Archive for June, 2008
A model for understanding your innovation portfolio
Posted by jay in 07 Offerings, Innovation Models on June 20, 2008
Much has been written on the subject of innovation portfolios. I’ve found that there is a difference between models used in the service sector versus the industrial sector (stating it like an assertion). Innovation portfolios need to be managed over time to ensure optimal leverage of initiatives driven by innovation campaigns.
Innovation projects affect two major areas of the business namely; the offerings presented to the world and the capabilities needed to deliver. An offering is the combination of key elements that include; product and service, actors involved in acquisition and deployment, time of the presentment of the offering, and the location of where the offering is delivered. Capability includes; people and their abilities, talent and genius, processes and practices.
A key challenge is to determine the measures needed to polarize the “new” from “existing”. Existing capabilities, when enhanced, will result in a slight shift in execution capability. But, when capabilities are renewed an entirely new model might be required, that includes challenging the dominant paradigms in the existing organization. Offerings in well established industries shift at a slower rate than those in emerging industries. This shift might require a rethink of the capabilities needed to monetize new ideas.
…to continue…
Innotown: the best experience you’ll ever have!
Posted by jay in 07 Offerings, Exploring the World on June 17, 2008
I attended two Innotown Innovation conferences in Alesund, Norway. This year they moved the conference to Stavanger. It is by far the best innovation conference with great speakers, energetic intellectual spirit and a real innovative feel to the proceedings.
The best part of the conference is the networking. People from more than 20 countries interact and they are all there to listen and share their ideas. Diversity of cultural backgrounds and opinions about innovation makes this a must.
Expressing your dominant idea; replacement for vision statement?
Posted by jay in 03 Business Philosophy on June 12, 2008
Innovation in business has got us to a point where a rethink of the vision statement is needed. I’ve written about this before by stating that all (or most) vision statements are computer generated. And this applies to many types of business.
An early version of the new vision. The concept of the Dominant Idea – everybody has one. All businesses, political parties, billionaires, social groups, etc share their existence around one great Dominant Idea. Industries are created around one dominant idea that then gets implemented through many designs resulting in the competitive landscape. Mandela’s dominant idea resulted in the road to freedom, Google’s resulted in the journey to own the world’s information…
What a Dominant Idea is not…
not a vision statement that’s generic,
not a goal that is achievable,
not a bland description of some key action,
not fully scripted to allow for innovation.
It is…
something that describes the essence of your being,
can be translated into a mantra,
can be commercialized through a Dominant Design (will chat about this in a later entry),
gets described by your philosophy,
translates into a set of business and life principles.
Check out a previous entry on the The redundant vision statement. Can the description of your Dominant Idea and Dominant Design replace the vision, mission, goal, objective, etc set into something more specific and meaningful?
I want to focus on politics in this instance (business examples will be unpacked later…). A story of delivering on a Dominant Idea by using modern unscripted, non-professional, mashed-up, and fragmented media scape:
Let’s look at a recent topic of the American presidential race and the analysis of Hilary Clinton’s journey. Social media and general amateur media affected her campaign more than the scripted stories and robotic like behaviour – “She was being overscripted and controlling of her message” by the Next Right blog.
“What hurt Clinton most, political analysts say, is that she couldn’t consistently use the newfound ubiquity of video to soften her image with voters.”
Look at this media mash-up of the Hillary’s idea; and viewed more than 5million times on YouTube…
And if you haven’t seen (or cant remember) the Apple 1984 advert, check this…
If there ever was a statement that sums up the new world of media and communications then this is it:
“Conquering video in the digital age has less to do with being telegenic or smart, as both Clintons are. Being a politician in the YouTube era means being comfortable with giving up control of your message and realizing that everything you say or do can be uploaded within minutes for the whole world to see – and then mashed up into something new.”
And for a contrasting story…
What is Robert Mugabe’s dominant idea? Where are a YouTube media entries about his doings? Who is really questioning his actions? Do we know anything about what’s really going on in a controlled media world? I find Michael Trapido’s blog entry called What if Robert Mugabe was white? quite interesting. It shows that we are in a complex world of interwoven dominant ideas with dominant designs that are supported by philosophies not well communicated or supported.