Tag: leadership

A Model for Dual Corporate Innovation Management
As reiterated by Tim Kastelle in the previous post, it’s imperative to distinguish discovery from execution when it comes to startup and innovation activities – bearing in mind that both purposes are complementary and equally important. This suggests following a dual approach for balanced corporate innovation management. The main objective of dual approaches is to sufficiently separate exploration-/discovery-oriented initiatives from exploitation-/execution-oriented ones (e.g. in terms of dedicated tools and metrics to be applied) while at the same time ensuring an appropriate degree of connection and proper interplay among both parts.

In the following, I will outline a model that attempts to help organizations implement a dual approach to innovation management. This model condenses learnings from recent research in this field as well as experiences of my own work with diverse companies in various industries around managing innovation up to now. It aims to integrate objectives, activities, requirements and inherent tensions along the innovation spectrum as well as enabling aspects, often being discussed independently from each other. Therefore, it’s titled a model for integrative innovation management.

Essential premises for balanced and sustainable innovation management

In my view, sustainably successful innovation management systems in organizations are required to be based on a couple of essential premises – all of which can be considered necessary conditions. As successful innovation management also relies on additional factors, they are no sufficient conditions, though.

Premise 1: Innovation management follows a balanced portfolio approach. The entire innovation portfolio is divided into exploitation-oriented and exploration-oriented innovation initiatives, where following characterizations hold:
- Exploitation-oriented initiatives are related to running core business by executing and enhancing existing business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value capturing (commerzialization). Examples: Product, service or process innovation, portfolio extension, innovation of selected business model components (e.g. channel or operations), market research.
- Exploration-oriented initiatives are related to developing future business by searching for novel, and often disruptive, business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value creation (configuration). Examples: Business model development, platform/ecosystem innovation, basic technology research & development, startup engagement, innovation intelligence.
The target portfolio including new initiatives is derived from a strategic growth gap analysis. In order to fill an identified growth gap, a company needs to start exploitation- or exploration-oriented inititatives with corresponding sizes and time horizons.

Premise 2: Board of Directors and executive management are committed to attributing equal importance to exploitation and exploration initiatives as both are vital for a company to thrive sustainably. This particularly implies receiving a long term mandate and adequate resource allocation for exploration and its initiatives. Probably the most critical requirement for explorative initiatives to flourish is staffing them with dedicated, high-quality full-time workers. Given that the vast majority of startups fail despite mobilizing dedication from a team that has nothing to lose, not dedicating adequate quality and quantity of workers will ultimately consign explorative ventures to failure. The appropriate ratio of resource allocation between exploitation and exploration depends in particular on a company’s strategy and environment, among other criteria. The CEO is in charge to define this high-level ratio for the entire company.

Saul Kaplan has suggested some debunking questions to check whether – or not – you have a company’s executive management, first and foremost the CEO, on board. Some of them are listed in the following, slightly rephrased for our context here:
- Does your CEO/executive management agree that innovation goes beyond breakthrough products to include business model innovation – entirely new ways to create, deliver, and capture value?
- Will your colleagues tell me that failure is a career-limiting move, or will they tell me that the company celebrates experimentation?
- How much time does your CEO/executive management spend strengthening and protecting the current business model, versus designing the next one?
- Does your CEO/executive management have clear and discrete objectives for both exploitative and explorative innovation? Do you organize differently for each?
- Do internal ideas and projects that threaten to cannibalize the current business model get squashed – or nurtured?
- Does your CEO/executive management have a process for allocating resources for explorative innovation projects that lies outside of the control of business units?
- Do executives with responsibility for explorative innovation report to the CEO/executive management, or to another line executive responsible for today’s business?
- Is your CEO/executive management willing to create a sandbox for exploration, even if it means carving out a part of the current business/market to serve as an ongoing real-world innovation lab?
Note: It’s mandatory to receive CEO commitment and alignment among executive management before putting systematic effort in truly explorative activities – otherwise exploration-oriented innovation will eventually be doomed, resources be wasted and people be frustrated.

Premise 3: Exploitation- and exploration-oriented initiatives are separated in terms of organizational anchoring, governance and funding. The distinct setups are proposed as follows:
- Exploitation-oriented initiatives are anchored in the operational business units. Innovation governance is carried out by a business unit’s executive management as overall responsible and a dedicated innovation board as supporting structure. Funding is covered by the annual budgeting.
- Exploration-oriented initatives are anchored in a dedicated exploration unit, headed by a “chief explorer” who reports to the CEO – just as the business unit leaders. He is also in charge for governance, supported by a dedicated “corporate innovation board” which is staffed by innovation-related stakeholders across the entire company – in particular all business units are to be represented. Financing is covered by a corporate fund, following a staged investment approach.
This ring-fenced setup enables each of both “camps” to operate as if the company’s future depended on it alone. The operational units pursue prolonging success of their existing businesses. The exploration unit aims at identifying and scaling novel – and often disruptive – opportunities to build cutting-edge businesses. These mutually complementing purposes correspond well to distinct types of transformation efforts, recently outlined by Scott Anthony:
- Exploitation <=> core transformation, i.e. doing what you are currently doing in a fundamentally different way
- Exploration <=> strategic transformation, i.e. changing the very essence of a company
In the end, this ambidextrous approach involves the highest impact on corporate development. Moreover, it avoids exploration to fall victim to common and dangerous organizational traits: short termism and resource prioritization in favor of core business.

Premise 4: Fostering an innovation portfolio is enabled by a proper idea management system which allows to either assign an internal or external idea to the corresponding unit or to reject it. One common mistake of organizations is to ask employees and external contributors to generate ideas without putting mechanisms in place to act upon them. Therefore, it proves crucial to develop criteria by which to judge and process ideas – particularly including the “crazy” ones. A good example of how an idea management process could look like, is given below. The original figure is slightly adapted for our context.

Adapted from: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/institutionalizing-innovation/

Whereas the upper path is taken by exploitation-oriented ideas with high proximity to the core business, the lower path holds for exploration-oriented ideas with no (immediate) fit with the core business. In order to feed the idea management system with potent and explorative ideas, a company needs to be based on an open, collaborative culture, leveraging a cross-pollinating and serendipity-friendly infrastructure and startup engagement.

Three horizons as distinct playgrounds for innovation intiatives

Exploration- and exploitation-oriented innovation initiatives can be assigned to three strategic horizons. As displayed below, the horizons address different proximities to the core business with regard to business model or technological capabilities – and therefore indirectly time scale. The horizons’ strategic objectives can be put in a nutshell:
- H1 – Core: Optimization of existing business models and technologies, addressing of existing markets
- H2 – Growth: Acceleration and scaling of new business models and technologies, adaptation of existing business models
- H3 – Future: Discovery and validation of new business models and technologies, shaping of future markets
Moreover, each horizon is based on dedicated conditions in terms of accounting, metrics, approaches and instruments, as well as organizational and personal requirements. Upcoming posts at my blog will elaborate on this more in detail. In average, the ratio H1:H2:H3 for resource allocation amounts to be roughly 70:20:10. Although this might be a good rule of thumb, a company’s actually required ratio needs to be adjusted necessarily according to its individual context and environment.

Whereas H1 represents the realm of purely exploitation-oriented and H3 the domain of purely exploration-oriented innovation initiatives, H2 can be regarded as interface between both “worlds” – which makes it even more demanding. Main issues in this regard are the integration of exploitation and exploration focus as well as exchange of capabilities between business units and exploration unit for mutual benefit. Consequently, each horizon requires dedicated leadership and management in order to succeed. H1 needs a traditional style if the business environment is stable and rather predictable (e.g. automobile or food industry, public transportation), or a more adaptive style if the environment is highly dynamic and unpredictable (e.g. technology or fashion industry). H3 needs an entrepreneurial one. H2, in turn, relies on a challenging, ambidextrous style at the intersection of H1 and H3. The H2 pipeline is fed from two directions:
- Existing H1 businesses are to be adapted and extended by partially renewing the existing business model or applying new technological capabilities (Adapt).
- H3 initiatives have been validated in terms of their success potential and are supposed to be scaled up. Scaling inititiatives are intended to either end up as new H1 core businesses in case of disruptive innovation or getting integrated in an existing division in case of sustaining innovation (Scale).
Depending on the type of environment a division operates in, either direction tends to be pronounced. If the environment is highly stable and malleable (e.g. offers a potential for disruption), deliberate, and occasionally revolutionary, opportunities from H3 will eventually enter H2. In case the environment is unpredictable and difficult to shape, a more evolutionary and agile approach is indicated: innovation is primarily operationally embedded and driven out of the core business towards H2, where experimentation within the existing business is leveraged to adapt to the changing conditions. In contrast, feeding from both directions is more balanced if the environment is in between those extremes. As most H2 initiatives pose a transformational character, usually coming along with significant organizational change and pain, it’s critical to launch as few of such initiatives as possible at the same time.

Takeway: A model for integrative innovation management

The points made above can be framed in the following model for integrative innovation management:

The model reflects some key takeaways:
- Structural separation of exploration and exploitation is crucial for established companies in oder to pursue revolutionary innovation, i.e. to create novel businesses (e.g. through white space opportunities) and disrupt existing ones, mostly operating in mature industries, respectively.
- Prolongation of established businesses is accomplished through evolutionary innovation within existing business models. It requires integration of optimization and adaptation by means of an operationally embedded, agile organizational structure.
- Appropriate integration interfaces between exploration and exploitation structures have to be designed for collaborative scaling of initiatives and mutual capability leverage.
- Pursuing both complementary directions of impact in parallel entails a balanced innovation portfolio and therefore the highest likelihood for company success over the short and long term.
9 May 2016
The Case for Dual Innovation
The first time I was advocating the idea of a dual innovation approach, here also referred to as organizational ambidexterity, is now more than 5 years ago. At this time it became pretty obvious to me that this concept – academically worn-out but deficiently or not at all put into practice in most organizations – would be of increasing importance in the time to come. It turned out compelling to me, given the inherent conditions a large company operates in, that decoupling explorative innovation (such as the development of new-to-the-company technologies and/or business models) from innovating the existing core business is mandatory for an organization in order to establish a balanced and sustainable innovation capability. As recently outlined, I consider organizational ambidexterity to be a key innovation issue for organizations in 2016 and beyond. And it looks like I have a point here…

After being discounted by many innovation practitioners in my sphere for some time, the concept of organizational ambidexterity is now finally gaining traction with rising speed. It’s encouraging to see a couple of research studies, recently conducted by different well-known consulting firms, backing the ideas I’ve been passionately supporting for many years. Let’s sum up some relevant findings of these studies, making the case for dual innovation management:

BCG: Most Innovative Companies 2014

Evaluating breakthrough innovation cultures and organizations, BCG concludes in their annual 2014 study:

By definition, breakthrough innovation is the introduction of new ideas that drive a different way of doing things. This requires risk taking, of course, since no one can foresee the outcome or results of such initiatives. Breakthrough innovators are willing to make decisions and choices as much on the basis of intuition and insight as on data and forecasts – they bet on people rather than manage a process.

In our experience, a dedicated environment is required to promote this kind of approach. And indeed, across all companies and industries, there is a growing trend toward a centralized approach to innovation and product development – meaning that these functions and processes are either controlled and driven by a centralized organization, or a centralized organization conducts R&D and passes the framework for new products and services to business units or regional units for development and launch. This trend is even more pronounced among strong innovators, with those pursuing a centralized approach rising from 68 percent in 2013 to 71 percent in 2014. Similarly, about 70 percent of disruptive innovators also lean toward a more centralized approach. Two-thirds of all breakthrough innovators stated that all innovation and product development is controlled and driven by a centralized organization, at least in its initial stages. More than 70 percent have a different organizational entity for managing radical innovation. (…)

Another approach enjoying increasingly wide trial is the corporate incubator. Incubators more or less evaporated when the dot-com bubble burst, but BCG research indicates that they are making a comeback – with a twist. The new generation of incubators is focused on incubating ideas that can have a direct impact on the sponsoring company’s business, not just creating stand-alone companies. The start-ups selected for incubation have interactions with their corporate sponsor that go beyond simple cash support, including access to R&D, supply chains, and important customers at both the corporate and the business unit levels.

Accenture: 2015 US Innovation Survey

Accenture finds in their recent study that companies need to reassess their approach to innovation execution:

Companies need to develop agile innovation operating models that enable companies to not only test new ideas quickly, but also absorb new capabilities and talent from other industries. Flexibility is especially important, considering how many of today’s innovations have no organizational home. Companies that cling to rigid innovation approaches are more likely to fail at creating space for disruptive innovation or nurturing new ideas.

A two-engine operating model holds particular promise for companies looking to achieve flexibility, as well as higher returns from their innovation investments. With this dual model, innovation engine 1 is laser-focused on making existing products and capabilities continually better. Engine 1 supports a company’s steady pace of evolution, and is a critical enabler of the incremental changes that propel a business forward. Innovation engine 2, on the other hand, drives big-bet innovations such as the introduction of entirely new product or service categories, an expansion into new markets, or the development of a new business model. Engine 2 efforts are disruptive and potentially game changing. When executed correctly, these innovations deliver a step-change improvement in organizational performance and competitive advantage.

Source: Accenture

Deloitte: Radical Innovation and Growth – Global Board Survey 2016

The latest Global Board Survey from Deloitte, brought to my attention by Paul Hobcraft, also calls for a dual innovation approach by establishing a dedicated “Division-X”, separated from core business and reporting to the board:

Our experience tells us and substantial research sustains (eg. 2014, Salim Ismail, Exponential Organization) that making new business creation inside a corporation is hard and often doomed to fail. The “immune system” of the core operation is soon to take over any great idea that might cannibalize it and thus even if the right decision is to disrupt yourself from within, it is almost impossible in practice.

We therefore want to know how many companies actually own a so-called Division-X or the equivalent of one (a division with the goal of finding radically new products or services). If they own one, we want to know for how long they have been in operation. 22% of respondents say “yes”, leaving 78% to say “no”. 30% of those with a Division-X have had one only for a year, 27% for two years and 24% for 5 years. 17% have owned a Division-X for 10 or more years. A correlation between turn-over, size, operation and industry reveal that these are largely midsized to very large companies from 1) Consumer Products & Services, 2) Technology/Media/Telecom, and 3) Industrial. (…)

Whereas, it is too early for the relatively sparse sample of global boards having experimented with a Division-X to harvest their fruits we are truly delighted to find that 75% of the companies that report an above 10% growth expectation for the coming 24 months also own a Division-X (or the equivalent hereof).

Source: Deloitte

Detecon: Die Innovationskultur von Konzernen (2016)

The german consulting firm Detecon just published a study (in german) based on interviewing and surveying more than 70 german corporate innovation experts. Some of the findings were:
- 100% of the surveyed experts agreed that defining an ambidextrous innovation strategy is an important management responsibility and critical to corporate innovation capability.
- Explorative initiatives and strategies should be pursued in dedicated units, decoupled from core business.
- The integration of disruptive ideas is the biggest challenge in german corporations. How can interfaces between dedicated units and core business be properly designed in order to develop disruptive ideas up to commercialization?
Source: Detecon

Conclusion

Taken together these outcomes, there hardly seems doubt anymore that appropriate ambidextrous approaches to innovation are required for most established organizations in order to stay competitive. In fact, it’s now a question of how they can be adequately organized, governed and operationally implemented. While the aforementioned studies clearly make the case, if not an imperative, for dual innovation management, they still lack a more detailed advice on the implementation issues. Jeffrey Phillips aptly comments on the recent Accenture study:

Accenture’s recommendation, the two engine solution, is appropriate but not new. Their suggestion is to define a path for incremental ideas, and a separate methodology and philosophy for radical or disruptive ideas. In this manner the ideas would be treated differently. What’s missing is a portfolio approach, which would indicate how many ideas of each type are valuable or necessary. (…) But until there’s clear sponsorship for disruptive ideas, funding and risk tolerance for those ideas and clear metrics and measurements, all ideas will eventually become incremental.

Another critical issue to be elaborated in each individual case is how to set up a dedicated unit for explorative innovation (vs. exploitative innovation in core business) in terms of its scope and openness. While the traditional notion of “ambidextrous organizations” assumes a strong “inhouse” focus, where exploration is mainly fed through internal strategic initiatives, ideas and intrapreneurship, a modern understanding of organizational ambidexterity also involves an appropriate degree of external engagement and co-creation, in particular by means of collaborating with startups. Michael Docherty also gets this point straight in his recent call for a “hybrid innovation engine for growth“:

We need to move beyond the myth of the ‘ambidextrous’ organization – large companies need to work on transformative innovation both internally and through engagement with the startup ecosystem. Learn to embrace disruption through collaboration.

In the past, systematic dual innovation management approaches have often been discounted due to falling short of expectations or lacking prevalence across the sum of companies. Both reasons, however, don’t necessarily imply the basic concept is inappropriate or even wrong. Adequate buy-in on part of executive/senior management and proper implementation of these approaches are mandatory prerequisites in order to make them live up to their potential and – as a consequence – increasingly trusted and applied. The above studies clearly reveal: Organizational ambidexterity proves to be a necessary condition for outstanding corporate innovation capability. Company boards may ignore it at their peril.

Takeaway

Let’s stop arguing whether dual innovation and organizational ambidexterity are required in today’s business world. Apart from a couple of exceptions, they seem mandatory for the majority of organizations, facing increasing pace for required reinvention and adaptation to changing environments. Instead, let’s shift our focus on how those approaches can get properly implemented in order to deliver much-needed impact. Going about this issue particularly entails
- accounting for dual innovation in strategy definition
- providing management sponsorship and well-suited organizational anchoring of dedicated exploration units
- decoupling of leadership, funding, staffing and metrics between exploration unit and core business
- balancing separation and integration between exploration unit and core business
- organizing operational interplay and designing proper interfaces between exploration unit and core business
- defining complementary innovation scopes for exploration unit and core business
- driving explorative innovation through a balanced portfolio of internal and external initiatives
- applying well-suited tools and processes for exploration initiatives
In a following post, I will be attempting to introduce a model for modern, dual innovation management. How can we get essential organizational ambidexterity from myth to going? Looking forward to your ideas and thoughts!
30 April 2016
Talk is the Technology of Leadership

Blinded by the Light?

“It’s raining at night, and a car coming the other way has their brights on – they’re blinding you. What do you do?”

I had already passed my practical driving test after we moved to New Zealand, and now I just had to answer this question, and I’d have my new Driver’s License.

“Slow down until it’s safe.”

“Ok, but what actions would you take?”

Now I had to think about it – what would I do step-by-step? I didn’t know! Now what?

I took a deep breath, then closed my eyes and visualised the situation. I put left foot on an imaginary clutch, my right on the imaginary gas, and grabbed the imaginary steering wheel. Then I talked through each action.

“Well, I’d let my foot off the gas to start slowing down, then I’d look down to the left to find either the white line or the edge of the road. If was safe, I’d pull over, otherwise I would navigate by the line until the car was past.”

That satisfied him. Now I had my new license.

The Things We Don’t Know We Know

When we drive, there are hundreds of things that we do every minute that we don’t consciously think about. Over time, we get so good at making these constant adjustments to speed and direction, gas and brakes, that we forget just how hard it is to actually drive a car. If we’re not careful, our concentration will slip and that can lead to trouble.

The things that we don’t know we know are like that – they allow us to do incredibly complex tasks without thinking about them, but the unconscious nature of the action can also get us in trouble.

Managing is a lot like driving. When you’ve done it long enough, parts of it become automatic. I don’t get to manage much in my current position, so when I get a chance to exercise my management muscles and I can see all these actions coming back, I’m much more aware of them than I was when I was a full-time manager.

Management is all about influencing from a distance. The whole job is nudges and levers, questions and suggestions. Little adjustments to keep on course, or speed up, or slow down. That’s the art of managing.

The academic term for the things we “know” but can’t articulate is tacit knowledge. It includes mostly things that we learn from doing. Think about riding a bicycle – can you explain step-by-step how to balance while you’re moving forward? It’s actually pretty close to impossible – that’s why we need training wheels.

We actually need training wheels as managers too. Here is how Henry Mintzberg puts it in his superb book Managing:

Little of management practice has been reliably codified, let alone certified as to its effectiveness. That is why Hill found that people “had to act as managers before they understood what the role was”

It should be emphasized that, unlike other workers, the manager does not leave the telephone, the meeting, or the e-mail to get back to work. These contacts are the work. The ordinary work of the unit or organization—producing a product, selling it, even conducting a study or writing a report—is not usually undertaken by its manager. The manager’s productive output has to be gauged largely in terms of the information he or she transmits orally or by e-mail. As Jeanne Liedtka of the Darden School has put it (in a talk I attended): “Talk is the technology of leadership.”

Talk is the Technology of Leadership

I love that quote from Jeanne Liedtka – talk is the technology of leadership. When was the last time you thought about how you use words? That’s something we learned to do ages ago. So long ago that we don’t even know what we know about speaking, or listening.

And yet, these are the core technologies of leading. Speaking, and listening.

If you’re leading, or managing, it pays to think about these technologies a little more deeply.

Tom Peters addresses listening in a great document that he posted over the weekend called Presentation Excellence (link to .pdf). The main document is about presentation skills, and it’s useful. For me though, the goldmine is the appendix on listening.

He starts this by saying “Interviewing/asking questions is a critical—and under-studied and under-practiced—skill. Few have treated it as a skill to be mastered akin to learning to play the piano.” He then goes on to give 59 thoughts on becoming a better listener. This is an invaluable resource – check it out.

In terms of speaking, I’ve also run across an excellent resource recently. It’s a book called The Power of Framing: Creating the Language of Leadership by Gail Fairhurst. Like the piece by Peters, this book contains a wealth of practical examples and tips for using language more effectively.

It’s time for us to consciously think about the things we do automatically. If talk is the technology of leadership, than it makes sense to build our skills in this area. As we do this, we should pay attention to one last quote from Mintzberg’s book:

“It’s not [the manager’s] job to supervise or to motivate, but to liberate and enable” (Max DePree of Herman Miller, 1990).

(photo from flickr/fragglerawker_03 under a Creative Commons License)

30 April 2013
Integrative Innovation
This post was first published as opening post to my new blog, titled Integrative Innovation.

Some people I’ve been collaborating with have recently encouraged me to open up an own blog. After having given it some thought, I decided to do so. I’m launching a new site and platform titled “Integrative Innovation” to share ideas and perspectives on innovation.

You might ask: why “Integrative Innovation”? Is this yet another buzzword?

I don’t think so. I rather think integration plays crucial role when it comes to successful innovation initiatives. I’ll share my view on this as well as the intention and purpose behind this new site.

Sustainable innovation management is a complex capability that requires dynamic integration of various aspects. Quite often though, discussions about innovation focus on a selection of factors, such as technology, R&D, customers or processes, without taking the bigger and systemic picture into account. Scott D. Anthony is absolutely right in saying: point solutions do not address a systematic challenge. Instead of following one-size-fits-all or one-sided concepts, integrative innovation approaches are needed for organizations to succeed. The need for integration is manifold – I see at least four major issues in this context:
- Integration of Directions of Impact
- Integration of Stakeholders
- Integration of Capabilities
- Integration of People
Integration of Directions of Impact

Innovation management requires a balance of different – often opposing – objectives, strategies and approaches. Examples of these tensions are:
- Incremental vs. radical innovation
- Scale vs. craft
- Strategic short term vs. long term focus
- Exploiting existing business models/technologies vs. exploring new ones
- Structured vs. emergent and experimental processes
It’s essential to understand that those opposing poles are inherently different but equally important. Succesful companies and innovation workers in the time to come will be able to operate integratively and balanced, regardless of their individual inclinations.

Integration of Stakeholders

Organizations find it increasingly impossible to tackle innovation on their own. It tends to be accomplished within open partnerships, networks and communities – including customers. In particular, systemic challenges, such as energy, healthcare, mobility depend on successful collaboration among complementary stakeholders. The future will belong to organizations and people that thrive in interconnected ecosystems. Consequently, successful orchestration of diverse stakeholders is going to be a mandatory capability.

Integration of Capabilities

Innovation management is an integrated discipline. It requires working openly across competencies and organizational functions. Thriving operating models don’t care about organizational boundaries and functional silos. They integrate functional capabilities to form value-creating cross-functional capabilities, as Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi point out:

Indeed, mono-functional excellence will almost never guarantee success. The most distinctive, differentiating capabilities are almost always cross-functional. P&G’s vaunted ability to launch breakthrough products isn’t just a matter of R&D; it requires an integration of competencies, including consumer insights, engineering, external partnerships and brand marketing. Similarly, IKEA’s capability in creating and selling stylish but utilitarian furniture combines functional expertise in design, sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, logistics, the design of customer experience in its retail stores, and cost management; all of these reinforce each other.

Integration of People

Innovation management is people management. Depending on the direction of impact, we need to have the right mix of people, skills and mindsets aboard. Particularly, for exploring novel opportunities with a potential to revolutionize the status quo and existing business models, a high diversity of viewpoints and ideas is conducive. This, in turn, implies that innovation workers and leaders act as brokers, integrative thinkers and catalyzers for collaboration. They must be skilled to hire and allocate adequate human resources. Moreover, they have to feel comfortable balancing consent and dissent as well as associating direction and meaning out of people diversity.

In this sense, Integrative Innovation intends to provide a platform for ideas that help tackle the holistic nature of innovation. In face of ever increasing interrelations, we should beware of not seeing the big picture or overemphasizing certain elements. My purpose is to provide value through integrative thinking and concepts as I deeply believe this is imperative for successful innovation management in the time to come.
22 February 2013
Reflections on Remembrance Day

A few years ago, on a holiday in France, my wife and I visited the Somme battlefield near Amiens to see the grave of her great uncle, Alfred Gaby, who had been killed during the final months of the first world war. After visiting the cemetery where he was buried, we then drove back along the road going west through the little villages with names that are familiar to many Australians because roads, parks and towns are named after the battles where so many soldiers lost their lives. Poziers, Bapaume, Hamel and Peronne are street names in various suburbs in Brisbane.

I think people have different reactions to visiting these sites. We drove through Poziers where around 7000 Australian soldiers were killed in four weeks of fighting and then on to the ridge top of Thiepval where a very large British memorial overlooks the slopes where thousands of soldiers from the Pal’s Battalions were cut down with machine guns. Despite the carefully kept graves and gardens in the cemeteries, these are not peaceful places to walk around. Nonetheless, its hard to grasp the scale of the killing by looking at memorials and reading about numbers of dead and wounded.

The last place that we visited was the Newfoundland Memorial at Beumont-Hamel, which was quite different from the other memorials on the Somme. Here it is possible to walk through the trenches and walk across no-mans land to the German trenches. It’s possible to think about glory and sacrifice at the neatly kept memorials but its hard not to be affected by the experience of stepping out of a trench and looking over the hundreds of meters of flat land to the well-defended enemy trench. After a few moments of comprehending what had happened here on the 1st of July, 1916, my overwhelming reaction was that of outrage over the stupidity of the Western Front. Why did this all have to happen? What would it have taken to stop it?

Sometimes history moves with a path dependent momentum that makes change very difficult. The correspondence between the Kaiser and the Czar (Nicky and Willy) is fascinating to read. While both men are heads of state and cousins, they are unable to stop the events that both know will lead to senseless carnage and destruction. There is a desire from both men to act, but the challenges of altering course are too great to overcome.

I think the lesson from this is that it takes a great degree of effort and leadership to make changes when we are talking about society, global politics and the economy. The morally correct action might be obvious but that does not ensure that the right outcome will eventuate.

What are the global challenges that we are facing today? Think about poverty, reforming the banking system and responding to climate change, for example. Do we have the courage and capacity to lead the change, or are we still marching to the guns of August?

11 November 2009