I did a short presentation for Innovation Island about my book about books about intrapreneurship and innovation.
Interesting conepts
I will not bore you with the 24 books and what I think are the exciting bits of the 24 books. Watch the beginning of the video. I talked about concepts such as solid, fluid and superfluid, designing organisations like rain forests, soft structures, six degrees of competition, biomimicry, clock speed and innovation friction.
Trends and examples
I talked about a few trends and examples. Haier, Darpa, Mondragon, AQ, citizen development, technology abstraction, fab-labs, co-creation, science fiction as a tool and the conclusion that technology and innovation are becoming existential.
It is all there
The conclusion is that it is all there. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. You need to understand the zone you are operating in (time, organisational, focus, shape), the importance of experimentation (what is the size of your failure fund?), collective leadership, dashboards, metrics and the realisation that innovation is a deliberate process. Not to be confused with change management or culture, but definitely always embedded in the culture.
Why is innovation so hard
Innovation friction in that context is interesting. Why is innovation so hard? What gets in the way of people expressing themselves and developing ideas? What gets in the way of flow? I think it is because the focus is too much on the mechanics and not enough about embedding it as a structure or (change) muscle. It should start with purpose, passion, joy, context, clarity and strategy. Then direction. I suggested three fundamental ones.
- Deep specialisation
- Islands of opportunity
- Sailing for America
And only then the tools. Of which there are plenty. Have a look here.
The tools
I did not have time to explain some of the tools you can use to understand purpose, create context and clarity and get some sense of a strategic direction, such as the strategic filter, your information dashboard, trend analysis, scenario planning and reverse attribute listing. And yes, I did develop a service around that. More information you will find here.
SMEs
I finished by talking about SMEs and innovation. The limited bandwidth, the disproportionate opportunity costs and risks, but also the ability of SMEs to be quicker and better at innovation. It is essential to develop the innovation capability of SMEs because we need them as the change agents for a better future.
Some suggestions
Why not organise innovation as a cooperative or cluster? Why not an intrapreneurship accelerator? Why not SME hackathons? Why not sandbox the risk/opportunity for SMEs by designing challenge-based competitions?
Shooting the breeze
As I said at the end of the talk, I am always open to shooting the breeze about these topics. Contact me at ron@ronimmink.com, and we will set up a Zoom.
PS If you want to get a copy of PP, also drop me a line, and I will send you the slides by return.
