Посты автора Drew Boyd

Drew Boyd

Innovation Behavior

Published date: February 15, 2024 в 2:41 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

Innovation is a skill, not a gift.  Top organizations drive growth by nurturing and investing in innovation as a competency.  One way organizations make it real is by including innovation within formal competency models.

Professor Rodney Rogers of Portland State University defines a competency as a persistent pattern of behavior resulting from a cluster of knowledge, skills, abilities, and motivations.  It is the persistence of those behaviors that matter most and help your organization succeed.

Competency models are a useful way to formalize that behavior and make it persistent.  They help describe the ideal patterns needed for exceptional performance.  They are a blueprint for the type of person needed for a specific job. And they help diagnose and evaluate employee performance.  It takes a lot of work to develop one, but it’s worth it.

My approach is to see innovation competencies at two distinct levels: The Innovator, and The Innovation Leader. Here is how to think about it.

The Innovator Competencies:

  • Generating Innovative Solutions – Systematically innovates using a model with proven efficacy; routinely innovates products, services, processes, and strategies; values and harnesses team diversity; reframes problems in a different light to find fresh approaches; entertains wide-ranging possibilities others may miss; takes advantage of difficult or unusual situations to develop unique approaches and useful solutions.
  • Seeing the Big Picture – Has broad knowledge and perspective; pieces together seemingly unrelated data to identify patterns and trends and to see a bigger picture; understands the pieces of a system as a whole and appreciates the consequences of actions on other parts of the system; possesses a big-picture view of the situation.

The Innovation Leader competencies are different.  It is not necessarily the innovation leader who must generate new ideas; rather, they must understand how to instill innovation according to Penn State researcher, Dr. David G. Gliddon. “Commitment to innovation as a culture is prevalent in organizations as it is commonly woven directly into mission statements. However, leaders still lack the ability to plan, measure and implement innovative programs, products and services.  These challenges are enhanced by the pressure to juggle several different and often conflicting roles.” said Gliddon.  In a three-year study, Gliddon identified the competencies that underpinned these roles and developed a competency model of innovation leaders.  The competency model can be tailored to any organization as part of a competency-based human resource development initiative.

An innovation leader collaboratively interacts with their employees and supports high levels of teamwork, providing opportunities to share innovations.  Once an innovation has been shared, employees should be empowered to then adopt the innovation if it is useful.  Employees can then support the innovation leader by initially adopting the innovation, and encourage the diffusion of the innovation throughout organization’s social system, Gliddon says.  Innovation leaders must also take personal responsibility for and be dedicated to projects that require innovations.  Therefore, innovation leaders must establish a trust culture and maintain relationships based on trust.  They must display initiative, set challenging project goals, and link those goals to the needs of the customer, department, and enterprise, according to his study. Persistent innovation behavior by the leader and innovator is a recipe for growth.

Mapping the Innovation Gap

Published date: December 7, 2023 в 10:48 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Once you have a systematic and routine way to innovate, you are confronted with a new problem – how to decide how much innovation is enough.  For many, this is an odd question.  If innovation is essential for survival and growth, most people would want all the innovation they can get.  But that is oversimplifying.  Too much innovation can overload the system, confuse the organization, and lead to ideation fatigue.  So how much is enough?

Here is a useful analysis that can tell you how many ideas are needed to reach your specific growth targets called “Mapping the Innovation Gap.” The steps are:

  1. Determine your revenue goals in each year over a specific time horizon. Base this on your firm’s strategic planning time horizon (usually 3 to 10 years depending on the industry).  Use the actual revenue targets from your company’s business plan.
  2. Break these annual revenue targets down over a mix of products, new and existing, in each year. Some firms call this a revenue cascade or revenue waterfall.  It shows for each year how much of the revenue comes from existing products and how much comes from new products.
  3. Estimate your Innovation Yield (number of new ideas needed to produce one new product). This varies by industry and by company depending on factors such as level of investment, core competencies, and access to technology.  Various think tanks and consultancies have estimates such as the curve pictured above.
  4. Estimate your typical idea-to-launch Lead Time (how much time it takes to develop and launch a product once it is conceived). As with the Innovation Yield, this will vary. Take a look at past product development experience and determine an average time (in years).
  5. Plot the number of new ideas needed in each year to produce the necessary new products in subsequent years. Take the number of new products needed in a specific year and divide it by the Innovation Yield.  Then plot this number back in time by the amount of Lead Time to develop ideas.

What you end up with is the number of new ideas that need to be generated each year to have a realistic chance of achieving future revenue growth targets.  It can be a sobering number depending on how aggressive your targets are.  With this number, a general manager can then task the team to “schedule” innovation, and then hold them accountable for generating the necessary number of ideas.

The bottom line:  To grow, companies need a systematic innovation method, and it needs to be applied systematically.

Innovation Archetypes

Published date: December 1, 2023 в 10:43 pm

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Category: Innovation

An archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype after which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all.  Archetypes put context to a situation.  We use archetypes, for example, in marketing.  We create brand archetypes to assign a personality to the brand.  An example of such a model is shown at right.  In political debate, it’s useful to understand whether a commentator is an “archetypical democrat” or an “archetypical republican.” This helps frame their comments so we know where they are coming from.

Listening to the Voice of Innovation is the same. As I read blogs, interviews, and books on innovation, I try to determine the author’s innovation archetype so I know where they are coming from.  I observe at least four of these.

The four Innovation Archetypes are:

  1. Innovation Doer: These are the practitioners of innovation…people who innovate on a regular basis. The Innovation Doer is on the front lines and feels both accountable and motivated to come up with new and useful ideas.  They may or may not use a systematic approach. They approach situations with a natural inclination to change the status quo rather than preserve it.
  2. Innovation Watcher: These are people with a strong interest or obsession with innovation created by other people. They are fascinated by novelty. They consume it, read about it, and report on it. They marvel at what others create but stop short of serious innovation themselves.  They report useful insights about innovation and innovators. They add value by commenting on trends and milestones in the world of innovation. Entire websites such as Gizmodo and Engadget fit this archetype.
  3. Innovation Preacher: These are the voices that inspire others of the need to innovate. They make the case for innovation and change. They relate innovation to our everyday lives as well as to the global economy.  They create both hope and fear…hope in terms of what can be created through innovation, and fear from the consequences of not innovating…from being “disrupted.”
  4. Innovation Teacher: These are the people who teach methods and processes of innovation.  They infect others with tools to create new ideas.  Teachers are interventionalists. Their students become Doers (if they have taught them well).  A number of university professors and innovation consultants fit this archetype.

It is likely there are more innovation archetypes than these four.  Others could be defined around some of the brand archetypes displayed in the model above.  Certainly there are people who display multiple archetypes, perhaps all four.

In the corporate domain, we need all four archetypes. Those that preach create the mandate for change.  They mobilize the leadership and staff to focus on innovation as a source of organic growth. The Doers and Teachers tend to put things into motion.  Watchers are the “sense makers.”  They are trend spotters. They have a unique perspective on external innovation to give useful context to internal innovation.  A lot of corporate mergers and acquisition departments fall into this category.  They are “hunters” of opportunity.

As you listen to the Voices of Innovation, see if you can spot their archetype.  Who are the leading Innovation Preachers in our innovation community, for example?   Also, ask yourself: what is your archetype? Which do you aspire to become?  Most importantly, how will you get there?

Choosing Innovation Consultants

Published date: November 16, 2023 в 1:32 pm

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

The innovation consultancy landscape has become immensely complex, dynamic, and varied in the last several years, especially when discussing quantity. There are a variety of methodologies, approaches, as well as consultancies of all sizes. Several large accounting firms have made acquisitions of innovation consulting firms, which means the distinction between the mega-consultancies and the more boutique consultancies has become blurred.

Since the innovation consulting firm atmosphere is so dense, there are some common sense rules of thumb one must use when choosing an innovation consulting firm. Luckily, our good friend, Drew Boyd, created a list of criteria that you can utilize when choosing an innovation consulting firm.  However, due to the richness of the current marketplace and the dynamic approach, some of this list is no longer relevant. While this may be the case, it still includes a lot of useful advice. The below advice and tools will help you make an informed and educated decision when choosing an innovation consulting firm.

Choosing Innovation Consultants

Choosing an innovation consultant is challenging for two reasons: the client is not always clear what type of innovation they want, or they are not sure what type of innovation a consultant offers.

Here are three factors to consider when choosing an innovation consultant:  1.  TYPE of consultant, 2.  METHOD used, and 3.  ROLE of the consultant.

TYPE of consultant

The innovation space has become so crowded that I group them into four types (I-D-E-A):

INVENTION:  These are consultants that help you create new-to-the-world ideas.  They have a particular expertise in creativity methods or idea generation tools.  Their main focus is generation of many new product or service ideas.

DESIGN:  These are consultants that take an existing product, service, or idea and put some new, innovative form to it.  They have a particular expertise in industrial design or human factors design.  Their main focus is transforming the way a product is used or experienced.

ENGINEERING:  These are consultants that help you make the new idea work in practice.  They have a particular expertise in technology, science, research, and problem solving.  Their main focus is building it.

ACTUALIZATION:  These are consultants that help you get the innovation into the marketplace.  They have a particular expertise in marketing processes, brand, or commercial launch of a product or service.  Their main focus is selling it.

The challenge is many consultants claim to be all of these.  While true for some, my sense is that all firms started off as one type and then expanded to cover the others.  The question to ask yourself is: would you be better off matching your need to their original core expertise, or would you be better off going to a one-stop shop…a firm that can do it all even though their core expertise is, say, design.  How do you know what type the firm really is?  Study the biography of their founder.  What was the founder’s education, experience, work background, interests, etc.  The founder is where the core orientation of the firm begins.  The other practice types get bolted on later.

METHOD used

Step Two is understanding their method.  The first question I ask consultants is, “Do you know how to innovate?”  The second question is, “How?”  I want to understand their method of innovation, and I want to be able to explain it to other people.  I want to know the efficacy.  Has it worked in the past and will it work on my project?  Show me the data.

ROLE of the consultant

Step Three is understanding the role of the innovation consultant.  Is this a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach where you are given some software or other resource to create innovation on your own?  Is this a DIWY (do-it-with-you) approach where the consultant leads and facilitates groups of your employees to innovate together?  Is this a DIFY (do-it-for-you) approach where the consultant takes your problem specification and comes back with their recommended solutions?  Or, is this training?  All of these roles are valid depending on your need.

I am impressed with the talent and variety of the consultants in the innovation space today.  It becomes even more impressive when you select the right one for the job.

People Innovation

Published date: October 26, 2023 в 10:28 am

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Category: Organizational Innovation,Sustainable Innovation

Human Resource departments often find themselves tasked with creating a more innovative climate for their firms.  That can make sense given that innovation is a people activity.  It’s a skill, not a gift, and it can be taught and learned like any other business skill.  And it is usually team-based.

My advice to HR leaders?  Experience innovation close to home first.  Use innovation tools on actual people or HR systems before venturing out to the broader organization.  This has the effect of making true believers out of the HR team, it gives them a handy reference point for other departments to benchmark, and it yields creative new approaches to traditional HR processes.

How? Using the five templates of Systematic Inventive Thinking, here are examples of pre-inventive forms within the HR realm.  The key is to envision the pre-inventive form, then find a useful role or benefit for it.

SUBTRACTION: Your training programs have no faculty.  Why?  What would be beneficial about it?

TASK UNIFICATION:  Offer letters to new hires have an important additional role during the first year of employment.  What is that role, and how could it help the organization?

MULTIPLICATION:  Employees receive two paychecks each payday, but they are different in some way.  How are they different?  What would be the benefit?

ATTRIBUTE DEPENDENCY:  Year-end bonuses do NOT change based on performance or other factors.  Why?  How could it motivate employees?

DIVISION:  New employees are hired first, THEN recruited into the organization.  How would this work and why would it be useful?

The real trick in using this method correctly is to envision a pre-inventive form that doesn’t seem to make sense at first.  Then, using a cross-functional team, you outline specific benefits that could be derived for the HR department, the company at large, or some other entity.  Ask yourself: Is it feasible?  How could the idea be modified to make it even more beneficial or feasible?

 

Another approach is to use innovation templates on specific employees – create ideas that innovate their life or career.  Here are five more examples of pre-inventive forms at the individual level:

SUBTRACTION: The employee no longer has a budget but still has to accomplish their goals.  Why?  What would be beneficial about it?

TASK UNIFICATION:  The employee’s office space now performs an additional role.  What is that role, and how could it help the organization?

MULTIPLICATION:  The employee has two bosses, but they are different in some way.  How are they different?  What would be the benefit?

ATTRIBUTE DEPENDENCY:  The employee works fewer hours the more she produces.  How would this work?  What would be the benefit?

DIVISION:  The employee no longer works from 8 to 5, but has to work at different times.  Why?   How could this be useful?

Re-invent others by re-inventing yourself first.

Click to read 4 Ways HR Can Cultivate a Successful Culture of Innovation.

Launching Innovations: The Do’s and Don’ts

Published date: October 19, 2023 в 1:21 pm

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Category: Innovation,New Product Development,Strategy

At some point as an innovation leader, you and your team will launch new innovations into the market place. Those could be new products and services, it could be a new advertising campaign, or simply displaying your products at a trade show. These initiatives are an important test of your leadership. So here are my tips – the DO’s and DON’Ts for launching new initiatives.

First, lead through people. That means delegating to your team rather than trying to take on these projects yourself. Your first priority is to create a team of A players. So now is the time to use them. Thoroughbreds like to run and run fast, so put them to work on these initiatives. If you’re thinking that “it’s easier to do it myself than to explain how to do it,” forget it. When you assign a new initiative to a person, tell them what you need done and what success looks like. Let them figure it out from there.

Next, be visible during the launch of any new initiative. There’re a lot of reasons for that. First, it motivates your people when they see you care enough to be part of their event. Second, it never hurts to have another pair of hands in case a team member needs help. As an innovation leader, don’t put yourself above the team when it comes to the dirty work. Hey, a good leader needs to pick up the broom and sweep the floor just like everyone else.

Finally, hold people accountable for the outcome. It’s critical that you give people constraints up front so they know the boundaries of what they can and can’t do. Measure those results and reward people for what they achieve. If they exceed the boundaries you set for them, you gotta point it out to them.

Now, let’s look at the don’ts.

First, whatever you do, don’t micromanage your people. Details are important in any initiative, but if you get in the habit of pointing out every last detail of a project, you’re telling your team that you don’t trust them. That will eventually undermine your leadership.

Next, never upstage your team members responsible for the event when the initiative is launched. If they do all the work but it’s you that gets in front of the camera to take all the credit, your team won’t ever be loyal to you again. Now it’s okay to manage up a bit and keep your bosses informed about the initiative, but just be sure to give credit to your team for their hard work. And by the way, when you give credit to others instead of taking it all yourself, your bosses look at you as someone who’s going to move up the ladder.

Finally, avoid playing the blame game. If the initiative doesn’t go well, take responsibility. Don’t start naming others on your team as the guilty party. You want to give that team member feedback about what could have been improved. But publicly blaming them for the failure is a mistake. As the leader, stand up and take full responsibility. But then go back and understand what went wrong. What were your assumptions? What unexpected things happened that hurt the initiative? And most importantly, what are you going to do about it next time? And that’s what great innovation leaders do. They create a competent team that continuously learns, and gets better every day.

Corporate Innovation Strategy Template

Published date: August 31, 2023 в 2:55 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

          Rudyard Kipling (1902)

 

Here is a simple template to create your company’s innovation strategy:

WHAT:

  • Determine what business lines are to be innovated.
  • Determine what products or services within those business lines need innovation.
  • Establish a portfolio model that compares innovation output from one business line to another.
  • Rank order business lines based on the strength of their innovation portfolio pipelines.

WHY:

  • Determine how much innovation is needed.  Use a tool like Map-the-Gap.
  • Tie innovation to a strategy framework such as The Big Picture.
  • Focus innovation exercises to link directly to the strategy framework.
  • Use the framework to identify market adjacencies.

WHEN:

  • Schedule innovation workshops at the front end of the business cycle to help determine what projects will get funding in the next budget cycle.
  • Schedule innovation workshops after the planning cycle to jump-start new initiatives for the upcoming year.

HOW:

  • Choose specific methods of innovation to be used based on efficacy and results.
  • Combine different methods to leverage the strengths of each.
  • Integrate the methods by using the output of one as inputs for the others.

WHERE:

  • Set aside space with the specific purpose of conducting innovation workshops.

WHO:

  • Form innovation “dream teams” to maximize the success of innovation efforts.
  • Schedule training on how to use innovation methods.
  • Examine the company’s innovation culture to diagnose where it is weak.
  • Establish an innovation competency model.
  • Designate and empower commercial leaders to drive innovation efforts.

M&A Innovation

Published date: August 9, 2023 в 11:25 am

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

Relying on Mergers and Acquisitions for growth sends a signal that you don’t know how to innovate or how to manage it. M&A has other problems, too. Companies tend to overpay which actually destroys shareholder value. At best, firms end up paying full value, neither better or worse off financially. The firm grows in size, not value, and pays in the form of distraction.

What if you could use the tools and processes of innovation in mergers and acquisitions?

How could it help?

  1. Would you select acquisition targets better?
  2. Could it help understand the valuation better so you get a better deal?
  3. Might it help you implement better?

I believe innovation techniques could be applied to all three.

Here is one example: targeting – deciding who to buy.

Imagine you are the CEO of a bank, perhaps headquartered in Europe. You and the other board members have decided its time to deliver more value to the shareholders by growing the business. You decide to acquire another bank with all the spare cash you have accumulated (rather than just give it to its rightful owners.) The question is: Which bank? Should we buy one in Europe to expand our share while eliminating a competitor?  Should we expand to the U.S. market and buy one there?  Should we buy a struggling bank, get it cheap, and restore it to profitability?

No, no, no. Too simple and obvious. Nothing innovative here at all. Let’s instead apply the Subtraction Tool from Systematic Inventive Thinking and see how we can re-frame the question. Start by listing the components of your bank.

1.    Employees

2.    Customers

3.    Assets

4.    Property plant and equipment

5.    Brand

6.    Systems

7.    Management

Now, one at a time, let’s remove a component, then ask ourselves which bank we should acquire.  Imagine you had no customers. You still have all the other components, just no customers. What bank could you acquire that had the ideal customer base for YOUR bank given what it’s all about? Would you want customers who were more diverse, higher income, more profitable, lower cost to serve, more loyal, etc.? In other words, acquire a bank that delivers the perfect complement of customers. Now remove employees. You have all the other components, just no staff. Now what bank would you buy? Which has the ideal employee base for who you are? Would you go after employees who are smarter, less costly, more diverse, younger, older, etc.?

The same process, done for each component in succession, gives you a whole new innovative perspective on who to acquire. It helps you understand why you are buying, what you are getting, and how you expect to create new value and competitiveness. It helps you understand The Bet – what the deal is really all about.

M&A is an expensive way to grow. By adding the gift of innovation to the process, shareholders stand a better chance of seeing more value.

(Originally published in 2008)

Innovation Stigma

Published date: May 11, 2023 в 5:37 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

There is an inherent bias against innovation despite the enormous value it holds for organizations.  Corporate executives know that innovation is the only true long term growth engine for their firm.  Yet innovation carries with it a certain stigma, a perception in the minds of executives, that it is “soft” and frivolous compared to other hard core business activities like productivity, quality, and demand generation.  This stigma deters executives from taking risk and investing in serious innovation initiatives.

The innovation industry itself is partly to blame.  Participants in the innovation space tend to perpetuate a mystique about innovation and creativity as though it is a deeply hidden secret that needs to be unleashed.  Walk into many innovation sessions and what you see are cans of Silly StringTM, Slinky(R) toys, Frisbees, and funny nose glasses.  The notion here is that people need to be more playful to have that “eureka” moment and invent the next blockbuster idea.  People are conditioned to believe innovation requires “skunk-works” in a specially-designed room to pursue “white space opportunities.”   Innovation is voodoo.

In an effort to differentiate themselves, participants in the innovation space create novel names for their programs and services.  Here is a very small sample: Innovations-Radar(R), Innovation Cube(R), Challenge AcceleratorTM, 360-IA(R), SpinnovatorTM, Idea BucketTM, AlphaStormingTM, Excursion DeckTM, Mindscan(R), IdeaSpring(R), Super Digilab(R), etc, etc.  The list is overwhelming and it tends to confuse the market.  More importantly, what is the efficacy of these tools?  Do they work?  The granddaddy of them all, Brainstorming, is certainly suspect given the many studies that suggest otherwise.

Is there an innovation bias?  I am polling Fortune 100 executives to describe the characteristics of people who champion certain business causes.  I ask them to describe the typical age, experience, credentials, aspirations, and personality of:

  • Productivity Champions
  • Process Excellence Champions
  • Innovation Champions
  • Leadership Champions
  • Brand Champions

The early feedback suggests innovation champions, compared to the others, are seen as more eager, altruistic “dreamers” who are out of touch with the business.  One executive described innovation champions as necessary but had low expectations of actual results.  Of more concern is the perception executives have about themselves in this role.  My sense is business people shy away from championing innovation because they believe the stigma of failing at innovation is more career-damaging than failing at other ventures.

The innovation industry needs to play a role in improving the image of innovation.  Fortunately, there are resources like Innovation Tools and CREAX that consolidate the innovation space and help companies make sense of the different offerings.  More prominence needs to be given to the classic researchers in innovation and creativity like Ronald Finke, Thomas Ward, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Jacob Goldenberg.  We need to get back to the basics of what makes innovation work so we can skip the hype.

The innovation bias has to be overcome if companies want to make progress and grow.  Leaders need to address this head on.  How?  Just as they learned to champion leadership by first becoming an authentic leader, they need to champion innovation by first becoming an authentic innovator.

The Not-So-Fuzzy Front End

Published date: April 20, 2023 в 11:24 am

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Category: Innovation,Strategy,Sustainable Innovation

A best practice at Fortune 100 companies is to see the front end of the pipeline not as fuzzy, but as crystal clear.  A systematic approach to innovation using an effective process can take away the mystery of the front end and create a sustainable growth engine.

What is the “fuzzy front end” and why has this notion become so popular? Calling the front end “fuzzy” perpetuates the myths of innovation.  “Fuzziness” is the term coined to suggest that innovation has lots of risk, is not systematic, and is more of a “eureka” moment.  One can schedule work, but you cannot schedule invention.

This is simply not true. You can schedule innovation. A company like GE, for example, that is seeking 8% growth on a base of $207billion in sales, needs $17 billion in new revenue a year from innovation to achieve that. GE will not tolerate fuzziness at its front end of innovation.

For some, fuzziness is more about how to select projects from among the ideas generated at the front end. There are many tools available to help managers select the most appropriate projects. The best of those use some form of weighted linear model.

My advice: Create an innovation schedule. Hold people accountable for generating new business opportunities. Sharpen the focus, and reward teams that bring forward an exciting portfolio of current and future growth opportunities. Accepting fuzziness in the front end is accepting slow growth.

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