The tyranny of change and telling fortunes
Posted by jayvanzyl in 04 Ecosystems on July 8, 2010
I’ve had some push-back on my views about socially driven innovations and that in turn means a push back on open innovation. When “The Process Innovation Imperative” was written (leading up to 2002), the 4th Generation of R&D was in full swing. The focus was on using learning theories and knowledge based approaches to drive new innovations. I do not think that learning is less important today, it is just more imbedded in the make-up of our organizations as we are educated on the possibilities of what this can bring. With regards to 4th Gen R&D, the premise of getting the customer more involved in your business is a modern phenomena; and here to stay.
Some pertinent questions are being raised in light of a more open and transparent approach to innovation:
1. Our culture and organization does not function like this, so how will this work?
2. Our industry does not work like this, where can it be applied?
3. As an innovation leader I have no control over the more federally designed business units, how open can we be?
There are some undeniable evidence that movements towards a more open world is moving at a consistent pace. We do, as humans, have a problem in telling the future though. Our mental pictures of what’s possible are always different to those views of what actually happen. the result is that when we look back things don’t look so well crafted and planned.
Look at “Back to the future” Marty McFly arrived in the future (a few days ago) after hitting 88mph in a Delorean in 1985. What were you thinking about innovation in 1985? Remember the hovering skateboard?
There are some signs of change, especially those that are socially driven, that normally go unnoticed. This one isn’t; we are in a world where humans demand rights, want to be treated well, and feel they have the right to the benefit of their actions. Having just experienced the soccer world cup in South Africa, I once again feel that a movement like “against racism” is driving a society to believe (rightfully so) that inequality is wrong and that individuals should be valued.
A colleague just returned from China (Guangzhou an economic powerhouse). He found that after interviewing some prominent business leaders the result was quite clear. “So, why do you want to do open innovation again?” Let’s leave it at that for now…
Towards a more socially integrated innovation process
Posted by jayvanzyl in 08 Participative Customer on July 8, 2010
Innovation processes come in various forms and shapes, but there is an overriding view that open innovation based approaches have simplified the concept. In some cases you need gates, funnels, check points, runways, pipelines, fuzzy front-ends, committees, review boards and other concepts to deliver on your innovation approach of choice. But, other times you need the process to be socialised, integrated and imbedded to deliver on your management mandate in a seamless way.
To drive this a process of Create, Rate, Collaborate and Review might just do the trick. Get people to participate through cycles of energy, then rank and rate what needs to be done socially, collaborate with various parts of the organization to get the job done; and finally find the successes and failures to either contribute, learn or avoid. Bring the shadow organization and the formal organization together by allowing ideas to flow freely, innovations to be implemented openly, and the benefits to be visible. Is this form of transparency paving the way for the future organization?
Towards a metaphor for innovation
Posted by jayvanzyl in 09 Economies of Scope, Innovation Models on May 30, 2010
Being in a position where I’m fortunate enough to work with students who are interested in studying the subject of innovation; metaphors are used to shape our understanding of how new ideas come into being and are then allowed to develop into fully developed real-world outcomes. One such metaphor is the role of the architect in shaping our physical environment. The architect, client, designer, builder, designer, financier, etc are all part of a complex constellation of value creation.
Some thoughts on the process of creativity that results in real world outcomes, as seen by an architect:
1. We all live in a setting that is determined by crowds and social structures.
2. We have the ability to either accept this setting or challenge it.
3. Our fit with this environment is determined by how our views are adopted.
4. There is always a sense of permanency once we have decided to pursue a certain course of action.
5. It is cumbersome to change our thoughts once we spent time formulating our reasoning.
6. To change the physical manifestation of our thoughts are time consuming and ego-trapped.
7. Moving into a new world or a new way of going things requires a new setting or paradigm to develop.
Look at these key reasoning areas from some architectural greats some 80- years ago:
Adolf Loos wrote “Ornament and Crime” in 1908 outlining that we should remove ornaments from everyday life like buildings, as it will hasten the demise of the design that was made permanent.
In “Theory and Design in the First Machine Age”, 1936, Reyner Banham reasons that functionism has rules and patterns that guide us as we moved into the era of modernism.
“Towards a New Architecture” by Le Corbusier in 1922, focuses on the understanding of basics that allow for flexible and agile change of all non-structural elements.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe spent his life changing the world’s view of how architecture and technology live together in harmony where most forms of excessive ornamentation is removed for functional design.
As we moved from the eras of mystical reasoning to science and pragmatic thinking, our focus of how we live as humans is shifting towards a far more integrated existence. We woke up one day realizing that our actions are far more impactful than we thought, and that our understanding of mystical behaviors have caused us much pain. Believing in individual value and group well being, got us to think about the basics of how a new world would operate. It is almost like we are going through a human reasoning evolution as what happened in the 1920-1950′s. A new form of pragmistism is emerging that allow crowds and individuals to co-exist in diverse opinion.
Humans express themselves through the physical outcomes of their thinking, as we have seen in the changes in architectural styles over the years. Furthermore, our access to technologies shape our minds as to the possibilities of creation in the realm of “what’s possible today”. We live in built up urbanized areas, malls, social gathering areas, crowds watching great acts of arts (like music), etc more than ever before. The integrated world of technology and human behavior is allowing us to socialize more efficiently than ever before as we live close together. And all this in light of our self destruction of the world, global population growth, and religious wars. Even crowd oriented corrections like the financial crises will shape our minds in new ways as to the “possibilities of creation and correction”.
Innovation is entering an era where the strict rules and decorative processes and procedures of past are all under scrutiny. A more integrative and social approach is emerging where we need the individuals in our constellation to perform at their best. Even Open Innovation is developed on the platform of the past; taking an old construct and evolving it. Is this good enough for this era? The new rules of change will force you to integrate the creative genius of all these people in ways frowned upon in eras gone by. Our ability to create new ideas, evaluate and rate those in light of the setting, collaborate on the development and outcomes of those ideas, and finally the ability to find valuable ideas; all will determine our success in achieving success in a new world.
Towards the new basics
Posted by jayvanzyl in 03 Business Philosophy on May 15, 2010
Crowdsourcing is going through the paces when you get auditing firms ;-) discussing the merit of such a phenomena. Look at this entry by PwC. The concept of “crowd behaviour”, “crowd wisdom”, “crowd sourcing” concepts are discussed in the same way as “market behaviour”, “market wisdom”, and “market segmentation” of late. The biggest difference is that the value of the individual is amplified in the modern business. This goes for employees and consumers/customers/clients alike.
We feel we have the right to better product, the right to customize, the right to select freely, and the right to participate with the supplier of services and products during the delivery (and making of goods and services) phases. So, co-production and crowdsourcing are now integrated into most propositions of the modern business. The advent of automated and integrated social networking technologies have caused this shift towards crowd power to accelerate. And it doesn’t matter what industry you are in; your life will change over the next few years as you expect more from the worlds top providers. The spill-over of finding new competitive frontiers will hit the companies that think they can compete by doing the basics right.
The basics have shifted, and you need to figure out what those are. My take on some of the new basics:
1. Real-time enabled strategic capabilities and not core competencies
2. Crowdsourcing and crowd wisdom based analysis and not market segmentation
3. Configurable business value creation configurations and not the hierarchy through command and control only
4. Dematerialized value statements and not vision statements
5. Offerings as propositions to customers and not products and services
6. Open and transparent value networks and not closed value- and supply-chains
7. Energizing the shadow organization through champions and not appointed change agents
Is this the time to redefine the basics? Could the basics for you and me be different?
Open innovation orientation
Posted by jayvanzyl in 05 Ecogenetic Changes on April 20, 2010
Stefan Lindegaard is working on his new book on Open Innovation. He has his first chapter available for download to get a taste of his thinking on the subject. I love his views and the initial read definitely presents a real world view on this topic of open innovation and crowdsourcing. There is however one key concern; I think we forget about the services companies and their role in open innovation. R&D is not seen in the same light as P&G for example, and there are many different challenges on delivering service innovations.
Our 
Open Innovation Orientation Model was developed together with a number of services and industrial organizations. These include banks, insurance organizations, manufacturers, distributors, and professional services firms. I do like Stefan’s definition of open innovation: “open innovation is very much about bridging internal and external resources to make innovation happen”. We have found that companies develop a “style” of operation over time that favors one approach over another namely:
1. Organizational Orientation (inside-out) – using the capabilities and key strengths of the business to figure out what to make next and sell to customers (or “clients” as for professional firms).
2. Customer Orientation (outside-in) – using customers to shape what needs to be focused on next and then shaping some key delivery capability to achieve the stated intent.
Organizational orientation is when a business relies on its analytical capabilities to drive new innovation campaigns. Furthermore it focuses on obtaining information from customers through deliberate actions and crafted surveys and research activities.
Customer orientation is determined based on the primary actions of “listening to customers” and then to include the customer as a co-producer of value creation. The act of listening has limited value as we can’t really learn a lot from absorbing information from our customers only. We need to immerse ourselves in co-produced activity where the inventor lives with the recipient; understanding the way in which the invention will be used and value derived. The act of immersion will prepare you to drive innovation that focuses on “surprise”. As humans we want to be surprised with great products and services, we don’t want to be asked all the time.
The Open Innovation Orientation Model is used to shape your involvement in a portfolio of activities to drive innovation activity. All actions are driven towards creating an innovation ecology where an organization can benefit from both the ability to engage the customer meaningfully and the ability to externalize some of the key capabilities to co-produce innovative outcomes.
“Apple never holds focus groups. It doesn’t ask people what they want; it tells them what they’re going to want next.” wrote Stephen Fry in Time Magazine. If Apple can re-invent itself from the inside-out, what does it mean for Open Innovation? What does “open” really mean?
A collective re-design is imminent
Posted by jayvanzyl in 03 Business Philosophy, 05 Ecogenetic Changes on March 18, 2010
The world is upbeat about the changes in economic activity. Consumers, customer, patients, guests and clients are all spending more than recently (well, a few month ago). We want to feel upbeat about positive change and will look for signs of change to support our views of the major growth cycle we are about to experience. Our “brains” translate the recovery as a trend and the feeling of “it will all be ok” sets in.
With this phenomena comes the deep rooted paranoia that forces us to look at alternatives. We need to rethink why we did things in a certain way and re-look at certain decisions and behaviors during the “bad times”. If you are in a corporate setting this gets amplified as everybody wants to make a mark on the new era where positive thinking will result in good returns, major returns and overall a new era of growth.
This brought me to the conclusion that we need recessions more than growth periods to stimulate innovation. Yes, I know, many people have written about and discussed the reasons why you should innovate during a recession, but this is different. People need to be constrained, scared and shaken before they feel upbeat enough and ready to move onto new things.
We have noticed major activity in our services clients, especially in banking and telco’s, to the extent that most now have “redesign the business” mandates or initiatives. Executives are ready to make major leaps forward in testing new innovations to drive competitiveness. For those that believe that a redesign is not necessary, be warned that when a larger collective initiate “change”, typically a major shift in an industry’s competitiveness results.
The changes will probably come in three stages:
1. Initiate by testing options: this is where organizations reorganize and reshape their top teams for optimal redesign mandates. This requires strong leadership and decision making capabilities to get the correct changes approved. Some will be disciplined and purposeful and others will be add-hoc and unfocused.
2. Spend money: a redesign program is typically messy as many of the dimensions of change are not tested and might result in poorer performance in the interim. The “business case” culture is challenged and a more “benefits oriented” approach is followed where holistic returns are expected. As experimentation with technology is not often liked by business people, technology will be implemented prematurely and result in major redesign initiatives after this phase.
3. Deal with the aftermath: only some of the organizations that embarked on change initiatives will reap the benefit. This will result in a new era of corrective action, with a new kind of business that is highly automated, efficient delivery oriented, client intimate, and well integrated. The mandate of survival versus reshape will start all over again.
Just think about the changes in banking, telco’s, insurance, let alone manufacturing over the last 20 years in technology and automation, legislation, delivery mechanisms, size of markets, etc and the picture gets interesting… we are about to enter one of the most intense periods of re-design, the world has ever experienced.
Some ramblings on crowdsourcing
Posted by jayvanzyl in 06 Age of Access, 08 Participative Customer on February 11, 2010
Two more examples of crowdsourcing approaches.
I’ve spoken quite a bit about innovation related communities and ecologies over the last months. One component that is needed to make innovations successful, is the ability to try and predict the future. Some predictions are described as scenarios and others can come from communities where the whole world participate in submitting predictions. The community, What the future holds plays to your need to leave a legacy where people in the future will see that you were able to predict the future.
Nostradamical: predict, publish, play “Essentially Nostradamical is a fun approach to a serious topic: The ability of ‘the crowd’ to predict events with better overall success than ‘the individual’.” The focus is on getting social communities to share information about the future. They are also working on a prediction engine that uses the data from the community to intelligently make predictions.
I find this particularly interesting as most of our clients would benefit from this approach when collecting complaints, recommendations, ideas, compliments, etc from their clients, staff, etc. We are entering an era where the classical MIS (management information system) approach is just not going to cut it. Real-time information is needed as crowds share ideas, change behaviours and shift markets. Integrating financial information from your bank, with tax information from the local authority, vehicle information from your car, mobile behavior from your cellphone, E-mail information from your E-mail provider, social information from your Facebook and Linkedin accounts… And, once integrated, you should be able to have recommendations made as to when to phone, where to drive, and what to do next for optimal performance. Is this taking it too far?
Here is another example, and something more practical…
We are embarking on a rethink of our brand, something that happens periodically. LogoTournament is a crowdsource based community where designers from all over the world can design logo’s for companies. It will cost you anything from about $250 to $5000 depending on the level of response required. So, why would you do this? The old way was to give your favorite agency a detailed brief, let them come up with something, and then you select an item. This is costly and everytime you want to change something it costs you money.
To crowdsource your design you need to provide the same kind of brief, and in some cases more detailed. You set the price tag and off you go. Designers from all over the world then submit their designs in pursuit of the relatively small fee for the design. Ranking systems are used to determine the kind of designs you like and don’t like. All of this happens interactively with a design community obsessed with making a name for themselves.
I have a confession to make…
Posted by jayvanzyl in 02 Reframed Thinking on January 27, 2010
Dear planet, it’s beena while since my last confession. Actually, I have never made a confession as the motivation has never been as strong as now…
I have not posted anything on this blog for last two months as I’m grappling with some reasoning about certain aspects of our modern existence. I’ve been brought up in one way (and rebelled), transformed into the world of commerce in another way (and was forced to adopt or die), and pushed into rethinking all of what was there before.
Operating in a commercial world where I spend some of my time teaching innovation (and related topics) at one of the local business schools, got me thinking that we are living in the most intense times of change. Ye sure, “change” – move on. But, there are many things that we are forced to think about that is not how we were brought up. All the great inventions of our era and the past 100 years or so, are all under serious scrutiny.
I have to confess that I find it difficult to shape an outline for my next academic paper (that is expected of me as a part-academic) and still feel comfortable that I’m promoting something that will be good for humankind going forward. It is incredibly hard to separate the “logic” of global warming, pollution, human rights issues, and the general destruction of human behaviour WITH the clean thoughts of recycling, eating organic food, clean energy usage, etc.
My clients are large corporates that are trapped, like all of us, in a cycle of demand and production where it is virtually impossible to reverse the wrong doing of age in one generation. Yet, it is expected that all of the human race needs to change its view on how it lives its daily life.
I am confronted with the emotions of employing a number of people to earn an income and feed their families, while the only means of income is based on the application of skills by using toxic (to this planet) based products. How do we reconcile our behaviours during the radical transformation periods?
I have to confess that I’m ill equipped to fully guide my children on the dangers of how they should behave to preserve their offspring’s future. The world I come from is long gone, and I’m only in my 40′s…
Check out Ecogenetic.com
The role of NeuroLeadership in Customerization
Posted by jayvanzyl in 05 Ecogenetic Changes on November 20, 2009
Neuroleadership as a field is emerging and poised as an important component of driving leadership development and organizational change. There is a conundrum though in that the Social Sciences and Neuro Sciences are developed separately. Some integration is taking place as the NeuroLeadership community tries to develop some of the connections.
In the “Customer Centric” world, practitioners are trying to make sense of the role that social networking technologies play and sometime forget about the individual. Consider crowdsourcing for a moment – what is the NeuroLeadership versus NeuroFollowing’s role in making group decisions? I’ve been reasoning that the role of the individual gets amplified in crowds that need direction. In one of my previous posts My take on the “The Myth of Crowdsourcing”, is that the individual has needs, aspirations, etc that are sometimes morphed into the identity of the group. But, more often than not, the individual plays a role more important than what is expected.
Looking at newish communities like The Social Customer, The Customer Collective, Social Media Today, etc you will find an intense focus on researchers trying to understand the “social” aspects and not the “neuro” aspects of human behavior. 
Will we be able to design a new customerized approach where the characteristics of individual, by using NeuroLeadership approaches, and characteristics of the group, Socially oriented approaches, can be combined in a new view for value creation?
Is the NeuroLeadership crowd, just another very relevant crowd, trying to make sense of our complex physical make-up in a world where theorists and practitioners are scrambling for relevance?
History of Innovation Poster
Posted by jayvanzyl in Innovation Models on October 9, 2009
We have been trying to find different ways to depict the history of innovation (this is a draft version and work-in-progress). The posted does not show any “time bands” of change nor does it provide any detail as to the inventor. The idea is to represent some of the major changes from the industrial revolution onwards that changed our lives.
My take on the “The Myth of Crowdsourcing”
Posted by jayvanzyl in 05 Ecogenetic Changes, 08 Participative Customer on October 1, 2009
“Crowds don’t innovate–individuals do.” writes Dan Woods. Obviously, I think that Dan missed the point a bit as to what crowdsourcing really is!
Let’s look at the basics again:
“A crowd is a group of people. The crowd may have a common purpose or set of emotions, such as at a political rally, at a sports event, or during looting, or simply be made up of many people going about their business in a busy area (eg shopping).”
Crowds are groups of individuals with different backgrounds, preferences, opinions, skills, etc. What makes a crowd is when just one of these preferences coincide with preferences of others.
“Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.” “Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. Problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions.”
The key is “sourcing” in crowdsourcing, it refers to the concept of getting groups of people access to potentially solve a problem. It is not that the “crowd” can solve anything; it is that an individual that is already influenced by being part of a movement or community now has access to a platform where the most appropriate solution will be accepted.
In the era of market segmentation we focused on segmenting markets based on behavior, gender, preferences, etc and then tried to solve problems for the segment in a generic way. Concepts like mass customization pushed concept of allowing a “market” to change some of the variances in the product/service based on individual preferences. Customerization is when the marketing messages and produced product or service are customized simultaneously based on individual preferences.
So, my take on crowdsourcing is; it is a platform for customerization where both the supply-side and demand-side of the value network in the economic setting participate in the extraction of value. Value in this case refers to economic and other forms of value for example reputation building, education, societal causes.
There is a relationship between crowds and tribes. Tribes is defined as “the term to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship”. Crowds are formed based on common properties, and in most cases when crowds are formed inside companies it happens due to kinship; hence the relationship with tribes.
Let’s look at an example:
If you want to crowdsource ideas to develop a new business idea, you would need to firstly have access to a crowd. This crowd could be your immediate social network, or some other community where the individuals in the crowd have similar interests (and possibly only one common interest). You would need to present a “request for ideas” to the crowd where individuals will then decide (individually) if it is worth their while to participate. If the incentive is for immediate gain; where you pay money for great ideas, or if the incentive is long term; where you pay once the idea has been implemented will be different between various parties. As the crowdsourced ideas get submitted, the crowd will assist in determining if these ideas can contribute to the problem that’s being solved. This rating and ranking approach is now well adopted by eBay, Digg, etc where crowds express their views by voting en mass.
The ability to communicate and integrate ideas in society will continue to fascinate the human race. My take is that crowdsourcing related activity is an evolutionary phenomena on the way to have a more efficiently integrated human-technology decision making landscape. We are influenced by our peers, networks, friends, etc which are all crowds and we use technology to remove the inefficiencies of this influence.
Steve Jobs is back on stage…
Posted by jayvanzyl in 05 Ecogenetic Changes on September 9, 2009
Steve Jobs has changed “the world as we know it” in many different ways. Check out his first appearance back on stage, making an appeal to all. Steve Jobs returns to the stage.
This is in 2005 when Steve gave his Stanford Commencement Address.
Sidney Bernic: In memory of a great man
Posted by jayvanzyl in 02 Reframed Thinking on August 13, 2009
Sidney was an incredible man with many strong views on the world. I’ve included two short video extracts from his presentation at our Realities of Innovation Conference held in 2004. In the first video he presents his view on “vision”. The second video is about his approach to passion; he often spoke about “passion and purpose”.
Idea ecologies, the new frontier of innovation?
Posted by jayvanzyl in 04 Ecosystems on June 29, 2009
Idea ecologies are exploding by using open innovation based principles. Until recently it was very difficult to tell your suppliers (the many retail and other suppliers that fill our everyday life with goods and services) what you need from them. Now with crowdsourcing and idea ecologies you can become part of these organizations and participate in swarm based innovation behaviour. In my previous post about these ecologies I discussed some examples. This is an update with more organizations joining the “crowdsourcing of ideas” phenomena.
eBay, Amazon and others pioneered and popularized the concept of rating and reviewing of deals in the world of commerce. In this digital world we trade with ideas and intellectual assets.
Check the Ubuntu community’s ability to elicit ideas and have the best ones implemented by an open source community.
Innocentive is one of the first successful idea ecologies that was founded by Eli Lily. Ideas are captured and solved by the crowds of people interested in making an impact. Communities are brought together to solve problems and prizes are set in monetary and other soft measures.
Idea Bounty is a community that elicits ideas and then crowdsource the best ideas as a solution to the problem (ideas). A bounty is set where the prize money is promoted as one of the biggest draw cards of the crowd. In this community you have creatives and clients. Clients set bounties and creatives respond to these with great and useful ideas. You can also be rewarded if your friends have winning ideas; they call it “Share the Love”. I like this statement; “Idea Bounty was started by a guy who saw the light and a guy who was frantically waving a torch.”.
Idea Connection is a great community with lots of information on the concept of crowdsourcing. With the vision statement: “To give businesses access to the world’s most creative and innovative minds, who work collaboratively to solve problems and develop innovations.” they have a mountain to climb as the world is jumping on the ecology wave. They follow the same approach; ideas are needed to solve problems, ideas are captured and rewarded.
Netflix Prize wants to achieve: “The Netflix Prize seeks to substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences.” In the world of media and especially in a disruptive world of on-line media, the viewer uses ratings extensively. This community tries to incentivise crowd participation for rewards.
IDEAnet has a noble cause. This is their purpose: “The IDEAnet is a global collaboration of individuals and institutions that provide medical services and humanitarian relief. The mission of IDEAnet is to foster collaborative efforts to use distributed learning and volunteer telemedicine to address health disparities and foster effective, sustainable health services.” It is mostly designed around Communities of Practice based concepts where ideas and discussed and developed for benefit to the community.
Connect + Develop from P&G is a great open based innovation community that brings together many parties in making innovation work. This is a comment from Bruce Brown: “It’s our version of open innovation: the practice of accessing externally developed intellectual property in your own business and allowing your internally developed assets and know-how to be used by others.” This is a great summary of many parts of the crowdsourcing based innovation concepts: “Today, open innovation at P&G works both ways — inbound and outbound — and encompasses everything from trademarks to packaging, marketing models to engineering, and business services to design. It’s so much more than technology.” P&G has Innocentive, NineSigma, Yet2, and yourEncore as partners making their innovation initiatives some of the most successful today.
Socialtext is a social community platform where many components of what’s needed to construct complete collaboration communities are built. Their value statement: “Socialtext was founded on the vision that technologies emerging in the consumer web offered far better social dynamics than any enterprise software. The opportunity we saw was to create a new social context for organizations and the people who make up those organizations.”
Social computing as a platform for social networks are now in the corporate space. For those that believe that the old paradigm, and those set in their ways, is going to get you to compete with the highly integrated and well connected generation has some else coming. This is the era of social based ecological activity. Consumers are educated that their voices will be heard and that the eras gone by, where CRM and other half-baked attempts to solving customer problems, are gone. There is an explosion of social communities, check these entries; 50 Niche Social Media Communities and top social networks for entrepreneurs. And, yet senior people shun social networks. We are in a paradigm of socialization.
Social Based Innovation, human-mashups under emergence
Posted by jayvanzyl in 02 Reframed Thinking, 05 Ecogenetic Changes, Making Memes (my presentations and workshops) on June 26, 2009
Does innovation require a different outcome during these times? Will a lean approach make me more successful? Do we have to do things differently than before? Would people adopt the approaches quicker than before? There are a number of questions that are left partially unanswered as academics and practitioners struggle to find easy answers for their individual settings.
Discovery, Invention, Innovation, Improvement, Creativity; throwing these in the organizational “pot” creates more confusion than solving problems. When [man] saw fire for the first time, was it a discovery? Imagine the surprise and excitement when the uneducated and uninformed caveman felt the heat from the fire for the first time. But, how do I keep this thing going? How was it created? Got asked before the long road to innovation to turn the discovery into something that is more controllable. The invention of making fire came much later.
Innovation during lean times is about the realization; that most of what we’ve learnt during the previous knowledge cycle since the beginning of the industrial revolution, is now under threat. We are working on two innovation re-think projects called “Built to Thrive”, that focuses on understanding business innovation as an eco-system activity; and “Social Based Innovation”, that focuses on the approaches to follow to re-invent yourself.
Participative Customer:
Historically we found that many of the time-locked concepts for example “client centricity”, “best practices”, “talent management” and “scorecard based measures” to mention a few; create common and copied views of how the world works. This imitation without understanding deeply why you need it has destroyed more companies than any other. The great pioneers of our time do not copy; they engage and immerse themselves deeply in the activity of their business and then redesign their future’s appropriately. The industrial era’s mindset is still fresh in the minds of managers and they find it difficult to shift [paradigm] to an era where the value creation activities are now socially influenced.
Let’s take one such example called ”client centricity”. Listening to your customers is a sure way to get into trouble; they have entirely different approaches, mental mindsets, and outcomes in mind compared to you and your business. The future is about crowdsourcing, crowdspirit, co-design, co-production and immersion. You do not want to give your favorite mobile provider or bank the exact requirements of what they need to make for you in the future. You want to be surprised and enlightened. This requires a much more networked and involved approach to understanding the issues and problems of the day. It also requires more insights into the solutions that might result in financially successful and environmentally friendly outcomes. Business models are evolving through the development of the participative customer as a means to get closer to the action; where the economic customer is seeing financial value in the network.
Social Networks:
Look at some of the latest innovation ecologies, these are essentially crowdsource based idea generators, that emerged over the last 2 years or so. Coke, Starbucks, Apple, IBM, etc all now have active and very vibrant idea to innovation communities that allow customers, competitors, and staff to interact in an integrated world of information sharing. They leverage the organization’s shadow and the industry’s undercurrents to gain deep understanding of of the shifts that are taking place. So, instead of copying, they allow for the crowds to co-produce and co-design the intended future. Market segmentation and coarse grained approaches will disappear and swarm based approaches and unique value approaches will emerge.
Our approach to delivering value is “Social Based Innovation”. Leveraging the shadow organization in achieving innovative outcomes. It’s not about product innovation; it’s about the offering. It’s not about process innovation; it’s about capability innovation. It’s about leveraging the social value in the business and not the elitist team that’s responsible for innovation. It’s about mobilizing the crowd through tribes and not the formal structure where innovations get trapped.
Obsessive Execution:
It’s in the portfolio; the success of your innovation efforts. The translation and articulation into meaningful actions. It’s the journey “from here and now, to here and now”.
Let’s take a view on innovation terminology that’s still in use today; “product based innovation”. Maybe the concept called “product” does not exist. Maybe there is only “service based innovation”. Take the chair you’re sitting on as an example; is it a product or a service? It was designed at a point in time where the collective knowledge of chair making and manufacturing got frozen and encapsulated into that chair. But, it is used to deliver a service for you tonight. It might be comfortable easy to adjust, etc making it a great service delivery platform. If the chair is not comfortable will you walk away thinking that the night was not useful?
Presentation: Social Based Innovation, human-mashups under emergence
Posted by jayvanzyl in Making Memes (my presentations and workshops) on June 9, 2009
We are living in times of seismic change and accelerated shifts in paradigms. Reframed thinking results in new business configurations being tested and uncharted territories unearthed. This results in business renewal activity that impacts the human component of the business directly. Social shifts result in people looking at the world differently.
Humans are integrated with technology and used as a driver to deliver new growth platforms. What are the new emerging practices of innovation as social networks connect people like never before? Can we learn from the historical successes of innovation? How are successful companies using innovation to compete in this fast changing world? Where does human innovation fit in the new business?
This presentation covers four key areas when looking at Social Based Innovation:
- Where has the customer paradigm taken us as crowdsourcing emerges
- How does the social network affect the human-technology ecosystem
- Using innovation capabilities to drive obsessive execution in the innovation ecology
- Forget about talent we need to focus on harnessing genius
These critical questions will be answered through case studies and insights into the latest innovation findings.
Service Design through Social Based Innovation
Posted by jayvanzyl in 02 Reframed Thinking, 05 Ecogenetic Changes on June 1, 2009
Service Design is an approach used by iconic design and innovation firm, IDEO. It is the practice of designing intangible experiences that reach people through different touch-points. The purpose is to influence these interactions in such a way that financial and benefits are positive to the firm. Realistically these intangible experiences are very hard to quantify and even harder to describe in processes.
Great service designs emerge over time and have the ability to capture the essence of the interactions between humans and humans and computers. Often a great design is only identified once it is created; the act of making it relies on deep experience of the designer together with the ability to immerse in the activity that is being designed. This results in “I’ll know it when I see it…”.
Due to the emergent nature of this type of design; you require many different view points that cut across the organization. Using a social based approach allows for interested and other parties top collaborate in ways never explicitly designed before. The add-hoc nature of the interaction drives the energy and interest to solve the service design challenge.
Presentation: Towards Capitalism 2.0, Signs of a new world order
Posted by jayvanzyl in Making Memes (my presentations and workshops) on May 29, 2009
We believe that studying cycles of change can teach us something about the world we’re in. But, every now and then a change comes along that shifts our perception of the world pushing our reasoning beyond all logic. Our inability to read signs of change push us into uncomfortable territory.
Economic systems, human reasoning about financial systems, and the current reasoning of the business world are all under scrutiny. We are concerned about the environment and global warming. Our renewed interest in human rights and the global population explosion all contribute to uncertain times.
This presentation takes the audience through a journey of some of the signs that need to be understood. It is a journey that starts with some of the key and fundamental challenges of modern commerce, and ends with some of the unanswered questions of our current state.
Presentation & Workshop: Reframed Innovation on the Horizon
Posted by jayvanzyl in Making Memes (my presentations and workshops) on May 29, 2009
Sustainable and successful organisations have the ability to explore new frontiers of competitiveness during challenging times. New business configurations and alternate uses of scarce resources are tested and uncharted territories unearthed. Innovation is used as an approach to drive competitiveness. But, the influence of new technologies and the ability to respond to changes affect the organization’s delivery capability.
Innovation disciplines are used to drive growth opportunities whilst protecting existing platforms of operation. This results in a number of critical questions being left unanswered. What’s involved with the practice of innovation? How are the most successful companies using innovation to compete in this fast changing world? Where and how can technology be used to drive innovation success? What can we learn from these (and previous) experiences?
This workshop has been broken down into a number of topic areas that highlight different aspects of how business renewal can drive performance through innovation and emergence. It brings together the realms of strategy for innovation and the ability to re-invent the business to ensure successful outcomes in this highly competitive and fragile business environment. Social Based Innovation approaches are unveiled and the participant is taken on a journey of reframing…
Making the case for Social Based Innovation
Posted by jayvanzyl in 02 Reframed Thinking, 03 Business Philosophy, 04 Ecosystems on May 26, 2009
I’ve been discussion many concepts relating to innovation over the last few years. But kept the development of our new approach under wraps as we are testing some of the constructs. So, let me give you a sniplet of what’s been going on.
Working globally with financial services, manufacturing, and other services firms we discovered some interesting concepts in innovation. You would’ve noticed that I have a number of posts on social networking (the hot topic of the day I guess), and other social related phenomena. All these contribute partly to the concept of Social Based Innovation.
The initial definition is:
Social Based Innovation is the ability to influence social actions in such a way, that benefit is obtained by the social group in its tribal setting, behaving in a way that value is captured by the collective.
Shadow organizations as they are called, refer to the social interactions that happen outside of the formal structures as defined by leadership. These shadows are often overlooked as sources of value and not nurtured. Social Based Innovation as an approach is used to capture value holistically by allowing all dimensions of the community to interact. This drives the tribal approach where common beliefs and ideas are developed even if these are from customers, employees, competitors, or other traditional constructs. Crowdsourcing, Co-production, crowd spirit, etc are concepts that try to capture the emerging world of social mobilization. Leveraging communities as crowds that influence your innovation mandate has become a new topic of discussion.
Some notes on where reward systems (check out McKinsey&Company’s And the winner is… paper) and Social Based Innovation intersect:
- Identify excellence through social rating approach and tribal acceptance and co-development of ideas and innovations.
- Influence public perception by exposing a wider community to rewards for great ideas and innovations.
- Focus a community by getting the entire social group involved in collective activity for common purpose without the traditional organizational boundaries.
- Identify and mobilize new talent by allowing individuals to have creative freedom during idea development and guidance through implementation.
- Strengthen the community by getting tribes actively involved in problem solving.
- Educate and improve skills by getting champions of innovation to emerge based on their attitudinal and aptitude towards innovation. These people can then assist others in achieving more in the network.
- Mobilize capital once the strategic intent of the campaign and involvement of the formal and social structures have delivered a verdict.
Is innovation as a discipline evolving faster than before due to the effects of social networking?