INNOVATION?

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Today, the local economic reality is that recession has eased and a next-generation innovator is needed to balance current strategy with career planning, diverse workforce development, and global outreach.

A Michael Porter PhD [HBS] competitive styled SWOT analysis is a good place to commence a fresh look at innovation and business or didactic plans. 

SWOT analysis
HBS Systems
Innovation
Dr. David E. M
73 months ago

13 answers

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I’d like to start my answer with a question: “Which of the currently most successful business or political leaders are known to have used SWOT analysis to guide them to success?”

Karel Petrak
73 months ago
Have you looked up PESTLE some of the more Top twenty companies have even taken it a stage further and addedd Ethics as the media is now changing peoples perception, long before it makes the main headlines "power to the People" Sounds from the the "60s" is more of a reality today - David 71 months ago
I am not sure I get the point David is trying to make. My question was asking for specific names of leaders that have benefited from SWOT analysis. Regardless, I would say that we all go through processes similar to SWOT, asking and answering similar questions, reaching our conclusions and taking actions. It the last step that really matters. Using a structured approach such as SWOT might help. - Karel 71 months ago
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More than any analysis or strategy, I believe first we need to understand the reasons that fails innovations. Especially when the economy is out of the clutches of recession and businesses and organizations are more receptive to innovative ideas and thoughts.

Below is a pole results that shows the leading reasons for innovation failures.



Individuals – This results when an individual doesn’t expand on his tool set or in other words when he or she is not forced to think differently.

Group – This happens when a group is always in the risk aversion mode. Where the new ideas are killed by group members’ behaviors

Organization – When the organization’s hierarchy doesn’t support innovation or when innovation is not considered as a strategy.

Market – When an innovative idea fails to show its value and utility in the market place.

Society – When the society thinks that an innovative idea is against the societal values and aspirations

Technology – When the technology is not fully baked to make it presence felt.

Above are few reasons that may call to have a unified or individual strategy to tackle each constraint. As in today’s dynamic world one method cannot be considered as a panacea for a particular problem or challenge. 

The above thoughts are improvised version of a very popular book authored by a renowned professor Professor David A Owen from Vanderbilt University (Creative People Must Be Stopped)

Sunil Kappal
73 months ago
It should be also recognized that there have been many innovations that had no practical value; many such patented “innovations” can illustrate it. Hence “being without merit” should be another reason / category for failure to be accepted. - Karel 73 months ago
Sunil, What I read from the survey you posted is that there were a lot of factors each perhaps contributing in some way to the failure of innovation. I would suggest to you that post mortem analysis of failures would show clustering of certain factors related to the specific company, market, or product or service that failed. Ask startup investors why a company in their charge failed. - Sandy 70 months ago
Then ask observers of larger corporations why their efforts failed. You will get differnt groupings in my experience. - Sandy 70 months ago
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Fabulous essay on failures; thanks. But, what about success?

Dr. David E. M
73 months ago
Success is hidden within the failures itself, once we know the failures (I still maintain there could be no one approach to identify) we can always work towards aolurion. Example Customer Service was also driven by humans (ideation constraint could be individual or organization) AI Chatbots changed the game. Sunil - Sunil 73 months ago
*towards a Solution - Sunil 73 months ago
80% of the Largest Healthcare Systems Have a Senior Innovation Officer - Dr. David E. 72 months ago
Also, defining success and what is acceptable is in order. One group may have success versus another group that had wild success, while another may have limited success. Failure can likewise be small or gigantic in its scope. - Sandy 70 months ago
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Incremental innovation may happen with a good manager. But, sea change innovation flows more from great leaders. I always consider Pareto's Rule [20/80]. While, awesome innovation is more individualized!

Dr. David E. M
73 months ago
Innovation can be individual, or more like a team sport. IT depends on the culture of the company and a whole range of factors. - Sandy 70 months ago
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SWOT 

While in B-school back in the day, I used to attend Porter’s lectures. This was well before he was a “famous celebrity”.

Today, I understand he sits on the BOD for many public companies; usually at more than a million dollars, or so, per seat. So, your answer seems to be pretty obvious. Nevertheless, your point is well taken. Like true leadership, you just can’t teach this stuff. It is inborn.

Dr. David E. M
73 months ago
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Innovation Strategy Framework (Steps):

I happened to stumble upon this great visual that shows a step by step approach to produce innovative products/services/offerings. This also fits pretty well with my earlier strategy and one thing that I really want to mention that I am huge fan of Professor Porter's 5 Forces model and other technology innovations models. However, at the same time I am a nomad in terms of finding new strategies for innovative ideation methods. At the end of the day innovation is all about implementing new ideas with a combination of proven and emerging strategies.



Sunil Kappal
73 months ago
All very obvious; so what? - Karel 73 months ago
That's what my point is, things that looks very obvious are taken for granted and are always overlooked by a lot and that's the point when the "Idea gets killed" the innovation is dead. - Sunil 73 months ago
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I'd like to break this question down to fully understand what you are asking, "Today, the local economic reality is that recession has eased and a next-generation innovator is needed to balance current strategy with career planning, diverse workforce development, and global outreach." 

This sounds like you are asking for the next big infrastructure project like the American highway system, or the electric grid that required enormous efforts in invention of equipment and training of people to manage that equipment. With revolutionary or disruptive innovation, herculean efforts are required with the associated risk. 

In this context, SWOT is only one of many tools that could be employed, and in my experience, SWOT highlights excessive risk and kills more endeavors than it promotes. Innovation solves the customer's tough problem. Even when the customer has not recognized they have a tough problem. 

As you detailed in your question, disruptive innovation requires dealing with "career planning, diverse workforce development, and global outreach." What you didn’t mention is the speed in which this needs to happen in today's "current strategy". The ability for the human element to keep pace with the education and training of the new technologies coming to market is stretching our global education system to its limits. Who in their right mind would champion the next big thing now? 

Innovators clearly have a calling to overcome these obstacles and SWOT will not deter them. However, we do not expect them to move forward without direction. They must focus on four major categories - What the customer values, The benefits for the company, Pitfalls (waste) to avoid, and End of life cycle issues. 

Bart Huthwaite detailed these well - Customer values: Performance, Affordability, Features, Deliverability, Usability, Maintainability, Durability, Image

Benefits for the company: Profitability, Investment, Risk, Produce able, Marketability, Growth Potential, Leverage, Respectability

Pitfalls (waste): Complexity, Precision, Variation, Sensitivity, Immaturity, Dangerous, High Skills required

End of Life Issues: Recycle-ability, Envronmentally friendly - includes the factories that make the product

Utilizing these categories as guidelines will help remove a significant portion of the risk, but not deter an innovator from continuing forward with bringing an idea through to commercialization.

John DuBois
73 months ago
WOWSA - Excellent analysis and f/u. Thanks. - Dr. David E. 70 months ago
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What about NATO's ALTA technique?

This technique allows its users to apply independent, critical thinking with an alternative perspective for a better decision making, especially for organizations that are innovation hungry. AltA helps to understand various bias levels that support the innovative thinking within the project life-cycle.

  1. Perceptual Biases: AltA helps to better understanding these types of biases within the project teams to get rid of preconceived notions about a situation that can hinder the progress of a project.
  2. Estimation Probabilities Biases: Given the fact that a lot of project teams find it appropriate to follow "analogous estimations", AltA helps the project management teams to rethink about their estimation by considering potential adjustments to estimations in an event of new activity or information.
  3. Biases in Perceiving Causality: AltA encourages better risk management by accounting some level of randomness to the events and not just plainly going by a set pattern.

Sunil Kappal
72 months ago
Cognitvie bias is a huge trending topic today; especially in economics and finance, well said. - Dr. David E. 72 months ago
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Here is one that aspect of innovation cultivation that has been greatly overlooked in my opinion. Early in my career as I was learning the scientific method approach to research in industry (not in school), I was lucky enough to be surrounded with exceptional minds with great mentoring abilities. I learned a great deal from observing, questioning, and seeking advice to guide my research projects, that contributed to the success of the approach to problem solving. Those around me had experiences to share and lessons learned that I and others could benefit from.

What I see as lacking in a great many industries is this mentoring and bouncing off of really talented people to improve one's sense of how to problem solve in ways that produces results. Graduate school did not do it sufficiently, doctoral programs were not sufficiently able to harness the depth and breadth needed for success, only working in the industries was I able to do a far better job of keeping innovation alive by bringing in talent and then giving it opportunities to thrive. I went from one leading company, to another, gathering from the great minds at each location. I can say that if more companies had a mentoring, teaming, buddy system, they would benefit from those early and frequent interactions to shape the internalization of innovation and strengthen the culture that supports it.

Sandy Waters
70 months ago
Agree and also would like to see external input, for example a completely different industry that has been successful (or not successful) to spur innovative thinking. - Vera 69 months ago
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Innovation is not a top down function; it can be, and top down support and incentivization is key, but bottom up can identify product, solution, process issues given hands-on experience.

Gates Ouimette
69 months ago
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John - Agree: SWOT is more for short-term managers [J. Welch GE] while leadership is for longer-term innovators [E. Musk - Tesla].

Dr. David E. M
73 months ago
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SWOT and PEST analyses are intricately linked in innovation as it is not just about a good idea, service or product, but also a process that involves with varying degrees of political, environmental, socio- economic, technical issues to address. SWOT is very good at assessing new products, services or organisations with the threats being turned into opportunities and the weaknesses into strengths. To me these two analytical frameworks are an excellent tool for innovation as they deal very effectively with the good, the bad and the ugly bits of almost any new development.

Paul D
72 months ago
Is it PEST or PERT analysis? Accordiong to Wikipedia: The program (or project) evaluation and review technique, commonly abbreviated PERT, is a statistical tool, used in project management, which was designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project. First developed by the United States Navy in the 1950s, it is commonly used in conjunction with the critical path me - Dr. David E. 70 months ago
David the old systems are often the best - simple and effective. In managment and my innovative world everything works off these two assessments. - Paul 70 months ago
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PERT


Thanks for reminding me of PERT.

PERT is Program Evaluation and Review Technique which is used to identify the most realistic estimate/duration of an activity in a project.

Dr. David E. M
72 months ago

Have some input?