City Business Library

Embedding Innovation

Robert Foster Red Ochre

© 2015 Red Ochre

Running order

Introductions

What is innovation?

How to recognize and support innovation

How to embed innovation

Be more innovative in your own personal and professional development

How to measure innovation

Be more innovative in your own business support practice

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What is innovation and creativity?

Creativity

The ability to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others

The last legal means to an unfair advantage

Innovation

The process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay

A new method, idea, product etc.

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Market failures -> innovation -> solution

Market failures tend to be identified in one of three ways

Modelling

Academic papers, rigorous and tend to have robust data

Observation

A problem or issue has been observed in others

Experienced

You have come up against a problem and thought you could do better

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Exercise: Market Failures

You are at the bottom (or top) of a hill;

You are on the ground floor (or top floor) of a building

You wish to move from one level to another

Your task

In groups for 10 minutes

List as many alternatives as possible

Are there appropriate markets/applications for these alternatives?

© 2015 Red Ochre Source: Harvard, April 2012

Domain Relevant Skills

Are domain relevant skills necessary?

For evolutionary innovation

Or disruptive innovation?

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Intrinsic Task Motivation

Staff want to fix a problem or deliver a solution

New (CIPD) Model: Hire on attitude, fire on skills

Traditional model: Fire on skills, fire on attitude

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Social Context

Organisational culture

Corporate culture

Blame vs. risk

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Strategic Vision

Now and then drawing exercise (visual brainstorming)

In groups of 3-5 (where social norm is involvement vs. larger groups social norm is to defer to alpha males/females)

Time allowance: 5 minutes now

Time allowance: 5 minutes future

Present to plenary e.g. key messages, objectives, value set

Time allowance: 4 x 2-3 minutes

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Tasks, resources and responsibility

Moving from objective setting, to task prioritisation and allocation or resources and responsibility

Summary of strategy using success criteria derived from group consensus e.g.

Balanced Scorecard

Opportunity evaluation framework (using BSC criteria) id required

Discussion and Q&A

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Creativity Relevant Processes

6 hats

Lateral thinking

Brainstorming / brainswarming

Provocative Action (Po) / Moment to Moment

Synchronise and stabilise / Sprint and scrum

Effectuation

Information, problem, opinion and solution sharing*

Open source / collaborative approach* © 2015 Red Ochre

Six Hats Hat

Like

Focus on

White

Neutral, unbiased in any way, agnostic

Available information, Objective facts

Green

The natural world, New growth

Creation, new growth opportunities, alternatives

Blue

The sky above us

Thinking about thinking, control of the process,

planning

Yellow

The sun, hope and positive logic

Optimism, looking for benefits,

Red

Fire, biased in any way, passionate emotion

Feelings, intuition, hunches

Black

Logical negative

Critical thinking, risk, downsides, consequences

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Brain swarming

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Exercise: Brain swarming

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Exercise: Six Hats

Use the following “hats” to analyse a problem relevant to you (for instance the one of the ones you mentioned during the introduction)

White

Green

Black hats

Propose options/recommendations to group as if you were presenting to a client

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Lateral Thinking

Lateral Thinking is used to escape from established ideas, thought patterns and perceptions in order to find new ideas

Just a tool to stimulate a “Eureka” moment

Provocative Operations (Po)

Moment-to-Moment

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Provocation

Not hypothesis & speculation. We guess at something but cannot prove it

Naturally

Happening e.g. Apple, bath

Received e.g. heard or seen

Setup the Provocative Operation (Po)

Escape.

Drop a positive (never negative) feature e.g. Po dogs don't bark - trained guard dogs press a silent alarm

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Moment to Moment

Visualise moment-to-moment thought experiment

E.g. aeroplane is unstable and needs to be corrected every second -> fly-by-wire fighter craft

E.g. (Po) cars have square wheels, better cars have self-levelling suspension

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Exercise: Securing client meetings

Think of three ways you could try to arrange client meetings for your business support standards assessment

Use White Hat, Yellow Hat and Green Hats

Use PO “I have only 3 hours a week available for this programme”

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Group Exercise

In groups; decide on an organisation or problem to explore

Explore two changes that the owner / manager might implement to develop this company/organisation

If you’re stuck try an Escape to set up a Po (Provocative Action)

Present your recommendations to the group

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MOSCOW (An Agile Methodology)

For each short-listed option consider using the MOSCOW framework

Must Do

Should Do

Could Do

Won’t Do (this time)

This will generate multiple streams / themes of options for later, more in depth evaluation

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Evaluating Innovation – Informal Framework

Define problem / opportunity / function

You should initially be technology agnostic

Explore scenario in context of market

Look at:

Market, marketing, distribution, competition

Organisation, culture, management

Creative approach, technology, protection etc.

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Measuring Innovation

Messen ist wissen (To measure is to know)

Werner von Siemens

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Not everything that can be

counted counts, and not everything that counts can

be counted

Albert Einstein

Metrics - What Should You Measure?

How do you know you are making progress towards

your strategic objectives?

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Ways to Increase Innovation

Stimulate desire and curiosity in your staff

Attitudes to blame and risk

Creative thinking, not merely linear or critical thinking

Effective delegation and empowerment

Technical skills and training

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Action Plan

Innovation in your organisational strategy

Appropriate and achievable changes to your organisational culture

Hire and develop your staff in an appropriate manner

Use attention directing tools when useful

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Exercise: Action plan What will you do?

How will you do it?

Will there be enough

resources / support

given to this?

When / where will

this happen?

Who will make sure

it gets done?

How will you

measure success?

People – domain

relevant skills

People – motivation

People – creativity

processes

Social context –

culture

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Further Reading The Cathedral & the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond, O'Reilly

Better Brainstorming, McKinsey Quarterly, http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Seven_steps_to_better_brainstorming_2767

Brain swarming, Tony McCaffrey, Harvard Business Review, 2014

Edward de Bono, http://edwdebono.com

Online innovation assessment (corporate culture), www.innovation.gov.uk/self_assessment/home. asp? p=assessment

Nesta, http://www.nesta.org.uk/

Innovate UK, https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk (formerly the Technology Strategy Board)

Bethnal Green Ventures, http://bethnalgreenventures.com/

© 2015 Red Ochre