Practical Innovation
Innovation is difficult, by definition. It involves not only risk, but uncertainty - about the future evolution of customer demands, about new sources of competitive threat and about changing industry conditions. Since no organisation has at its disposal the ability to accurately predict these future variables, innovation is inherently hard to do consistently and well.
When pursuing innovation, the challenges that arise from uncertainty about the future are compounded by the multi-faceted nature of innovation itself. How should organisations choose between continuous, incremental innovations in processes to drive cost efficiencies, versus the development and introduction of new products and services, versus business model innovation to disrupt existing markets, versus the pursuit of risky radical innovations with large up-front costs and long lead times, but potentially vast pay-offs? Any organisation possesses only limited resources and organisational attention to apply to innovative projects. Particularly problematic is the fact that there is no optimal portfolio of innovations that applies to all organisations regardless of sector, location, size or age – in innovation, there is no ‘one size fits all’.
While many organisations now recognise the critical importance of practising systematic innovation, very few have implemented a fully resourced, managed innovation process that continuously renews and balances risk amongst a portfolio of innovation projects. Fewer still have developed a well articulated innovation strategy that sets the selection criteria for funding of new development projects or decision rules for killing experiments that look likely to fail. Yet fewer have integrated their innovation strategy into their broader strategic planning process, with linked metrics and performance criteria that keep the two in step.
At the same time, the advent of the web, and especially so-called web 2.0 technologies, have dramatically lowered the cost of information and collaboration. This, plus recognition of the ever-increasing complexity of knowledge relevant to an organisation’s innovation decisions, has also led to a focus on open innovation, thus widening the scope for who can and should be involved, whether internal or external to the firm. Innovation is not only difficult, but is itself continuing to evolve as new technologies, behaviours, practices and business models emerge.
At Vulture Street we believe that innovation will always be inherently difficult, by its very nature. We also recognise how hard it is for organisations to learn, adapt and change. For this reason we steer clear of pretending that we have the magic framework or key to creativity that will unlock your organisation’s innovation capability. Instead, we focus on providing practical, useful tools and approaches that allow innovation capacity to be built one step at a time.
We do this first and foremost with our jam service, which provides a simple, practical mechanism to get the right people focused on the issues and opportunities that matter most for your organisation right now. The jam approach can be used to reach deep into the corners of your organisation to find the best and brightest new innovation opportunities; it can be used to catalyse or accelerate collaboration with customers, suppliers or other external partners; or it can be used to tackle a wide range of common but complex organisational problems.
Importantly, Vulture Street’s jam approach can add value whether your organisation is specifically pursuing innovation or not. Our jam services slot neatly in to many organisational decision making processes, with some of our customers using a jam to:
Innovation is difficult, by definition. It involves not only risk, but uncertainty - about the future evolution of customer demands, about new sources of competitive threat and about changing industry conditions. Since no organisation has at its disposal the ability to accurately predict these future variables, innovation is inherently hard to do consistently and well.
When pursuing innovation, the challenges that arise from uncertainty about the future are compounded by the multi-faceted nature of innovation itself. How should organisations choose between continuous, incremental innovations in processes to drive cost efficiencies, versus the development and introduction of new products and services, versus business model innovation to disrupt existing markets, versus the pursuit of risky radical innovations with large up-front costs and long lead times, but potentially vast pay-offs? Any organisation possesses only limited resources and organisational attention to apply to innovative projects. Particularly problematic is the fact that there is no optimal portfolio of innovations that applies to all organisations regardless of sector, location, size or age – in innovation, there is no ‘one size fits all’.
While many organisations now recognise the critical importance of practising systematic innovation, very few have implemented a fully resourced, managed innovation process that continuously renews and balances risk amongst a portfolio of innovation projects. Fewer still have developed a well articulated innovation strategy that sets the selection criteria for funding of new development projects or decision rules for killing experiments that look likely to fail. Yet fewer have integrated their innovation strategy into their broader strategic planning process, with linked metrics and performance criteria that keep the two in step.
At the same time, the advent of the web, and especially so-called web 2.0 technologies, have dramatically lowered the cost of information and collaboration. This, plus recognition of the ever-increasing complexity of knowledge relevant to an organisation’s innovation decisions, has also led to a focus on open innovation, thus widening the scope for who can and should be involved, whether internal or external to the firm. Innovation is not only difficult, but is itself continuing to evolve as new technologies, behaviours, practices and business models emerge.
At Vulture Street we believe that innovation will always be inherently difficult, by its very nature. We also recognise how hard it is for organisations to learn, adapt and change. For this reason we steer clear of pretending that we have the magic framework or key to creativity that will unlock your organisation’s innovation capability. Instead, we focus on providing practical, useful tools and approaches that allow innovation capacity to be built one step at a time.
We do this first and foremost with our jam service, which provides a simple, practical mechanism to get the right people focused on the issues and opportunities that matter most for your organisation right now. The jam approach can be used to reach deep into the corners of your organisation to find the best and brightest new innovation opportunities; it can be used to catalyse or accelerate collaboration with customers, suppliers or other external partners; or it can be used to tackle a wide range of common but complex organisational problems.
Importantly, Vulture Street’s jam approach can add value whether your organisation is specifically pursuing innovation or not. Our jam services slot neatly in to many organisational decision making processes, with some of our customers using a jam to:
- Discover potential issues related to a significant plant re-location from employees directly and indirectly affected by the move, to feed into design and configuration plans for the new site;
- Complete the embedding of a new efficiency-driven work process by providing an action-oriented forum for unintended consequences and unforeseen human resource issues to be addressed;
- Find ways to improve operational and strategic integration across three highly independent business divisions;
- Maximise the impact of a costly one day workshop involving senior managers from diverse geographic locations;
- Identify and evaluate potential strategic responses to a set of long term scenarios outlining possible consumer behaviour and market trends.
Regardless of the type of challenge being addressed by a jam, and whether it relates to a problem or an opportunity, the approach consistently delivers an important secondary effect with respect to ownership and transparency of ideas and opinions (both positive and negative). This accelerates cultural maturity in the organisation and can assist with easing the transition to a more systematic and constructive approach to experimentation, learning and failure – all critical cultural aspects of a high-performing innovation process.
For those organisations that have begun the journey to a fully managed innovation process, Vulture Street can assist with our innovation audit package, which compares each aspect of the organisation’s current innovation activities against established best practice. This produces a gap analysis and set of recommendations that may cover changes to skills, incentives, funding, processes, technology or strategy.
