Presentation at Roads and Transport Authority and at Dubai Customs, during the UAE Innovation Week, November 2016:
I've been working with enterprise innovation management over the last 10 years. Working with private and public companies all over the world allows me to observe similar patterns in innovation management programs.
When reflecting about what to share at the 2016 UAE Innovation Week, I defined two constraints: present something that 1) could help avoiding the most commons problems that I see, and 2) that you can start using today .
Therefore, I shared 7 models that changed my way of addressing innovation at the organizational level.
They are indispensable to my professional practice and research activities. The models are rooted in the domains of organizational learning, communities of practice, knowledge management, complexity science, strategy and organizational change.
If you're avid for frame-breaking approaches and eager to start thinking and acting anew, I'm sure these models will be able to change your innovation 'program'. For better and for good!
I've included a 7-Day Challenge so you can try them out on a personal level.
9. Part I: Working on the mind-set
Organizational
Learning
Organizational
Change
Organizational
Innovation
1 2 3
OUTLINE
10. Part II: Making the mind-set work
Value Proposition
Design
Lean Startup Net-working &
Communities
4 5 6
Sense-making
7
OUTLINE
11. What is an organization
that it may learn?
#1 Organizational Learning
12.
13. 1
2
Individually, the need to move from “everlasting education” to become
“lifelong learners”. The “company” concept has been designed for
reproducing working practices with efficiency and effectiveness in
mind. Not for continuous self-transformation by learning.
3
Organisational norms, strategies, processes and workflows that support
collective action in companies are designed for repetition and can hinder
innovation. Uncertainty and ambiguity, key ingredients of the innovation
game, create a lot of anxiety at the very least.
The aim to avoid failure at all cost, look good, and face-saving.
This amplifies the fear of failure and the addiction to being right.
#1 Organizational Learning
3 Key Problems
15. Model I - Theory-in-use
• Be in unilateral
control
over others
• Strive to win and
minimize losing
• Suppressing
nega>ve feelings
• Act ra>onally
• Minimize any
encouragement of
inquiry and tes>ng
• Misunderstanding
• Miscommunica>on
• Escala>ng errors
• Self-sealing processes
• Self-fulfilling
prophecies
Governing variables
• Advocate your
posi>on in order to
be in control and
win, etc.
• Unilateral face-
saving (own and
others’)
Action strategies Consequences
Argyris and Schon, 1978
#1 Organizational Learning
16. Model II - Theory-in-use
Argyris and Schon, 1978
• Producing valid, or
validatable,
informa>on
• Enabling informed
choice
• Responsibility
• Vigilant monitoring of
the implemented
ac>ons to assess its
effec>veness
• Effec>ve problem
solving
• Reduc>on of self-
fulfilling, self-sealing,
error escala>ng
processes
• Advocate your
posi>on and
combine with
inquiry and public
tes>ng
• Minimize unilateral
face-saving
Skills Required: Reflec&on, experimenta&on, tes&ng of ideas
#1 Organizational Learning
Governing variables Action strategies Consequences
17. Single vs Double Loop Learning
Governing Variables
/ Values / Beliefs
Ac>on Strategies
and Techniques
Consequences
Double-Loop
Learning
Single-Loop
Learning
#1 Organizational Learning
18. The major learning inhibitor can be our mindset, based on a pervasive
belief in a “stable state”. It creates inhibiting loops in organizations.
1
2 As individuals and organizations, we need to “learn about learning”.
How to bring about transformation with minimal pain and disruption.
This is the core competency in a world of constant change.
3 To drive innovation through discovery, we need to be open to being
wrong. This implies recognizing the limitations of Model I. And to give
a chance to Model II governing variables and action strategies.
Key Contributions
Models on Organizational Learning
#1 Organizational Learning
19. The world will keep
changing. How are we going
to stay ahead?
#2 Organizational Change
20.
21. We think about organizations as deterministic and of change as the
exception. But change is natural and continuous, not the exception.
1
2
3 Unsuccessful change initiatives put the blame on the “resistance to
change”. Is it really resistance or is it a “dynamic conservatism”?
We need to let the illusion of stability go and engage in change. But
the outcomes may not be immediate or may not be the intended ones.
#2 Organizational Change
3 Key Problems
22. Organizational Change
#2 Organizational Change
UNFREEZE MOVE REFREEZE
• Increase driving forces
for change
• Decrease resisting forces
against change
• Make changes
• Establish a sense of
urgency
• Involve people
• Create coalition
• Make change permanent
• Establish new way of things
• Reward desired outcomes
Prepara&on Implementa&on Make it s&ck
Kurt Lewin, 1951
23. Three Types of Change:
#1 Planned and #2 Collateral
Planned Change
The “Sta&c
Organiza&on”
Unrealized Change
Realised Change
Collateral Change
#2 Organizational Change
My model, is inspired by: Mintzberg, 1985
24. Three Types of Change:
#3 Emergent Change
The
“Living Company” +
#2 Organizational Change
My model, is inspired by: de Geus 1997,
Haridimos Tsoukas and Robert Chia, 2002
New Opportuni&es
for Change
Emergent and
Con&nuous Change
25. No change => No learning => No innovation
Learning always precedes innovation and requires change.
Key Contributions
1
2
Change has an individual dimension connected to our personal
identities, which cannot be ignored. Everyone tends to like novelty.
But we need to acknowledge that no one likes being changed so we
can prepare accordingly.
3 We need to address the emergent change that is already happening.
Get everyone on the look out for its weak signals.
Three types of Organizational Change
#2 Organizational Change
28. The tyranny of the present can stifle the future. Nowadays, managers
and employees say that they don’t have time to innovate. Even
organizations that had significative success and were seen as the most
innovative of their times kept having “Kodak moments”.
1
2 Educational and managerial models, developed over the 100+ years,
were not designed for innovation. What about the future? Big emphasis
on methods to manage or improve the present: Operational Excellence,
BPR, TQM, Six Sigma, and so on.
3 The new “silver-bullet” effect: with the pressure to deliver results in an
uncertain world, we use tools outside their domain of applicability.
That’s how adopting best practices can do a lot of harm.
#3 Organizational Innovation
3 Key Problems
29. Three Horizons of Growth
#3 Organizational Innovation
My model, is inspired by: Alchemy of Growth, 1978; Seeing in Multiple Horizons, 2008
IMPROVE
EXTEND
EXPLORE
NOW AHEAD FUTURE
Time
Growth + Strategic
and Market FIT
30. Three Horizons of Growth
#3 Organizational Innovation
Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3
Execute Search
Improve the present Invent the future
Daily work Long Term
Look for Linear Ideas Look for Non linear ideas
Sustain Disrupt
Exploit Explore
Incremental Innovation Radical Innovation
100% Predictability 100% Uncertainty
Easier Harder
Well known processes and metrics Evidence Based Innovation
Improve
Do what you do, but be.er.
Extend
Expand what you do.
Explore
Find new things to do.
31. Without innovation, strategy can only support incrementalism.
Strategy needs to address both the present and the future. Continually,
and in parallel.
Key Contributions
1
2
3 Thinking about Innovation in 3 Horizons helps us to understand the
particularities of each one of them. Each horizon needs to be addressed
by different people and through significantly different methods and tools.
Innovation is about becoming better at what we do and finding new
directions to venture. It is a continuous learning process. Cutting
costs on innovation is like shutting down our companies’ immune
system.
Three Horizons of Growth
#3 Organizational Innovation
32. How can we innovate
towards value and
positive impact?
#4 Value Proposition Design
33.
34. 1
2 The common methods we use to assess and develop ideas - Business
Plans - don’t work for novelty, where the existing patterns and metrics
don’t apply.
3
Ideas are very brittle. They can be over-focused on a single aspect of
the problem at hand. It is easy to miss what is required for their
success.
No Value => No Innovation. How can we get people focused on
creating ideas with positive impact?
#4 Value Proposition Design
3 Key Problems
35. | 35
Values Proposition Canvas:Osterwalder,2010
The Business Model Canvas
designed by: Strategyzer AG
The makers of Business Model Generation and Strategyzer
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit:
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strategyzer.com
Revenue Streams
Customer SegmentsValue PropositionsKey ActivitiesKey Partners
Cost Structure
Customer Relationships
Designed by: Date: Version:Designed for:
ChannelsKey Resources
#4 Value Proposition Design
37. | 37
Gain Creators
Pain Relievers Pains
Gains
Products
& Services
Customer
Job(s)
Value Proposition Customer Segment
copyright: Strategyzer AG
The makers of Business Model Generation and Strategyzer
The Value Proposition Canvas
strategyzer.com
#4 Value Proposition Design
42. | 42Mission Model Canvas:AlexanderOsterwalder and Steve Blank,2016
The Mission Model Canvas
designed by: Strategyzer AG & Steve Blank
The makers of Business Model Generation and Strategyzer
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
strategyzer.com
Mission Achievement/Impact Factors
BeneficiariesValue PropositionsKey ActivitiesKey Partners
Mission Budget/Cost
Buy-in & Support
Designed by: Date: Version:Mission/Problem Description:
DeploymentKey Resources
#4 Value Proposition Design
43. Key Contributions
1
2 It’s a value-oriented framework that focuses innovation on positive
impact from the outset. It helps understanding the value being created
for customers with the Value Proposition Canvas and which value is
being created for the company with the Business Model Canvas.
3
Value Proposition and Business Model Canvas
Great ideas won’t work without an appropriate ‘business model’. This
approach provides a structured way to organize, prioritize and
communicate hypothesis about it.
Success can only come when we get the all the domains right. It instils
holistic thinking that helps addressing ideas beyond the product or
technology focus.
#4 Value Proposition Design
46. We need organizations that can work at startup’s speed. Being open to
what’s possible and taking the initiative to do something about it, fast.
1
2
3
How can we test Business Models and Value Propositions? They can be very
appealing on paper. But they are just hypothesis, i.e., educated guesses.
More often than not Innovation Management programs and projects
initiatives fail don’t deliver the promised results. Everyone starts off
excited. But after a while, we are all dressed up with nowhere to go.
#5 Lean Startup
3 Key Problems
49. Key Principles
#5 Lean Startup
search execu&on
uncertainty
test most cri>cal
assump>ons first
use quick and cheap
experiments first
$
$
$
$
$
$
spending
Alexander
Osterwalder,
2016
50. Investment Readiness Level
Steve Blank, 2013
Based on NASA/DOD Technology Readiness Level
#5 Lean Startup
9. Metrics that MaWer
8. Validate Value Delivery (Le side of Canvas)
7. Prototype High-Fidelity Min. Viable Product
6. Validate Revenue Model (Right side of Canvas)
5. Validate Product / Market Fit
4. Prototype Low-Fidelity Min. Viable Product
3. Problem / Solu&on Valida&on
2. Market Size / Compe&&ve Analysis
1. Complete First-Pass Business Model Canvas
51. Created a key distinction between established organizations and
startups: execution vs discovery. Expanded the model by applying it
to universities where students use it, private firms and governmental
institutions. It is now used both by startups and big companies.
Key Contributions
1
2
Offers a tool set to move through uncertainty faster, while trying to
create value from ideas. Analogue to what we have for execution, but
focused on testing unproven ideas through experimentation. Key for
addressing Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 Innovations.
3
Before investing heavily, we need to actively learn, change and refine
ideas, until we have a model that works. Innovation without execution
is hallucination. But if we start by executing, without validation, we
end up investing too much time, energy and money in ideas that
won’t make it to the finish line.
Customer Centricity
#5 Lean Startup
54. We think about organizations mostly from the hierarchical, functional or
processual perspectives. This is “myopic”, at least. Our interventions
need a better understanding about what we are dealing with and
cannot be designed considering only the tip of the iceberg.
1
2
3
There’s a lack of shared organizational awareness, which is key for
collective action and innovation. We need to enable connections
between people and ideas to foster innovation.
Well intended interventions destroy “social” and “informal” structures,
when trying to capture their value.
#6 Net-Working and Communities
3 Key Problems
55. Designing for Communities
and Networking
#6 Net-Working and Communities
INFORMAL
VIEW
FORMAL
VIEW
Inspired by: Practice-based approaches in organizational studies and interventions
Lave, Orr, Guerardi, Orlikowski, Duguid, Brown
Organizations
seen through the
practice lens:
Communities and
Networks
56. Key Contributions
1
2
The learning unit in organizations is not the individual. It is a group,
formal or informal, such as a team or a community. This is key for our
understanding and the design of prolific interventions. Team work.
3
Instead of thinking about knowledge and innovation as nouns, we
need to consider them as continuous practices: knowing and
innovating. The end-goal is knowledge-ability: improving capacity for
action, through knowing-in-practice.
Designing for Communities and Net-Working
Informal structures are the organizational ‘glue’. To improve work, the
workplace, and to empower professionals, we need to understand
and design for both the formal and the informal dynamic structures:
networks, communities and practices.
#6 Net-Working and Communities
57. How do we make sense of
the world to act in it?
Together!
#7 Sense-Making
58.
59. We all strive to make sense of what is effective action. Though well
intentioned, we are ‘hostages’ of our mental models.
1
2 Conforming all ideas, problems or opportunities to the same approach is
like trying to hammer a screw into a wall. We all have been there and
know the end result: catastrophic failure.
3 Over 80% of innovation projects fail. Most innovation programs and
processes are designed with an illusory ‘safe-fail’ approach, as if they
were mere obvious questions just waiting to be executed.
#7 Sense-Making
3 Key Problems
62. It helps to move from ‘fail-safe’ idealist approaches, to ‘safe-to-fail’
experimentation, which is imperative to address innovation. Failure is
not the new success.
Key Contributions
1
2 Cynefin is useful both for diagnostic and guiding action. It provides an
actionable approach to address problems in each type of system:
ordered (simple or complicated), complex and chaotic.
3
Problems and opportunities need to be addressed with different
strategies, depending on their nature. The first step towards success
is to understand what’s the context and the domain we are working in.
Collective Sense-Making
#7 Sense-Making
64. So, what can you do tomorrow?
Think of a conversa>on in a situa>on, project or problem where there were some thoughts or
feelings that were not communicated. Split a piece of paper into two columns. Write down
what was actually said on the right column and thoughts and feelings that you didn’t
communicate on the leE column. AEerwords, analyze it using Model I and Model II.
Thoughts and Feelings
Not Communicated
Actual
Conversation
He’s not going to like this topic, but we
have to discuss it. I doubt that he will
take a company perspective, but I should
remain positive.
I: Hi, Bill, I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about
this problem of customer service versus product. I am sure
that both of us want to resolve it in the best interest of the
company.
Bill: I am glad to talk about it, as you know.
I had better go slow. Let me ease in. I: There is an increasing number of situations where our
clients are asking for customer service and rejecting off-the-
shelf products. My fear is that your salespeople will play an
increasingly peripheral role in the future.
Bill: I don’t understand. Tell me more.
Of course you understand! I wish there
was a way I could be more gentle.
I: Bill, I’m sure you are aware of the changes [and explains]
Bill: No, I do not see it that way. It’s my salespeople that are
the key to the future.
There he goes again, thinking as a
salesman and not as a corporate officer.
I: Well, let’s explore that a bit…
EXAMPLE
#1 Organizational Learning
65. So, what can you do tomorrow?
• Think about a planned change in your life that you
couldn’t realize as intended.
What emerged?
• Think about an unplanned and positive change in
your life that you were not expecting.
How did it happen? Did you make the most of it?
#2 Organizational Change
66. So, what can you do tomorrow?
#1 - Individual Perspective
Think about your career and personal
development in three curves. The past,
the present and the future, to understand
what was your journey so far, where do
you stand today and when it will be time
for big changes.
#2 - Company Perspective
Consider the 3 Horizons of Growth and
make a 3 column table: Improve,
Expand, Explore. List your innovation
programs and projects. Assess your
portfolio.
IMPROVE
(Horizon 1)
EXTEND
(Horizon 2)
EXPLORE
(Horizon 3)
Initiative A
Program B
Initiative C
Program D
#3 Organizational Innovation
67. So, what can you do tomorrow?
Create a
personal
Business
Model You
#4 Value Proposition Design
68. So, what can you do tomorrow?
Validate your “Business Model You” model by iterating it with your
‘customers’ (colleagues, family, friends).
Be aware that they may be using defensive behaviours from Model I.
In order to truly validate it, ask for an example of how it happened for
each item being addressed.
Also, remember that this is not just to validate your initial hypothesis. It
is simultaneously a discovery process. Be on the lookout to find things
you didn’t consider.
#5 Lean Startup
69. So, what can you do tomorrow?
Overtime we learn we rewire our brain through
new, improved or disrupted connections.
Think about professional connections that are new,
have become stronger, or have been disrupted.
Can you think of groups of people you work regularly
that are not part of the formal hierarchy but are
indispensable to get things done?
#6 Net-Working and Communities
70. So, what can you do tomorrow?
Think about a decision and the way you’ve
addressed a problem on the complex
domain that had a bad outcome.
Now, and with the benefit of hindsight what
would you have done differently?
Tip: design an action plan using experimentation
‘probe-sense-respond’ model of the complex domain
#7 Sense-Making
72. Organizational Learning
“Not that profit and product are
no longer important but without
continuing learning, they will no
longer be possible”
– Harrison Owen
#1 Organizational Learning
73. Organizational Change
“The things we fear most in
organizations - fluctuations,
disturbances, imbalances - are
the primary sources of creativity”
– Margaret Wheatley
#2 Organizational Change
75. Value Proposition Design
"You have to start with the
customer experience and work
backwards to the technology”
– Steve Jobs
#4 Value Proposition Design
76. Lean Startup
“Innovation projects are like
flower bulbs. You never know
which ones will pop up as
beautiful flower.“
– Gijs van Wulfen
#5 Lean Startup
77. Net-Work and Communities
“Collaboration is an organizational
imperative of 21st century.
Networks of relationships are the
ultimate resource.”
- Patti Anklam
#6 Net-Working and Communities