January 4, 2013

Issue 14 January 4, 2013

1. 21 Innovators on What Well Be Doing in 2013............................................... Mari Anixter

2. How Renaming the C-Suite Can Spark Innovation ...... Luis Gallardo

3. Igniting Innovators DNA to Flourish in 2013 ....... Janet Sernack

4. Think Like Nature to Innovate .............................. Jocelyn Atkinson and Michael Graber

5. Technologies for the Emerging Digital Universe .... Steve Todd

6. January 2nd Kick Off ... Donna Sturgess

7. 6 Digital Trends to Watch in 2013 ........ Greg Satell

8. Why a Common Language Matters for Innovation ....... Jeffrey Phillips

9. Let Me Speak! ........ Drew Boyd

10. Why Corporate Culture is Important for Innovation ..... Jeffrey Phillips

Your hosts, Braden Kelley, Julie Anixter and Rowan Gibson, are innovation writers, speakers and

strategic advisors to many of the worlds leading companies.

Our mission is to help you achieve innovation excellence inside your own organization by making

innovation resources, answers, and best practices accessible for the greater good.

Cover Image credit: Close Up Champagne Explosion

21 Innovators on What Well Be Doing in 2013

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Mari Anixter

What will innovators be doing in 2013? When we asked a sampling of our authors/bloggers/community members, inspiration for the New Year

tumbled forth! Thank you for big picture predictions, personal proclamations and some gorgeous wishes. If even 50% of these come true it will

make for a great new year.

Scott Bowden

IBM Global Services

1. Innovators Will Be Surfing

I am approaching 2013 like a surfer floating in the ocean scanning the horizon. I am looking for the next big innovation wave to ride, trying to

make sense of a churning sea of one wave after another, counting to see which is the seventh wave, which in surfing lore is usually the best to

ride. I worry that there is such an intense focus on innovation as a corporate panacea that as a practitioner I might choose a wave that is too big

to ride. I have to remind myself that the smaller waves will still get me to the shore and, more importantly, in one piece.

Nicolas Bry

Orange Innovation Group

2. Innovators Will Have Timely Dialogue

I wish Innovation will feature a timely dialogue in 2013 involving active co-creation, modular design, sparkling collaboration. This will ensure

constant knowledge circulation across the innovation team riding in a collective adventure.

- Timely means to me finding appropriate time to listen to and the tolerance to sometimes not to be listened to!

- Catching the right moment for innovation to connect people, leveraging on digital to deliver a meaningful impact in a humanistic and social

approach.

Lea Carey

Principal of TheHealthMaven, LLC, IX Healthcare Editor

3. Innovators Will Focus on Digital Healthcare around Lifestyle and Wellness

It will be huge in 2013. Consumers will become more engaged in their own healthcare; employers and health plans will continue to search for

the secret sauce to keep everyone healthy, reduce healthcare costs, and improve outcomes. Social media will be a key driver to move

innovations forwardand forward.

Dean DeBiase

Serial CEO and Chairman of Reboot Partners, Innovation Excellence, Entertainment.com and co-author of The Big Moo with Seth Godin

4. Innovators Will Be Answering to Multinational CEOs and Boards

CEOs and boards will be looking to their chief innovation officers, and key leaders, to move beyond incremental innovation and deliver on

creative ideas that reboot slow growth sectors and make more significant impacts to their core business. Three key areas will be 1. Impacting

the next generation of global growth with new product, service and customer/client programs; 2. Innovative, lower cost, partnerships the move

the needle and their brands into new product/service areas or create entire new market categories altogether; and 3. Innovative ways to

restructure the way they operate and deliver value, with systemic changes to the cost side of their business and driving smart/significant

efficiencies through deeper adoption of technology, the Internet and social media.

Rowan Gibson

Co-founder of Innovation Excellence and the author of Innovation to the Core

5. Innovators Will Be Executing

As the field the business discipline of Innovation Management continues to evolve in 2013, the general shift will be from idea

generation to idea execution. All those ideation sessions, creative competitions and open innovation efforts have already produced scores of

potential new opportunities for the organizations involved. Most of them are now struggling to turn at least the most promising of those

opportunities into adequately funded and professionally managed projects with enough momentum and political support to stand a good chance

of successful commercialization. Thats the challenge the bottleneck that is now keeping a lot of highly committed innovation VPs and

managers up at night: Where can I find the money, the people and the time to put behind all these great ideas? Solving this challenge will be

a major focus for organizations in 2013 as they continue their efforts to embed a deep, sustainable capability for innovation excellence.

Judith Glaser

CEO, Benchmark Communications, Inc. & Co-founder at Creating WE Institute and author of six books including TRUST At the Moment of

Contact to be published in 2013

6. Innovators Will Be Focusing on Co-creating Conversations

on changing how we communicate with each other from power-over to power-with conversations which inspires our aspirational thinking

about the future. The more we learn to shape conversational spaces, the more we are able to bring our greatest wisdom and insights into the

world. Human beings are designed to co-create. The more we learn about how to shape conversational environments for co-creation, the more

we will set the stage for deeper musings, for more profound innovations and for more powerful conversations to emerge around the world. We

are now poised to learn, grow and nourish each others greatness co-creating conversations will lead the way.

Neale Godfrey

CEO of Green$treets Inc. Just launched a bestselling App for kids 5-8 that teaches financial and ecological responsibility. Greenstreets:

Unleash the Loot! Author of 17 books that deal with money, life skills, and value issues.

7. Innovators Will Keep on Creating the Need

Innovators have to not only react to the needs of the populace, innovators have to actually create the need. True innovators will continue to stay

in front of the curve. An innovator has to listen, really listen to their market and collaborate to develop meaningful solutions to problems that

heretofore, did not have apparent solutions. 2013 will bring that open, honest dialogue of collaboration to make the world a better place, starting

with kids and families.

Paul Hobcraft

Frequent IX contributor and Innovation Knowledge Consultant who divides his time and Innovation Advisory services between Switzerland and

Asia.

8. Innovators Will Be Figuring Out the Power of the Innovation Bubbling Up

And how to harness these insights into winning products quickly. As we grapple with all the value (and pitfalls) of social media, increasing

avenues for our customers to connect and the world of innovators all around us in collaborations and through open innovation, the ability to

capture all this open bubbling energy will need new ways to capture and interpret all of this into new offerings that can be channel back down

into those meaningful products and services wanted. This will require increasingly nimble organizations, agile, responsive and prepared to

invest in this more risky and fast changing environment, through new business models and innovation practices.

Joan Holman

Author, Internet Marketing Guru and Book Marketing Diva at Joan Holman Productions and IX Publishing Editor

9. Innovators Will Harness the Explosion in Self Publishing

Disruptive innovation in the publishing industry has created a profound transformation that is shaking the industry to its roots and has forever

changed how books are produced, distributed and marketed. The stigma of self-publishing will continue to disappear and the shift to self-

publishing will accelerate in 2013. Entrepreneurs and innovators will join the new Gold Rush in Indie publishing by providing an array of

products and services for the needs of Indie authors that helps them publish and market better, smarter and more effectively. Opportunities will

lie in making books more appealing and more discoverable to target markets, as well as tapping into the fast-growing markets in 2013 for

English-language books outside the United States.

Saul Kaplan

Founder and Chief Catalyst Business Innovation Factory and author of The Business Model Innovation Factory: How to Stay Relevant

when the World Is Changing

10. Innovators Will Move from Tweaks to Transformation

2012 was great for innovators. Our voice & collaboration muscle got stronger. The big trend now is self-organizing purposeful networks. In 2013

lets put our networks to work to solve the big social challenges we face including education, healthcare and energy. Lets go from tweaks to

transformation in 2013.

Braden Kelley

Co-Founder of Innovation Excellence, Pull Marketing Strategist and author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

11. Innovators Will Be Created and ICE Will Become HOT

More organizations in 2013 will realize that innovators are not born, but created, and that they can take tangible actions to create them. These

include leveraging the Nine Innovation Roles framework to build more efficient and effective innovation teams, and training their employees,

members, or students to increase their ICE skills:

Invention and Insight - Augment your peoples capabilities in the Value Creation component of innovation by focusing on

prototyping, ideation tools like SCAMPER, and creative problem solving techniques. Build up your peoples insight capabilities by

giving them access to Voice of the Customer data, which is even more plentiful now in this age of social media monitoring, and

training them in an insight generation methodology like the Four Lenses of Innovation from Rowans book Innovation to the Core.

Collaboration and Communication - Improve your peoples communication skills and encouraging collaboration to improve their

success at the Value Access and Value Translation components of innovation.

Entrepreneurship and Execution - Help your people move from having an idea to changing the world by teaching them

entrepreneurial and execution fundamentals like conducting a market assessment and feasibility study and the basics of crafting a

business case or a business plan. Moving from mind to market is the second key to success in the Value Creation component of

innovation.

So if you are not already offering ICE education to your employees, members, or students, it is never too late to start. Who knows, the next

innovator you create might cure cancer, end world hunger, or at least help your organization survive, thrive, or possibly help to change the

world for the better. To continue my mission of making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, instead of selling them for a profit,

in 2013 I will be making the design for my Nine Innovation Roles cards freely available so that everyone can get card decks printed on

demand in the USA or wherever you might be for only the costs of printing (stay tuned).

Lou Killeffer

IX Marketing Editor and Principal Five Mile River Marketing

12. Innovators Will Bridge the Private and Public Sectors

in finding new solutions to age-old problems. Policymakers facing waves of escalating troubles will reach out to leading innovation

practitioners for aggressively fresh approaches to seemingly intractable issues. Innovators new to public policy, those traditionally trained to

create solutions within corporations, will respond; launching a new wave of experiment and possibilities at both the city and state levels. Such a

new model will at first be dismissed; then accepted; then applauded.

Patrick Meyer

Business 3.0 expert/advisor to Fortune 500 leaders and emerging mobile/social start-ups, The CEO Futurist speaker and author of the new,

future-focused insight and innovation book Steve Jobs & The World of Mobile

13. Business/Brands Will Finally Wake Up to Mobile as the #1 Business Driver (not just a media-like vehicle)

Steve Jobs innovation magic finally surfaces in at least 2 new Apple introductions vs Tim Cook conservative upgrades repeatedly!

(Jobs reported 4 year pipeline finally is allowed to come to market, totally new iphone, Apple TV, totally new tablet solution, Apple e-

wallet.)

Showrooming becomes a massive phenomenaevery day, every place consumers shop

Tap it becomes a world unlocking behavior via NFC (say good bye to QR, paper based coupons, even many wallet occasions)

Big Data becomes the big deal ( shift from reach/frequency media to ROI focused marketing)

Life shifting Baby Boomers re-exert their power (based on dissatisfaction with the coming golden years looking tarnished)

Facebook check-in exceeds Google search to upset the digital world (billion users checking in hourly on smartphones)

Siri becomes the solution to the text-when-driving crisis and more.

Strategic Winners (Amazon.com, Apple, Google, Verizon) and Strategic Losers (Best Buy, Microsoft, ATT, Blackberry) become even

more apparent to all

Sarah Miller Caldicott

Great grandniece of Thomas Edison and CEO of Power Patterns of Innovation, and author of Midnight Lunch, Innovate Like Edison and

Inventing the Future

14. Innovators Will See the Contributions of Artificial Intelligence to the Innovation Process

With the continued global proliferation of smart devices, as well as expanding linkage between the mainstream Internet and the Industrial

Internet (the internet of things), collaboration will become a crucial superskill to harness input from both machines and humans.

Kevin Riley

Principal, Kevin Riley & Associates | Health Model Innovation focusing on helping companies thrive where consumerism and reform-era health

care converge

15. Innovators Will Focus on Minimalism

Instead of doing more with less innovators will do less and make more using techniques like minimum viable product. Healthcare will

unfortunately still take the opposite approach. I will wait until my 2014 or 2105 prediction of that day.

Wayne Simmons

Co-Founder and CEO of The Growth Strategy Company and co-author of GrowthThinking: Building the New Growth Enterprise

16. Conventional Innovation Speak Will Become More Precise

We see six types of business innovation (1) Service Innovation, (2) Strategic Innovation, (3) Business Model Innovation, (4) Customer

Innovation, (5) Value Innovation, (6) Design Innovation offering companies levers that can be deconstructed and reconstructed as part of

overall growth strategy. It will be important to distinguish between them and explain them coherently to all of the stakeholders.

Donna Sturgess

President of Buyology Inc., IX Ideas Editor and Author of Eyeballs Out: How to Step into Another World, Discover New Ideas and Make

Your Business Thrive

17. Ideas Will Be Evaluated through Non-Conscious Research

Aggressive companies are already doing it. The rationale is compelling greater differentiation among ideas is revealed by tapping the deeper

motivations for choice. Innovators will discover significant new insights when they measure consumers non-conscious response to their

concepts and executions. Continuing to work the same old ways will not do in 2013, as the pressure for growth continues to rise.

Maria B. Thompson

Director of Innovation Strategy, Motorola Solutions

18. Innovators Will Keep Asking the Question How Might We Make Everyone in our Corporations Catalysts for Change?

Innovation is just a sexy name for Change Management or Management of Change. We all have creative energies and abilities. We may not

know how to unleash or to apply them. In 2013, lets all make a resolution to embrace change in all its wonder. Lets not shy away from

opportunities or avoid risk-taking. Heck, lets all take a chance on something new! Like Mahatma Gandhi once said Be the change you want to

see in the world.

Steve Todd

EMC Fellow and Director of EMCs Global Innovation Network

19. High-tech Innovators Will Continue to Focus on Cloud and Security

For the cloud, CIOs will begin deploying software-defined data centers as a strategy to keep costs down and devote more IT budget to

innovative output. The rise of software-defined data centers will be accompanied by an increased focus on information security. Information will

assume increasing economic value; new software security techniques must be created to protect that value.

Scott Williams

CEO and Founder, Maga Design

20. Innovators Will Insist on Visual Communications

as the organizational world becomes increasingly visual in its appetites. CEOs and their communications apparatus will insist on simplified

communications for obvious reasons. Pinterest will become a role model. And in a huge stress reliever, when we work and collaborate together,

we will also draw together. And we will still depend on maps of all kinds to help us see where we want to go.

Julie Anixter

Executive Editor, Co-Founder Innovation Excellence, Chief Innovation Officer, Maga Design and co-author of The Big Moo with Seth Godin

21. Innovators will Focus on Developing Authentic Relationships

between brands and consumers, between the environment and the populace, the haves and the have nots and all the aspiration therein,

between buyers and sellers, the CEO and their constituent publics, and especially the potential for relationship expressed in the untapped,

unmet needs that get expressed every second in the sphere of social media. Call it conversation, call it opportunity, cal l it desire, its VAST.

We look forward to developing great relationships with all of you this year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Innovation Excellence Team

image credit: photo used with permission of Trey Ratcliff, www.stuckincustoms.com

Mari Anixter is Managing Editor for Innovation Excellence. She is a communications professional living in New Mexico.

How Renaming the C-Suite Can Spark Innovation

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Luis Gallardo

Todays business leaders need to adjust their way of thinking. The world is

changing faster than ever before, and executives must be able to think holistically

and act personally to stay ahead of the curve. Making this a reality requires

organizations to refocus their approach to the C-Suite. New titles for CXOs such

as chief of reason, chief resilience officer, and chief rouser will open the door to

innovation like never before.

Problems With the Current C-Suite Model

The conventional structure of our organizations and management teams was well suited to many of the challenges of the 20th century, but not

todays world. For example, a focus was needed on marketing and customer service, so companies appointed a chief marketing officer.

Financial skills and management expertise are clearly vital, hence the rise of the chief financial officer. And when it comes to the black art of

managing people, the chief people officer (HR Director) takes responsibility.

However, this approach has always had one major flaw, and now another problem has evolved. The perennial problem is that the responsibility

for delivering to customers doesnt rest on one individual or even one department. It has never been solely the responsibility of the CMO.

Rather, everyone works in service of current and potential clients.

Similarly, when managing people or finance, having someone with the necessary skills working constantly to improve their area of the company

is great, but these advantages are outweighed by the benefits of holding everyone responsible for important issues. Or, to put it another way,

the mere presence of a CFO means that some people can choose to neglect their financial responsibilities, safe in the knowledge that the CFO

and her team will provide cover.

Another problem with this approach has been present for a while, and has recently become acute. Appointing a CFO, CMO, COO, or any of the

conventional C-Suite members is too internally focused and fails to take into account the changes necessary to accomplish the following:

Think holistically and recognize that issues cut across these functions.

Act personally and take responsibility for improving the organization and delivering its strategy or goals.

Refocus everyone in the organization on six vital issues: the 6Rs or reason, revenue, rousers, reputation, relationships, and

resilience. These are complementary to each other and each is part of the framework that helps you create value, competitive

advantage, and sustainable growth.

Renaming the C-Suite is vital not only because of the external changes shaping the world in which we live, but also because of the need to

understand the big picture and balance this with a practical, execution-oriented approach that reflects the desire for strong, capable leadership.

How Renaming Can Inspire Current Leaders

In most organizations, people wish to leave it better than when they arrived: they aspire to deliver quality as well as achieve recognition and

reward. This should come as no surprise after all, very few successful people are content to simply work on a pointless endeavor for long.

The challenge, therefore, is to help people find meaning in their work: the element that they value and enjoy as well as the recognition of where

they fit within the organizations work. The 6Rs provide a great framework for this: they can help people understand what they do, why they do

it, and their wider impact and benefit. They can connect with other people both inside and outside the organization and work with a

common purpose.

In order to implement the 6Rs, the C-Suite needs to be renamed around them so executives can feel a new sense of purpose and direction in

how they manage. Titles are labels that imply responsibility and accountability. If there are new responsibilities, it is important to name them

and to appoint somebody to lead them and assign the right resources to make it a success. Revamping titles and organization of top execs like

this is an amazing way to breathe new life into your business and pave the way for new ideas.

How Renaming Can Attract the Right Employees

In order to be one step ahead today in business, you must have continuous innovation and a strong sense of purpose. Renaming is a way to

ensure that change is embraced and welcome. It sends a signal outward as well as inward. People who get excited and feel challenged with

change will acknowledge that signal and want to work for you.

Big changes like this can feel risky, but ultimately you will attract more potential employees who are better suited for your company and who will

enjoy contributing to your innovation and growth. Then the more you have to choose from with each job opening, the more selective you can

be, and you will gain higher quality employees.

Change is one constant that can be counted upon, and change now needs to be re-evaluated in relation to the way we manage our

organizations. Dont be afraid to make a big statement with a big change and jump ahead of your competition. After all, the only thing harder

than predicting the future is trying to ignore it.

image credit: talentmgt.com

Luis Gallardo is a global brand and marketing leader and an expert in strategic brand management, brand engagement,

brand expression, marketing, communications, business development, and reputation management. Former managing

director of global brand and marketing at Deloitte, Luis provided leadership to Deloittes network of 3000 marketing and

communications professionals. He is the author of Brands & Rousers.

Igniting Innovators DNA to Flourish in 2013

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Janet Sernack

At ImagineNation we acknowledge that innovation is the result of a

COLLISION between different perspectives and thought patterns. In our

programs we initiate intentional and constructive collisions that disrupt the status

quo and cultivate peoples provocative competence. This enables people to

develop, manifest and maximize the creative intelligence required to be

innovative.

People learn how to challenge and question existing perspectives and

thought patterns in deeply disruptive and provocative ways.

Research reveals that all successful innovators take responsibility for facilitating the innovation process, they dont delegate it, and they do it

themselves! They intentionally stimulate, activate and generate new perspectives and thought patterns that lead to the discovery of innovative

ideas and solutions. Authors Jeffrey H. Dyer, Hal B. Gregersen, Clayton Christensen, in their recent article The Innovators DNA in HBR,

outlines the results of their six year study to uncover the origins of creative and often disruptive business strategies in particularly innovative

companies. Their research led them to identify five discovery skills that distinguish the most creative executives:

. Associating

. Questioning

. Observing

. Experimenting

. Networking

They found that innovative entrepreneurs (who are also CEOs) spend 50% more time on these discovery activities than do CEOs with no track

record for innovation.

Underlying these five critical skill sets are the Innovation Be-ing States or Mindsets

that drive the Behaviours that result in the development of these skills.

Associating; is the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems

or ideas from different fields.

To develop this skill we need to cultivate an open mind and adopt divergent

thinking processes; which is able to view questions, problems and ideas from the

outside or from the whole.

To understand and deconstruct issues by taking a whole systems perspective, considering global competition, instability and

uncertainty, product and market analysis, cost /benefit analysis to expose and/or make the connections.

Questioning; is the willingness and ability to constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom, status quo and operating

assumptions. It requires us to imagine and synthesize opposites and embrace constraints.

To develop this skill set we need to cultivate an open heart, be detached and curious, seek possibilities and pay deep attention.

To learn how be present and deeply attend to one another, to listen and ask questions at the generative level. To challenge the status

quo by inquiring and constructively debating to achieve high levels or meta thinking to generate imaginative and creative ideas and

unexpected solutions.

Observing; is the ability to pay deep attention by scrutinizing common phenomena to gain insights about new ways of doing things.

To develop this skill set we need to be able to perceive and sense the operating patterns from the whole system perspective.

To zoom in to the detail and tactical aspects as well as to zoom up to the conceptual and strategic aspects of the question, problem or

idea.

To work with, and not against, what could be wanting to emerge from the whole.

Experimenting; is the ability to actively try our new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots. It requires us to construct interactive

experiences and to try and provoke unorthodox responses to see what insights emerge.

To develop this skills set we need to create the openings, or right hand turns and inflection points that transform questions, problems

and ideas into innovative opportunities.

To accept that failure is a natural part of doing business, allowing people to fail small, fast and cheaply to create the safe space for

mitigating risk.

To be courageous by creating new opportunities for learning and change through experimentation and prototyping by be-ing adaptive,

persistent and resilient.

Networking; is the willingness to devote time and energy to finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse individuals. Going out of

their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives to extend their own knowledge domains.

To develop this skill we need to cultivate an open will, be detached and listen for the possibility in every encounter.

To constantly interact with others to create, notice and act upon chance opportunities and make successful decisions by using

intuition and gut feelings.

To be willing to be intentionally disruptive & deviant, to dispute the status quo, to shift perceptions & create openings as to what could

be.

To generatively debate, not to win, or be right, but to create unconventional and unexpected ideas and solutions.

At ImagineNation www.imaginenation.co.il, we have over thirty years of experience in corporate consulting and learning projects with some of

Israels and Australasias top 100 companies. We have integrated and evolved our successes and learnings to create our own innovative

approach and methodologies to bring these mindsets, behavior and skills to life. We can enable you to learn, practice, practice, practice and

apply these skills to be more successful and innovative in 2013. We call them, the Art of Provocative Competence; an innovative and

entrepreneurial way of thinking, doing and be-ing that engages harnesses and maximizes the imagination, creativity and potential for innovation

from your most costly and valuable resource, your people. We have three learning streams:

1. Coach for Innovators Certified Program http://www.imaginenation.co.il/coach-for-innovators/

2. The Start-Up Game http://www.imaginenation.co.il/the-start-up-game/

3. Team Innovation Labs.

Finally, be courageous and put your own unique ding in the universe in 2103 by:

Seeking the connections to seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.

Constantly asking questions to challenge and disrupt the status quo, conventional wisdom and operating assumptions.

Experimenting with new ideas and taking more risks.

Testing ideas through networking and debating with deviant and diverse others to extend your knowledge domain.

Embracing and crystallizing a powerful vision for innovation and change!

image credit: reorbit.com

Janet Sernack is the Founder & CEO ImagineNation. She is an ICf certified executive coach and experiential learning

specialist with expertise in adaptive leadership and team effectiveness. Janet facilitates a weekly business network in

Zichron Yaakov, Israel, for English speaking business owners and entrepreneurs.

Think Like Nature to Innovate

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Jocelyn Atkinson and Michael Graber

Nature stores many business success lessons for those smart enough to see

them. Companies that prove able to interpret and transfer creations learnings

to its own culture prosper on an on-going basis.

When it comes to pragmatically producing innovations, businesses and people

tasked with a new product or service pipeline would do well to take notes from

the chrysalis process.

First, note the fragile eggs. If they are not on the right host, in the right

environment, they die. These eggs include new incremental ideas, adjacent products or services, and breakthrough business ideas that change

the landscape and create a new category and leadership position. At this stage, they all look the same, have a high mortality rate, and need

care and support. They are nurtured by white boarding, customer co-creation workshops, and further discovery.

Second, see the larval caterpillar. Eric Caryles famous childrens classic The Hungry Caterpillar provides the right image for this stage. Here

the hungry concept grows and eats, and molts and grows, and eats more. This stage of development is where the innovation concept is fed

benchmarking studies, modeled out in different sizes, played with in workshops, and where financial cases are drafted. The concept is cared for

via the imagination, potential, and excitement. Keep away from internal politics and cocoon the concept with access to a humble, separate

budget if the prototypes and preliminary numbers look positive and realistic.

Third, the chrysalis: this is where the magic happens. Just as a Vespa could no more imagine itself transmuting into a Lear jet, the humble

concept cannot envision itself taking flight. Here, all cells turn into liquid, totally fluiddo not lose sight of the significance of this metaphor:

totally fluid. In this creative, primordial soup, they become the alchemical agent, known to science as imaginal cells.

These imaginal cells transmute into something much bigger, more beautiful, and with a different nature than the original concept. The process,

to extend our overarching analogy, happens when teams come together with a sense of mission and possibility and infuse the concept with

radical perspective of what can be.

It is a visionary exercise and those who only criticize or only see limits and hurdle should not be allowed in the room at this stage. They are not

fluid enough to learn how to fly.

You know the end of the story: the sublime butterfly, new eggs, the process begins again. But, are you creative and smart enough to apply the

age-old story to your business?

Can you access your imaginal cells and defy your original nature? Can your business fly?

Only the brave and the capable and the willing should try.

image credit: worldpublishing.com

Michael Graber and Jocelyn Atkinson run the Southern Growth Studio, a strategic growth firm based in Memphis.

Visit www.southerngrowthstudio.com to learn more.

Technologies for the Emerging Digital Universe

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Steve Todd

Recently I published a post describing the enormous amount of data being

contributed to the Digital Universe by machines.

Billions of devices will generate petabytes of information. Much of it will land

in deep archives that are eventually mined and analyzed using a variety of

fast, parallel analytic techniques.

The Digital Universe study posits that by 2020 these machines will not only

generate an estimated 40% of all digital content, but the machines will be

expecting an immediate (sub-second) response, or instruction, to determine the next robot-like action that they should take. Often times these

instructions will need to rely on a variety of other sensor feeds and/or real-time streaming information.

The analytic techniques of 2012 will quite frankly not cut it. What kind of innovation will be required to support this growing reality?

Its an interesting thought exercise to examine some of the emerging technologies in analytics and consider how they can be combined to

achieve near-instantaneous machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and decision making.

In this post Ill approach the discussion from the angle of a centralized model. Im assuming, in the short term, that service providers will begin

adding these technologies into the plumbing of their existing data centers.

Over time, however, as the device count scales you will likely see these implementations move to the edge in a dispersed cloud model.

Consider the graphic below and the bi-directional M2M needs of devices connected to the cloud infrastructure of the future:

Here are two emerging technologies that will facilitate M2M in coming cloud infrastructures:

1. More and more streaming data will be ingested into in-memory, distributed data grids. A good example is VMware GemFire: an in memory

data grid that enables real-time data distribution data replication, caching and data management using a non-relational key-value store, to allow

storage of data for client applications. In addition, VMware SQLFire is described as folows: VMware vFabric SQLFire is memory-oriented data

management software delivering application data at runtime with horizontal scale and lightning-fast performance while providing developers

with the well-known SQL interface and tools.

The key is the in-memory, horizontal scale provided by these types of technologies. Business logic accepts streaming machine input from

sensors and immediately stores them in either key-value (Gemfire) or SQL (SQLFire) format. If a given sensor requires immediate feedback

based on the state of other sensors, it can be quickly retrieved via an in-memory query. This approach, depicted below, enables the sub-

second response times that many sensors will be expecting.

2. More and more streaming machine data will be process in real-time by a technology known as CEP, Complex Event Processing. Wikipedia

has a good summary of the technology:

Event processing is a method of tracking and analyzing (processing) streams of information (data) about things that happen (events), and

deriving a conclusion from them. Complex event processing, or CEP, is event processing that combines data from multiple sources to infer

events or patterns that suggest more complicated circumstances. The goal of complex event processing is to identify meaningful events (such

as opportunities or threats) and respond to them as quickly as possible.

These events may be happening across the various layers of an organization as sales leads, orders or customer service calls. Or, they may be

news items, text messages, social media posts, stock market feeds, traffic reports, weather reports, or other kinds of data. An event may also

be defined as a change of state, when a measurement exceeds a predefined threshold of time, temperature, or other value.

Two implementations of CEP getting a lot of buzz are Esper and Storm (Thomas Dudziak has written a good blog

Both of these technologies will become more common in the clouds of the future. Exactly how they fit into a cloud architecture is an area being

explored by corporations and academia alike. In a future post I will discuss a research initiative that is starting to investigate analytics of

streams at scale.

image credit: e-forex.net; stevetodd.com

Steve Todd is an EMC Fellow, the Director of EMCs Innovation Network, and a high-tech inventor and book author

Innovate With Global Influence. An EMC Intrapreneur with over 200 patent applications and billions in product revenue,

he writes about innovation on his personal blog, the Information Playground. Twitter: @SteveTodd

January 2nd Kick Off

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Donna Sturgess

The first day of the New Year is haloed in possibilities of who we are and all we wish to

be; opportunities for 2013 abound as we start back to work on January 2nd. And, as the

calendar changes, so do we. It may be time to shake off old ways and try some new

practices to shift your perspective and fulfill new possibilities.

Here are four suggestions that can jump start you and your business.

1. Get the picture

Over the first couple of weeks start shooting photos of interesting people and things to

build an inspiration wall. Take photos that are wide-ranging and earthy. In photos we

see new possibilities, new colors, new behaviors and new beginnings. By playing in

photography you will have a role in something much larger than ourselves, to be part of the script, to be part of the action.

When people ask me what is the point of this exercise I offer a response that is rooted in the value of play. When doing things that are

intrinsically rewarding for there own sake, acting and thinking becomes one and it feels cleansing. There is no better way to clear out the

cobwebs and have a fresh adventure, physical or mental. Revisiting the photo board will bring you back to those moments when you need to

feel stimulated by the heartbeat of the present.

2. Stay Charged

To maintain a curious and agile mind you have to cut the ties that bind you to your desk chair. We spend most of our business life in our office

at arms length from the noisy chaos of the customer. It is no wonder that acting outside of the data world terrifies most marketers and business

leaders. Business judgment requires understanding the customer beyond the numbers and you are not going to acquire it sitting in your office.

To keep your momentum going, go on a half or full day immersion with your team. Jolt your expectations by discovering adjacencies to your

business that may be a wellspring of new thoughts and dreams to generate growth. Brush up

against your consumer to find real insights about what motivates them. Talk to people who love

your competitor and listen deeply. That will fire you up to compete!

3. Zoom In

It is a popular question to ask people if they actually use the products they are marketing and

selling. Of course all those asked vigorously nod in agreement that they do. The better

question is, Do you use the competitors products on a regular basis? Imagine what can be

learned from that experience! Take the opportunity in this new year to dive into the competitive

offerings in your category and become an expert on what they are selling and personally experience the relationship they offer.

To inject a competitive spirit into your team conduct an offsite Market Gaming Meeting. Part of the pre-work is for everyone to buy and use the

competitive products or services for a few weeks in advance. The meeting begins with a visualization exercise that brings to life the users

experience based on your first hand perspective. The priority for the day is to evaluate your products strengths and weaknesses in comparison

and identify ways to change the game to your advantage either through strategy or tactics. Many businesses are faced with growing by taking

market share. This approach will make the game you are playing in the marketplace concrete, like a reality game board to identify moves you

should take to grow share.

4. Plow the Pipeline

Is your pipeline fertile? Take a good hard look at it and determine whether the pipeline represents a vision of where you are taking the

business. If it is just a collection of projects that continue to stuff pipeline charts, then start to prioritize what stays and what goes. Killing

projects early is part of the innovation process. Killing projects at a later stage consumes precious resources and is expensive and disruptive to

the organization.

It can be invigorating to terminate or suspend projects that people no longer know why the business is pursuing them. It is far better to initiate

more creativity and momentum while you have the time to fill the gaps than to sponsor false hope that weak ideas will somehow get better

through the product development and launch cycles. Revisit your pipeline early in the year and challenge whether the ideas the operation is

spending time and money on are worthy of the investment. Start with a sanity check of how much revenue each idea will really generate.

Include sales people in the discussion to infuse objectivity into the evaluation.

I wish you good luck and good business in 2013 !

image credit: new year & realistic zoom image from bigstock

Donna Sturgess is the President and Co-founder of Buyology Inc and former Global Head of Innovation for

GlaxoSmithKline. Her latest book is Eyeballs Out: How To Step Into Another World, Discover New Ideas, and Make Your

Business Thrive. Follow on Twitter: @donnasturgess

6 Digital Trends to Watch in 2013

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Greg Satell

Ive long given up the habit of making New Years resolutions. Whats the point?

The seeds of the next year are sown in the previous one. So rather than empty

vows of change, all that effort can be put to better use by planning for what is to

come.

To do so, we need to go beyond simple linear extrapolation. Principles like

accelerating returns and hype cycles help point the way and we also need to

keep in touch with the technologists and entrepreneurs that drive events.

As Ive noted before, blindly following trends is for suckers, but putting serious thought into where things are headed is an essential

exercise. Mapping out what we can expect helps us prepare for the unexpected, be robust and stay on our toes. With that in mind, here are 6

things we can expect to shape the digital world over the next year and beyond.

1. Watson Meets Siri

Two of the most important things weve seen emerge over the past few years are Big Data and machine intelligence. Cheap, low power chips

combined with enormous data farms and powerful algorithms are creating an artificial nervous system that has nearly unlimited power to

monitor and store information.

A year ago I said that 2012 would be the year of the interface and thats been true to a large extent. Beyond Apples Siri and Microsofts

Kinect, Google has launched Project Glass, an interface thats embedded inside the frames of eyeframes, giving you an instant connection

between the real world and all those data centers.

These two trends are about to combine in a major way. IBM is taking its Watson project, which beat human champions at the very intuitive

game of Jeopardy! and applying it to real world applications like medicine. Microsoft just unveiled technology that can listen to English and

repeat back in fluent Chinese.

And thats just the start. This trend will accelerate. Systems will get much better, cheaper and more integrated very quickly.

2. Atoms Collide With Bits

Ive written over the past year about the new industrial revolution. A confluence of various technologies, such as CAD software, 3D printers,

CNC routers, laser cutters, and 3D scanners are democratizing manufacturing and dramatically improved industrial robots are completely

reshaping the economics of manufacturing.

As Steve Denning notes, the fact that companies like Apple and GE are bringing manufacturing back home points to a larger movement.

As automation increases, the proportion of labor costs in manufacturing falls, changing the outsourcing equation dramatically. We could be

witnessing the beginning of a vast surge of manufacturing coming back to developed markets.

Yet he also makes a subtler point. As businesses bring factories back home, they are rediscovering information that they lost from outsourcing

the invaluable interactions between designers, marketers and the factory floor. It seems that moving all that production overseas may not

ever been a good idea in the first place.

We can expect this trend to deepen. As the informational content of products continues to increase, atoms will become inextricably tied to bits.

3. SoLoMo Makes Way For The Web Of Things

Over the past few years, weve seen computing become more social, local and mobile and that is what has driven innovation and user

experience. It seems hard to remember a time when we didnt use those few extra free moments standing around to tweet and surf or stop to

check the online recommendations of a cafe before going in.

That will continue, but the new horizon is the Web of Things, where just about everything we interact with becomes a computable entity. Our

homes, our cars and even objects on the street will interact with our smartphones and with each other, seamlessly. This will not only change

the game, it will change the players as well.

Ive argued before that the most immediate ramification of this trend is that it gives Microsoft an opportunity to get back in the race. We may

very well find that the Xbox will become as central to their ecosystem as the iPhone and the iPad have become to Apples.

However, the larger consequence is that all businesses will become a technology businesses. As Ray Kurzweil has noted, in the future all

technologies will essentially become information technologies, including energy. That, in turn, will transform every organization into a potential

competitor and collaborator in just about every industry.

4. Operating Systems Become A Three Way Race

Probably the biggest thing to watch in 2012 will be the battle for operating systems heating up and Windows 8 challenging Google for market

share. Apple, strangely enough, will mostly be a bystander. Their consumer base will likely remain loyal and most probably continue to grow

roughly in line with the market.

However, Apples market share is relatively small, roughly 15%. So the major conflict will be between Google and Microsoft, both vying for the

loyalties of handset manufacturers. Samsung, the most coveted partner, has about 30% market share, so they will most probably decide how it

ultimately all plays out.

As Ive written before, Im pretty optimistic about Microsofts chances. Reviews of the Windows phones have largely been positive and if

manufacturers decide to split their loyalties, the tie would go to Microsoft. That simple fact, plus their strength in the enterprise market, gives

them the advantage.

In the end, how it really all turns out is anybodys guess. Google is building out its own assets such as the Project Glass initiative I mentioned

above and autonomous cars. Plus, you never can tell what they have cooking in Mountain View. In any case, this 3-way race will certainly be

a key focal point over the next few years.

5. NFC Heats Up

Everybody who has ever used E-Z Pass (or for that matter, been stuck in the slow cash lane at a tollbooth) knows the power of seamless

machine to machine communication. Near Field Communication (NFC) is the latest iteration. The advantage of NFC is that the

communication goes is two-way.

So well soon be using our smartphones to communicate, not just with each other, but with the world around us; facilitating payments, picking

up promotional opportunities from ads and sharing information with retail displays, just to mention a few of the applications being talked about.

In truth we really dont know what NFC will bring us, because there are so few phones out there that include the technology. However, now that

virtually every handset manufacturer (except, of course, for Apple) offers a variety of NFC capable models, were nearing a tipping point.

Expect to see a lot of action in this area over the coming year.

6. SEO For Social

I still remember the first time I heard about search engine optimization (SEO). It was probably in 2005 and an entrepreneur I knew well told

me he was starting a new business to optimize search engine marketing. I have to admit, I didnt quite get what he meant.

Since then, SEO has transformed advertising and media by optimizing the way machines talk to machines. Thats been great for direct

marketing, but not so good for content. Theres been a constant tension between making content easy for machines to find while at the same

time creating the kind of fantastic user experience that consumers enjoy.

Natural language processing will be the key technology for solving this problem. Companies like OpenAmplify and Networked Insights are

creating algorithms that can analyze massive amounts of content in very much the same way a human would, except infinitely faster and with

greater accuracy.

This analysis can then be combined with standard engagement metrics to point the way forward. This might take more than a year to play out,

but its coming fast and itll be a real game changer.

The Semantic Economy and Brands as Open APIs

While all of these trends will unfold very differently in terms of detail and impact, there is an underlying theme: Technology is changing the very

fabric of enterprise.

For most of the 20th century, businesses focused on developing proprietary value chains. As they became more successful and added scale,

their competitive advantage would grow in terms of quality, efficiency and brand equity. Even a relatively small advantage could, over time,

compound and be parlayed into a corporate dynasty.

What were seeing emerge now is a new semantic economy, where competitive advantages are built not through closed proprietary systems,

but through creating effective linkages. As search and transaction costs fall to negligible levels, upstarts can not only compete with larger,

incumbent rivals, they can put them out of business seemingly overnight.

The upshot is that we need to recognize that brands have a new architecture. They are no longer mere proprietary assets to be leveraged,

but platforms for collaboration and co-creation. Brands have, in effect, become open APIs.

image credit: inmobi.com

Greg Satell is an internationally recognized authority on Digital Strategy and Innovation. He is available for consulting and

speaking engagements in the areas of digital innovation, innovation management, digital marketing and publishing, as well

as offshore web and app development. Check out his site, Digital Tonto and follow him on twitter.

Why a Common Language Matters for Innovation

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Jeffrey Phillips

As noted in previous posts (here, and here) Im returning to the idea that

executives have a number of important roles to play when sponsoring

innovation. Perhaps one of the most important roles is the work of creating

a common innovation definition and language, and communicating the

importance of innovation consistently and broadly.

The modern tower of Babel

For those of you who dont know your old testament, complete with the

angry, vengeful God, lets return to the story of Babel. In their hubris, people decide to build a tower that will reach for the heavens. God, in a

fit of pique, commands that they all speak a different language. Chaos ensues. Innovation is a lot like the tower of Babel, only in reverse. A god-

like leader, typically the CEO, requests, no demands, more innovation. And everyone in the organization runs off to innovate interpreting what

innovation means and applying to their situation. This means that in any company several innovative things happen simultaneously:

Old, tired ideas long in limbo are reframed as innovative

Any small change to an existing product or service is labelled innovation

A completely irrational, disruptive idea is justified on the basis that it is innovative

Soon every thing is innovative and nothing is

In these scenarios, when executives dont create a consistent definition of innovation, and dont bother to construct a common language about

innovation, everyone interprets the needs and goals in their own context. Ive watched management teams talk about innovation in situations

where there are at least three or four operative definitions occurring at the same time. The dissonance is maddening, and completely

unnecessary.

Everything is based on language and communication

Scientists believe that humans evolved much more rapidly once they began to use complex communication, and that learning accelerated as

language became codified. Why do we constantly need to relearn in business what is obvious in the rest of our lives? As young children we are

taught the definition of words, and as middle schoolers and high schoolers we are taught to understand and parse great literature, to

understand how to communicate. Yet business communication is terrible (if you doubt this, read Why Business people speak like idiots) and

the culmination of terrible language and communication is when we mix regular business communication with the new and unusual practice of

innovation, which has its own language and definitions. It doesnt help that innovation is really a catch-all for a number of methods, activities

and tools, and that innovation has a potential range of outcomes, from incremental products to disruptive business models. But we blithely toss

around the word innovation as if there is a common definition, and as if everyone will interpret the word in the same way. Nothing could be

further from the truth.

If innovation is new, unusual and uncertain, fraught with change and risk, shouldnt an organization do all in its power to reduce the uncertainty,

remove the risk through clear definition, consistent language and constant communication? Youd think that would be a likely approach, but

most organizations attempting innovation view these actions as unnecessary overhead, rather than understanding how much good

communication will impact innovation barriers, like risk, uncertainty, the existing way of doing business and the powerful but intangible

corporate culture.

How can you define the indefinable?

Can you create a definition of innovation that provides insight, gives guidance and instructs the organization? Weve noticed that a number of

firms have attempted to create a common definition for innovation. 3M uses the following definition: The use or application of creativity to

generate a new or novel output having value for customers. Note that this definition identifies creativity as a central input to creating new or

novel products and services. Note also that innovation is focused on creating value for customers, so in this definition 3M doesnt emphasize

internal process improvement as innovation. But simply creating a definition creates scope what to leave in, and what to leave out.

But go further, because innovation has as many contextual meanings and uses as plastic. Should innovation engage external parties or should

it be constricted to internal teams (Open/Closed)? Should we focus on small changes to existing products and services, or aim for entering new

markets with new to the world products (Incremental/Disruptive)? What is the intended outcome (Product/Service/Channel/Business

Model/Customer experience)? Until these concepts are clarified, every innovator defines and scopes innovation for him or herself.

Communicating

Even when a definition, goal or language is specified, most organizations do a terrible job of communicating their innovation requirements,

definitions and rationale. Communication experiences what I call the waterfall effect. That is, a senior leader communicates to the next

management level in the hierarchy, and so forth in a series of waterfalls where the message is watered down, tempered and redirected. By the

time the messaging reaches the main body of the organization, they have no idea what they are supposed to do, or how they should react.

Rather than actively embracing innovation through powerful and consistent communication, most senior leaders demand it on a quarterly basis

and never return to the messaging. These half-hearted messages bounce off the impervious cultural hide of the middle management like a

bullet off of Superman. Until executives engage in active communication and assess their reporting structures to understand i f the messages

are received, heard and acted on at all levels, communication about innovation doesnt matter, because the overwhelming power of business

as usual remains.

Definition, Language and Communication in the Workmat

Paul Hobcraft and I wrote and developed the Innovation Workmat, a guide to what executives need to know, and do, when building a

framework for innovation. In the workmat, there are seven domains that must be enriched for innovation to take root in an organization.

Definition, language and communication is the central tenet and the glue that binds the workmat together. In an effort to get started quickly,

most innovation teams never think about defining what innovation is, what the acceptable outcomes are, and how to communicate the purpose,

goal and rationale throughout the organization. Without the common frameworks, pretty soon any and every initiat ive is innovative and

frustration reigns. This is yet another case where a careful and thoughtful approach to innovation, taking time to think about the definition,

language and rationale, without simply plunging in, can make all the difference.

image credit: dialog image from bigstock

Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation

teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of Relentless Innovation and the blog Innovate on Purpose.

Let Me Speak!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Drew Boyd

Giving your employees a voice in matters boosts their creativity. New research

shows that, over time, procedural fairness (giving people the opportunity to express

their views) has a positive maintaining effect on creativity whereas stifling their

views decreases creativity.

Bernhard Streicher* and his colleagues assigned twenty three University students

randomly to one of two groups: treated fairly (getting a chance to voice their ideas)

or treated unfairly (not given a chance to express themselves). Students were

given a different creativity task over four successive weeks. They were told that a

committee would rate their results. After the completing each of the tasks, the

students in the fair group were given the opportunity to explain their ideas and that the committee would consider this information in the

evaluation. The unfair group was not given this opportunity. Ideas from both groups were evaluated and scored (blinded) using standard

assessment techniques.

Over the four weeks of the study, students in the fair group maintained their creative output while students in the unfair group declined.

Interestingly, there was no difference in creativity between the groups in week one. Over time, however, the effect of fairness kicked in.

For leaders of innovation teams, letting your employees express themselves helps maintain a culture of innovation. But the key is to be

consistent over time. Dont let distractions or a crisis cause you to change the rules. Give them a chance to speak about anything related to the

innovation challenges you face: focus, methodology, budget allocation, team formation, and so on. But most importantly, as the study points

out, let them speak about the nature and value of their own ideas.

*Berhard Streicher, Eva Jones, Gnter W. Maier, Dieter Frey, and Anneliese Spieberger, Procedural Fairness and Creativity: Does Voice

Maintain Peoples Creative Vein Over Time? Creativity Research Journal, 24(4) (2012): 358-363.

image credit: megaphone image from bigstock

Drew Boyd is Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-

Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Why Corporate Culture is Important for Innovation

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Jeffrey Phillips

A few days ago I wrote a post about why environment matters for innovation.

Today, in a continuing series of posts, I want to take a look at why corporate culture is

such a vital barrier or accelerator for innovation. Im writing these posts to continue to

expound on the Innovation Workmat series of articles Paul Hobcraft and I

published a month or so ago. Those articles suggest that executives have a key role

to play in building an overarching framework for innovation in any organization that

hopes to succeed at innovation.

Corporate Culture

Corporate culture exists at the intersection of corporate memory, corporate history, business context and operational effectiveness. Corporate

culture is what defines what a company is, why it does what it does, and in many ways sustains a presence and a facade to the outside world.

Corporate culture is what directs how people work and think, what creates tangible and intangible restrictions, establishes risk tolerances and

sets attitudes and behaviors. Theres probably no more powerful intangible force in any business than corporate culture.

Corporate culture can be a positive, when it reinforces activities and thinking that matter. 3M survived a CEO who attempted to introduce GE

style thinking, and remained fairly innovative in the face of stack ranking and Six Sigma efficiency focus, mostly due to a long organizational

memory and a strong innovative culture. They dont say culture eats strategy for breakfast in jest.

Toxic Culture

The challenge in many firms, though, is that the culture is not based on an organizational memory of successful innovation, but on an

organizational memory of tooth and nail survival. When the culture adopts and sustains short term thinking, incremental improvements and an

aversion to risk and uncertainty, it can be difficult to introduce even modest incremental innovation concepts, never mind larger disruptive

innovation or the risks associated with open innovation. And, since corporate culture is largely intangible and made up of attitudes, behaviors

and past experiences, it is exceptionally difficult to change. That means that the firms that often need innovation the most face corporate

cultures that are the least open to change. Firms that have viable corporate cultures that help them sustain operations in a competitive space

often find those cultures are resistant, or even worse, toxic when it comes to making the significant changes necessary to embrace innovation.

What is an innovation culture

A culture that sustains and supports innovation is one that encourages reasonable risk and uncertainty in the goal of larger, more profitable

products and services. It is a culture that is based on experimentation and discovery, because many good ideas or insights exist outside the

corporate boundaries. That suggests as well that innovative cultures have porous boundaries people, ideas and concepts flow into, and out

of, the organization constantly. Innovative cultures understand that generating and developing new ideas is an iterative discovery process,

which isnt perfect and certainly doesnt always create the product or service that customers want. Innovative cultures also understand that

when failure occurs, rather than sweep the failure under the rug, the firm attempts to extract learning and new insights so that the failure leads

eventually to a new success. Innovative cultures understand intrinsic reward systems, encouraging innovators to work on their ideas and to stay

involved and engaged. They dont pay people for ideas but recognize involvement is its own reward. Innovative cultures sustain innovation as

a way of operations, rather than thinking of innovation as an occasional, sporadic process. Innovation cultures welcome different points of view,

different perspectives and seek to association disparate ideas and technologies into new products and services. It will be rare to hear someone

in an innovative culture say weve never done that before as a way to shut down ideas rather, it will be considered a challenge worth

pursuing.

How do we shift an existing culture

Corporate cultures respect Newtons laws. They like to remain at rest, comfortable in their inertia, and will remain that way until acted on by a

powerful force. Likewise, culture will resist the change force as a matter of course. That means that to change a culture you need constant force

in a positive direction for a long period of time. This means that change to a corporate culture must be slow and steady, and the best change is

change the culture wants to make, not feels forced to make. This means change begins by creating a vision about the future and telling a story

that the culture can adopt. Once the culture and those individuals who keep and shape the culture believe the story, they wil l work to weave the

new story into the fabric of the existing culture. Factors like what is recognized and rewarded, what executives say, and well as what they do,

matter. Early in the shift, the culture will examine early successes and especially early failures to see what is rewarded and what is buried.

Actions speak louder than words. Saint Anthony of Padua said it best: Let your words teach and your actions speak. Shifting a culture requires

a significant commitment from senior leadership, but also buy-in from the people who are keepers of the culture. These are the people who

collect and tell stories about the culture and reinforce the culture through their decisions, commitments and investments.

The three Rs

We often talk about the three Rs when shifting a culture: reward/recognition, recruiting and retraining. If we want people, and therefore the

culture, to do new things, we need to improve the skills and capabilities of the people who are on board (training) and recruit new skills and

perspectives to help the company and the culture think in new ways (recruiting). Which is why your human resources or talent management

team must be a vital contributor to the work of changing the culture. Recognition, rewards, evaluation, training and recruiting are all activities

they are actively involved in, and which influence the corporate team and the culture.

How long does this take?

We are constantly asked by clients how long will it take to change the focus and intent of our culture, to make it more innovative? This is not a

change you can force in six months. After all, your corporate culture has been constructed and reinforced since the business began. You cant

simply whipsaw a culture in a new direction and new focus in a few months. GE famously attempted to shift from Jack Welchs priorities

(Number one or two in an industry or out) to Jeff Immelts (more innovation) by establishing corporate innovation funds to the tune of several

hundred million dollars. In the first year of funding, not one business unit accepted the innovation funds, because the existing culture that Welch

left was so predominant.

The answer is: it depends. It depends on the continuity and focus of the executive team. It depends on the vision you create and how the story

associated with that vision is reinforced and propagated throughout the organization. It depends on how the people who are the keepers and

reinforcers of the culture are willing to change and adapt. It depends on how risk and uncertainty is tolerated, on how open the organization is

to change. It depends on introducing new perspectives, new skills and new techniques. It wont be fast, but it can be effective.

Corporate culture is the most powerful and most intangible barrier to innovation. Place Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein in a corporate culture

that resists innovation and we wait another decade for electric lights or special relativity. A good idea in a resistant culture is a scream in a

vacuum. It simply wont be heard. As an executive, a leader, a manager who wants more innovation, theres no more important aspect to focus

on, and none more difficult to influence. Nailing jello to a wall is probably an adequate metaphor. But it must be done. You cant sustain

innovation without changing the culture, and your business cant thrive without sustained innovation.

image credit: happy team image from bigstock

Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation

teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of Make us more Innovative, and

innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.

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