Building Innovation Muscle

In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, the ability to innovate is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity. Top companies understand this and have shifted their perspective on innovation. They see it not as a lucky dip, but as a cultivated skill – an “innovation muscle” that requires consistent effort and a strategic approach.

But how do you translate this metaphor into a practical roadmap for your organisation? Here, we delve deeper into the analogy and explore actionable steps to create a winning innovation fitness plan.

Why Building Innovation Muscle Matters

Imagine a world where your organisation struggles to adapt to changing customer demands, gets blindsided by disruptive technologies, and watches competitors steal market share with groundbreaking ideas. This is the unfortunate reality for companies that lack a strong innovation muscle.

On the other hand, organisations that prioritise innovation reap significant benefits. They are:

Future-proofed: They can anticipate and adapt to changing market trends, ensuring long-term sustainability.

Problem-solvers: They can tackle complex challenges more effectively with creative solutions.

Growth drivers: Innovation unlocks new opportunities and revenue streams, fueling expansion and market leadership.

Building Your Innovation Fitness Plan

Just like building physical fitness, building your innovation muscle requires a multifaceted approach. Here’s a breakdown of four crucial areas to focus on:

Finding Your Training Focus

The first step is to identify your specific innovation goals. Are you aiming for:

Strength Training: To tackle major industry disruptions or solve complex problems that require significant resources? This might involve developing revolutionary new technologies or completely reimagining your business model.

Endurance Running: To consistently generate a stream of smaller, incremental improvements that keep you ahead of the curve? This could involve streamlining internal processes, optimizing product features, or developing new service offerings.

Flexibility: To adapt quickly to changing market conditions? This requires a culture that embraces new ideas and fosters agility, allowing you to pivot strategies and implement solutions rapidly.

Understanding your overarching goals will inform the type of innovation exercises and approaches you prioritise, resulting in the correct type of innovation muscle..

Develop a Diverse Training Regimen

Just like a well-rounded workout plan incorporates different exercises, your innovation strategy should encompass various techniques to generate a steady flow of ideas and validate their potential:

Idea Generation: Brainstorming sessions, design thinking workshops, and even elements of gamification can spark creativity and encourage participation from a wider range of employees.

Experimentation: Embrace a “test and learn” mentality. Set up small-scale experiments, prototypes, or pilot programs to validate your ideas in a low-risk environment. This allows you to gather quick feedback and iterate based on results, saving time and resources.

Benchmarking: Look at how industry leaders and even companies outside your domain are innovating. Analyze their successful strategies and adapt them to your specific context. Don’t be afraid to borrow good ideas and put your own unique spin on them.

Creating the Perfect Training Environment

A supportive environment is crucial for fostering innovation. Here are some key elements to consider:

Empowerment: Encourage a culture where employees feel empowered to take calculated risks, experiment with new ideas, and learn from failures. Celebrate initiative and recognize the value of “failing forward” – learning from mistakes and using them as springboards for improvement.

Cross-functional Collaboration: Break down silos and encourage collaboration between teams with diverse perspectives. Innovation thrives on the exchange of ideas and the ability to see problems from different angles. Create cross-functional innovation teams or implement knowledge-sharing initiatives to break down barriers and foster a collaborative spirit.

Leadership Buy-in: Secure strong support from senior management. Leaders who champion innovation efforts, allocate resources strategically, and remove roadblocks to progress will send a powerful message of commitment throughout the organisation.

Track Your Progress and Adapt

Innovation is an ongoing journey, not a one-time event. Therefore, it’s vital to regularly monitor progress and adapt your approach:

Metrics: Develop clear metrics to measure the success of your innovation efforts. These could include the number of ideas generated, the rate of successful implementations, the impact on key business goals (e.g., increased revenue, customer satisfaction), or the cost savings achieved.

Regular Reviews: Schedule regular reviews to assess the effectiveness of your innovation fitness plan. Discuss successes, identify areas for improvement, and be prepared to adapt your approach based on what’s working and what’s not. Gather feedback from employees involved in innovation initiatives and use it to refine your strategy for the future.

Don’t forget though, once your innovation muscle has been created it needs to be maintained and kept injury free.

If you need a little help building your innovation muscle then please get in touch …

Innovation – the people you need

So, you’re fired up about innovation, but who should be on your team to make those brilliant ideas a reality? Forget about fancy titles and hierarchical structures – we’re on the hunt for people with the specific skills that will make your innovation initiative flourish.

Here’s a breakdown of the essential roles you’ll want to fill on your team. Remember, especially in smaller organisations, some folks might be able to comfortably wear multiple hats and fulfill more than one function.

The Connectors: These are your organisation’s social butterflies. They have a knack for connecting different departments, even entire organisations and industries, that wouldn’t normally cross paths. While they might not be the deepest experts in every field, they possess a broad knowledge base and understand how to bring the right people together to tackle a challenge.

The Collectors: Think of them as the detectives of the idea world. Collectors excel at gathering up all the fantastic ideas floating around and meticulously organising them so everyone on the team can easily access and utilise this valuable knowledge base. They understand the power of information and ensure it’s readily available to fuel the innovation process.

The Framers: These are the rule-makers, but in the best possible way! The Framers work hand-in-hand with the leadership team to establish clear and consistent frameworks for evaluating ideas. Their job is to build a fair and transparent playing field where all your innovative concepts can compete on a level ground.

The Judges: Imagine a panel of experts from various departments like sales, marketing, and R&D. These are your Judges, and they wield the power (guided by the Framers’ established criteria) to assess the merits of your ideas. They act as the final gatekeepers, ensuring only the strongest concepts move forward.

The Prototypers: Okay, your idea has passed the judging phase and is ready to take flight! But how do you translate that abstract concept into a tangible reality? Enter the Prototyper, the master of rapid prototyping. They’re skilled at creating quick and functional models to test the viability and functionality of your ideas before you invest significant resources. All of the people identified here fulfill a need; however, the Prototyper is vital.

The Measurers: They say “you get what you measure,” and that’s especially true when it comes to innovation. The Measurer is responsible for defining what success looks like for your initiative and then tracks your progress towards achieving those goals. This might involve measuring quantitative aspects like the time it takes to bring an idea from conception to launch, or qualitative elements like the valuable lessons learned from even unsuccessful attempts.

The Storytellers: People are wired to respond to stories. The Storyteller on your team is the keeper of the narrative, collecting and sharing the tales of your innovation journey. A well-crafted story can be a powerful tool for inspiring and motivating the entire organization, reminding everyone of the purpose and potential rewards of your innovation efforts.

The Lookouts (aka The Scouts): Innovation thrives on staying ahead of the curve. This is where The Lookout, also known as The Scout, comes in. Their job is to constantly scan the horizon for emerging trends, disruptive technologies, and what your competitors are up to. By anticipating what’s coming down the pipeline, they help your team adapt and innovate even faster. Scouts scan the future to understand how the industry is likely to change. What are the scenarios we might face? What technologies are in development that may affect our business? What might a competitor do that would upset our position in the market? What is hot in other industries that we might adapt?

Using negativity

April 4, 2024 ·

Podcast: Using negativity

3 Min, 54 Sec · By Derek Cheshire

Using negativity, especially within the workplace, is something you should try to do. We all have a few people around us, in our businesses or our circles of friends who are a little bit negative, don't we? I like to call them the Mood Hoovers. Some of them are so bad that they do actually suck the goodness out of you. But they can actually help you without realising it. Reverse or negative brainstorming is absolutely ideal for this. It can be slotted into short periods of time, such as coffee breaks, train journeys, or whilst you're waiting for somebody. And if you're bored, you can always let your mind wander a little and venture off into springboards to. Anyway, if you want to use this technique, then simply select an issue or a topic about which you need to generate some ideas. The fact that some of you will be more familiar with the topic than others in the in a group, doesn't really matter at all for this exercise. Everybody will get benefit from trying out this technique and swapping notes afterwards. The topic you select should be positive and present a possibility.

Click to subscribe: Apple Podcasts | YouTube Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

Some Thoughts On Innovation Ecosystems

Here are a few thoughts on the topic which may help you directly or inspire further thinking.

Diversity is Key

Innovation ecosystems thrive on diversity. A mix of people, ideas, and resources from various backgrounds and industries can spark creative solutions. It’s like a salad bar for innovation, with different ingredients coming together to make something awesome.

Collaboration is the Name of the Game

In these ecosystems, collaboration is more important than competition. Instead of everyone fighting for a piece of the pie, they work together to make the pie bigger. Think of it as a potluck dinner where everyone brings something unique to the table.

Start Small, Dream Big

Many successful innovation ecosystems started small and grew over time. Silicon Valley, for example, began as a cluster of tech companies in a garage. So, even if your innovation ecosystem is just a few passionate folks in a co-working space, don’t be discouraged. Big things can grow from small beginnings!

Global Innovation Ecosystems

I mention these briefly because they come up in popular discussion but there is only one true global Ecosystem that exists and that is our planet which is being slowly destroyed by us. In its former condition, it was a good example but our management of it shows why trying to create another such system to attack global issues is perhaps a pipedream.

My own opinion is that we should mimic nature and create a multitude of much smaller systems that can coexist and in time perhaps merge. Think of the rain forests and the fungi and plants that exist on the forest floor meeting another complementary ecosystem at the edge of the forest. The only danger is that we could accidentally create a poison or the equivalent of an antibiotic that destroys the organic system that we are creating.

If you need a little help with your Innovation Ecosystems then please get in touch …

Do You Suffer From Shiny New Toy Syndrome?

Is AI just a load of hogwash? Is Threads just another pointless distraction? Is Leadership just a load of hocus pocus? Are you suffering from Shiny New Toy Syndrome?

Well, brace yourselves folks, ’cause I’m about to ruffle some feathers with my opening statement. But honestly, I couldn’t care less about that. The purpose of this post is to get those gears in your head turning. And hey, before you slap me with the “anti-everything” label, take a gander at what I actually said. I’m just asking questions here, not making proclamations.

So what’s the big deal then? Let’s talk AI for a moment. It burst onto the scene, its reputation skyrocketing faster than a rocket-powered cheetah. It can speed up our tasks (no kidding), whip up some fancy copy (you bet), and even create art while casually chatting up our customers.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no beef with that. Except for one tiny little thing—it sucks us all into its vortex. We start feeling like total losers if we haven’t given the latest version of ChatGPT a whirl or explored the gazillion cheat sheets and prompt generators out there.

So here’s the deal, my friends: the next time a shiny new thingamajig pops up, ask yourselves these burning questions:

1. What’s the point of it all?
2. How the heck is it gonna help me or my business?
3. And most importantly, how’s it gonna help my customers or their business?

If it can’t offer any help, well, you have two choices—either ignore it like yesterday’s stale croissant or chuck it onto that ever-growing list of intriguing stuff you’ll eventually get around to (yes, just like those management books you bought but haven’t cracked open yet).

Keep on experimenting and keep on learning, my friends! That’s the name of the game.

If you are having trouble with your shiny new toys then I can help …