Innovation

 The real challenge is to understand where and how you can and should improve to get the biggest effect and scale up innovation across the digital ecosystems.

Due to the complexity of modern businesses, within the organizations, innovation nowadays is rarely an individual action; rather, it is a team effort, often needs to work across multiple functional silos, and even collaborate with a business ecosystem. The journey from a promising concept to a fully scaled innovation involves several critical steps and considerations. 

Overcoming the "proof-of-concept purgatory" requires strategic allocation of resources, a supportive organizational culture, effective communication, and seamless collaboration.

Characteristics of Successful Innovative Management: Top management supports innovation and provides leadership in this area. The organization dedicates resources specifically to innovation rather than expecting it to happen as a matter of course. Individuals who push for innovation are rewarded. The organization has a diverse workforce and welcomes ideas from outside the mainstream.

The organization’s bureaucratic layers are closely connected so that innovations can be easily communicated and implemented. The organization tries to experiment with different ways of doing things with the understanding that not all could be successful.

Innovation governance: Innovation governance is the steering wheel to keep a straight line or take a turn at that velocity of strategic planning processes and business execution scenario; the headlights to do forecasting of what lays ahead (risk or opportunity); fuel gauge (cost), speedometer (metrics), or the brakes to slow or continue the journey (resource management) etc. The governance process/mechanism can be embedded into the business process seamlessly, and governance practice should be shared across enterprises collaboratively.

Organizational Culture: Innovation is the most needed changes. Organizational change may require cultural change. A strong organizational culture can both help and hinder innovation. Strong cultures can inhibit organizational transformation where greater flexibility and agility are required to respond to changes in the external environment. Organizations need to be agile and able to adjust to the rapid and exceedingly high degrees of technological change in order to maintain their effectiveness. 

 More and more firms are learning and implementing best practices in management for scaling up innovation. The real challenge is to understand where and how you can and should improve to get the biggest effect and scale up across the digital ecosystem.

Posted in: Innovation