Innovationinquiries

Innovation has become more intense with broader content or enriched context. 

The goal of innovation is about creating sustainable competitive advantages. It's common that many companies tend to focus more on their core competencies with age, often forgetting about the value of innovation. Creative problem-solving is about trying something “unusual”- the thing that has never been done before. Radical innovation starts with a problem, having no solution in the current situation. They are critical to build long term business advantage.

Many businesses took a big bite of resources to keep the lights on, only leaving very little for building innovation competency which directly impacts the strategic movement of the company. The management needs to ask tough questions, take a disciplined innovation approach to set the right priority, align resource, process, talent seamlessly, cultivate a culture of creativity, manage risks and improve innovation management success rate significantly.

How to leverage “the diversity of thoughts,” make unusual connections for creating meaningfully fresh ideas? Innovation is progressive because it represents a new way of doing things by making unusual combinations of ideas or insight to solve bigger problems. We are stronger through diversity and become ultra-modern through inclusiveness. Creativity is about connecting unusual dots. Complementary mindsets, interdisciplinary knowledge, collaborative platforms and technological tools allow us to perceive things via unusual angles, connect unusual dots, and explore many unusual options to spark fresh ideas constantly. When an unusual thing strikes, almost all join together to deal with it as the purpose is clearly understood and accepted to solve problems innovatively. 

Using our creative side helps to create new ways of doing things that allow for innovation to happen. Every collaborative team will be different and hence, produce different results. Don't expect your collaboration to be the same, and find your own balance and you will find your innovation. Inclusive teams with strong innovation competency can generate novel ideas and solve problems alternatively. The meaningful fresh ideas are the foundation of all sorts of innovation. Besides products, services or business model innovation, diversity of thoughts can also harness soft innovation such as leadership innovation, communication innovation, and culture innovation.  

 

How to break through the bottlenecks and increase innovation speed?  Speed matters because it doesn’t take long for ideas to get stale due to the rapid changes and overwhelming growth of information. In reality though, there are idea bottlenecks, process incoherence, cultural frictions, and talent gaps, etc. Information is intensive and critical to innovation success. The compromised data or information friction slows down idea flow and stifles innovation. Innovation management needs to make an assessment of innovation management maturity, make adjustments to the speed with which new ideas are created and how fast well-selected ideas are brought to market. 

Organizations can be more effective in executing innovative ideas by relying less on silo functions, more on cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement. Organizations can bridge idea gaps, collaboration gaps, and innovation implementation gaps by taking a framework approach to develop dynamic innovation capacity, measuring innovation effectively, and building a suitable and hybrid environment for stimulating creativity, encouraging originality. The concepts of the framework are good, but they are often implemented in a bureaucratic manner with a focus on processes and not execution. It adds another layer of complication, slowing down innovation speed. Innovation process needs to become agile, dynamic, fit for changing circumstances, innovation capability is modular, integral, innovators are flexible, versatile to speed up innovation management cycle smoothly.

How could it identify and manage risks in innovation management? Innovation involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel. With each flavor of "innovation," the risk is involved. The more disruptive the innovation is, the greater the risk would be. In the world of innovation, you will fail more often, many more times, than success. Innovation management needs to ponder: What’s the failure rate of innovation? Can you predict risks? Do innovations fail because there are too many disconnects that occur in innovation management? Does the organization have the risk-tolerant attitude, risk intelligent processes, risk management cohesiveness, and resilient innovation system?

Innovation usually happens at the intersection of people and technology; business and customers, a robust governance program can be the medium through which innovation is fostered. Innovation is not just a restless adventure, but a cautionary tale. The innovation risk management would need to be flexible and applicable to a dynamic situation. Innovation Risk Management means stepping away from the accepted "best practice"; developing the next practices, and asking whether a fundamentally different approach would provide more flexibility, more sensitivity, and more responsiveness. 

Innovation has become more intense with broader content or enriched context. Proactive innovation management and continuous adaptability are necessary in a rapidly changing world. Innovative organizations deploy a range of different management, technology, processes, and structural solutions, pulling enough resources, connecting a variety of dots to catalyze innovation, and produce high performance results consistently

Posted in: Innovation,Leading by Questioning,Learning