Trends

Exploring Trends

I have participated in a number of trend focused workshops over the past several months, which have proven to have been insightful into how to implement a structured approach to understanding and synthesising trends that are relevant for a specific business.

Idea Campaigns

Building Idea Campaigns

Whether a company is running an internal or external idea campaign, they need to have a structured approach in managing both the process and the ideas that have been submitted. 

Sustainability in Innovation

The term ‘sustainability’ is often heard when companies describe their overall innovation and business goal. Those who fully integrate this trait are gaining both monetary and brand reputation benefits. Where sustainability is generally described as “the capacity to endure”, for innovation it stretches beyond having a long-term maintenance of environmental, economic and social responsibility. Amid a continuously growing population with rising customer expectations, Government regulations and employee demands, businesses are being driven to make huge changes in not only their products, services and processes, but in how their innovation is organised and managed. But with the numerous trends, tips and hints which are being recommended from numerous sources, how can sustainability be embraced in a viable way for your company?

Uniqueness of Leadership

Develop your leadership within an area that comes natural to you

Through a group in LinkedIn, I was lead to an article from Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Discovering Your Authentic Leadership’. It made me relate to one of our past Innovation Masterclass on Leadership and Culture provoking my neurons to create naïve thoughts around how great the ‘working’ world would be if both were combined. 

Tools and Best Practice for Identifying Blue Ocean Opportunities

Blue Oceans, taken from the highly successful publication, Blue Ocean Strategy, and is defined as a product or service that is operating in an uncontested market space, which is opposed to Red Oceans, where the product or service is swimming in contested market competition.  Taking the theory from this publication, Richard (Dick) K. Lee, CEO and Chief Innovation Officer, Value Innovation Inc. (VI) developed a ten-step methodology that serves to facilitate companies in discovering Blue Ocean opportunities through the usage of a number of key tools and techniques, which this blog posting will briefly explore.

On Ideation and Other Why’s

Methodologies and other factors

This week, one of our Masterclasses was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, deep diving on the Front End Innovation. Taking this opportunity, I'll give a snapshot on common techniques used to generate ideas and other factors that will affect the quality of them. 

The Power of Collaborative Partnerships

What to Consider Before Establishing a Partnership

In a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies cannot solely rely on their own competencies to sustain a competitive market position. The paradigm of Open Innovation recognises this and provides a structure which encourages organisations to go outside the four walls of their team, department and company to find and access knowledge to fill internal competency gaps. Engaging in Open Innovation requires an organisation to develop a strategy, build a networking culture and create partnerships with external sources. In the context of Open Innovation, partnerships enable companies to establish relationships with universities, SMEs, research institutes, etc. to acquire or jointly develop a technology.

Pivoting Behaviour

Pivoting in a ‘behaviour-innovation’ context. 

Recently I’ve been listening and reading many views on innovation culture, but it was not until last week, when I attended an on-line forum entitled "Change Culture by Doing" hosted by Innovation Management that I heard the word ‘pivoting’ in a ‘behaviour-innovation’ context. 

The impact of the Millennial Generation on working environments and retail experiences

The Millennial Generation (those born post 1980) has come of age and is influencing the way in which retailers sell and market their products and services. Also, the work place has been influenced by working environment designed to facilitate this highly networked generation. A recent article (interview with Nick Shore, MTV Insights) illustrates the inspiration behind MTV Insights, a study exploring how the Millennial Generation will reshape the future of commerce and working environment (The Millennial Mega MashUp, April 2012).

Beware of One-Size Solutions

A "Procrustean Solution" in statistics is where you draw the trend line you want and then pick only the data that fits the line. This may have even influenced the famous quote "Lies, damned lies, and statistics", which is attributed to, amongst others, William Gladstone, Mark Twain and Alfred Marshall. The back story of Procrustes comes from Greek mythology. On his way to claim his birth-right in Athens, the young Theseus stopped at the house of Procrustes for bed and board. Procrustes was not the sort of Greek hotelier you'd wish to meet. He invited his guests to stay in his special bed, which he claimed was so extraordinary that it's length would exactly match the person who slept on it. What he failed to mention was that if you were too tall for the bed, he'd cut your feet off, and if you were too short, he'd stretch you. Nobody ever appeared to fit the bed at first, because secretly Procrustes had two beds of different sizes. Happily Theseus saw through the deception, slew the villain, and went forth to deal with the Minotaur.

There's no win-win with a Procrustean Solution, it's a form of deception where one set of interests are forwarded at the expense of others. A statistician would obviously be aware of what they were doing if they were cherry-picking the data to fit the curve, but the person looking at the analysis would assume that it was "kosher".

When you are looking at solutions to problems, and especially when someone is suggesting a solution to you, it's easy to be persuaded by the sales patter particularly when there's some compelling evidence to back it up. In Innovation Management, it is important to realise that one size does not fit all. Processes have increased in complexity, and there are now an increasing number of practices which are largely unproven and where the contribution to the bottom line is unclear. A trial and error approach to innovation processes can be expensive and success rarely comes quickly. Since companies need to change fast in a world of accelerating change, they should learn from others' successes and failures as well as their own.

Remember Procrustes, and don't assume that there is an extraordinary solution that will perfectly adapt to organisations of all shapes and sizes. If someone tells you they have a bed that fits everyone, talk to someone who has slept in the bed first!

How to Conduct Successful Technology Scouting

How to Conduct Successful Technology Scouting

Key findings from Best Practice Research Study

Even though the concept of Open Innovation (OI) has been around for some time, insights tend to focus on the ‘what’ and ‘why’, but not the ‘how’. This post gives a sneak preview of the actionable findings from the recent best practice study I have conducted into Open Innovation, and reveals what best practice is for Technology Scouting.

Culture for Breakthrough Innovation

Why are some companies expecting success in breakthrough innovation (this being automatically disrupting market behaviours) without considering the change needed in their employees?

Structuring Front End Innovation

Attitudes to Failure and the Working Environment for Front End Innovation

We often see the FEI process being referred to as ‘fuzzy’ due to the combination of convergent and divergent thinking required when delivering excellence. However, the values of FEI come from companies taking a grasp of their FEI process with a structured approach. This blog post focuses on two of the key aspects to address when structuring the FEI process; attitudes to failure and the working environment.

The Growing Trend of Business Model Innovation

Creating value through Business Model Innovation

In today’s highly competitive and fast-moving technology advanced market space, much of the innovations and cost savings that could be achieved have already been achieved. As our economy continues to put companies under resource scarcity, managers are hesitant to make any big changes where the potential value is accompanied by a degree of risk. A recent piece of research by Raphael Amit and Christoph Zott (Sloan Review, March 2012) uncovered how companies are focusing more on complementing their product or process innovations through business model innovation.

How business models can accelerate innovation.

Lessons in parenting and teenage development

Fred van Ommen, SVP Innovation Excellence at Philips, was speaking at a conference in Barcelona last month  (the 2nd Annual Open Innovation in the Life Science Sector to be exact). His chosen topic was how business models can accelerate innovation.  The Life Science Sector is an area that Fred is passionate about . He ran the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging ) business at Phillips for six years, and during that time he doubled the business,  and he did that  by  changing the design of the outside of the machine. Fred realised that the key to success was the anxiety that an MRI produced in people, not the technology inside the MRI.  People are afraid when an MRI  machine makes a  noise and they are also scared by the lack of mobility. Fred’s success was because he considered the human side of the product.  At Barcelona, Fred and his colleague, Corina Kuiper, took this one stage further when they compared business model innovation to parenting and teenage development. Their starting point was that as a parent you have to be consistent, and with innovation you have to have consistent strategy over time.  

The following comparisons flowed naturally after that: 

IP protection in Start-Ups

A Comment to "A Plea for Patents that Inspire Invention"


I read this great article written by James Dyson, when it was shared by Dick Lee on his Value Innovation group at LinkedIn. Please find it in the following link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cbd5c6bc-87ac-11e1-ade2-00144feab49a.html#axzz1sUf190k7

Why this article caught my attention

Voice of the Customer (VoC) Techniques

Voice of the Customer (VoC) techniques play a vital role within the front-end of an organisation’s innovation process as they help bridge the gap between what customers need and what can be delivered at a competitive price. However, with a number of different techniques available, many organisations are faced with the challenge of knowing which one to implement. This post shares a snap shot of how five best practice VoC techniques can be used, so individuals can improve their level of understanding and weight up which will deliver the most value to their organisation.

Which VoC techniques should you use?

Managing the Front End of your Innovation Process

Front End Innovation (FEI) is one of the top innovation management challenges of our times. The notion that FEI is fuzzy and uncontrollable is being replaced with the belief that it should now be managed in a systematic way to ensure that ideas are created based on informed scenarios and opportunities with relevant customer insights. However, there are a number of different methods to adapt and knowing which one to implement can be challenging for organisations. This post illustrates a snap shot of Geoff Waite’s NOIC (Needs, Opportunities, Ideas and Concepts) and SPROC (Strategy, Process, Resources, Organisation and Culture) frameworks, which are a combination of practicing (NOIC) and managing (SPROC) the front end of innovation.

How do you manage the front end of your innovation process? 

Ideas Change Culture or Culture Changes Ideas

Do ideas change culture, or does culture change ideas?

Jeffrey Phillips wrote a very interesting article on Innovation Excellence: Do ideas change culture, or does culture change ideas?

I had always been inclined that an idea had all the strength required to change a culture, but this article made me re-think my statement.  I used to believe that all that was needed for a culture to change was a strong thought, and well communication, but Jeffrey does make a good argument by stating that in some cases, the idea won’t be as strong as the culture, and therefore it will not be successful.

The Innovation Leader Programme

Members of the Innovation Leader Programme

 

The Innovation Leader Programme (ILP) is aimed at providing industry-based practitioners with actionable and relevant insights to build and improve innovation capabilities and performance as well as encourage and instil a framework of continuous learning for innovation within R&D, NPD and Innovation teams.

ILP Membership is far more than an ‘off-the-shelf’ subscription service, we look to build and nurture a long-term relationship with our customers. We listen to and work closely with our members to understand their innovation process and management challenges. We then develop and deliver a programme of bespoke activities aligned to their needs.

Pure Insight Overview

Annual Survey of Key Innovation Management Challenges for Members of Pure Insight’s Innovation Leader Programme

Which challenges keep customers awake at night?
 

Listed below are the top 4 of our 5 key Innovation Management challenge areas, as defined by our ILP Members, in the 2010/11 membership year.

This short publication provides interesting insights into cross company, sector and industry trends surrounding the key innovation management challenges in the year ahead.

Motivating Your People

Non-monetary Incentive and Reward Schemes

Which ones do you use?
 

Money is usually a short-term motivator although everybody needs a certain minimum to feel comfortable to cover their overheads. Promotion is a very good system to recognize performance which does not have to be associated with a huge pay rise to make impact. Telling the internal candidate they are not quite good enough and then appointing somebody from outside at the level above can be a huge error – if the employee shows they are able for 2 years in that role then that should be enough to promote them or they will walk out on you.

Business Model Canvas

Why should you use the Business Model Canvas?

In this day and age where environments are becoming increasingly complex and fast-changing, companies need to change the way they manage innovation. The very nature of competition is rapidly changing, and to maintain a competitive market position, a business needs to have the ability to frequently develop valuable new products, services or experiences for their customers. This can be achieved by bringing some structure into the innovation process - The Business Model Canvas is a great tool for doing this as it creates a snap-shot of the commercial logic around a specific idea at any one time. By quickly creating a visual picture of the business, a shared understanding can be generated and everyone can see how all the different factors fit together.

Product and Technology Roadmapping

How to Utilise Roadmaps

At the end of the day, to be innovative all you have to do is think about the world differently. But you can’t run a business on thinking alone; you need to create a strategic plan so that your future vision becomes a set of reachable opportunities. Your strategy has to be unique to you. One way to test this is to get a copy of your strategy and replace your company name with your competitors – does the strategy still make sense? If your answer is ‘yes’ then you don’t have an exclusive strategy.

Get Out of Your Cognitive Box to Innovate

"We all need to get out of our cognitive box to understand the content of other's boxes"

Jose Antonio Baldaia wrote an article on www.innovationexcellence.com on the importance of "thinking out-of-the-box to get inside other's boxes". Please visit the following link to read the entire article: http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/03/27/get-out-of-your-cognitive-box-to-innovate/

This phase is brilliantly simple, reframing the essence of going beyond your confortable thinking zone and expand your limits with a purpose, giving structure to where its usually misty. It is the link to other's perspectives, or the lack of link, that will encourage teams to find new ways to complement services and develop new ones to disrupt markets. 

Fishing and Innovation - They have much more in common than you think

Innovation and the Art of Fishing

"The critical capability isn't knowing how to fish, or having all the answers; It's knowing how to go about finding the fish and discovering the answers we need." 


Dennis Stauffer makes an analogy for innovation using fishing, and the 'learning to fish', which I found very interesting.

Curiosity Video – Beautifully made, clear and concise message

“We can only pass on the things that we have understood, if we ask questions, and stay curious, then life will have much more in store for us”

Where things come from from Hardy Seiler on Vimeo.

A technique that encourages curiosity... 5 Why's

Eight ways to streamline and evaluate ideas so that they can be turned into innovation briefs

The process of turning ideas into developed products can be challenging, and it is an area in which Pure Insight subscribers want actionable insights. As a result of some recent research that we have conducted on behalf of one of our Food and Drink ILP member, we have been able to establish eight key insights on how to successfully coordinate and streamline ideas and turn them into innovation briefs.