Monday, March 26, 2018

Influential Book "Digital Maturity: Take a Journey of a Thousand Miles from Functioning to Delight" Review

10:52 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Organizational maturity is assessed based on the overall business effectiveness, efficiency, operational excellence, responsiveness, performance, innovation, intelligence, resilience, and people-centricity.

The purpose of the book “Digital Maturity: Take a Journey of a Thousand Miles from Functioning to Delight” is to envision the future of the business, articulate the very characteristics of digital organizations; reimagine the interdisciplinary and hyperconnected digital ecosystem; fine-tune processes and structures of the digital business; develop the best and next practices to charter the digital paradigm shift seamlessly; leverage information & technology as the linchpin of the digitalization; take a holistic approach to measure digitalization effort; avoid pitfalls and barriers on the way; and make a leap from doing digital to being digital effortlessly.

The state of digital flow: Digital means flow - mind flow, energy flow, information flow, idea flow, and business flow. The classic organizational management usually enhances silos and overly rigid hierarchy. But digital organizations, like individuals, are living things; need to be in flow to operate smoothly and to exercise for keeping energized and achieving the state of delight. From information management perspective, a highly intellectual and highly effective digital organization has a higher level of responsiveness because information can flow to the right people, allow them making right decisions at the right time to bring better results and accelerate digital speed. In fact, in this information-abundant digital era, there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of information that flow through the enterprise at any given split second. It is so critical to streamlining information flow across functional boundaries because information brings about business ideas and insight to enable organizations grasping business growth opportunities and preventing potential risks, to build a people-centric organization. Information flows and penetrates through the business to make the digital organization more responsive, dynamic, antifragile, and therefore, delightful.

The full spectrum of digital innovation: Digital is the age of innovation. Innovation is to have a new perspective on things and gain the benefit by doing something different. Leading only through operational considerations is not the way forward. In most organizations, innovation is still serendipity. When organizations just follow the old rules, have “we always do things like that” mentality and less appetite for change, they are getting stale, without maximizing its full potential. To improve the business maturity, digital organizations should build innovation as a differentiated business competency, learn how to solve problems creatively and manage a balanced innovation portfolio systematically. Innovation follows basic rules, which are adapted depending on the company's situation and ambition. Digital innovation has a broader spectrum, it can be categorized as empowered innovation (creative disruption), sustainable innovation (better version of product/service), efficiency innovation (process improvement), and soft innovation (management/communication/culture rejuvenation). Innovation is one of the core activities of the digital revolution and societal progress, in order to move up the digital maturity from functioning to firm to delight.

The delightful working environment with harmonized minds, hearts and hands: Statistically, there is the very low employee engagement rate in many organizations across the industrial sectors. There will be better business results achieved if it's a place where people look forward to coming to work, know that they are appreciated and trusted, have work that interests and challenges them, and have some fun. It means the challenge for today’s business management is how to win hearts, minds, and profits to improve the top line business growth. Build an open environment to encourage inquisitiveness and inspire innovation, push teams to “think in the bigger box” and develop a culture of learning and creativity in the workplace where the only thing you get fired for not asking hard questions. In the high-mature digital organizations, thinking differently is the foundation to build an inclusive and innovative team. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to new digital structures is the development level of the people, either at the cognitive level or skill/capability level. In practice, creating positive change and building a delightful working environment is a joint effort and co-responsibility of management and employees. It needs to involve your entire team at all levels, exhibit positive thinking and proper behaviors at all times. Shifting a team's focus to bigger picture objectives is key and that managers are the owners of this messaging. The goal is to overcome the barriers and roadblocks that have so far hindered people engagement and harmonize minds, hearts, and hands to unleash collective human potential.

Organizational maturity is assessed based on the overall business effectiveness, efficiency, operational excellence, responsiveness, performance, innovation, intelligence, resilience, and people-centricity. There are different types of organizations and they are at the different stages of the growth cycle in their business maturity; equally, individuals have their own learning, growth, and maturity cycles as well. In practice, taking the digitalization journey of a-thousand-miles is to improve business maturity from functioning to firm to delight.

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The New Book Introduction: "Digital Maturity: Take a Journey of a Thousand Miles from Functioning to Delight"?

The New Book “Digital Maturity” Introduction Chapter 1 The Characteristics of Digital Organizations

The New Book Introduction Chapter 2 The Interdisciplinary Aspects of Orchestrating a Digital Business Ecosystem

The New Book "Digital Maturity" Introduction Chapter 3 Fine-Tune Organization Structures to Get Digital Ready

The New Book “Digital Maturity” Introduction Chapter 4: The Next Practices to Orchestrate Digital Paradigm Shift Seamlessly

The New Book “Digital Maturity” Chapter 5 Introduction: IT Maturity is Proportional to the Overall Business Maturity

The “Digital Maturity” BookIntroduction Chapter 6: Take a Holistic Approach to Measure Digital Transformation

The New Book “Digital Maturity” Introduction Chapter 7 The Pitfalls in Digital Managment

The New Book “Digital Maturity” Introduction Chapter 8 From “Doing Digital” to “Being Digital”

The New Book “Digital Maturity” Book Conclusion: Develop the strong Pillars to Build High-Mature Digital Organization

Break Through IT Bottlenecks to Get Digital Ready

10:44 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

IT is a business enabler, capability builder and digital catalyzer for the business to reach the era of radical digital.

As businesses move into the digital future, technology is the fastest growing arena and information is growing exponentially. Never before has IT and business been so closely tied together, never before has technology moved more quickly and missteps have larger trajectory impacts on every aspect of the business. Still, many IT organizations are perceived as a controller, slow to changes. Can IT play a critical role in handling the digital intensity, break down the capability and capacity bottlenecks, and ultimately become the business catalyst to drive digitalization?

IT - business communication bottleneck: The gap between IT and business is usually one of the biggest barriers to achieve high performance and run the business with digital speed. IT-business communication bottlenecks exist when IT and business speak their own dialect or move in a different direction. To build effective IT leadership, CIOs must speak the language of the business. As every IT initiative should help to solve problems large or small; an executive interface role between whoever is providing the technology to solve business problems, or help create business opportunities is necessary to fill the gap. CIOs who are pure technologists will fail, but those who already speak the language of business value are at a better place. The best IT leaders are focused on success at all levels - from the success of their own team to the success of the organization, and even the business sector. The strategy implementation bottleneck exists because objectives are not actionable or they have not been communicated properly to the people who are responsible for their delivery. All strategic goals must be communicated to individuals by translating the business objectives into the individuals’ roles and abilities. To break through the bottleneck, top IT performers don't think of themselves as IT guy/gal only, they have the ability to talk and walk on both sides of the fence, and reaching higher IT maturity level of proactively enabling and engaging with the business. They understand the business as well as the business people they work with and focus primarily on solving business problems and creating business capabilities.

IT process & system bottleneck: In many traditional IT organizations, legacy IT systems or outdated processes cause the bottleneck for IT responding to changes timely. They are maintaining apps that they could have almost certainly removed had they engaged their business effectively and allowed their business to make the decision with the actual knowledge and actual business value determination. Some IT organizations are maintaining legacy apps at the most basic level, not carrying out upgrades and systems were decades outside the manufacturer's support, thus increasing business risk and their costs of maintenance. Thus, to break through IT systems bottleneck, IT needs to integrate varying applications and enable workflows between them. Integration is very simply the task of connecting systems so they can share and consume each other's data. The ultimate business goal for IT integration is to maximize the value from existing IT systems and the need for better business performance and responsiveness. Integration can be very difficult, costly and hard to justify the ROI, each "integration" effort can spin off into a chain reaction that may not be recognized until the budget is gone. Therefore, it has to be done with a “big picture” - architecture in mind that supports business strategy and objectives such as revenue growth, margin improvement, and customer satisfaction. Because integrating the right systems for the right business reasons can be extremely valuable.

IT performance bottleneck: Organizations rely more and more on technologies; the IT department has more and more to overcome in running at digital speed. The causes of IT performance bottleneck have varying perspectives. The process of changing a good business idea into an effective IT solution has become awfully complex and messy in many larger organizations. Too often IT is involved too late in the decision-making process. This results in a dynamic where the business develops enthusiastically shiny plans and goals and IT then has to explain why this cannot be developed and fit into the existing architecture at a reasonable investment. This reinforces the perception that the internal IT department cannot deliver. Unless there are collaborative and mutually understanding environments, the perception is that IT is raising roadblocks. A digital-ready IT is a thresholding competency of the organization, application development needs to bring up the most business value. To break through IT performance bottleneck, the de facto best practices of managing IT portfolio need to include such as, only solve crucial business problems, not for technology's sake, measuring IT performance for improving revenue (enable the business to gain market share), prioritize IT workload, and manage the full application life cycle in a continuous mode.

IT has to continue tuning its processes and systems, enforcing cross-functional communication and collaboration, keep improving performance and repositioning itself as the premium provider of competitive business solutions. It is an enabler of business digital capabilities. IT is a business enabler, capability builder and digital catalyzer for the business to reach the era of radical digital.

The New Book Preview: "Digital Maturity: Take a Journey of a Thousand Miles from Functioning to Delight”

10:24 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

With the increasing pace of change and unprecedented uncertainty, enterprises of the future are increasingly exhibiting “VUCA” characteristics in various shades, intensity, and extensiveness.

The organization or company may be in business for many years but has not matured its management disciplines and structural flexibility. Digital disruptions are inevitable, and digital transformation is unstoppable. Organizations shouldn’t just respond to them in a reactive way. It is the transformation that is reshaping our thinking, recasting the way we view ourselves and the hyperconnected world surrounding us, re-adjusting our lens to see the dynamic and expansive digital ecosystems of which we are the part of the environments. Companies need to embed digital into the very fabric of the business, explore digital management practices in a structural way. Digitalization is a journey of a thousand miles to make a seamless shift from functioning to firm to delight, and reach the higher maturity of the business to get digital ready.

Chapter 1 The characteristics of digital organizations: Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way the business is conducted so that simply adopting a new digital technology may not be sufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying functions, processes, cultures, and the organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Otherwise, the company will begin a decline from its previous good performance. More specifically, what are the characteristics of digital organizations, and can you make an objective self-assessment of whether your organization is a digital master or a laggard?

Chapter 2 The interdisciplinary aspects of orchestrating a digital business ecosystem: The digital business ecosystem is dynamic, nonlinear, and complex. Hence, digital management discipline also needs to be nonlinear and transdisciplinary to deal with the "VUCA" characteristics of the Digital Era. Overall speaking, trans or interdisciplinary approach can be applied to management with integrated multi-disciplinary methodology; it enables digital leaders to frame bigger thinking boxes, and approach problems via the multifaceted lens, technically, scientifically and culturally.

Chapter 3 Fine-tune organization structures to get digital ready: Due to the “VUCA” nature of digitalization, the business complexity is unavoidable and change is inevitable. Organizations that are skilled at managing complexity can gain advantages by pushing the boundaries of a more complicated business mix that provides opportunities to create inter-business value. Tuning the organizational design and structure to achieve the high level of autonomy is the symbol of the digital maturity. The democratic processes will overtake hierarchical control, and that culture will become a more fundamental organizational asset.

Chapter 4 The next practices to orchestrate digital paradigm shift seamlessly: A digital paradigm is an emerging digital ecosystem of principles, policies, and practices that sets limits or boundaries; also offers the guidance for problem-solving or creating something new under the digital rules, keeps information flow and achieves a state of dynamic balance. The digital paradigm has many dimensions, it’s important to develop the best and next practices to expand systematically and charter the digital paradigm shift seamlessly.

Chapter 5 IT maturity is proportional to the overall business maturity: IT has become strategically important. It is imperative for IT and business leaders to work effectively and efficiently together to ensure that they are leveraging IT across their companies to attain enterprise-wide digital maturity; not just using IT as a digital extension, but running IT as a digital engine. IT maturity is proportional to the overall business maturity.

Chapter 6 Taking a holistic approach to measure digital transformation: The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital transformation is not a one-time project or a stand-alone initiative; it is a continuous journey to adapt to the digital new normal of the business world. Metrics are part of transparent visual management allowing pulling.

Chapter 7 The pitfalls in digital management: Change is inevitable, and the speed of change is increasing. How capable the business is handling change and mastering digitalization would directly impact on the business competency. In fact, there is a high failure rate of Change Management statistically, and more than two-thirds of business change effort fails to achieve its expectations. Thus, it is important to identify the big barriers and potential pitfalls which stifle changes and impede your progress in reaching the high level of digital maturity.

Chapter 8 From “Doing Digital” to “Being Digital”: Organizational digitalization is not just about leveraging the latest technology gadgets or applying the fancy tools. At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation. There are a couple of evolutional ecosystems stages businesses have to experience in order to ride above the learning curve and move up the business maturity from “Doing Digital,” to “Being Digital.”

With the increasing pace of change and unprecedented uncertainty, enterprises of the future are increasingly exhibiting “VUCA” characteristics in various shades, intensity, and extensiveness. Companies have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation, in order to adapt to the new business dynamic.

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The Monthly “100 Digital Rules” Book Tuning: Digital Rules and Principles Mar. 2018

10:16 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

A well-defined set of digital rules are not for limiting innovation, but for setting the frame of relevance and guide through changes and digital transformation.

The purpose of “100 Digital Rules: Setting Guidelines to Explore Digital New Normal “ is to establish digital principles and update business policies that can be applied holistically and guide the digital transformation systematically. Digital rules are based on a set of fundamental beliefs behind the methodologies and they help to shape mindsets behind behaviors. Digital rules encourage mindfulness, authenticity, creativity, inclusiveness, and discourage static thinking, silo, and bureaucracy, help to accelerate collective human progress.

Digital Rules and Principles

Setting Digital Rules to Guide Digital Transformation ? Digital transformation is rarely a straight line. It is all about interaction, incrementalism, and innovation. The journey is far more important than the destination. Digital organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes and are able to follow digital principles, revise business rules, reconfigure organizational structures and change their own behaviors for its adaptation to environmental changes and business dynamic, to get digital ready.

The New Book “100 Digital Rules - Setting Guidelines to Explore the Digital New Normal” Chapter 5 Digital Transformation Rules The emergent digital technologies and tools help to break of silo paradigms and loosen overly restricted structure. Digital workplace is fluid, live, creative, and productive. The digital organization should set the guidelines and rules to empower employees at all levels within an organization to unlock creativity, understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and exploit opportunities in new and innovative ways.

Setting Digital Mantras for Accelerating Digital Transformation ? Digital transformation is the long journey. Digital doesn’t mean just tear down all the old things in the previous era. In reality, digital means to strike the right balance between the new way and the “old way.” to do things, to strike the delicate balance. Organizations have to set fair principles, build the well-rounded capabilities, run up all important stages for reaching high digital maturity and reap the benefit via going digital at full speed.

Following “ADVANCE” Principles to Build “Future-Proven” Digital Leadership? The rule of thumb about leadership is for ADVANCEMENT. Advancement is about forward-thinking, progress, improvement, fresh insight, modernization, or innovation while the opposite of advancement is primitivity, outdated concept or knowledge, lagging, backward, etc. When following “ADVANCE” principles, leaders become more mature; people are becoming more progressive; the life or the business reaches up to the next level of maturity, and the society as a whole is advancing to the next stage of prosperity.

The Book “Digital Rules: Setting Guidelines to Explore Digital New Normal” Quote Collection V The purpose of “100 Digital Rules: Setting Guidelines to Explore Digital New Normal “ is to establish digital principles and update business policies that can be applied holistically and guide the digital transformation systematically. Digital rules are based on a set of fundamental beliefs behind the methodologies and they help to shape mindsets behind behaviors. Digital rules encourage mindfulness, authenticity, creativity, inclusiveness, and discourage static thinking, silo, and bureaucracy, help to accelerate collective human progress.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4500 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

The CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer” & Information Master: Information Management vs. Innovation Management

10:12 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Information Management makes information available and useful to providing innovative ideas for either growing the business or delighting customers.

The abundance of information brings both unprecedented opportunities and risks to businesses today. Information is the lifeblood of the enterprise, but if not properly managed, it becomes at worst case a liability and at best case an underutilized asset. Information Management is all about having the right people to have the right information to make right decisions at the right time. Information is one of the most critical pieces in innovation puzzle. Given this assertion, there is no limit to the value of information in running a high mature digital organization. CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How can you connect the dots between information management and innovation management?

Information-enabled innovation management is more science than art: IT is the key element of business innovation. Information brings about business ideas; business ideas generate lots of information. Information and technology catalyze today's digital businesses. Information Systems are the backbone and provide valuable information for business growth and improve the organizational responsiveness. Companies today can abstract business and customer insight from explosive information, and bring to the table innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs and fit the growth perspective of the organization. Innovations happen at the intersection of people and IT, business and customers. Therefore, information is one of the most time-sensitive pieces to the digital innovation puzzle. How well the organization manages innovation is based on the varying factors, such as the speed of decision-making, the attitude toward risk, how effective for the allocation of resources; what’s the altitude of innovation impact and the aptitude to manage innovation; how efficient of the innovation processes or lack thereof. IT is the linchpin to connect all necessary business elements to implement great ideas and achieve their commercial business value. The science of innovation management is to manage innovation lifecycle and executes in a systematic manner that provides sustained competitive advantage.

Information is the key ingredient of innovative solutions to today’s complex business problems: Digital organizations must manage information effectively, and bring to the table innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs while reducing the cost to market. Information Management is the overall process of aligning the use of information through the management practices: What data you have, in what format and the location and method it is held? Information Management is the management with knowledge as a focus, involves the use of technologies and processes with the aim of optimizing the business value that is generated. The art and science of information management are to optimize its usage, how to refine information into knowledge and business insight and achieve its value and full potential. Information Management is to connect people with the right information at the right time and location, to ensure that accurate information is accessible and shared within relevant business units, brainstorm innovative solutions to either existing or emerging business problems. The potential value of information also depends on how the information will be used again in the future for either running business or managing innovation in a structural way. Information Management is, in fact, becoming the core digital capability of the business.

Running IT as an innovation hub, Information Technology should be seen by any business as the growth engine: IT needs will only expand. It’s simply not sufficient for IT to “keep the lights on” only. To reinvent IT as an innovation hub, IT leaders need to be proactive and get really creative on how they architect and implement changes, to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving now. Information Management is about how to achieve the value of information which is defined uniquely, qualitatively, and, measurable. CIO should focus on the information content and context; how that information can be tapped from the underlying data and be utilized to turn it into valuable business foresight and customer insight and come up with innovative solutions. CIOs need to be the creative leaders who can make an influence and shape the culture of innovation via leveraging the powerful digital platforms and tools for enforcing idea sharing and creative communication. IT can play even bigger role in re-framing of business planning processes in order, allowing creativity and innovation to flow, identifying technology as well as business risks, etc, along with re-framing of in-place processes that filter and fund investments.As a result, innovation becomes a persistent, shared reality, even across silos and geographies. CIOs have to advocate their organizations as the innovation hub because the penetration of information enables the business to refine the business foresight, prepare for changes, and execute business strategy solidly. and IT value has to be driven, indicated, and understood at all levels of the organization.

Information Management makes information available and useful to providing innovative ideas for either growing the business or delighting customers. Innovation is not just about the intuitive interface to enchant customers; behind the scenes, information management is the crucial piece of solving the innovation puzzle via optimizing the value of information while minimizing risks. The art and science of Information Management are to optimize its usage and achieve its value as well as its full potential and get the entire business ready for opening the new chapter of digital innovation.

The Monthly Summary: Five Keywords to Articulate Digital Characteristics Mar. 2018

10:43 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

The rate of change has accelerated, indicating that business leaders must learn how to strike a balance between managing complex issues today and predicting the uncertain issues of tomorrow.

From one generation to the next, the substance of leadership does not change, it’s about future, change, and influence. However, digital leadership trends will continue to emerge. Here is a set of featured blogs to dig into the “keywords” of the 21st century to brainstorming the future of the digital organization.

Five Digital Keywords to Articulate Digital Characteristics

The “Interdependence” Characteristic of Digital Organizations Digital makes a significant impact on almost every aspect of the business from people, process, to technology, both horizontally and vertically. It does make a smaller world, but also makes businesses and the world super complex and full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Due to the latest digital technologies such as social and mobile, the business and world are always on and have become hyper-connected and interdependent. What’s further understanding of interdependence as one of the significant characteristics in the emergent digital era?

Adaptability is not just a soft Skill, but a hard Capability While turbulence is not new, and uncertainty is the new normal. Adaptability is to be understood as the ability of systems or people adapts themselves smoothly and fast to changed circumstances. Adaptation is an inherent characteristic of humans to survive. Self-adaptation is a phenomenon strictly linked to see learning and knowledge increases if shared and consumed. In the ever-changing digital dynamic, adaptability is not just a soft skill, but the hard capability.

Digital Balance: How to Strike it Just Right We are experiencing the dynamics of the most significant business transformation since the industrial revolution. The majority of us will work in an organization that is somewhere between old and new; at both industrial speed and digital speed; in the physical building and remote environment; or will remain to be a mixture of old and new. It is the biggest management challenge to be a change agent, where we respond to the current state of the organization and we try to take it from there to the next level. Just like running up to the string, the point is how to strike the right digital balance?

Is Uncertainty Problem or Opportunity Uncertainty and ambiguity are a key challenge for business leaders today. In the past, many business leaders believed their organizations’ long-term goals could wait until they had dealt with the current crisis. In the current business environment with “VUCA” characteristics, this is no longer the case. The rate of change has accelerated, indicating that business leaders must learn how to strike a balance between managing complex issues today and predicting the uncertain issues of tomorrow. So is uncertainty the biggest problem in business today? And is it affecting business in setting long-term strategies and are forced to concentrate on short-term goals? And further questions include - how can the soft signals of contextual changes be best determined? How do you structure information systems to deal with uncertainty - in the era of Digital?

Digital Holism: Digital disruptions are inevitable, and digital transformation is unstoppable. Organizations shouldn’t just respond to them in a reactive way. To stay competitive, companies must go beyond experimenting with digital, take a holistic approach, commit to transforming themselves into a fully digital business powerhouse.

The Digital CIO as the Gap Minding Role

10:30 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

CIOs are the gap-minding role as IT is in a unique position to oversee underlying business functions and structures. IT leaders have to look at things from different angles.

Nowadays, information is permeating into every corner of the business and technology is often the disruptive force of digitalization. The CIO is not a static management role, but a dynamic leadership role due to the changing nature of technology and the overwhelming growth of information. Especially now more and more enterprises are leveraging IT for revenue-generating initiatives. The IT leader of the future and the exemplars of today must move away from pure IT manager, and become a trustful business partner and an insightful strategist to bridge the gap between IT and business, and between the industrial age and the digital era, The important component of IT leadership success has to do with the definition or scope of the role that the CIO is playing and the profundity of IT leadership influence.

A wide look: Taking a wide look around at what's going on outside the organization and how it might affect the organization via an environmental scan, and identify opportunities and threats periodically. A smart information management system can refine information to abstract business insight, capture marketing trends, and read digital sentiment fluently. By capturing the trends, you're asking the organization to look at what's happening now and what's coming down the pike so they can be proactive in preparing for it. To effectively respond to the digital dynamics, companies must begin thinking about ways with strategic planning to broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams while becoming more responsive and scalable. However, for many businesses, ecosystems have evolved without much attention or planning. With the fast pace of changes and fierce competition, the dynamic digital normality really forces them to do an environmental scan, pay attention to how things are changing and then think about what they might need to change to respond to the trends. The most successful organizations have a very clear vision and understanding of why they exist and the value they bring to customers and the very reason for digitalization. Today’s technology enables companies to leverage their various environments, or ecosystems, to chase innovation and accelerate performance. An open information platform blurs functional, geographical, or even industrial borders, enables companies to integrate the critical components of a smart platform, which is “open” not only because it allows information exchange, idea flow, and participant involvement but also because it ensures that interdependencies and loyalties between partners are taken into account and build up a strong innovation engine. Organizations can easily invite their business partners or customers to participate in strategic conversations and provide invaluable feedback on how to run a high-effective digital organization.

A deep look: Taking a hard look at what's going on inside the organization, including its strengths and weaknesses (perhaps doing a SWOT analysis) - analyze Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities Threats in their digital environment. The digital world is complex and uncertain, hyper-connected and interdependent, the world boundaries close in, the business weaknesses and strengths are inseparable, opportunities are tightly mingled with threats and vice versa. Thus, SWOT analysis needs to be in the IT leader’s toolbox. IT is increasingly supportive of the competitive position and the business. In general, careful consideration must be made about which knowledge or capabilities have to be secured. Discover IT strength and unique competency. Strength often doubles up on strengths and threats often double up on threats. From a strategic perspective: Where is the organization on the technology or process adoption curve? Is the organization a pioneer, mature adapter, or laggard? What are the risks of taking strategic initiatives? How much risk are you personally willing to take? If CIOs are not able to make any dent in the executive board, and then IT is just acting in the reactive mode, their proactive solutions will not get enough traction in most cases.

An objective look: As the gap-minding role, digital CIOs should have know-how attitude about the business and strengthen IT as a business partner. Take an objective look at the relationship between IT and business: Is the gap enlarged or shrunk? Often business and IT have evolved digital at a different pace. In some cases, businesses still do not wish to learn about enterprise IT or deal with the IT department. Nevertheless, technology intricacies are increasingly hidden by smart interfaces that make possible for its direct operation and management by business people, avoiding as such as the IT department involvement. In other cases, IT still does not care much about the many types of business processes and methods. The key point is to take an objective look, enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration to bridge IT-business gaps. CIOs are able to demonstrate the full reasoning behind the proposal, in order to shift to proactive mode smoothly; and that needs a strong team, a full understanding of the business and how IT underpins all elements of it.

There are few business units that are as deeply embedded in each corporate function as IT. Therefore, CIOs are the gap-minding role as IT is in a unique position to oversee underlying business functions and structures. IT leaders have to look at things from all different angles: Think inside the box - what can you do in the short term; shape the new box of thinking - what can you do in the long term; leverage IT unique knowledge, and use this knowledge to uncover hidden value, not only within IT but benefit the entire organization.

The Monthly “Problem-Solving Master” Book Tuning: The Creative Problem-Solving Mar. 2018

11:26 PM Pearl Zhu 1 comment

Out-of-the-Box” problem-solving is about continuing to break down the old box or known method, and shape the new box thinking to discover alternatives.

The purpose of “Problem-Solving Master - Frame Problems Systematically and Solve Problems Creatively“ is to throw some light on how to understand, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, and over-complex business problems effortlessly. Digital leaders and professionals should self-aware of their role in problems, show professional maturity, and develop a good reputation as the problem-solver.

The Creative Problem-Solving

"Out-of-the-Box” Problem-Solving Every mind has a certain box, some smaller, some bigger. the commonality is that "the box" tends to be what people with certain experience in the topic can identify as being "commonly known." It can also mean "solutions/answers" they have heard before. It is usually about how to fix problems via conventional ways. On the opposite, Out-of-the-Box” problem-solving is about continuing to break down the old box or known method, and shape the new box thinking to discover alternatives and solve complex problems via creativity and collaboration

The New Book “Problem-Solving Master” Chapter 3: Creative Problem-Solving Running businesses is an iterative continuum to solve problems large or small. Creativity needs a problem, and a creative person needs a purpose. Creative thinking and critical thinking often work in tandem for problem-solving. Collectively, innovation allows an organization to stand out and above the rest for solving problems creatively and maximizing the commercial value to the company.

Innovation as a Problems-Solving Discipline ? Running a business is fundamentally a problem defining and problem-solving continuum. It becomes about addressing the correct need and perhaps the problem becomes how to identify the need at the right level. Any problem is the right problem if there is an attempt to find a solution. The reality is that, once people get into a routine at work, they typically get stuck at the “We always do things like that” mentality, and they do not like to hear about how things could be done differently to solve problems creatively. Innovation is change, it is never for its own sake. In essence, innovation is a systematic way of applying creativity to solving problems in business or real life. But how do you get motivated to be innovative on daily basis via solving real-world problems large or small, in a creative way?

How to Apply Creativity to Frame and Solve the Right problem? If the very purpose of business is to create customers, then, the big challenge for business’s survival and blossom is how to solve business problems systematically and skillfully. More critically, how to apply creativity to frame the right problem and solve it right is a fundamental capability to grow as a Digital Master?

Inquisitive Problem-Solving ? We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of digital age, Inquisitiveness is not just the raw intelligence to reflect humans' intellectual curiosity, it becomes the new skills need to be sharpened and focused on, to frame and co-solve common problems and co-create the better world.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with about 4500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way to human progression.

Change Management Bottlenecks

11:21 PM Pearl Zhu 2 comments

Business Change Management is managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of working.

Change is the new normal, in fact, the speed of change is increasing. To put simply, change itself changes. Digital ecosystem has become more complex and dynamic, Change Management also turns out to be more complex, and there is no magic formula to follow. That’s perhaps part of reasons why the failure rate of Change Management is so stubbornly high in the last two decades. The perils of Change Management can waste a lot of resources and cause a lot of pains. So, how to identify Change Management bottlenecks and build change as an ongoing business capability?

Communication bottleneck: Communication, exemplification, and amplification of best practices are all crucial steps in building a changing-enabling culture. Make sure all of the management is on board and educated well on the change objectives and how to carry them out effectively. Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization. Unclear communication for vision, goals, the need for change, benefits of change and each one's role in the change is a huge mistake. Without strong-honest communication, early engagement of staff in the plan, rumors will hinder your progress. It is important to keep the communications open and creative, make each individual feel responsible for the success of the plan, engage them actively and make sure that your new proposal solves their current problems, and provide the better and creative working environment. Over-communication, regular updates, and plan adjustments will enhance your chances of success.

Process bottleneck: Change Management is all about balancing the main elements impacting change: People, strategies, processes/ procedures and IT. Change Management processes evaluation is important because process management is an important aspect of change capability building. The process of "Planned Change Management" shouldn’t be too rigid or overly prescribed, otherwise, it could create the bottleneck for streamlining change scenario. It’s important to have the team own a process by bringing them in early and getting their involvement in creating the process. In order to execute a successful Change Management process, there is a need to delegate roles and responsibilities of the process. During the whole process, make sure that all staff is aware of the plan/process, timely updated, breakthrough process bottleneck, and responsible for building change competency.

Speed bottleneck: The speed of change is dependent on the change leadership effectiveness and the changeability of the people. Change is happening at a more rapid pace, but it takes a lot of energy to break down old habits and outdated thought processes, for accelerating the speed of change at both individual and organizational level. Most people are quite willing to put the effort into change. What they don't want is 'to be changed by others.' That calls out for resistance. So, let them be part of the direction, speed and the way you are heading. Change managers need to regularly update and identify individual team members’ strengths and weaknesses, this enables timely intervention where and when challenges are identified. It is important for creating both internal and external beliefs around how business management is a movement for enablement and improvement, break through the bottleneck and increase the speed of changes.

Business Change Management is managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of working such as, Stakeholder Management, process or organizational change, digital readiness, etc. Change is inevitable, and the only differences are the reasons and goals behind the change and its scope, depth, and breadth (why to change, what you need to accomplish, what does it consist of and what does it impact). Either for incremental changes or leapfrogging business transformation. It’s crucial to breakthrough these bottlenecks, keep information flow, communication flow, optimize process and speed, for building change as the differentiated business competency.

The Reliability, Flexibility, and Profitability of Digital IT

11:16 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Reliability, flexibility, profits with ROIs, optimization for improving business efficiency should be the driving force behind IT management.

With the fast pace of changes and continuous disruptions, IT has been pushed out of its comfort zone as a back office and become a frontrunner for accelerating digitalization. The trend of technology consumerization indeed provides unprecedented opportunities for IT to get more touch base with end customers and improve the top-line business growth. IT is the important and also expensive investment in most of the organizations, whether it is "planning" or "performance," "process" or "people," “Information” or “innovation.” How to run a high performance IT with reliability, flexibility, and profitability?

Reliability: “Keep the lights on” is always fundamental to run a reliable IT organization. IT plays a crucial role to ensure that the organization’s systems are reliable and run when needed and when the users expect them to run. Quick-fixing the handy issues is also necessary to build a good IT reputation. Make sure IT systems running following the preplanned schedule and performance standards. If there is a day-to-day operation break/fix type of issue in relation to a business-critical technology, an effective CIO has to first stop the pain, take care of chronic operational issues and deliver much-requested upgrades and tactical solutions. Many IT organizations in legacy organizations or in legacy industries spend significant time, cost and resource to maintain the heavy legacy applications. IT leaders need to truly work hard on achieving IT management excellence which is more as a journey than a destination. Because information, technology, and other IT assets and resources need to be centralized, reallocated, updated or replaced if needed to improve business efficiency, optimize processes, and build the business capacity and competency.

Flexibility: Running a real-time digital organization means high-responsiveness and high speed. Because the ways of doing business and meeting customer expectations both tend to be more flexible than the siloed industrial age. The degree of business responsiveness depends on how those systems and subsystems interact with each other, and those interactions can be structural, technical, informational, or human. IT flexibility and maintainability are dependent on the proper module design architecture, with reusability and process flow, etc. CIOs are in the right position to set good policies to ensure information and technology accessibility, responsiveness, reliability, to help the business achieve strategic responsiveness and organizational flexibility. There’s always a compromise to make, and balance to strike for quality and speed. Digital organizations must have strategic responsiveness to process business information almost real-time, communicate and collaborate with business counterparts timely. The reality is that organizations that do not respond to external environmental changes will quickly outcompete nimbler and more adaptable companies catch up and take their customers. IT organization needs to have the flexibility to take the different approach with the adaptability to meet the business’s expectation.

Profitability: To accelerate organizational maturity, IT needs to discover ways to move up the stack and provide business value (innovation) and not spend their cycles "keeping the lights on" as just a cost center. The challenge is getting out from the daily burden, and spend more resources and time on innovation-related activities. In the end, it is not about technology, but what technology can do when it is enabling and integrating with change management and business processes to deliver strategic differentiation. It is also not about information, but how to refine information to gain business foresight, capture the growth opportunities of the business and demystify the innovation puzzles. Do not underestimate the perfect digital wave of combined business integration of all of the exponential growth curves. IT is also an important component in building differentiated business capabilities, which allow the organization to explore the new opportunities and unleash business potential. IT is a prudent and effective steward of the organization’s resources particularly profit and strives to be a revenue contributor to the business. Being striving is to try to achieve the optimized result, and make the strenuous effort on IT management effectiveness and maturity.

IT needs to build a good reputation as a trusted business partner and an innovative problem-solver. Thus, reliability, flexibility, profits with ROIs, optimization for improving business efficiency should be the driving force behind IT management. IT digitalization is the journey of making continuous improvement and doing more with innovation.

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 3/23/2018

11:19 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking, brainstorming, innovating and sharing.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with 4500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

The Bumpy Road to Going Digital Digital era is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous, the shift to digital cuts across sectors, geographies and leadership roles, the digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. It is important to bridge the multitude of gaps for speeding up changes, unlocking performance, and building a delightful workplace in order to run a high performance and high mature digital organization. However, many organizations are still confused digital with general technology adoption. It's a significant shift from doing digital to going digital and being digital. In practice, doing digital perhaps means that the business takes a few initiatives for adopting some new gadgets, but going digital is an overarching management discipline which includes breaking down silos, tuning underlying processes & functions, managing both tangible and intangible business elements, evolving emerging trends and dynamic ecosystem. There are numerous barriers and pitfalls on the way, and for most organizations, it will be the bumpy road from doing digital to going digital.

The Policies, Performances, and Pitfalls in Digital Boardroom The corporate board as the advising role is responsible to steer the organization in the right direction and provide an “outside-in” view of the business via multidimensional lenses. Digital doesn’t mean just tear down all the old things in the previous era. In reality, digital means to strike the right balance between the new way and the “old way,” and strike the delicate balance. Digital organizations are complex systems that are dynamic, self-evolving, self-adaptable, and self-perpetuating. Thus, the directorship in any organization must be able to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate. The Board of Directors is the top leadership team that can make the great influence on shaping digital mindsets, setting right policies, advocating changes, and steering the business to digital new normal.?

Running IT as Innovation Glue Nowadays, information is the lifeblood of the business and technologies are the disruptive forces behind digital innovation. The highly innovative organizations depend more heavily on its technological knowledge and IT-enabled capabilities to develop and commercialize innovation. IT is the super glue to weave all important business elements seamlessly for building the unique business competency, manage a balanced innovation portfolio and improve innovation success rate.

The Popular Change Quotes of “Digital Master” Series III 2018 "Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (22+ books) is to perceive the multifaceted impact digital is making to the business and our society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the digital journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” Here is the set of popular quotes about change and change management.

The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: Insight Gaps Mar. 2018 "Digital Gaps -Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Business” is a guidebook to help digital leaders and professionals today identify, analyze, and mind multiple gaps with the multidisciplinary insight and holistic understanding. Today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still., bridging the 'gap of opportunity' between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge, it is important to bridge communication, knowledge and insight gaps and take a stepwise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

What are the Real Challenges of a CIO to Build a high-performing IT? Information is permeating into every corner of the business, technology is often the driving force of digital disruptions. IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business changes. The business paradigm is shifting from the industrial era with the scarcity of knowledge to an information-abundant digital era. And therefore, the role of IT in the current business environment should reflect such a significant shift. However, many traditional IT organizations are overloaded and understaffed, running at the transactional role and still get stuck at the lower level of the organizational maturity. What are the real challenges of a CIO to build a high-performing and high-mature digital IT?

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

How to Handle The Buy-in Cycle of Change Management

11:13 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

A digital organization with strong change capability is an environment of growth and letting go, possibilities, chaos, solutions, innovation, and creativity.

Generally speaking, Change Management has very low percentage of success rate due to varying factors such as static mindsets, poor processes or bad timing, etc. The big “WHY” about change is always fundamental because change shouldn’t be for its own sake, it must have a clear business purpose or a progressive goal. From Change Management perspective, handling the buy-in cycle is an important step or the prerequisite for managing a successful change effort effortlessly.

Change Management is leaders' game and leadership involvement is a must: Change starts with a "sense of urgency" which can only come from top management. The commitment of top management is very important for any change to be successful. There is a big difference between 'total buy-in' and 'support.' Total buy-in involves top management being able to fully articulate the change, as well as their ability to provide all necessary support where and when it is required. One thing about buy-in always fails when management thinks they got all the answers and they come up with a plan in a vacuum and try to sell. Top Management must not devolve the entire change management to middle management. Management needs to allow the cross-functional change community to have a voice for feedback. They must be fully involved to ensure buy-in and commitment on the lower levels. The democratic change process is to have the team own a process by bringing them in early and getting their involvement in creating the process for making change easiler. Sometimes, the problem is that the leadership gets really into the change but fails to bring others along. Knowing the psychological process is just a necessary element that a change leader must master.

Communicate the need for change so that you'll all enjoy a growing and healthy organization: Emotions are very important as change is a personal thing. There are both psychological curves and knowledge/methodological curves for changes. Make everyone aware that there is a better way and explain it smoothly. Coach people to shift from the belief that change is "loss" to a belief that change leads to "growth" and growth leads to organizational viability, relevance, and long-term prosperity. Find out what people’ real concerns are. Listen, ask tough questions. Be there when the difficult problems pop up. Deal with the real concerns of those who can put up roadblocks. In practice, deliver a change management training to a large group of people, increases the group's ability to get through the denial and resistance phases easier. Taking the time to communicate the expected outcome with consideration of the "right" way allows the team to have room make success progressive and change sustainable. The processes you go through must be empathetic and as such will be subtly different for each one. If you try to force them to a one size fits all (formulaic approach), even you change the behavior, but change cannot sustain because the mindset hasn’t been changed yet.

Knowledge building, change agent recognition, and lessons-learned are also important for handling buy-in cycle and well preparing the change journey: Change curves exist because these days it is pretty tough to get attention as there is so much going on. Each person has their own change curves. Change agents are the leaders, change specialists, change champions, team players who orchestrate and collaborate to accomplish the desired changes and transformations. A Change Agent is a means toward reconciling all the different factors toward a unifying and driving motivation but it isn't the only answer. What a Change Agent most often does is harness the skills, talent, drive, passion and enthusiasm of the whole organization and direct that to a unifying and shared goal. The change agent is not a title, but the game-changing mindset and the well-tuned skill sets. The real skill of a Change Agent is the ability to play any role and know which to play, and when. It's also wise to recognize change champions who lead change on the company's terms and timelines so the organization can stay relevant and healthy in a rapidly changing world. When every team player becomes a change agent, then change is sustained.

The speed of change is accelerating. A digital organization with strong change capability is an environment of growth and letting go, possibilities, chaos, solutions, innovation, and creativity. By handling buy-in cycle smoothly, Change Management can become an enjoyable voyage to discover the new landscape of business and an ongoing business capability.

Five Digital Innovation Bottlenecks

11:08 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

The business needs to define strategy, profitability, and relevance at any given time to break through bottlenecks and avoid pitfalls on the path to innovation.

Digital innovation has a broader spectrum and more enriched context. Innovation is not serendipity, but a management process. Innovation has three phases: discovery of a problem or new ideas; designing a prototype solution and the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. Therefore, the best point of view is to see innovation as a system, capable of delivering organizational-wide capability. However, innovation management has an overall very low success rate in the majority of organizations. From the management perspective, what are innovation bottlenecks and how to break them through in order to build innovation as the business competency?

Idea management bottleneck: The original germ of a creative idea is often, if not always arrived at through the interaction of ideas from different domains of thought and experience. Thus, innovation thrives with diversity. Homogeneity is the bottleneck of idea generation, and silo setting will stifle idea creating and flowing. If creativity is about connecting the dots, and innovation is about applying the structural methodologies to transforming novel ideas for achieving their commercial value. To break through idea management bottleneck, innovation management needs to clarify: Can you learn some innovative ideas across the industrial border? Can you also learn what the trend of such new idea is? Innovation happens at the intersection of people and technology. Can you identify important technology trends, including potential next-generation innovation waves, as well as the key players who are involved in their development? Can you classify the components or operations of ideas, what can interact with ideas, and what parameters the innovative ideas might have? Who else is using such new ideas? Who are the industry players? Ideas are like water, keep flowing, do you have an idea reservoir to keep them up, and manage them effectively to unleash their potential. Most good ideas emerge from business interactions, not single individuals, therefore, 3C (Communication, Collaboration, and Coordination) are necessities for keeping idea flow and practicing good idea management.

Innovation process bottleneck: If idea creation is more art than science, and then idea implementation is more science than art. Lots of ideas mean you will fail if you do not have a screening process to systematically evaluate them. The nature of how the implementation of the idea has to follow a logical path for the solution and provides a great opportunity for the digital organization to shine through based on its scientific discipline. The main barriers to innovation are silos, rigidity, inflexibility, static process, or bureaucracy, etc. Different types of innovation should be managed via tailored management processes. If your stakeholders are internal process owners and your output stakeholders are the same, the type of innovation you have is continuous innovation. If you take knowledge from one context and bring it over into a new context, you have knowledge or technology transfer innovation, with a higher possibility to manage a radical innovation. With continuous process improvements, you can reduce costs and increase the innovation success rate. You are implementing an efficiency innovation. The right level of guidance and process is important, but the overly rigid processes or too ‘pushy’ goals will create new bottlenecks and stifle innovation.

Resource bottleneck: One of the main barriers to innovation blossom is the business resource. Organizations have limited resources, many businesses took a big bite of resource to keep the lights on, only left very little for doing innovation. Thus, resource management becomes a bottleneck for innovation success. How resource allocation is determined should be understood by important parties. An effective resource allocation scenario helps take advantage of resources effectively, optimize cost, set priority, keep the process transparent, and manage a well-rounded innovation portfolio effectively and efficiently. The bottom line is, for any company to succeed, it is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction, breakthrough resource bottleneck and maximize the digital potential of their business.

Innovation execution bottleneck: Even you have many innovative ideas, it doesn’t guarantee innovation success due to the possible innovation ‘execution’ bottleneck. Most companies fail at innovation execution because they have no clear process, nor understand the linkage required to work horizontally across departments, as well as create a disciplined or managed space for developing and testing new models, products, and business approaches. Organizations can be more effective in executing innovative ideas by relying less on silo functions, more on cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement. The other key to closing the innovation execution gap is improving the organization's culture to be more risk tolerance. If you have or develop the right culture, and then everything else can be connected. Innovation execution is an integral part of a strategy-execution continuum. To bridge the innovation execution gap is to de-risk the introduction of innovation into the market, protecting existing operations and brands, and establishing clear proof-of-concept before making investments to launch and scale up.

Innovation talent bottleneck: Digital innovation has a broader scope, you need different types of people for various innovation objectives (incremental, breakthrough, etc.) in different types of companies (service/solutions versus products, etc.) Fresh ideas require Mavericks since being innovative is a state of mind which disrupts legacy thinking or the old way to do things. Innovators play the odd which involves both opportunities and risks. You need to have both idea creators and implementers who can rise above the status quo. To break through talent bottlenecks, it’s important to build a culture of learning and creativity, recognize and encourage innovators and changes agents. Have the good sense and charisma to attract or to surround yourself with the right people who can either generate great ideas, provide fresh viewpoints, or move the idea into action. Spotting and scoring individual as an innovator needs to focus on individual capabilities and potential to innovate. Have the right people in place to manage the process, valuing experience, insight, and judgment to rigorously make the needed decisions, and manage a balanced innovation portfolio systematically.

Innovation is the core activity of human evolution to changing the environment for reaching performance and improving profit, for the saving of resources, for the satisfaction of customers, etc. Innovation is about reinventing the business direction and purpose at any time. The business needs to define strategy, profitability, and relevance at any given time to break through bottlenecks and avoid pitfalls on the path to innovation. Innovation has to become your business routine and collective mindset. It takes both strategy, discipline, and daily practices to streamline innovation processes and reap the benefit of innovation practices.