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Improving your innovation capability
The document discusses improving innovation capability. It identifies common barriers to innovation as not understanding innovation, designing organizations to stifle it, and stopping what used to work. The discussion focuses on measuring an organization's innovation quotient using factors like strategy, culture, processes, resources, and relationships. A behavioral trust framework is introduced to build relationships and encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, risk-taking, and communication to improve innovation culture. Organizational ambidexterity is needed to balance performance and innovation.
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Improving your innovation capability
- 1. IMPROVING YOUR INNOVATION CAPABILITY Dr.Andrew Maxwell, Bergeron Chair in Technology Entrepreneurship, Lassonde Engineering, York University
- 2. WHAT STOPS USINNOVATING? • We don’t fully understand what innovation is • We design our organizations to stifle innovation • It means stopping what we are good at It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date. Roger von Oech
- 3. TODAY’S DISCUSSION • Whyis innovating difficult? - Andrew • What are the barriers to innovation in Siemens (and what are the enablers)? - Siemens • How might we remove some of these barriers? – All • What are the challenges to improving your innovation capability - All Innovation is serendipity, so you don't know what people will make. Tim Berners-Lee
- 4. TODAY’S AGENDA How theInnovation Quotient Can help better Understand Innovation Barriers/Enablers? Identifying and removing Critical Barriers? Where does it start (and how much does it cost)? It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up. F.M. Young
- 5. DR ANDREW MAXWELL •Engineer/MBA/Large technology co’s, 4 startups • U of T/U of W/ Temple University/York University • CIC/Innovators Alliance/IRI/IRAP/VentureWell • Heizer Award (PhD) Academy of Management • Educator of the Year Lassonde (2018) You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization. Denis Waitley
- 6. DEFINING INNOVATION Any projectthat is: •New to your organization (not just improvement) •Has an uncertain outcome (involves risk) •New products/services (and business models) •Changing what you do (and how you make decisions) Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
- 7. MEASURING INNOVATION Common techniquesfor measuring innovation: •Reputation •Number of patents filed •% revenue from new products/services Measuring outcomes doesn’t help improve them You can't manage what you can't measure Peter Drucker
- 8. CAN YOU DESIGNFOR INNOVATION? DESIGN FOR PERFORMANCE • Efficiency • Repeatability • Predictability DESIGN FOR INNOVATION • Speed • Impact • Uncertainty If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. Albert Einstein
- 9. BALANCING INNOVATION & PERFORMANCE Howdo you? •Keep your eye on the ball…..and on the game? •Take risks..... mitigate risks? •Make informed decision.....take action? We use the Innovation Quotient to help assess innovation barriers and enablers Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites. Carl Jung
- 10. OVERCOMING INNOVATION INERTIA 1. Thereis a natural tendency for organizations to keep doing what they’re doing and resist changes. In the absence of a force, they will continue to do what they’ve always done. 2. Larger organizations require more force to change what they are doing than smaller organizations. 3. For every force there is a reaction force that is equal in size, but opposite in direction. When someone exerts a force on an organization, he or she gets pushed back in the opposite direction equally hard.
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- 12. STRATEGY – ROLE OFLEADERSHIP Strategy Culture Processes Resources Relation- ships • New customers, products & processes • Experimentation, risk and failure • Establishes guidelines for other factors
- 13. PROCESSES AND RESOURCES: Strategy Culture Processes Resources Relation- ships • Hiringand incentives decisions • Managing risk/allocating resources • Strategic decision making • Communication
- 14. RELATIONSHIPS AND CULTURE: Strategy Culture Processes Resources Relation- ships • Relationshipswithin organization • Relationships with suppliers/customers • Risk taking and mitigation
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- 17. VOICE OF THECUSTOMER 1. Using the framework offered, or other personal insights, write down five things that seem to stifle innovation in Siemens (five minutes) 2. Using the framework offered, or other personal insights, write down five things that seem to enable innovation in Siemens (five minutes) 3. Form small groups, share the insights and create a master list (fifteen minutes) If you look at history, innovation doesn't come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect. S. Johnson
- 18. VOICE OF THECUSTOMER 1. Vote on the factors that you think have the biggest impact on innovation barriers 2. Vote on the factors that you think have the biggest impact on innovation enablers 3. Discuss the implications of these insights and what you can do at Siemens
- 19. INCREASING YOUR INNOVATION CAPABILITY •Strategy: Embed innovation in corporate strategy • Processes: Review current practices for innovation • Resources: Allocate strategic resources • Relationships: Build and develop innovative relationships • Culture: Align values and behaviours around innovation The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw
- 20. Andrew Maxwell Lassonde Schoolof Engineering www.bestlassonde.ca bestmax@yorku.ca BUILDING INNOVATION CAPABILITY Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow. William Pollard
- 21. IMPROVING THE INNOVATIONCULTURE A BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH Observed behaviours in innovative organization that: • Improved collaboration • Enhanced knowledge sharing • Improved risk taking • Enhanced communication Identified the importance of trust behaviours, reinforcing the importance of trust as the universal lubricant Trust is the universal lubricant that enables innovation, it enables the innovation engine to engage with the performance engine. Andrew Maxwell
- 22. INTRODUCING THE BEHAVIOURAL TRUSTFRAMEWORK (BTF) • Moving trust from a sentiment to a behaviour • Link specific behaviours to building, damaging or violating trust • Helps individuals decide who to trust, and how to trust: enabling the development of trust based relationships • Helps build higher levels of relationship trust: overcomes relationship risk, encourages collaboration We identified four categories of trust behaviour: capabilitytrusting, and communicationstrustworthy,
- 23. RELATIONSHIP TRUST isa ƒ(trust level) Trust level is = ∫(Trust building - trust damaging) behaviours – ƒ(controls) subject to the absence of trust violating behaviours MEASURING INNOVATION CULTURE AS A FUNCTION OF TRUST Learning to collaborate is part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy. Don Tapscott
- 24. Trusting: • Disclosing: Showsvulnerability by sharing confidential information • Reliance: Willingness to be vulnerable through reliance on others • Receptive: Demonstrates ‘coachability’ and willingness to change BEHAVIOURAL TRUST FRAMEWORK Trustworthiness: • Consistent: Displays of behavior that confirm previous promises • Benevolent: Exhibits concern about well-being of others • Alignment: Actions confirm shared values and/or objectives There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. Brene Brown
- 25. Capability: • Competent: Displaysrelevant technical and/or business ability • Experienced: Demonstrates relevant work/training experience • Judgment: Shows ability to make accurate / objective decisions Communication: • Accurate: Provides truthful and timely information • Explanation: Explains details & consequence of information provided • Openness: Open to new ideas or new ways of doing things 25 BEHAVIOURAL TRUST FRAMEWORK Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world! Joel Arthur Barker
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- 28. • To exploreteam dynamics in organizations looking to increase innovation capacity • To identify challenges to building partnerships with new innovation partners • To facilitate innovation coaching and team building discussions Evidence BTF users can identify short term actions to reduce controls, to repair damaged trust and increase trust APPLYING THE BEHAVIOURAL TRUST FRAMEWORK
- 29. ORGANIZATIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY PERFORMANCE (EXPLOITATION)ENGINE • Follow rules, drive out variance/slack • Focus on existing customer needs • Manage/refine existing competencies • Optimize organization for existing rules • Make money now INNOVATION (EXPLORATION) ENGINE • Break rules, promote variance /slack • Serve new customers with new needs • Develop and lead new competencies • Develop new organization + new rules • Make money later
Editor's Notes
- #5 "It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up. — F. M. Young
- #7 But your organization is designed for improvement, not innovation, and an improvement culture stifles innovation
- #8 What works in one context may not work in another A Man in a Balloon A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude." "You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. "I am," replied the man, "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far." The man below responded, "You must be a manager." "I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know." "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is, you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
- #20 Ability to rely on others
- #23 Ability to rely on others
- #24 Collaboration is an essential ingredient for innovation Trust is a necessary pre-condition for effective collaboration In the absence of Trust, we develop proxies for Trust: Any mechanism which seeks to control behaviour is a proxy for trust (examples: employment contracts, performance reviews, annual budgeting processes, rigid organizational structures and reporting relationships, over-applied lean methodology, outcome-based objective setting) The higher the Trust Level, the lower the need for controls The higher the Trust Level, the greater the level of collaboration, which results in a higher level of innovation
- #25 Speak to behaviours in each dimension – can build, damage or violate trust
- #26 Speak to behaviours in each dimension – can build, damage or violate trust