BLOG ON INNOVATION AND TRANSFORMATION
Tools and strategies to innovate, solve complex issues, and transform businesses
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What drives leaders to invest in transformative innovation?
If you plan to introduce or increase the volume on transformative innovation in your organisation, expect pushback to say the least. Still, some leaders manage to overcome all obstacles.
In this article I want to highlight three powerful drivers behind the success of leaders who managed to create a capability for transformative innovation within their organisation.
So what drives leaders to invest in transformative innovation?
Fear of disruption
Hunger for growth
Awareness of an unforeseeable future
The road from Tackers to Thinkers50
I learnt recently that Alex, Yves, Alan and myself have been shortlisted for the 2021 Strategy Award for our work on The Invincible Company.
I wish I could say that I had never hoped for such recognition… but that would not be entirely true!
In this blogpost I want to tell the story of my 5-year journey from Tackers 2016 to Thinkers50 and express gratitude to the exceptional people in my life who helped me along the way.
Experimentation is your path to growth!
Large organisations won’t be able to tackle 21st century business challenges without a strong experimentation capability.
In this blogpost I explain why experimentation is so critical to manage the high uncertainty of new business ideas, what the iterative innovation process looks like, and how experimentation unlocks value creation in terms of new products, services and business models.
Leadership support for innovation needs more than good intentions
Despite their best intentions, attempts by senior leaders in large organisations to set up a thriving innovation capability can end up in bitter disappointment.
In this blogpost I outline the five acts of a CORPORATE INNOVATION drama I’ve seen unfold too many times, and what leaders can put in place to create a virtuous circle towards better outcomes from innovation.
Two Questions to Gauge the Importance of Corporate Innovation in any Organisation
How to quickly assess the state of corporate innovation in any organisation?
In this blogpost I explain how to use two simple questions to leaders as a good predictor of how important innovation is considered in any organisation.
Use those questions before you can do a more detailed assessment.
Interview on Innovation Ecosystems
In this interview I answer all the questions from my fellow Strategyzer Advisor Christian Doll on innovation ecosystems, a critical topic to build long-term resilience in large organisations.
An Example from the Pharma Industry on How To Build a Thriving Innovation Ecosystem
It takes time and investment to create a sustainable innovation ecosystem, and it requires many decisions along the way.
In this post I show how a Pharma company I’m working with is balancing their short-term and long-term objectives as they navigate their way to building a thriving innovation ecosystem.
The 3 Elements of an Innovation Ecosystem
Developing an innovation capability within a large organization is a daunting prospect. It’s become clear in the last few years that it requires a more systemic approach.
In this post I explain the three core elements required to build an innovation ecosystem: explore portfolio + innovation programs + exploration culture.
Align your Innovation Ecosystem Stakeholders with Clear Explore Guidance
Letting the wrong projects into the Explore portfolio can be a very costly mistake for corporate innovation leaders.
In this article I show how leaders can align the various stakeholders of their innovation ecosystem and bring clarity on their priorities and the boundaries of their exploration with explicit Explore Guidance.
You can’t pick the winners at the start, in transformative innovation… and pro basketball!
The hindsight bias leads to overconfidence regarding our ability to predict the outcomes of future events. In the field of innovation, this often causes leaders to invest in the wrong ideas.
In this post I show how leaders who want transformative innovation outcomes should start by acknowledging the hindsight bias, and accept that “they can’t pick the winners at the start”.
Books that most influenced my work in 2020
In this post I reflect on the most useful books on innovation and business transformation I read in 2020.
Below are the four books I referred the most to fellow practitioners, clients and friends.
My 2020 writing year in review
I tried to maintain good writing habits in 2020, despite my consulting workload and the impact of the pandemic.
In this post you can find the links to:
12 posts for the Strategyzer blog (that I update regularly on my personal blog),
A white paper: “Chasing European Unicorns” by AmCham, that I contributed to,
The Invincible Company webpage, the book I co-authored and that was released in April 2020.
Innovation Inception: three ideas that unlock innovation in the minds of leaders
In this post I highlight the three fundamental ideas that leaders need to make their own to unleash the transformative innovation potential of their organisations:
1. Exploration is fundamentally different from exploitation,
2. There are different types of innovation: efficiency, sustaining and transformative,
3. To achieve more transformative innovation, you need to bring more volume into your innovation portfolio.
How to unlock better innovation outcomes with the 3 types of innovation framework
In a previous post I explained that, to bring clarity to any conversation on innovation, you need to distinguish between three different types of innovation, heavily borrowed from Harvard professor Clayton Christensen: efficiency, sustaining, and transformative innovation.
In this post I highlight 3 more use cases where the 3 types of innovation framework unlocks radically better innovation outcomes in large organisations by helping to:
Provide better innovation guidance
Assess the balance of an innovation portfolio
Check alignment of a portfolio with expectations
What type of innovation are you talking about?
People often misunderstand each other when they talk about innovation.
In this post I explain how Corporate Innovation Leaders can use the 3 types of innovation framework to bring clarity to their communication on innovation.
How does it feel to become a published author?
In this post I share the anecdote of when Alex Osterwalder went off script when we were recording videos for The Invincible Company and asked me how it felt to become a published author. That question almost choked me… to his great amusement!
How to take The Guesswork Out of Innovation
In innovation and exploration, it is crucial to measure whether you are reducing the risk and uncertainty of new business ideas before you invest big and scale. In this blogpost I introduce the 4 innovation metrics you need to track on very innovation project to take the guesswork out of innovation. RISK, POTENTIAL, TIME and COST.
Three New Tools You Need to Master to Build an Invincible Company
In this article, I introduce three innovation tools that executives and corporate innovation leaders can use to better manage innovation in a large organization: the Strategic Guidance framework, the Portfolio Map and the Culture Map.
Lessons from Hilti on What it Takes to Shift from a Product to a Service Business Model
In this blogpost I illustrate one of the business model patterns, the shift from product to service, with Hilti. And I go behind-the-scenes with Dr. Christoph Loos, CEO of Hilti, to understand what it takes to lead such a business transformation.
How to Use Patterns to Shift an Outdated Business Model to a More Competitive One
No business model can live forever. In this post I show how business model patterns can help executives and innovation teams think through how to substantially improve their current business model by shifting it from a less competitive to a more competitive one.