I fear the ‘genie is out of the lamp’ constantly asking you your next connected wish before you see another useful technology lamp to ‘rub’ for more wishes. Over time privacy and security will take on a different meaning and the pursuit of trace-ability and transparency will take its place as our concerns.

Why will this change – simply because we need everything to be open?

As we become more open, more willing or coerced into trying the latest thing, the internet of things will increasingly determine our behaviors. There are four powerful enablers that are working away at making a significant change in our lives. As we connect more, we change our ways of working, our thinking, our habits and our abilities to earn a living.

• The more personal devices will keep us in the anytime / anywhere state, demanding the services it provides will give us increased innovating opportunities.

• IoT will offer those (expected) guarantees of access into the physical world. Digital will fuse more with the physical and we have to keep open to explore this.

• Then we have the internet of people, all busy connecting and communicating that will promote the internet as the fundamental channel of choice, into user communities of selected groups, or broader communities that we will rely increasingly upon for data, content, services and increasingly our ‘digital currency’ to earn a living.

• Lastly cloud computing allows an infinite array of connecting apps, your personalized virtual infrastructure, where you can receive, deliver, create and distribute growing services over the internet, extending your ability to innovate to a much wider market.

Yes, the world of innovation is changing, digital is changing it significantly

We felt open innovation was a big enough deal, perhaps it was in its day but as digital implants itself into our lives, into our organizations, into our societies more and more. We must decide if we stay open to allow it in, or try to close it off and channel it in ways that will provide value, but those will be transitory moments before we need to go back and open up again.

image credit: digitalsocial.eu

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

Why is it we always seem to fail back into the same traps or pitfalls? Bad habits seem to always reoccur even when we work on trying to eradicate them. Or we ignore the warning signs that were ‘signaling’ the problem until it is too late?

Let me offer that innovation has eight possible pitfalls or sink holes that we need to consciously try to avoid. Some are in our hands, others are clearly out of our hands butwe can do is try to be aware of them so we can avoid them the best we can. We sometimes need to be more prepared for these traps based on our judgement and experience.

1. Failing to make innovation explicit

If we don’t set the appropriate context, provide the background understanding or provide what we know up to now, we leave our ideas, innovation or intents far too open. We end up with thousands of ideas, with 95% useless as the context was not explained. Meeting agenda’s that have no structure do the same thing, we end up rambling and in a worse outcome than when we started. Making innovation explicit and aligned to the organizations vision, its objectives, its strategy and knowing what is core and what is not, makes innovators activities far more explicit.

2. Lack of appropriate resources

This is the constant battle, the real tension point within any project. We hear “not enough in high priority areas”, “unbalanced…too little to late”, “to much in creativity not enough in execution”, “we don’t have enough discipline” or “our research dominates and restricts development” and finally “reduced involvement of the commercial people in the process” all signal misappropriation of resource or a lack of them being available at the appropriate time. This is a real sink hole we all seem to drop down into.

3. Missing Enabling Structures

When we talk about our innovation process we tend to think in the singular, we tend to view this as linear. Both of these are wrong. If innovation was such a linear process wouldn’t it be so much easier. For me the innovation process is a little like playing ‘snakes and ladders’ when I was young, constantly going back down or quickly climbing up but each fresh role of the dice might send me one way or the other.

How often do we separate out venture units, create spin outs, hive off dedicated business development groups, encourage skunk works or separate different innovation? The more we recognize innovation requires different approaches than the one pipeline or stage gate approach so much the better.

We need to encourage top leadership sponsorship of unique ideas that need to be separated out, we need to often apply different tools and techniques to different types of innovation. We need to go outside far more and access our networks and collaborative environment and enable ‘them’ to assist or drive the innovation as inside it might get caught up in traditional thinking and narrow metrics.

4. Insufficient Insights

So what do customers really want from innovation? We never seem to complete enough research, or test enough validations. We tend to allow personal judgement or biases to creep in or even drive decisions. We fail to fully map the jobs-to-be-done or really look hard for the unmet needs as places where new innovation solutions can resolve. The promise of connecting into a social stream of engaged people, working their replies to your rapid prototypes, test pitches, rough designs, validation of concepts will rapidly shift insights into less insufficient and more into ‘too many’. Both have pitfalls.

5. Insufficient Engagement

Is the whole organization engaged in improving, in encouraging innovation, in contributing to the thinking, design and validating? Does the leadership offer a stimulating environment where you want to get involved, or are large parts of the organization being totally disengaged, demotivated and disinterested?

If there is no clarity in roles, contributions, seeing your value and worth, feeling totally aggrieved about recognition and rewards then engagement suffers badly. Getting anyone to be motivated to help, to contribute, to go the extra mile needs positive engagement. Insufficient time on putting in place all the enablers means a very tough environment for the few who are engaged to achieve what they believe is possible. Insufficient Engagement from our leaders and colleagues is a real pitfall or roadblock to innovation.

6. Weak Innovation Processes

Between business strategy and product portfolio is one. A lack of discipline in the management of the innovation portfolio. A lack of clarity of purpose and design. We often see weak front ends in how ideas are captured, then enriched without referencing back to need or intent and developed in independent silo’s so the end result comes out a misfit of what is needed or initially thought.

We have this constant ability not to say no and allow concepts to drag on instead of being killed off so the resources can be channeled into something more relevant. How often do you squeeze all your product development through the same evaluation process, because it is policy?

How often do you see emotion getting in the way or certain parties involved in the process strongly influence the decision-making process on their position of power. All indicate weak innovation processes.

7. Lack of Balance

We often do not work all the different types of innovation available. We stick with what we are supposedly good at. We churn out the incremental product updates but fail to explore all the ten innovation types.

…or we don’t think through Geoffrey Moore’s suggestions discussed in his book “Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution”,

This is where innovation is considered in the context of the category life cycle, with category being the product or service term used by customers that distinguish what it is they are buying. In this context,Moore defines innovation types consisting of:

Then you have the work that I and Jeffrey Philips undertook back in 2011 on the whole area of exploring a Collaborative Innovation Framework where we went into considerable detail on the whole collaborative bit, and within this completed an examination of innovation types which are discussed on the wiki at https://cirf.pbworks.com

8. Rapid Shifts in Landscapes

Finally we have such rapid shifts taking place all around us, we are often poor at recognition of change. We fail to make the context and connection of what that change really means. We simply don’t spot changes or often simply chose to ignore them as they disturb today’s business.

I’m still surprised how poor many organizations are at making a really comprehensive competitive watch. They get share numbers, they see the promotion activity but there are so many sources of competitive intelligence that can build up a depth in knowledge to help anticipate or determine points of competitive difference that your customers will value and appreciate.

Lastly in this sinkhole category, there are such global movements in conservation, environment, emerging economies, demographic disparities, social trends and technology convergence going on, that all these do need constantly factoring into your innovation thinking. We often fail to consider ‘all’ the picture.

In Summary

Of course, you have the ‘common’ pitfalls of innovation we also tend to fall into. These include focusing too much on short term results, having unsupported performance measurement systems, often a lackluster in leadership of innovation, the hiring of the wrong employees for innovation work or not having a process to track and develop innovative ideas. All create deeper pitfalls.

Just remember sinkholes can just simply open up in front of you unexpectedly  and you have suddenly sunk without trace. Working consciously on all the possible pitfalls around innovation can help you to avoid these unexpected moments.

My best advice, keep moving around, stay nimble and fill in all those holes as they emerge, or work around them, making sure all those around are really aware by working on them all the time, consciously to avoid.

Spot the gaps, fill them quickly, or avoid them but keep circling around on the lookout for the next one that could derail your innovation efforts, they are potential all around you waiting to trip you up on your innovation journey.

******

Author note: This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site with some small adjustments.

image credit: poleshift.ning.com

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

Many organizations are struggling with their metrics and ways to measure the progress and success of their business growth from innovation.

From this writer’s point of view their innovation activity gets caught up in plenty of unintended consequences, to put it mildly, in wasted debate, discussion & bad decisions through wrong measurement criteria.

Challenging the old paradigms in how we measure

Firstly, we are still locked in the old paradigm of thinking this is an industrial economy where we set about measuring inputs to innovation (R&D expenditure, capital investment) and then focused on the intermediate step of throughput and then outputs (publications, production units, patent filing, end products).

We also perceive innovation far too much still as an activity within just one company – viewed as linear, with considerations for services more of an afterthought (like ‘bolt-ons’). Production systems still remain far too often the driving force of performance judgement.

Today, the world of innovation is completely different. We need a far more open set of resources (many outside our own company) to enable innovation. The process has clearly been recognized as non-linear and the chase for more ‘real time’ metrics is reflecting the shift to a knowledge-based network economy to accommodate growing uncertainties, the multiple choices and varying outcomes that innovation offers. We need to move our measuring to ultimate successful outcomes

Recognizing the need to change our measurement culture

This shift means we have to push a whole lot more on challenging established measurements and metrics – question if they are still valuable or just ‘simply’ established and have never been questioned in a way to overhaul the whole process. Everywhere we look within innovation systems; there are significant legacies in place.

We need to do a better job at measuring knowledge flows – it is the increasing emphasis and use of technology that is allowing us to challenge the old measurement paradigms. We still love to count machinery use, transactions, production of widgets, with an engrained efficiency mind set. Sadly it is not as effective, nor relevant, to the world today, actually most of these are just statistics that don’t drive us forward, they constantly make us look back. It is not ‘forward accounting’ for the knowledge that is building, to underlie new creation and valuing the way this is developed and diffused in the future.

This also brings to the surface the need to understand our intellectual capital. If you understand that, you have a better chance to be more innovative, inventive and creative as you are moving far more towards a learning environment focusing on the value of all the intangibles that generate knowledge or leverage through relationships, human engagement or dynamic structures that shape and respond.

Valuing our network relationships more

The value of networks is still not accounted for as well as they should be within our measurements. We collect the number of connections yet we fail to capture the knowledge generated by these interactions, they stay resident often just with the receiver, not captured within the organizations brain to understand and put to better, more effective use, applying the multiplier effect. Technology is rapidly changing this, and this collective knowledge and networking is certainly being leveraged more, but is it really being measured as a vital metric that provides value?

Today we are working through the impacts of the Industrial Internet (IoT)

This promises to be transformative, it will change the basis of competition and through this the basis of how we measure ourselves. Not only will the industries have their boundaries withdrawn, there will be a new wave of disruptive companies challenging the incumbent, since they don’t suffer the legacies of the past. Technology is driving the change:

• The world will improve its operational efficiency in dramatically different ways (time, asset-utilization) though more predictive maintenance and increasingly remote management.
• We will become far more comfortable with connected ecosystems, forming around software platforms that will break down and blur traditional industry and working boundaries.
• We will see increased collaboration between humans and machines, and even machines to machines, which will shift productivity into a new realm – which we need to understand, so as to capitalise on the potential this offers.
• Lastly we are rapidly moving to the outcomes economy, fuelled by software-driven services, innovation built into hardware, and the increasing visibility into products, processes, location, customers and partners.

It is in this last shift, of outcomes, we need to build our measurements and metrics around.

We move constantly towards the era of outcome-based services

Businesses will be forced to shift from measuring the inputs and outputs of products, to outcome-based results, where a business competes on their ability to deliver measurable results to customers.

This delivering on outcomes will radically shift how we measure and reward our progress. It will call for significant levels of increased collaborations across a growing, ever-changing, ecosystem of business partners, bringing together those involved to combine products and services to meet customers’ needs

Platforms and ecosystems will become a far more common place to facilitate and capture the data, translate the pockets of knowledge so these are shared, aggregated and exchanged across these growing ecosystems, where we are all increasing working to create and capture value for ourselves and contribute to others within the platform ecosystem. Our participation in platforms are helping us to facilitate transactions, interactions and mobilization and increasing extending out to learning platforms, each of us looking to achieve a successful and ultimate new outcome that improves on the existing.

These shifts in the ways we form collaborations are giving us broader connected knowledge that is creating different insights and eventually new business models. To achieve this we are becoming increasingly reliant on the partnership network or relationship we form within different (chosen) ecosystems, to learn, distribute and monetize these in new products and services that fit our needs, all occurring at unprecedented scale and speed to capitalize on opportunities and create a new competitive lock in or contribution to our needs. These are providing increasingly the new products and services that specifically meet customer needs based on the learning outcomes and exchanges.

Moving from outdated measuring criteria

How we embrace the changes occurring daily means we must challenge much of the way we presently measure and manage innovation. Innovation can’t stay hidden behind closed doors, safe within a selected group or siloed off and we simply can’t keep working with outdated measuring systems that focus on inputs, throughput and outputs.

We need to shift to the greatest judgement criteria, our measures and metrics all need to become outcome-based solutions as the only really measuring point. It is in successful outcomes we come closer to solving the real needs, tackle the problems and opportunities you find in innovation as others measure success seen and judged on the outcome.

The ultimate outcome from innovation is to understand the real customers need and then deliver on it. To get to this we do need to keep checking that we did understand, constantly reiterated additional value in our learning on this constant updated basis, translating what we learn and building with increasing speed and scale towards the lasting solution.

We need to all get paid or rewarded far more on the value of the result from successful ultimate outcomes, judged by focusing only on the successful result of delivering to that real customer need.

image credit: keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

I have been totally struck by the overwhelming (and clearly underwhelming) number of webinars being offered to me on a daily basis, all related to innovation and all for free. Hmmm, let’s suck up some more of our valuable time?

Am I the only one getting overwhelmed in choice, underwhelmed in content value?

Look this is a bit of a rant, so turn away those who love all the free choices we currently have, don’t waste your time reading on but perhaps you should. Are you really getting good value out of the time you are putting in or just filling in your time?

I wanted to ask ‘out loud’ some question to you:

What do you get of real value… when it is offered free?

You are getting experts offering free webinars or short ‘tasters’ with even offers of “fly me to your destination- no fees just cover my costs”, others offering “join my (global) network” as entreaties.

Then you are equally getting software providers giving their take on innovation solutions galore, with the “three lessons learnt” mantra as the takeaways. These all increasingly add up to you being bombarded daily with their knowledge, that often you can’t really decide if it did have value or not, by the end of the hour you had invested.

Then you get the innovation community providers linking up, providing web chats, drawing in different and diverse opinions from practitioners, academics or specialists, under let’s “ask the experts”, all hosted and moved along to stay within the prescribed time period. Yet even these are so often totally failing to get to solve your solutions, all you end up getting is their experiences or observations, in someone else’s often unrelated situation, that might even be dangerous to extract and simply apply.

Maybe this is a really bad day for me?

I am getting really frustrated by this constant ‘streaming’. I know I can ignore it, click the invite off, I can simply tune out and I think this is where many of us all seem to be heading. Are we really getting the value out of these ‘free’ offers?

You can go on and add in the free mix, different academic courses being offered on innovation from one day, to three days, a week or even longer as on-line courses by providers building their brand for the future. Then you are getting the “upgrade or get left behind” messages from all these. Are these really worth the time investment or just self-promoting?

I’m constantly being told I need upgrading on my innovation skills, nudged to check out the latest software update, and enticed to participate in a debate. It simply goes on and on.

Can it stop? Should it? Will it?

Then we have conference and forum providers for anything innovation, be this open innovation, CEO’s, social innovation, digital innovation. Then you have these consistent meetings offered by the European Union or different institutions, non-profit making organizations etc., etc for half days- are they mad in what this means in invested time, or are we simply mad to go? Do we all have so much time on our hands, really?

I certainly can’t afford the time. And then for what, some long introductions and a few ‘choice’ bullet points. Thank god for streaming these live events so you can tune out much but being there, can you run and hide? Did I mention the radio talk shows, book publicity videos?

Then you have the reading material. OMG! That is me included here. careful! We do need a break from all this, we are all progressively tuning out, not actually in. Is all this “stuff” really helping?

Real lasting value or is it just simply filling in our time?

No seriously, we are so far running ahead of ourselves in delivering ‘something’ as service providers but is it of real, lasting value? We have opened up the spigot to allow a deluge of “anyone” who can simply take hold of an idea or a thought, quickly put it together through a host of technologies and social platforms, so as to deliver their contribution onto the mountain of advice equally piling on, I mean mountains of advice.

Can we call stop, surely we are all gradually switching off or do we just totally tune out? I believe clients, meaningful decision makers in clients are tuning out, as they surely do not have the time for all this.

Personally I really am not so sure we can reverse this trend but we do need new thinking?

The technology is becoming so pervasive, it just seems to get easier to ‘knock out’ a presentation, offer a webinar, or write an article. We are in a ‘swamp’ of material ‘up to our necks’.

We are making innovation complex, needlessly complicated and increasingly unattractive. We are failing in really “moving that innovation needle” because we are getting more and more people simply “tuning out” and the more we try, the more they reject this and then seemingly tune out even more. We are simply the dog chasing its own tail and enjoying it because we know no better.

I just feel we are all getting a little frantic in offering free advice…

How can we get back to the basics within innovation, those that can put to simplification back in innovation? Well actually getting back to the basics on anything come to think of it?

image credit: cas.umkc.edu

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

Big Data and harnessing technology seems to be threatening everyone in its path

So we will be seeing not just the young start-up rapidly scaling and replacing larger incumbents but new trillion-dollar businesses emerging, wiping out other trillion-dollar businesses, this is a foretaste of the disruption to come even more than we are already witnessing.

Presently we have to deal as much with fear and anxiety as we are scratching our heads and absorbing this pace of change, all driven through technology and the flow of money into it

The ramping up of rhetoric around Big Data certainly is fueling this angst of fear and anxiety but is pointing us towards the changing landscape we are traveling towards. Clearly the emergence of Big Data is a phenomenon we can’t ignore. But will it disrupt as much as being talked about, or just simply allow the incumbents in the market place to respond and adjust their businesses to accommodate this? Time has an impact that is immediate, but also it has an influence on our futures.

A McKinsey study finds French companies that have undergone thorough digital transformations may unlock revenue gains of up to 40 percent, while companies that do not quickly become digitally integrated could lose up to 20 percent of revenue to competitors, now that is significant by any account.

Harnessing technology, adapting business models, exploiting data, scaling fast all become vital to adaptive infrastructures, even I’m told building stacked ecosystems, all modular, layered, highly granular and extendable as you go, are the requirements within this disruptive world to thrive.

Increased rhetoric is not helping me at present, it is making me uncomfortable

One of the big consulting firms writes “winning big by thinking big” and is suggesting larger companies will turn out to be among the biggest beneficiaries of initial big data implementations. Why? In their words, “although big data projects still pose challenges, larger companies appear to bring more to the table.” I’m not sold on this. I feel the usurper has the edge over the incumbent. New models are like new species, they are faster at adapting to the changing landscape

Maybe we all have to be on edge, it makes us sit up and focus as others go jumping over the cliff screaming “disruptive whoopee” for our lemming moments. Are we all jostling for the leap, caught up in the moment, feeling great about the launch into the unknown?

Disruption and change is all about market transitions

I was listening to one of the World Economic Forum’s debates around “digital in context,” it confirmed much. The discussion led off with “watch for market transitions”, “don’t be slow to adopt” and “if you don’t reinvent, you will fail.”

The underlying message was that data has a real currency to all our organizations. They were suggesting 40% of our current enterprises will be gone in 10 years and with the digital revolution there will be a completely different landscape of winners and losers. There will be no hiding place with connected technology.

So we will increasingly see technology killing off jobs, causing dis-location, forcing many into life-changing choices. We are seeing increasing conflicting and fragmenting positions that are causing growing uncertainty. The “cost to serve” is continuing to be driven down, and data is driving this. Add dislocation and deconstruction to disruption, destruction and digital.

We all need to keep moving

We are all being warned to “keep moving”. I often feel we have become like our forefathers, a nomadic tribe that is both physically being forced to move, to hunt the jobs that allow us to live and to keep applying knowledge found through the internet to survive and thrive.

So it does seem we are in the “disruptive era” but I prefer to think this is more a ‘transformation’ period, often uncomfortable since much of its boundaries and borders are not clear. It is fluid and we need to adapt to this flow until the disruptive events subside into something we have learnt to accommodate and manage. It is transforming much of what we know, our technology and all that comes with it.

Yet, we need to equip ourselves to be empowered in this transition, we need to keep constantly engaged and attempt to figure out what’s next or at least go with the flow. We need to keep our focus on outcomes and not get caught up in the inputs into the process.

image credit: en.wikipedia.org

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GUEST POST from Paul Hobcraft

As we come closer to the year-end it’s always good to look back, to take out some dedicated time to take ‘stock’, in this case, on innovation’s progress.

In a just released “The State of Innovation Management in 2015” that I have authored and kindly provided by HYPE for free, I believe you will find something of interest that you might have missed during a busy year, that is coming to a close. I certainly hope you will find time to go through it.

You’ll gain a valuable and quick insight into critical aspects that innovation managers and CINO’s should be aware of. It is in an easy format of thirty plus pages and offers a reference resource that builds a solid understanding of innovation today regarding relevant factors that will stimulate and support your innovation activity.

There has been a Surge of innovation reports in 2015

I am sure you have experienced that in 2015 we have seen a significant surge in innovation reports, many of these coming from large consulting firms or innovation publishers. Each has been providing an updated view on where innovation presently ‘sits’, in its challenges and the needs to be addressed going forward.

I approached HYPE and suggested that there should be an attempt to pick out some of the interesting points within these reports, I was promptly given the challenge and they are providing this for free, a year-end bonus I feel.

Go to this link, which takes you to the landing page and simply register to obtain this free report provided by HYPE at the year-end.

https://i.hypeinnovation.com/the-state-of-innovation-2015-report

Investing your time is always at a premium, I trust this report is worth it.

I decided this report format would be valuable to save you time or reconnecting to some good reports that came out in 2015. Usually there is just not the dedicated time to wade through all these reports, they seem to come in waves or sometimes we even simply just miss them. So I undertook the task !

In this report just released, I was highly conscious of saving your time and have tried to make as much of the reporting visual with as little text as necessary. It is for you to determine what part is relevant to your situation and within the links provided, you can explore these further more if they have this real relevance and I bet one or two really will.

The tough part was on deciding what to review, include or exclude. I took the view of just reviewing all the known (to me) reports coming out in 2015, with an exception or two going back to 2014 if it supported my thinking of what I think you might view as relevant as against just interesting. I was looking to achieve some “actionable relevancy”

I am hopeful it gives you a stimulating read over the coming festivities as we begin to move forward into 2016 with some helpful looking back from these selected 2015 reports. If you need any further interpretation or my further perspective you know where to find me.

Here is the landing page again, simply register for the report and then hopefully it offers you something of value to you.

If there some given areas  that trigger your need to explore these further, then HYPE and I can certainly help provide deeper connections and insights. This is part of my advisory bag to support you in your innovation advancement, I hope the report does just that.

Happy reading, wishing you a really great start to 2016.

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