Saturday, December 25, 2021

Innovatingcrossboundarily

Working in an innovation garden not only takes passion but also needs the process and hard work to keep fresh ideas flowing smoothly and manage a healthy portfolio of innovation effectively.


Innovation is about how to transform novel ideas to achieve their commercial value. Innovation is the development of a new combination of available resources, in a way that solves problems in a more suitable way at the global scope. 

The world becomes more dynamic, innovation is for connectivity, renewal; it is equivalent to sustainability and resilience for an increasing number of hyper-connected enterprises and industries, which is based on the updated global view that looks at problems or issues in such a way that a solution emerges through a collaboratively interdisciplinary and innovative approach involving global psychological capital, intellectual capital, and social capital.

Cross-boundary innovation:
We all bring different perspectives and our boundaries might have changed based on open conversation. The expanded boundaries encourage open mind, open space and open innovation. Being innovative is not just about being "knowledgeable"; it is often at the edge of things and able to expand the boundaries of knowledge or conventional thinking, and through such expansions, new knowledge is developed, and dots get connected to enable idea flow and spur innovation. People with interdisciplinary knowledge or cross boundary working experience can often produce great ideas and stimulate creative energy because they are able to think more holistically when it comes to new products or designs, and more often, during the early stages of ideation around disruptive innovation

We do not have to agree with one another in order to learn from and with one another and produce fresh ideas. Ideas are seeds of creativity that can change a certain situation and future. There is more flow of creative ideas, the more is happening, the innovation pie gets bigger. So the expanded boundary amplifies the collective potential to innovate. Forward-thinking organizations build many innovation clusters which are cross-functional communities that help to brainstorm fresh ideas or exchange knowledge. They can manage a balanced innovation portfolio by connecting wider dots, seeing what’s possible, and having the technical expertise to create the multifaceted values.

Collaborative innovation:
Due to the fact that innovating in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature, it’s usually a collaborative effort. As boundaries today are fluid and cursive to streamline information and idea flow for adapting to changes constantly. In terms of collaboration: Does everyone knows and understands each other's goals and have agreed on common overall goals? (Alignment) Are information and knowledge equally shared among all members? (Clarity) Is there an environment of psychological safety and culture of innovation (Trust) Having knowledge is a good thing, but imagination is the wing underneath innovation. Debating, sharing, and exploring what to do with that knowledge and connecting disparate ideas that don't seem to fit together naturally will generate creative tensions, but lead to innovation ultimately.

In the business setting, it’s important to break down the variety of silos and enforce cross-functional, industrial, and cultural collaboration and innovation. The smaller business players can gain economies of scale of innovation through cross boundary communication and collaboration. The larger enterprise can renew the creative energy and rejuvenate their organization by developing the culture of learning and engaging customers/partnerships in their continuous digital conversations. The leverage point is how to structure innovation without adding too much complexity, generate winning concepts on a consistent basis, streamline idea flow, create business differentiation, ensure interdependencies and loyalties between partners are taken into account and build up a strong innovative ecosystem with harmony.

Hybrid innovation: Besides hard innovation such as product/service/process/business model innovation, there is a variety of “soft flavored innovations” such as leadership, communication, management, or culture innovation. There are incremental innovations and breakthrough innovation. To search for disruptive or breakthrough innovation, keep the doors open and be inclusive in your brainstorming and encourage "out-of-the-box" thinking for generating great ideas. Therefore, communication and participation are important to spark creativity. The latest digital technologies such as social computing make collaboration and sharing possible at a large scale. Employee engagement in the innovation process increases participation and streamlines creativity flow to cultivate a culture of creativity, harness creative communication, enhance innovative management disciplines.

Innovation Management system includes policies, structures, and programs that innovation managers can use to drive innovation. It is important to have some degree of a “hard-wired” innovation system to translate into business processes or change mechanisms with the proper metrics to monitor it. The process to support the creation of sustainable and systematic innovation can be structured. A systematic innovation approach is to depict innovation as a system, rather than a traditional process, build  an effective innovation framework to manage innovation in a structural way.  Digital leadership is doing fantastic work for developing a world-class organization with a strong culture of creativity and solid innovation competency.

There is no doubt innovation is becoming more important whereas technology is becoming so advanced and the pace of change is increasing significantly. Innovation is a unique business competency, how to manage innovation successfully could change the way managers do what they do to improve the organizational performance and maturity. Innovation is not serendipity. Working in an innovation garden not only takes passion but also needs the process and hard work to keep fresh ideas flowing smoothly and manage a healthy portfolio of innovation effectively.

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