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Pisano (2015) proposes that an innovation strategy should cover - as essential - interdependent processes & structures for:
- how firms search for novel problems / solutions
- synthesise ideas into concepts and designs

Starbuck (2002) notes that copying another's innovation strategy won't work.

KcKinsey's 8 Essentials:
- Aspire
- Choose
- Discover
- Evolve
- Accelerate
- Scale
- Extend
- Mobilise

Drawing on design thinking (Brown & Wyatt, 2010):
- Inspiration
- Ideation
- Implementation
- Foster divergent thinkers

Needs to include learning and knowledge (Therin, 2003).

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(From KM)
New knowledge (Drucker, 1998b)
Knowledge-based competence (Ichijo, 2007)
Different thinking styles (Leonard & Strauss, 1997)
Social capital/ social networks; socially embedded learning processes; knowledge discovery & sharing  (Alguezaui et al, 2010)
Tacit knowledge (Leonard & Sensiper, 2002)
Exploration & exploitation of knowledge; being knowledge-centric (Donate et al, 2011)
Effective firm-internal knowledge integration (Koch, 2011)
Knowledge creation mediates intra-firm sharing, external acquisition & documentation (Andreeva et al, 2011)
Continuous knowledge creation (Nonaka, 1991)
Brainstorming in groups with diverse knowledge, competences, experiences, ages, social status & ethnicity etc (Nielsen, 2012)
Assimilation of, adoption and application of external knowledge flows; trust (Greer et al, 2012)

(from the Innovation / Management domain)

People generate more & better ideas on their own (Grant, 2016) vs Interaction is essential to innovation (Colvin, 2015)
Group trust is essential; most creative groups have 2 members (but also see Verganti, 2016); intrinsic motivation more important to stimulating creativity than external motivation but on its own is not enough (Colvin, 2015)
Catalytic attitudinal factors in lean-resource innovation:
- Intention
- Inspiration
- Integration
- Indefatiguability (Bien et al, 2014)
Being 'other' focused (Colvin, 2015)
Dedicated time to innovative thinking / practice is more important than physical space; challenge (opens up potential for discovery) not vision (a stated end goal) (Furr & Dyer, 2014)
Need to generate lots of ideas - truly innovative ideas are creatively disruptive (Brown & Wyatt, 2010)
"Big Ideas" (as opposed to incremental improvements) are disruptive and come from positive deviance (Brown & Wyatt)
Most people can come up with a good idea - stop forcing them to conform; better ideas from people working on their own. (Grant, 2016)

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Grant (2016) argues that a strong innovation culture needs to be balanced with critical opinion (the dissenters) - criticism, like failure, if viewed properly can yield valuable insight and data.

Importance of prioritising values - studies suggest no more than 4, and that they should be rank-ordered (top one mediates the others, and thus conflict is avoided) - Grant (2016).

Grant argues the need to foster a culture of NON-CONFORMITY
- Time to generate ideas
- Meritocratic not democratic evaluation-curation
- Become your own competition
- Speed date the boss
Suggestion box & Innovation Tournaments

Hamel & Tennant (2015) urge that the following should be included:
- People need to be trained to think innovatively; to challenge orthodoxies, spot under-appreciated trends, leverage embedded competencies / assets
- a shred definition of innovation
- Comprehensive innovation metrics (see list)
- Accountable / capable innovation leaders
- Innovation friendly management processes (see also Furr & Dyer on removing barriers)

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According to Grant (2016), fellow innovators make the best evaluators. Meritocracy NOT democracy.

But, remember that innovators are themselves biased. Grant warns that Managers do not make the best evaluators of innovation. This plays to the Harvard book on Innovation & Creativity, which argues that new innovation initiatives need to be set up as totally separate businesses, and NOT overseen or evaluated by managers from the existing business - their mutual values and ambitions will be totally different!

Idea: 'Innovation Tournament': e.g., Dow Chemical as the example.

Verganti (2016) argues for the need for new assessment criteria (the world is awash with new ideas - the trick is to identify the big opportunity). A 4-step process routed in criticism, with the priority on engaging with employees from the outset, keeping external views to the end. He differentiates between 'improvements' (incremental) and new directions (radical), proposing that the act of generating lots of ideas is only good for improvement. His process is:
1. Individual reflection
2. Sparring partners
3. Radical circles,
4. Outsiders

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Silva et al's (2014) study looks at the factors influencing / impacting on propensity to innovate in service firms. They investigate:

- investment in internal R&D/ external R&D
Acquisition of machinery, equipment and software
- Acquisition of external knowledge
- Acquisition of training
- Marketing activities

They find that those which are most strongly connected to innovation capacity (defined as a firm having introduced some new service or product within a two year period - a decade prior to the paper's publication) are:

- investment in internal R&D
- investment in machinery, equipment and software

QUESTIONABLE!

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One measure of innovation capacity is to look at the extent to which the firm identifies, captures and embeds external knowledge (see Research study on innovation capacity).  What are the ways in which you think you might go about that?

For instance, you might buy access to data / information channels and feeds, such as Big Data.

Another would be to build relationships based on exchanging knowledge with external partners.

What about more innovative methods? Establishing Communities of Practice or Panels of Experts to meet regularly for presentations and debates? Identifying external experts you can call on. ACTIVITY: list out all of the ways in which you could bring in external knowledge, how would you embed / share this internally, how would you curate it, how would you ensure that it is used and absorbed? What might be the barriers and sticking points and how might you overcome them?

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Innovation nation - transforming potential

SOLICIT PROBLEMS NOT SOLUTIONS (Grant, 2016)

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Guy Kawasaki (2014):
- Make Meaning (not money) - major driver.
- Make a mantra not a vision statement. Why you exist.
- Perspective - jump to the next curve
- Roll the dice
- Don't worry if its crappy
- Let 100 flowers blossom
- Polarise people
- Churn, churn...
- Measure by unique vs value
- Perfect your pitch

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Stefan Gross-Selbeck (2014): innovative start ups don't have business models - they are about the process of discovery. Large companies execute business models, start ups discover them. This, he argues, is at the core of the disruptive force. Discovery is about fundamentally questioning the prevailing value chain, Most important thing is MINDSET - attacker, agile, failure is OK.

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Three core assumptions:

- innovation is relevant to all types of business
- creating shared values supports and drives continued innovation.
- there is no 'one size fits all'

LEARNING IS AT THE HEART OF INNOVATION - ENCOURAGING COLLABORATION AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING IS CRUCIAL.

Innovation is both a process and an outcome: "...high quality work, in a positive and collaborative organizational climate where success is shared, encourages employees to engage in solving business challenges and creates space where they can do so."

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Dave Harrison (10Eighty, 2015) finds a strong and positive relationship between employee engagement, and the 'dimensions' of a creative and innovative climate: Factors affecting employee engagement include:
- Valuing creativity and innovation
- Team cohesion
- Goal awareness
- Resources
- Risk
-Expertise
- Ideation
- Internal networks
- Achievement
- Internal collaboration
- External collaboration

He notes employee engagement can be divided into emotional and procedural engagement.

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Innovation is created by people as action in social interaction.

BUT according to Grant (2016), ideas are better from lone-working individuals than group brain storming (see article about 'brainswarming'). Group brainstorming can be problematic - people hold back, e.g., so group work is not the best way to go about generating new ideas - at least not initially. People need to 'brain write' ideas before engaging in group discussion.

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Companies are constantly hampered by orthodox ways of thinking - biases which cause people to overlook solutions 'hidden in plain sight'.  Need to address:

FUNCTIONAL FIXEDNESS
- how does this work?
- Generic parts technique (does our description imply a particular use, for instance?) - strip away all preconceived ideas!!
DESIGN FIXATION
- standard features are material, size, shape and parts? Complex problems require many more.... but people tend to fixate on the features of the current design - need to manipulate features that are usually overlooked.
GOAL FIXEDNESS
- the ways we describe objects can fix its goal - 'adhere' instead of 'fasten' for instance.
- Framing a problem in more general terms can help to overcome it. That is, choosing descriptors which have the least number of hyponyms (eg spoon is a hyponym of cutlery).
VISUALISING INNOVATIVE THINKING
- Map relationships between all possibilities, with the goal at the topic, and the resources at the bottom. As you re-phrase the goal, you can review the resources - to uncover the widest possible view of all of the features of any given resources.

(McCaffrey & Pearson, 2015; but see also Furr & Dyer, 2014)

Brainswarming - people write down lots of ideas (Brown & Wyatt, 2010, on design thinking)

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A 2015 report states that a poll of managers found 94% were dissatisfied with their company's innovative performance.

- Teach workers how to be innovative thinkers
- Clear and shared definition of what is innovation.
- Innovation metrics - ways of measuring innovation performance, include:

1. Inputs
2. Throughputs
3. Outputs
4. Leadership
5. Competence
6. Climate
7. Efficiency
8. Balance

- Accountable and capable innovation leaders
- Innovation-friendly management processes
- Taking a systemic view

(Hamel & Tennant, 2015)

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Smart Knowledge Sharing?

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- Challenge not vision
- Reimagine basic assumptions
- Embrace and manage uncertainty
- Manage decision points
- Don't make decisions, design experiments
- Advocate for new and different
- Ideas are just guesses - question them!
- You can IGNITE NEW IDEAS - but the organization has to be prepared to accept them.
- Ensure a common language
- Remove organizational barriers and processes likely to stymie innovation
(Furr & Dyner, 2014)

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(Learning Consortium 2015

- Goals, attitudes and values focus on added value and innovation as opposed to short term profits.

- Managers as enablers rather than controllers - draw on full capacities and talents of workers.

- Embedding values of transparency and continuous improvements.

- Open and conversational.

- Engage workers

- Constant learning and adapting

- Learning by doing, reflection, deep listening

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(McKinsey & Co, 2016).

Digitization can disrupt whole industries when it changes the nature of supply and demand.

See 'The Disruption Debate', HBR Commentary, 2015: criticism of Clayton Christensen's 'disruption' theory as being too limited. Robin Chase (founded of Zipcar) defines disruption as "discontinuously changing the business definition, the customer value proposition, and the structure and cost of the value chain.

See Weeks on Disruption

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Workers are free to develop new ideas and promote them without any expectation of anything in return, or any additional responsibilities (eg of management). (McCrimmon, 2005).

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Can be aligned to empathy, particular when it comes to collaborative innovation with customers (Greer & Lei, 2012)

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Open innovation = 'systematically performing knowledge exploration, retention and exploitation inside and outside an organization's boundaries throughout the innovation process" (Greer & Lei, 2012). This concept focuses on KNOWLEDGE FLOWS. How permeable are the organization's boundaries to knowledge flows?  Customers cannot always explain what they know: one study shows how originality (of idea in customers) is inversely related to knowledge of the underlying technology. That is, an increase in underlying knowledge can lead to a lack of idea originality!

A large DATABASE does not necessarily result in innovation.

Evidence suggests that "...the social fabric of embedded knowledge in organizations, the dominant logics, and the strategic lenses of decision-making limit the ability of organizations to absorb information necessary for innovation."

Importance of flows of knowledge from outside of the organization - otherwise, can lead to rigidities, cognitive inertia. This is a well known weakness in innovation practices.

Cumulative insights -cross functional mind sets

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Issues over the definition of innovation leads Quintane et al, 2011, to cast it as a process or outcome, or both.

Innovation along two dimensions: changes in technology, and changes in business model. This leads to 4 categories of innovation: disruptive, radical, architectural and routine. (Pisano, 2015).

Improvements vs new directions (Verganti, 2016)

Definition of innovation (Harvard Business Press, 2003):
- Incremental
- Radical

The pros and cons of focusing on one or the other, or both. Dalglish & Newton (2002) argue that firms which only focus on incremental improvements are shown to be incapable of sustaining high levels of performance for more than 10-15 years.

The 'S-curve' concept - the course of successful innovation (technological): Performance x Time / Investment.

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Many innovation initiatives fail through lack of an innovation strategy, according to Pisano (2015). Strategy is "...a commitment to a set of coherent, mutually reinforcing policies or behaviours aimed at achieving a specific goal."

Copying someone else's strategy won't work! Key questions should include:

1. How will innovation create value for customers?
2. How will the company capture a share of the value its innovations generate?
3. What types of innovation will allow the company to create and capture value?
4. What resources should each type receive?

Kim & Mauborgne (2004)'s Blue Ocean Strategy.
- business world split into 'red'/ 'blue' oceans. BOS is a 'consistent pattern of strategic thinking behind new industry creation'. They refer to the number of businesses which simply did not exist 30 years ago (writing in 2004). Their theory largely depends on the notion that new business lines (eg new products) are far more profitable than existing / improved products.

They argue that blue oceans are not about technology developments: it is not a defining feature (how true is that today, though!)

Characteristics of the strategic moves which create blue oceans:
- don't use competition as the benchmark - BOs make competition irrelevant.
- No trade off between value and cost (that is, to produce something cheaper, it doesn't have to be of less value to the customer).
- Buyer value = utility + price
- Hard to imitate.

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"Putting together a group with diverse knowledge, competencies, experiences, age, education, ethnicity, social status etc. is proven to be a core factor in the advancement of innovation" (Nielsen, 2012).

Paper on Wicked Problem solvers: study of 12 cross-industry projects arguing that innovation can rise from cross-industry collaborations - variation in experience, background, knowledge, cultures and norms (but factor in the 'group brainstorming' limitations!). Key shaping practices@
1. Foster an adaptable vision
2. Enable psychological safety
3. Enable knowledge sharing
4. Foster execution as 'learning' (ie learn by doing).

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The rationale for brainstorming is that the quantity of ideas increases the probability of quality. NOT SO says Nielsen (2012), who argues that the cognitive load of 'holding an idea' while listening to others could actually stymie innovation thinking. Transferring cognitive load to cards (writing ideas down) which are then displayed for group discussion helps  to distribute the load and facilitates more easily the sharing of mental ideas. Thus, separating the generation of ideas from the actual discussion of ideas.

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Leonard & Strauss (1997) argued that innovation depends on a mix of human styles of thinking.

Leonard & Sensiper (2002) create a direct link between innovation and tacit knowledge - through group interaction (with diverse skills and backgrounds) - the idea of 'creative abrasion' igniting innovation.

Quintane et al (2011) argue that innovation is a process AND an outcome. Raises a question - is new knowledge the outcome of innovation or is innovation the outcome of new knowledge???

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PA Consulting's 7 recommendations for being an innovation business:

1. Be visionary, aggressive and bold
2. Bring new life to the Board
3. Look beyond your sector
4. Measure by value, not financial calculation
5. Go beyond the 'token digital'
6. Learn from mistakes
7. Kill the innovation killers

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PA consulting: killers of innovation include:

- Fear
- Lack of focus
- Engine failure
- Wrong ROI
- Reluctance to invest

Grant (2016):
- taking a defensive line to stave off competition

Tradition often blocks innovation (Sawhney et al).

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PA Consulting (2015) describes digital as having a crucial role in winning the innovation race. They are mainly talking about capturing, storing and analyzing data from internal / external sources, networks. Businesses should be designed around innovation - culture, process. They also propose that innovation is a SHARED ACTIVITY.