Innovation Sucks! Time to Think Differently

Description

Businesses spend billions on innovation with very little to show for their investment or effort. This book challenges some of the ‘ingrained truths’ of innovation and suggests a different approach. Innovation is not the creation of a novel idea. It is the successful commercialisation of that novel idea. Rather than starting with a costly, time-consuming problem assessment that seeks to push potential solutions through an innovation funnel, an ‘impeller approach’ starts with possible solutions and gets the market to pull the best ones forward so they can fail fast or flourish fast. This approach is made possible by the addition of a ‘bee’ – a new type of integrative thinker who can harvest the existing knowledge from the ‘meadow of experts’. Completely reversing the innovation process means organisations are much better placed to win in the market rather than focusing on finding theoretical solutions or clearing innovation stage gates. In addition, this approach also recognises that the people who shepherd the solution through the ideation and testing stage are not the same people who must then take that solution to market for successful commercialisation. Given the current innovation failure rate, coupled with the fact that society is beset with multiple wicked problems, it’s time to think differently and innovate innovation itself. This book is essential reading for Heads of Innovation and Commercialisation, Directors of Marketing, Heads of New Product Development and New Service Development, Strategy Directors, Chief Technology Officers, Government advisers and policy makers. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents About the authors Acknowledgements Introduction What is innovation? It’s time to rethink innovation Innovation paradigm shift Part I The current approach to innovation 1 Traditional ‘innovation’ & why it fails The innovation funnel and its origins Innovation corrupted! The ‘why’ is missing Poor support for innovation within the organisation A pre-occupation with process over outcome Defensive thinking bias Thinking/doing is out of balance Insufficient focus on the ‘valley of death’ But our innovation is not failing 2 Focusing on the problem may be the problem Quality of our minds 4D leadership Solution over problem Part II The impeller approach unpacked 3 Start with the solution An impeller approach Starting at the solution The bee The meadow of experts Entrepreneur A stand-alone delivery/commercialisation vehicle Lever 1: Sales and profit growth Lever 2: Sales and marketing process Lever 3: Go To Market (GTM) proposition Lever 4: Management quality Lever 5: Client relationships Lever 6: Quality of income Lever 7: Intellectual property (IP) Lever 8: ‘Key person’ loyalty How it all comes together The bees’ honeycomb – the output Advantages and benefits of impeller innovation 4 The role of the bee The evolution of anything Emergence (generalist) Differentiation (expert) Integration (polymath integrator or bee) Harvesting and convolving knowledge Types of bees and their output The Magnitude, Periodicity and Holistic (MPH) model Meta Macro Micro Past Present Projected Heart Head Hands The bees are coming The influx of Millennials into the workforce The acceleration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Shifting work practises Increased diversity The failure of leadership in a post-truth world The dual nature of cutting-edge green leadership Reasons to be cheerful 5 How to identify and create more bees Attributes of a bee Bees are connectors, mavens and ‘salespeople’ Bees are effective communicators Bees trust their intuition Completely curious and voracious harvesters of knowledge Bees are disruptively creative The mind of a bee How to identify a bee Network analysis How to help a bee fly 6 Other players in the innovation system Research and Development (R&D) Government Private sector organisations A word on corporate venture capital (CVC) Analysts Designers Innovation teams that work 7 Getting to market Triple chasm model How the impeller approach can help to cross the chasms Crossing the prototype chasm Crossing the commercialisation chasm Crossing the scalability chasm 8 Sale or scale to sustainable growth The Rainmaking solution A word on sustainable growth Conventional growth Leveraged growth Transactional growth Disruptive growth Speed and nature of decision making 9 The impeller future In conclusion Index