Unpuzzling Innovation: Mastering Innovation Management in a Structural Way

Introduction

Digital Innovation is a dynamic storybook that has intricate chapters, with a serendipitous cover, which can be flipped over to the next level, but it is a book that never ends.

Figure 1 Mastering Innovation Management in a Structural Way

Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. Talking of innovation is not new nowadays, everybody, every organization now is talking about innovation. It’s been at or near the top of the business or economics agenda for a long time. However, there’re a lot of confusions about innovation and there is no magic sauce to guarantee its success. Back to basic, what is innovation, the more you look into this topic, the more difficult to give a definition of innovation, as it is such a broad topic. One of the good definitions of innovation is: "to transform the novel ideas into commercial success." In essence, innovation is, intentional novelty bringing sustainable benefit.

Creativity is the mental process to create novel ideas, and innovation is to transform novel ideas to achieve their business value. The creativity ingredients include curiosity, knowledge, urge, inspiration, intuition, need and necessity, instinct, survival of the fittest and larger good simple brilliance, boldness, logic, rationality, out of the box thinking, fluidity, flexibility, discovery, stretch, influence, experiment, insight, prioritization, customer-centricity, open-mindedness, transdisciplinarity, inquisitiveness, risk tolerance, etc. A new idea, a new method, a new product or service, a new business proposition, a new and better deployment of resources, another way to achieve better results, etc, all contribute to innovation.

Figure 2 The Creativity Cube

The purpose of "Unpuzzling Innovation - Mastering Innovation Management in a Structural Way is to demystify innovation puzzle in a structural way. Innovation is the process which can be classified scientifically and managed dynamically. Innovation is neither serendipity nor status quo, it needs to break some outdated rules, builds digital principles, and takes a systematic approach with robust, but not overly rigid processes to implement it. Digital innovators are the whole-brainers who present leadership skills and multidimensional intelligence, to mastering the art of possible." Creativity is simply about connecting the dots, the difference between innovation and creativity is implementation. It’s important to develop a set of best/next practices to manage digital innovation continuum effectively. It’s also critical to understand the paradox of innovation and strike the right balance between ideation and execution part of the innovation process and management. Innovation journey is thorny, be cautious about gaps and pitfalls on the way, to improve innovation success rate and measure it in the right way.

Chapter 1 Innovation classification: Digital innovation has a broader spectrum with hybrid nature including incremental innovation, evolutionary innovation, and radical innovation; hard innovations such as products/service innovation, business model or process innovation, and soft innovations such as leadership innovation, communication innovation, and culture innovation. The gap between incremental and radical innovation is huge both in terms of outcomes if successful and on how to approach.

Chapter 2 Innovation principles: Digital brings both unprecedented opportunities and risks to the businesses today. Every innovation-the creative pursuit has the risk in it. You’re accepting risk for potential reward. Therefore, it is important to set principles for managing innovation and handling risk in a structural way. The principles and guidelines help to further frame processes, measures, and control.

Chapter 3 Digital innovators: Creativity is a high level of thinking and intelligence. Intelligence is the quick and clear perception of any situation, plus ability to adjust to any circumstances. It is contextual and multidimensional. Digital innovators present leadership skills, master at creative communication, understand what is wrong with the status quo, have the good sense and sound judgment to attract and surround themselves with the right people, and work collaboratively to do more with innovation.

Chapter 4 Connecting innovation dots: Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Creativity is simply about connecting the dots. Creativity needs a problem, and a creative person needs a purpose. The difference between innovation and creativity is implementation. Innovation is to reinvent business, but not to reinvent the wheels. Innovation is about reinventing the business direction or purpose, which defines strategy, profitability and relevance at any given time. Innovation allows one to stand out and above the rest.

Chapter 5 Digital innovation next practices: Digital innovation has a broader spectrum with hybrid nature, it is the incremental improvement- radical innovation continuum. It is hard to think of any innovation as not a hybrid, a combination of something old with something new or a number of new things. Probably, the more hybrid, the more familiar things are combined, the less likely is any disruption, although all innovations are disruptive of something or some behavior to some degree. The innovation leaders need to master at managing complexity and dynamic of innovation portfolio more effectively.

Chapter 6 Innovation paradox: Innovation is to transform the novel ideas and achieve their business value. Innovation is not just about ideas or exchanging ideas, based on most of the innovation models, idea creation is only one step of the innovation process. Therefore, in a basic view, innovation is a process and every process needs to be managed. The paradox is that all creative activities are subversive in questioning the status quo. Setting rules and goals for creativity goes against the very nature of creativity and thus inventiveness and innovation. It’s critical to strike the right balance between ideation and execution part of the innovation process and management.

Chapter 7 Innovation gaps and pitfalls: Innovation fails because, there are