MBS e-Course:

Systemic Innovation

Innovation System

The Six Core Elements, their Behavior & Interaction

Understanding the Innovation System – Unlocking the Black Box

The Innovation System¹ model synthesizes and defines the core elements of innovation, their behavior and interaction. The power of this good model makes it easier to understand complex issues and dynamics of innovation, separate its elements and examine them is greater depth.

It establishes a framework that helps you to demystify the innovation process and its driving forces, to reveal the unique innovation practices of market champions and understand what makes them so successful and unique.

Managing Innovation versus Managing Operations

Managing innovation is quite different from managing operations. Managing uncertainty inherent in innovation requires specific tools and thinking. Innovation is a learning process, the product of which is new applied knowledge. Operations is an established process driven by existing knowledge.¹ Operations generate today's value, while innovation creates tomorrow's opportunities. The most important differentiation between operations and innovation is uncertainty... More

29 Obstacles To Innovation

• Lack of ownership by Senior Leaders

• Innovation not articulated as a company-wide commitment... More

Inspirational Leadership: 10 Roles

Inspirational leaders create an inspiring culture within their organization. They supply a shared vision and inspire people to achieve more than they may ever have dreamed possible. They are able to articulate a shared vision in a way that inspires others to act. They make relentless innovation a religion.

People do what they have to do for a manager, they do their best for an inspirational leader... More

10 Ways To Murder Creativity

7. Ask for a 200-page document to justify every new idea... More

Innovation-Adept Culture

Establishing the culture of innovation requires a broad and sustained effort. Though changing a company's culture is never easy, with the right leadership, cultures can be reshaped and amazing results can accrue. Establishing an attitude of relentless growth is what enables an organization and its people to achieve their goals. The spirit of relentless growth keeps fresh ideas flowing and reinvigorates your company. Thus, "the primary challenge facing market leaders is to institutionalize an environment where every decision and direction can be constantly and safely reassessed."³

Creating a Culture for Innovation

Leadership should ensure that both strategic and tactical decisions around these levers align to (or at least don’t undermine) the organization’s specific growth and innovation goals. Creating new strategic initiatives around organizational design and structure, innovation processes, innovation metrics, and other levers can make a significant difference in shaping the culture, and there are many practical approaches for manipulating each lever... More

The Jazz of Innovation

The improvisation-driven model for innovation project management doesn’t discard structure, just as there is a clear structure to good jazz. In innovation, this structure is created through roadmaps, guiding principles, business processes, systems and organizational charts. Strategic-planning and road-mapping processes cannot guarantee brilliant flashes of creative insight, but they can prepare minds and increase the odds that such flashes occur in real time. Thus structure, as chords do in jazz, serves as a basis for improvisation, experimentations, discoveries and innovation... More

Leadership & Management

Knowledge workers thrive on leadership, but they have an increasingly low tolerance for being managed. New managers should balance motivational leadership, coaching, and sound business management to keep all these independent thinkers pointed in the same direction and working towards the same goal... More

Steve Jobs' 12 Rules of Success

10. Innovate. Innovation distinguishes a leader from a follower. Delegate, let other top executives do 50% of your routine work to be able to spend 50% your time on the new stuff. Say no to 1,000 things make sure you don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. Concentrate on really important creations and radical innovation. Hire people who want to make the best things in the world... More

7 Dimensions of Strategic Innovation

• Organizational Readiness – the ability to take action... More

The Growing Role of the Business Architect

In today's knowledge- and innovation-driven complex economy, business architects are in growing demand.  They are cross-functionally excellent people who can tie several silos of business development expertise together, create synergies, design winning business model and a balanced business system and then lead people who will put their plans into action... More

 Case in Point  Canon Production System (CPS)

The Canon Production System (CPS) includes:

• Continuous improvement is at the core of the innovation system approach... More

Strategic Alignment...

Strategic Intent...

Corporate Guiding Principles...

Innovation Process...

Loose-Tight Leadership...

Organization & People...

Relentless Growth Attitude...

Managing Innovation by Cross-functional Teams...

Innovation Metrics...

Motivating Innovative Behavior...

Gain Sharing...

 Case in Point  General Electric (GE)...

References:

1. Relentless Growth, Christopher Meyer

2. Radical Innovation, Harvard Business School

3. It's not the BIG and eats the SMALL... it's the FAST that eats the SLOW, Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton

4. Driving Growth Through Innovation, Robert B. Tucker

5. Winning New Products and Service Practices Survey, a survey of 200 U.S. companies by Kuczmarski & Associates and Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management

6. Managing New Products, Thomas D. Kuczmarski

7. The Nature of Innovation: an Exploration, Eileen Clegg, Chuck Sieloff, Patty Zablock, Institute for the Future