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…

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.

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?

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?

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.

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 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

Neuroleadership

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. This recent research reveals once more that certain key communities are emerging as leading social platforms for business users. So, where is the holy grail?

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?