We need to constantly renew within ourselves. There is a time when your innovation efforts may need a serious renewal and for many this might be now. Knowing when to invest in an innovation renewal and organizing for it is like any other organizational activity.

Those that are honest enough to admit that what they have achieved to-date in innovation activity is just not going to ‘cut it’ for the future will be making a very ‘tough’ call but it might be one of the best ones you are about to make. I think we all need to think of a renewal of innovation as essential in our thinking as over time many things have changed and moved on. We need not just to adjust in our objectives but more importantly to adapt and acknowledge that our innovation understanding has greatly improved, so we need to reflect this in our innovation structures, processes and systems.

Challenge the ‘legacy’ within

Considerable investment has gone into previous innovation activity but much of this is actually ‘legacy’ and perhaps our current innovation practices are ‘frozen’ in past times and organized around out-of-date structures and processes. We all (should) have been learning about new concepts and approaches to innovation and what these can bring in growth, sustainability and value to our organizations. Often we don’t allow ourselves to call for a thorough review of our innovation infrastructure. We also sometimes need to expand out our thinking and push it a little more with future foresights, fresh visions and bolder challenges. We need to truly capitalize on the emerging practices of innovation, not just based only on yesterday’s experiments and successes or achieved through outdated past behaviors and thinking.

A need for a critical and fresh evaluation of your innovation process

There comes a time where any structure, process, culture or organization needs a radical rethink and innovation is no different -don’t simply bolt on the next bit, I would argue we need to reflect on this and think differently, reequip ourselves to meet the present and future challenges. To achieve this perhaps, radical departure, you do need to look at a more structured approach to your renewal of innovation, designing into this processes and structures that are more sustaining and can become embedded within the organization once and for all.

Making the first critical steps

Firstly you have to start out with why you feel a freshening up should be required, should this be radical, distinctive or incremental. What do you actually want to achieve that takes you closer to your aspirations, not just immediate goals? Can the way you conduct innovation today meet that strategic challenge? It could be for a host of pressing needs for meeting competition in today’s market or positioning for the ‘forces’ swirling around global competition as changes in fortune do not come just by luck or chance; we have to create the right environment to enable it to happen. We should question many of the ‘established’ approaches and challenge them with fresher, more up-to-date thinking based on current innovation thinking.

Going step-by-step

Let me offer some thoughts of taking a more systematic and structured approach to renewal. These can help you to think through those needs that have to be addressed for a different innovation approach in the future.

I would recommend that you can work through a step-by-step approach, enabling clarity and understanding as you go, so everyone involved can see the problems, challenges and contribute to the solutions. What this does call for is a very structured, comprehensive investigative approach across the organization to build the momentum for firstly sensing renewal as important for the future, and then seeing clarity for this future that is built upon a sustaining innovation culture all can become involved in.

12 critical steps through this diagnostic structured framework for equipping yourself for improving innovation.

These are:

1. Assessments that firstly evaluate your present position. Build this not only on internal observation but on external evaluations. Separate opinions and facts, highlight potential weaknesses, and investigate the culture through a range of evaluation tools that are available to complete this part.
2. Next, benchmark quickly your competitors and search across other industry insights to begin to build the momentum for ‘why’ change.
3. Seek out those pockets of resistance that are constantly just below the surface or even deep seated, address the critical issues through a change resistance grid and resolve the obstacles through a variety of methods and techniques with a real sense of urgency. Address this clearly and squarely.
4. Making a battery of tests to assess the readiness for change, the resilience and capability to make change and evaluate where innovation has contributed to your performance. Talk about this broadly.
5. Approach solutions with a greater understanding of the different people style options, the diversity of traits, leadership and situational methods that if accounted for from the early stages will bring fresh and different dimensions to your thinking and break down possible blockages by recognizing and adopting different techniques for different people. One size does not fit all and respecting diversity across the organization and accommodating this diverse opinion will add such a ‘zest’ of freshness.
6. Learning the techniques of facilitation to mobilize latent energy, provide encouragement, revitalize and respond to the multiple layers within your organization and spending the appropriate amount of time in building this into the actions you are needing to take for changing the environment and climate for innovation to thrive.
7. Focus upon the critical aspects of the business that assesses, realigns, restructures and redeploys around the three critical aspects of knowing and leveraging your core business through your innovation offerings:1) making the customer the center of your thinking
   2) addressing your products and service quality and offerings at the new innovation speed
   3) to build increasing agility, flexibility and anticipation that is required to meet the new market needs.

   Make these central to your new thinking.

8. Managing innovation change needs a clear, dedicated focus in clarifying plans, thinking through new systems and practices, committing to training and constant support, providing feedback, managing the inherent stress this can cause and building the building blocks of commitment and shared identification. Recognizing that this requires a sustaining innovation engine that needs well resourcing.
9. Knowing where the levers are to revitalize innovation requires a range of techniques and dedicated innovation champions to clarify objectives and to provide guidance and authentic authority. It is through these dedicated champions of innovation change that you communicate any decisions, communicate new policy to integrate these across the business. Seize upon any early wins, celebrate successes widely and provide the mechanism for this recognition through strong well thought out HR support. Identify and tackle those current difficulties head on and make every effort to reduce road blocks to give this increasing sense of renewal for all to see and relate too.
10. Innovation regeneration needs setting new visions, new directions and goals, providing essential resource and support to promote new culture and capabilities needed. You need to construct the appropriate action plans, track results, update and re-adjust from fresh knowledge and learning so these begin to restore a growing sense of identity and corporate value and building the communication plans to cascade these throughout the organization. Let everyone feel, hear and see the changes.
11. Provide clear solutions that define the goals, structure, systems and processes. Don’t duck them. Invest in the design considerations with care and forethought. Plan any cultural or structural shifts so as to provide the learning platforms for investing in new competencies and skills that place a premium on acquiring this new knowledge needed to adopt, using open consistent communications and growing networks that inform, promote and identify the emerging vision of why we need to do innovation differently.
12. Place innovation at the heart of generating new growth and establishing the ongoing momentum for sustaining renewal over the long term, with a structured process and corporate sense of engagement. This means an absolute alignment of innovation to the strategy. This alignment is a C-board imperative, otherwise nothing really changes, all you have achieved is a simple ‘lick’ of innovation paint to brush over existing weakness.

There is a real imperative for a clear sense of renewal in innovation, it often needs it to take away redundancy and replace it with a more purpose built innovation engine for growth and value.

By taking this more structured approach it certainly calls for a dedicated commitment that seeks out, investigates and builds the momentum for generating innovation renewal. The need for making the case for renewal and charting the path towards the solutions is no different than any other corporate initiative. Making the commitment and getting others to sign on often is hard but essential. It takes that ‘sense of innovation renewal’ that does come from an organizational commitment that all begin to recognize as necessary to address and meet the future. It is crafting the story in a clear, logical way that will gain that greater identification and commitment. Explaining that our future is not waiting for others, but ‘seizing the initiative’ and translating what we ‘know’ with what we ‘need to know’ is important. Placing our innovation destiny in our hands and on our terms by renewing ourselves is critical today.

We need to lead, so others follow and try where they can, in reacting, copying and adjusting does give a significant first mover advantage in today’s innovative world.

A structured approach to renewal is not an easy journey; it takes dedicated time and incredible strength of determination. The rewards come through an organization that emerges from today’s ‘uncertainly’ equipped to be more resistant, flexible and agile, so as to seize emerging opportunities quicker, at tomorrows new innovation speed .

You might recall the very impressive “Blinput” concept by Scotland-based design student Erik Hals from earlier this month. Well now it seems that the visually impaired could be spoiled for choice with student design projects, as University of Washington design students Erik Hedberg and Zack Bennet offer up another, potential revolutionary, smartphone application for the blind.

Where “Blinput” sought to utilise the technology already widely available in smartphones, “Thimble” combines the powers of the phone with an intriguing finger glove that offers “an entirely new literary experience” to the user. The fingertip camera would be used to scan printed text and signage and translate it into impulses of Braille within the glove. The location and real-time capabilities of the smartphone could also provide the user with relevant ambient and real-time updates at the touch of a button.

Has anyone else got any more ideas whilst we’re at it?!

But in observing a number of leading designers and innovators over the past couple of years (including individuals such as Yves Behar, Bruce Mau, and Dean Kamen, and firms such as IDEO and Smart Design), what has struck me is how often these change-makers seem to be moving sideways and even backwards, in addition to moving forward. In my own head, I’ve started to think of this as a kind of “catalyst’s dance”—with the most common version of it being a nifty (and quite difficult) four-step.

The ability to question fundamentals has never been more important

More often than not, this dance begins with taking a step back—to reconsider existing realities, to challenge basic assumptions, and above all, to question everything. Designers seem to be particularly adept at questioning (hence the joke, How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?), but it’s also an ingrained behavior among all sorts of innovators, including the most creative business executives. (One recent study published in the Harvard Business Review found that a key characteristic of creative executives—and the one that seemed to have the greatest impact—was the inclination and willingness to question everything).

While this first “questioning” step may seem like an easy one, it actually can be quite difficult to ask basic “why” and “why not” queries. There’s pressure, particularly in business, to avoid any appearance of being naïve. And questioning established practices doesn’t always sit well with colleagues accustomed to doing things a certain way. Moreover, there’s an art to asking the right kinds of catalytic questions (which will be the subject of a future post). But difficult as it may be, in today’s volatile marketplace, the ability to step back, question, and rethink basic fundamentals—What business are we really in? What do today’s customers actually need or expect from us?—has probably never been more important.

Of equal importance is the second step of the catalyst’s dance—which might be thought of as a “step to the outside.” Design thinkers at IDEO and elsewhere have demonstrated the value of observational research in helping innovators to ferret out people’s deep unarticulated needs. While this practice is sometimes labeled with design terms such as “user understanding” or “empathic research,” I prefer the word applied by the author and design consultant Dev Patnaik—“caring.” At this second stage of the process, innovators must care enough about people’s actual lives and needs to be willing to step outside the corporate bubble and immerse themselves in an environment where they can watch and learn. Doing so will tend to yield fresh insights that begin to address those big questions previously raised.

While this “caring” phase is critical, it often doesn’t yield the big breakthrough idea right away. Anecdotal stories from innovators—supported by the latest research on creative thinking—suggests that truly original ideas tend to come from taking what we’ve learned and synthesizing it with other ideas, influences, and creative instincts. This is the “connect” stage, wherein elements and ideas that may seem unrelated begin to come together to form “smart recombinations” (to use a term coined by the designer John Thackara).

There is no shame in going backwards or sideways

Think of the innovative Nike Plus system: The company started by questioning its basic offerings and then proceeded to the “caring” stage (using ethnography to learn firsthand about runners’ on-the-go information needs), but it took another step for Nike to smartly combine a running shoe with an iPod. This third step in the dance can be thought of as a “step together” move—when everything comes together to form the new idea. Neurological studies tell us that some people are better than others at making these insightful mental connections, but all of us are capable under the right conditions of getting to big “aha” moments. When it happens, it may feel great—but it’s not the end of the dance.

The fourth step—after question, care, connect—is to “commit.” It’s at this point that the innovator takes a bold step forward, by giving form to an idea and actually putting it out there in the world. Whether it’s a sketch, a prototype carved from foam rubber, or a sophisticated CAD model, what matters is the act of quickly and unflinchingly giving form to an idea so that it can be passed around, evaluated, tested. This is perhaps the trickiest step of the dance. Given that most new ideas are imperfect and most prototypes flawed, the likelihood of a misstep is so high as to be almost a given.

Still, innovation is unlikely to occur unless the person or team behind the idea is willing to commit, without hesitation, to taking this uncertain fourth step. If it turns out the idea is not ready for prime time, it may be necessary to once again step back—and perhaps even to repeat the whole question-care-connect-commit cycle, in the effort to keep learning and refining. What the experienced innovator understands is that there is no shame in going backwards or sideways, and what might seem to be a setback is nothing of the kind—it’s just a step in the dance.

The trend

With majority of cellphone users looking for multiple functions in mobile handsets, the focus of smartphone designers has been shifting toward touch-sensitive phones that can meet communication as well as multimedia needs through a single device. The popularity of touch-sensitive handsets can well be measured with the fact that over 20 different touchscreen-enabled phones, though with diverse form and functions, have been released in past two years. Taking the mobile phone technology, evolving day after day, to a new level, designer Julius Tarng has come up with an innovative cellphone called the “Modai” that seems to forge emotional bonds between the user and electronic devices by persuading human behaviors and pushing the limits of mobile technology.

Video after the break.
The inspiration

Despite the fact that numerous mobile phone concepts are switching to a touchscreen interface to provide great content and experience, they are still just chunks of metal and plastic that lack human qualities and emotional connection between the user and device. For most of the contemporary devices have no idea what you need, so you have to change your requirements according to the context you are in. Moreover, current devices are limited in ways, light, sound or vibration, to get your attention. These are either disruptive or ineffective, and hold no relation to the message that the user wants to convey. Therefore, Julius want to create a device that not only look good but also mold itself according to the needs and sentiments of the user.

What makes it so special?

Featuring a simple, ergonomic and unique design, the Modai offers a brilliant full screen, a muscle wire peel stand and sturdy aluminum body to allow superior communication wherever you go. Capable of following the user’s needs, the futuristic cellphone provides two paradigms, Fundai (social) that filters and delivers the social content and Prodai (work) that shows all the content you need to succeed in your professional endeavors, to balance both the social and work front. To add more, it includes a dynamic, human user interface, the Modai OS, which gives you exactly what you want anytime, anywhere. Furthermore, Modai proposes an area in the UI called the “Concierge” that delivers contextually relevant content based on previous usage and habits in different times and locations.

And the peel stand lets Modai move physically by itself, expanding the possibilities of tangible interaction with the user. The graphical avatar of Modai visually represents its status, including the paradigm you’re in, in case you are on a phone call, and the battery life. Sounding the alarm at its apex, the device gets up slowly, to wake you up, which you can snooze by a slight tap on its face. Moreover, the cellphone lifts its face up, down or nudges you in the pocket to attract your attention toward the received text message, call or contextual suggestion. Integrating modular, upgradable internals, the Modai circumvents the problem of outdated technology, for the user can simply peel back the peel stand and pull the tab to release internals and add new flavor to the hardware with ease.

What’s in it for me?

Exploring an advanced user interface and industrial design of a mobile device, the Project Modai proposes different ways to humanize actions by following the interaction between the human beings, while modular internals ensures a friendly ecosystem between the user and the manufacturer. Besides, Modai attempts to lengthen and enhance the relationship between the user and device by forging an emotional connection.

What’s next?

The modular and emotional characteristics of Modai cellphone has paved the way for a new genre of gadgets, which is not only intuitive and versatile but also sensitive and expressive, bringing man and technology more closer to each other than ever before.

Some days I’m a creator.  Some days, today for instance, I’m publicizing Gary Hamel’s recent post in the Wall Street Journal about Innovation.  Not that Gary needs a significant amount of assistance with publicity, but when someone gets it right, we need to point it out. Not with a flashlight but with a search light so everyone can see.
Gary started his post poking fun of some of the innovation lists – which firms are the “most innovative”. As he notes this is like comparing dancers – which is “best” – ballerinas or people who dance the tango?  Square dancers or break dancing?  Are we talking about classical interpretations or best new introduction?  Sometimes I think this is akin to the arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  Anyway, the real value of Gary’s piece lays hidden over two thirds of the way down, when he starts talking about what limits innovation in established companies.  He says:

• Few, if any, employees have been trained as business innovators
• Few employees have access to the sort of customer and industry insights that can help spur innovation
• Would be innovators face a bureaucratic gauntlet that makes it difficult for them to get the time and resources they need to test their ideas
• Line managers aren’t held accountable for mentoring new business initiatives or lack explicit innovation goals
• Innovation performance isn’t directly tied to top management compensation
• The metrics for tracking innovation (inputs, throughouts, outputs) are patchy and poorly constructed
• There’s no commonly agreed-upon definition of innovation and no way to compare innovation across teams

These are his words, pulled from his post.  The words I’ve highlighted with italics and bold and underlining (perhaps overkill) are the key ones.  If I were to take Gary’s words and place them in order of sequence and significance, I’d say:

• Define what innovation means and how it aligns to corporate goals and objectives
• Establish an innovation strategy – Need Seeker, Market Reader or Technology Driver
• Establish metrics and measurements for innovation
• Incorporate innovation goals and measures into annual plans linked to evaluation and compensation
• Train people throughout the organization on the tools and techniques of innovation
• Establish a well-defined innovation process that all ideas follow
• Encourage trend spotting and scenario planning as a way to gain insights

If you look at this list it seems daunting, and unreasonable if you want to create one new product or service.  Yet the additional work to change the culture and make it more innovative, beyond the work necessary to simply grind out one new innovative product, is not that pronounced.  Doing the least expecting the most is rarely a positive strategy.  If you want to be truly innovative, plan to do more to get more.

But you know this already.  The difference between creating innovative products and services and wanting to be more innovative is commitment.

Nokia has introduced a cellphone app that could usher in a new wave of “thinking” phones: Nokia Situations essentially transforms a phone depending on the situation or location of its user. While still in an experimental phase, Nokia Situations aims to “define how you want your phone to behave in different situations.”

The Nokia Blog explains:

We have created an experimental application called Nokia Situations which you can use to define how you want your phone to behave in different situations, like “In a meeting”, “Sleeping”, or “Playing with the kids”.  With the application running in the background, your device automatically senses the situation you are in (e.g. based on time, day, location, available networks) and adapts to it according to your preferences.

SplashTab – Customized Facebook fan pages: http://www.splashtab.com/
SplashTab easens building corporate Facebook fan pages. Users can create and design customized tabs (sub pages), e.g. for the purpose of promotions, events, or sales.

COPIA – Social eBooks: http://www.thecopia.com/
COPIA is an eBook platform with social networking features. Users can share their library, follow others with similar interests and discuss – even within the discussed eBook.

Top Apps – Highlights among mobile apps: http://www.t-mobile.de/top-apps/
Top Apps is a service giving recommendation on smartphone applications. Highlights are presented both on their Website as well as via their own app (iPhone, Android, Windows).

Yardsellr – A social marketplace: http://yardsellr.com/
Yardsellr allows users to sell and buy items by integrating heavily with Facebook and Twitter. It turns the user’s social feeds on these platforms into a social ‘yardsale’.

Bling Nation – Mobile payment: http://www.facebook.com/blingnation
Bling Nation offers mobile payment based on NFC stickers, which users apply to their mobile phone. At the point of sale users tap their phone, receive a SMS and confirm the purchase.

RockMelt – A social browser: http://www.rockmelt.com/
Based on Chromium, RockMelt is a new browser with a focus on sharing and social networking. Browsing takes place with and around Facebook friends, feeds, and search results.

Limili – Buy the songs you hear: http://www.limili.com/
Limili is an iPhone app that recognizes a song (e.g. playing on the radio) and adds it to a playlist. Further, it allows playing that song from multiple services, including Grooveshark, iTunes, etc.

harmon.ie – The end of Email attachments: http://harmon.ie/
The harmon.ie plugin integrates SharePoint and Google docs with MS Outlook and Lotus Notes. Instead of sending large Emails, attachments are replaced by shared documents.

Blekko – Filtered search: http://blekko.com/
Blekko is a new approach in the Google-dominated search market. Users can restrict their search to defined sites with so-called slashtags and can exclude results by marking them as spam.

Rounds – Enhanced video chat: http://www.rounds.com/
Rounds is a video chat platform that enables 1-to-1 as well as open video conversations. These chats can be enriched with special effects, games, virtual gifts, or shared photos and videos.

Several paradoxes exist in corporate innovation environments today. Due to the resources required, new growth-platform investment decisions are typically made at the highest levels in large global business units, yet the executives who must make those decisions have little time to spend on exploring the sources of innovation beyond the conventional R&D lab, where momentum-setting action rarely takes place. Managing customer complexity with new, value-added offerings has become the latest best practice for industry leaders, yet few are structured to take on the challenge. Even if the willingness for radical innovation exists, proven processes for cracking the code on organic growth challenges and driving differentiation often don’t. Result? Spinelessness, fear, excuses, skepticism, flat-lining, or worse.

No doubt these factors contribute to the slow pace of game-changing innovation we see at present. But I would also argue that the problem isn’t that executives today are too overwhelmed to contribute and support innovation and change. The problem is we need new ways to drive their engagement.

What is the right formula to attract a person who must prioritize every minute of every day, doesn’t suffer fools, and whose bonus is likely to depend on quarterly results, yet who is also tasked with figuring out the future? Produce the right level of executive workshop structured to drive key commitments and decisions. Here are some pointers:

Use time wisely. Set realistic expectations for involvement. A half day to one full day is all you will likely get. If you can’t get this much time, carve out a specific role in kickoff and closing activities so participants can get a grasp of the content discussed and process utilized.

Make passion palpable. Get the right people in the room at the forefront of the challenge. Think a select number of credible key stakeholders, archetypical customers, subject-matter experts, and other provocateurs, not just company employees. Discourage politically based invitations and folks with potentially derailing agendas.

Efficiently convey new relevant information. Spend time building context. Through no fault of their own, executives often live in bubbles. Fortunately, they’re usually aware that they lack perspective and appreciate being enlightened about new factors they should consider in decision-making. It has been my experience that driving a far-reaching, compelling, and efficiently delivered context for a challenge is seen as a wonderful gift. This type of information is critical yet often out of reach for busy executives.

One suggestion would be to articulate adjacent market dynamics and sources of nontraditional competition. For example, point out why the performance expectations in consumer markets, say, by Amazon (AMZN), have now set the bar for all e-commerce transactions. Or why Zipcar’s understanding of your preferences is emblematic of the type of customer intimacy expected from every provider given the type of technology available to drive such customer relationship management systems today. How might these or similar everyday performance expectations influence the must-haves in any new offering?

Facilitate integrative thinking. Design engaging exercises that mimic everyday unresolved opportunities. In my role as executive education instructor for Columbia University’s Graduate Business School, I recently led an experience design exercise involving multiple layers of customers (financial buyer, systems operator, end users, etc.) for a set of health-care executives. The example I used was based on a company that sold intelligent building solutions. After 90 minutes of deconstructing another company’s problem, a galvanizing moment occurred among the participants that showed an obvious path to tackling their own multilayered customer-experience opportunity.

The issues raised via seeing another company that’s succeeded at its very own challenge drove a passionate strategic discussion about market research practices, resource prioritization, and organizational development. For this crowd, enlightenment in how to enable innovation is perhaps more important than any idea that could have been generated through the process. The exercise’s success at transcending their mindset lies in allowing leaders to think in an integrative way outside their own box instead of the industry-focused, siloed manner normally found in the average corporate environment.

Strive to contradict the dominant logic of your industry. Innovation happens when companies do something the rest of the pack hasn’t. Countless examples are available. For inspiration, look at an array of pan-industry players who saw the opportunity to do things differently and never stopped to look back, including ING Bank (ING), Flor Carpets, Home Bistro, Flexjet, and Salesforce.com (CRM). How could your company break the mold similarly?

There is still no hotter topic in business today than driving organic growth and innovation. More often than not, these matters require the attention of senior executives who encounter numerous impediments in finding, vetting, and committing to the big ideas of tomorrow. If you are having difficulty getting the type of attention your big ideas deserve, consider engaging your executive team in a compelling new way that imparts spot-on vision. Your action-packed, hands-on event will not fail as a call to action for those tasked with leading your organization into the future.