Archive for May, 2009
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?
Situation traps and other mental phenomena
Posted by jayvanzyl in 02 Reframed Thinking, 05 Ecogenetic Changes on May 25, 2009
I came across Adizes’s work some 10 years ago. The concepts he promoted made sense and I started reading his work extensively. After buying 8 videos from the Adizes Institute and working through these over time, I got to understand his views.
In 1999 he published “Managing Corporate Lifecycles” that provides great insights into how organizations evolve over time. He has the ability to articulate clearly some complex change phenomena making him quite unique. You can also do a self test on his website to determine where you fit on his model; Understanding the Corporate Lifecycle: Get an Instant Online Lifecycle Analysis.
Today we have a need to rethink business and not apply the dogma of the day, but find new methods and approaches, and question the basics of how leaders take their businesses forward. There is a new world emerging and those that believe in a static set of concepts will follow the academic rhetoric of the past. This creates the situation trap that most managers find themselves in. I’ve been questioning the basics of much of where modern strategy and innovation is developed from; and the picture is still pretty bleak. It took major global catastrophes, climate change and a few crisis’s to get people to sit up and question their ways.
… that’s why I like this entry from Adizes…
This is from his latest posting:
[snip]
Waiting for a plane in Kiev, Ukraine, I picked up the Harvard Business Review from January 2009. Although I do not typically read this magazine, because it is so alien to my way of thinking, I did so because I was bored.
As I should have predicted, I became quite intellectually disturbed reading some passages and wondering, am I on the wrong track or is “the establishment,” as represented by Harvard, on an old, outdated track?
For example, page 21 on what it means to be a leader: “Leaders on the front line must anticipate merely what comes after current projects wrap up. People at the next level of leadership should be looking several years into the future. And those at the C suite must focus on a horizon some ten years distant.”
Well, being proactive requires anticipating the future, granted. Predicting the future is a necessary variable, but not sufficient in itself to make one a successful leader. The variables have to also be sufficient to produce the desired results, in this case to lead the company to success.
[snip]
Have a look at his web site at www.adizes.com.
What should a great innovation software product look like?
Posted by jayvanzyl in Innovation Models, Technology Stuff on May 21, 2009
We have been working with innovation related projects for many years now – and observed many different approaches work. This creates a challenge in that “innovation practices” are still emerging. The approaches followed are almost as diverse as the number of books published on the subject. There are however a number of common things that need to be looked at; some of these include:
- focus on understanding your approach first
- commit to the approach and work on embedding it into your culture
- get people energized to apply the newly acquired knowledge
- let ideas emerge (similarly to the way you’ve always done it)
- work on one change at a time and move forward from there
- reward successes and ensure that company measures are not undermined
- make it a long-term journey…
Based on some of these heuristics, innovation software products should contain some(or all) of these features as a minimum:
Manage ideation, innovation and adoption cycles:
- create observations (general learnings, market scans, landscaping)
- create ideas (as result of individual genius, workshopping, creative sessions, etc)
- create innovations (as result of reviewing ideas, etc)
- create projects (decide to spend money on realizing the ideas/innovations)
Staged idea/innovation capture:
- basic idea recording mechanisms (to simplify the process)
- deadlines, and other time based information
- investment needed and other monetary related information
- process and staged based information collection (especially for clients with stage-gate based approaches)
Project management integration:
- realize ideas through creating projects from the selected ideas
Setting of challenges and prizes:
- set a challenge on an idea with deadline, prize, and intended outcome
Define innovation campaigns based on strategic initiatives:
- define innovation campaigns based on context setting approaches
- target innovators to participate
- set challenges
- reward winners and achievers
Invite specialists:
- invite specialists to assist with developing your ideas (maybe through tribes?)
- create “call for review” notifications to elicit feedback
- create innovation workshops with directed purpose statements to facilitate specialized input
Define key measures for dashboarding:
- have the basic measures on dashboard depending on your position in the org structure or social network
- produce an automated innovation portfolio based on key measures
- have “socially aware” ideas move to the top automatically
- have “socially inept” ideas move sideways into “please review”
Integrate with NPD (new product development):
- define product and service targets (which to get ideas for)
- have idea approval and grouping by version/release/platform numbers for products
- integrate with legal process especially for trade marks, patents, copyrights, company secrets
Idea value analysis:
- group ideas by external and internal related criteria
- value the market potential of ideas for external use
- value ideas based on cost saving etc for internal use
- define portfolio balancing criteria
Knowledge management platform:
- integrate patent portfolio and other legal innovation constructs
- integrate field knowledge acquired throughout field testing and trials
- get information from various sources through mash-ups
- flag ideas as “company secrets” or secret ideas
- initiate prototypes, etc
Idea evaluation analysis:
- ideas that are discovered and copied
- entirely new ideas
- science based processes, etc
Idea and innovation clustering:
- search for like ideas and relate together with reason code
- allow idea consolidation
Idea and innovation workshop manager:
- define workshop purpose and objectives
- collect many ideas; but don;t “commit” to them
- review the collected ideas and produce an approved set
- measure effectiveness of session
- get participants involved electronically by viewing ideas on-line in real-time
- map ideas onto the Opportunity/Capability or other innovation models
Innovation e-learning integration:
- get access to all basic innovation terminology
- allow for brief learning sessions before ideas are captured
- track learning on the dashboard
Innovation tracking and energizing:
- track and monitor innovation “energy”
- understand who are creating ideas and at what pace
- automatically generate “innovation stimulation” activity for eg. e-mails, SMS’s etc
Community:
- structural and social based community collaboration to be allowed
- allow customers to see certain ideas and capture their own
- allow certain external intellectual and other providers to participate in the innovation process
- allow your legal firm access to key legal challenges
This is by no means a complete list of the features needed to manage automated idea management approaches in organziations, but it provides some insight into some of the important features. The simpler the approach the more effective the adoption will be.
Have a look at www.ReframingBusiness.com.