Innovating To Win

Wishing You an Innovative 2009

It’s hard to believe that there less than 48 hours left to 2008.  Yet soon, we will be welcoming the New Year.  Will the coming year bring as many surprises as this one?  One thing is certain.  The coming year will bring change and with it opportunities.

Of course, opportunities are just that.  Vision and execution are required to transform them into something of value.  If you have begun your journey from the world accidental innovation into the world of sustainable, high performance innovation practice, you will be well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.  If you have not begun adopting the tools and techniques to build a sustainable innovation practice, now is the time.

Either way, try thinking about your innovation resolutions for 2009.  Set some measurable goals.  Imagine where your organization to be, and make a plan to get there.  Stretch yourself and your abilities as you plan to create new value for your clients and your enterprise.

My 2009 innovation resolutions are simple:

• To help my customers by providing new ways of performing their critical tasks that deliver transformative value
• To listen to my customers carefully and the capabilities they would ask for it they only knew they could
• To support my customers innovation goals with new technology to make sustainable innovation practice easy to deploy broadly

What are your innovation resolutions?

Innovating Past No

There is an old saying among great sales people.  “The selling begins at no.”  Designers, engineers, scientists, and other innovation professionals should remember that for them the innovating begins at no.  Consider the following statements and what they mean to you.

“No, we don’t have the budget to pursue your idea.”
The fact is that no company can afford to not make innovation a front burner issue.  When you hear this it is probably the case that you have shown enough or the right value in your concept.  Ask yourself, have I thought through my concept to its optimal end?  How can I better communicate the value of my idea to the company?  If money is tight, consider if there is a program you can trade off to pursue your higher value concept and wrap that into you proposal to show how you can create more value at no incremental cost.

“No, I can’t justify the expenditure.”
When clients opt to not purchase, it usually means one of two things.  Either the prospect was not well qualified, or they didn’t perceive the value proposition was strong enough.  If it is the later, this is your open invitation to innovate.  Perhaps you can transform the business model in a way that shifts the value equation.  Maybe by changing you strategy for communicating the value you can impact you win-loss ratio.  Certainly, product innovations can boost the value proposition.  The field is wide open; go for it!

“No, it simply can’t be done.”
Don’t you believe it!  There are countless things that we take for granted today that were considered impossible not all that long ago.  This reaction may come from fear of change or mere ignorance.  Either way, you have many tools available to you to look for fruitful paths forward.  Leveraging structured innovation methods will help you reframe the challenge in ways that will lead to new insight.  The right technology platform can allow you to tap into global knowledge across many domains to find novel concepts that can support your breakthrough innovation.  The combination of these two is a potent formula that has worked for many enterprises and is at the core of sustainable innovation practice.

“No, this is the way it’s always been done.  Why change?”
This is another common refuge of innovation killers.  And, why shouldn’t it be.  After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Unfortunately, this view of change presumes that nothing else changes either.  But this is not the way of the world.  Everything is constantly in a state of change.  Customer needs evolve.  New challengers enter your market.  Technologies advance.  New business models emerge.  Closing your eyes to the evolutionary forces around you is the surest path to obsolescence.  Understanding the changing world in which we operate and innovating to define the future is the way to create lasting value and clear the road to market dominance.

How will you respond in the face of no?

Your Best Innovation Story of 2008

As we enter the last weeks of the year, it seems like to good time to look back and assess the year.  There have been a lot of interesting things happing this year—some good, some challenging.  All the while, the engines of innovation kept humming along.

As you look back over the year, what stands out for you as the best innovation story of the year?  Was it something you did?  Was it something a competitor did?

New Report: Innovation Strategies for the Global Recession

Chuck Frey of InnovationTools and Renee Hopkins Callahan of Innosight have released a report titled Innovation Strategies for the Global Recession.  This report is a compilation of insights from many of the foremost practitioners and thought leaders of innovation.  You can find the report here.

A few of the themes highlighted in the report are cited below with some brief commentary.

Redouble your focus on customer needs
This is a recurrent theme in product development and innovation.  Yet, brilliant execution in this dimension is often elusive.  This is because customers are not always able to tell you directly what they need.  This is the big challenge to the innovation practitioner.  We need to develop the right listening skills to not merely hear what the customer is saying but understand deeply what is the opportunity.

Prune your innovation portfolio
I especially like seeing this theme highlighted because it is something that is often forgotten.  Every decision has a time, a place, a context in which it is made.  Even a great decision may lose its relevance when the business environment changes the context of meaning.  You can create new resources to fuel innovation by jettisoning the deadwood from your portfolio.

Conduct a disruptive threat assessment
This theme has two meanings as I see it.  The first is mentioned in the report.  Proactively identify new threats and eat your own lunch before someone else does it for you.  However, there is another angle to be considered here as well.  Many companies make the mistake of hunkering down in tough times to weather the storm.  This is especially true of market leaders who may have become complacent and therefore take their edge for granted.  This means that there many potential opportunities created as these companies open the door to the industrious disruptor.  Could that be you?

There are many other thought provoking viewpoints in the report.  Enjoy!

What Is In a Word – Sustainability

Recently, a Linked-In group was started called the “Sustainable Innovation” group.  It is populated by innovation practitioners who are interested in maintaining a dialogue on the issues of building innovation as a sustainable engine of success for companies and individuals.  However, language is a funny thing, and some words carry multiple meanings.  Sustainable innovation is just such a phrase.

One the one hand, sustainable innovation refers to the topic outlined above and discussed here in this blog.  Sustainable innovation has a second meaning which is the practice of innovation in service of a green (or sustainability) initiative.  Thanks to this accident of language, someone posted a question to the linked-in group relating to this latter definition of sustainability.  In his question he referenced Dr. Stuart Hart's definition: "An economy that can be sustained indefinitely."   In responding to his question I mentioned that I didn’t like this definition because it lacks the specificity for most enterprises to really relate to their specific strategic plans.  People need to be able to connect to a concept if they are to be able to recognize the actionable aspects of the concept.

Understandably, he responded asking what definition has the specificity to make it actionable.  Since green innovation is a hot topic these days, I would like to continue this discuss here, and invite you to join in.

In answer to the posed question, things are actionable when they relate to goals and span of control of the actor.  This is where Hart’s definition fall short for corporate actionability.  There aren’t too many companies that have as their goal the manipulation of an economy or that individually possess the span of control to be the steward of an economy.  (Although recent events certainly show the impact a group of companies can have.)

Rather for most companies, the goals reflect responding to the needs and interests of their business constituencies: shareholders, investors, employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and so on.  It is this ecosystem of constituencies and the way in which their interests have aligned with the agenda of social and eco responsibility that drive and define the meaning of sustainability as it relates to each company.   For each company, this may lead to a unique expression of the green agenda, but there are certainly recognizable trends in both the situational business drivers of green innovation as well as the paths that companies traverse as they begin moving down the road to becoming a green player.  (This was the topic of my recent presentation at the PDMA’s recent SecondLife panel discussion.)

So in general, I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all definition for sustainability as it relates to companies.  If pressed for a definition, I would say sustainability in the corporate context is the alignment of business practices and operations to address social and environmental challenges that interface with the business.

What do you think?

Innovation Via Biomimicry – What You Said

The results are in, and once again they tell an interesting story.  In our most recent poll, we asked if you are employing biomimicry as a source of innovation inspiration.  The results can be seen to the right.  I find two things very interesting about these results.

Of most interest is that over 40% of respondents are unfamiliar with what biomimicry is.  With the tremendous speed with which science and technology evolve, it is hard to stay abreast of everything under the sun.  However, innovation practitioners have a unique mandate to do just that.  Our ability to drive innovation sustainably is directly related to our ability to harness available global knowledge and experience across many disparate domains. 

Biomimicry is the practice of studying the solutions of nature and looking for ways of repurposing the best solution which have withstood the crucible of natural selection to our innovation challenges.  Biomimicry has emerged in recent years as a very fertile and rich method for tapping into the wisdom of nature.  For more information on this valuable technique, check out the Biomimicry Institute.  You might also find this two part interview with John Bradford of Interface an interesting example of how one company has put biomimicry to work.

Biomimicry and Sustainable Innovation: Part 1

Biomimicry and Sustainable Innovation: Part 2

It is also interesting that among those who are aware of biomimicry, the responses were evenly split as to whether you use the method or not.  I am not sure how to interpret this result.  What do you think?

Once again, your participation in the innovation poll has provided an interesting picture of the state of innovation.  Please remember to vote in the latest poll on which types of innovation initiatives will drive your company’s strategy in 2009.

Biomimicry Innovation Poll Closing Soon

Our informal poll on biomimicry & innovation closes this Friday. 

Last week I participated in a PDMA SecondLife panel discussion on green innovation.  The event was very well attended with so many people asking to attend that some were turned away due to capacity constraints.  Eco/Social-innovation is expected to be a major driver of product and business innovation in the coming years.  How does biomimicry into your vision, or does it? 

If you haven’t cast your vote yet, you better hurry!  You can cast your vote using the Vizu poll widget in the side bar on the left.

A new poll will start on Monday, December 15th.

Setting Innovation Goals

Paul Williams, in his Think For a Change blog, talks about the need for leaders to start setting their 2009 goals for building the internal innovation culture.  This advice is spot on.  If you don’t have specific targets to shoot for, you won’t deliver any tangible results.  However, there is one other sort of goal setting that is important to successfully establish a sustainable, high performance innovation program.  That is specific innovation business goals.

This is an often neglected aspect of driving innovation, and one that is frequently neglected intentionally.  This intention doesn’t come from malicious or nefarious scheming, but from the misperception that innovation cannot be effected guided.  But if I may borrow Jeffrey Phillips’ catch phrase, you can and should innovate on purpose.

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy demonstrated great leadership by declaring that we endeavor to put a man on the moon.  Eight years later, that goal was achieved.  While business leaders don’t need to set such lofty goals, they do need to provide the framework for business value creating with business supported innovation objectives.

Is there a new market that you wish to enter?

Is there a product line you need to revitalize?

Are you in a business that you need to reinvent and recast for your future (GM, Ford, and Chrysler)?

Do you need to rethink your business model to create a better path to you customer?

Every business has some key strategic issues that can be addressed through innovation.  It is the responsibility of the CEO and executive management to prioritize and articulate those issues in a tangible and compelling way.  By doing so, you provide a vision of the predictable future that your innovation workers are able to respond to in way that delivers optimal value creation to the business.

Thanks for the Nod, Chuck

As a blogger, acknowledgement is never expected, but always welcome.  It is especially nice to get that acknowledgement from a respected and highly credible source.  In the Innovation Tools Innovation Weblog post “10 innovation experts to whom you should be listening”, it was a very pleasant surprise to be named by Chuck Frey.

Thanks for the nod, Chuck.

Check out who else is on the list.

Obama and Innovation: First Moves

As President-elect Obama continues with the process of preparing to assume the office in January, the Washington Post reports that he has named a team to create an Innovation Agenda for the U.S.  On the surface this is a very encouraging sign.  Urgent attention is needed in this area.  However, we will have to wait and see if anything substantive is delivered by the team.

Why the skepticism?  The background of the team leaders (Blair Levin, Sonal Shah and Julius Genachowski) suggests that we are unlikely to see strongly innovative thinking in setting the Innovation Agenda.  I suspect that we will see some interesting approaches to revamping how government interfaces with the people.  But in the area where we need it most, building the innovation capacity of America as a participant in the Global arena, we are most likely going to treated to a variety of the same old tired recipes: a bit of cheer leading, a smattering of funding haphazardly sprinkled about, and lot of hoping that if you simply talk about being innovative we will somehow be more innovative.

I sincerely hope I am unnecessarily cynical about this issue.  Innovation is vital not only to America’s future but also to the entire global community.  We, as members of the global community, have many issues that need to be addressed, and as the world has evolved it has become clear that some new paradigms are needed to resolve these issues.  Will the new Innovation Agenda make a contribution in this direction?  What do you think?