Archive | Innovation

You Snooze, You Lose

By Christian on 8th March 2016 in CEO, CIO, Complexity Management, Customer Experience, Innovation, IT-Enabled Business Innovation

I’ve written in the past about how to foster and grow innovation within your organisation, however, the number one response I hear from firms I work with is how they would love to innovate, but due to the complexity of their business they don’t know where to start, what to prioritise or how to make the time to get started.

My response is always to not think negatively and look to stifle innovation before you’ve even begun, but to start by talking to key stakeholders, customer-facing staff and your actual clients to find out what their business critical issues are, and work together to find out where and how you can help.

Often through this exercise, you find that just by reallocating resources or efforts from one thing which isn’t working to another that will yield tangible results is a great first step. This not only energises your staff, but more importantly re-engages your clients when using your products and solutions.

Some may say that this is not innovation in its truest form, but the companies that are smart enough to be proactive and re-engage their clients through these straightforward exercises will be the ones that win their future contracts and support. Those that don’t and then wonder why their forecasts need to be constantly updated and their revenues sharply decline will quickly follow suit, but with a delayed response that may prove difficult to catch up. Make the time now and don’t fall further behind your competitors, who are actively allocating time and resources to this, as well as working hard on reducing their internal complexity and inertia. Those that do stifle innovation and put it off are those most susceptible to the disruptors that are now operating within most formalised industries.

These disruptors are not only looking to have a share of your industry, they are looking to consume your key revenue streams and will quickly devour those with a lazy or old-fashioned approach to innovation and change. Your clients are more technically savvy and service oriented than they have ever been, and will quickly migrate to these new industry charges even if they do have a few rough edges. A good reputation is key to any organisation, but living off the past and not moving forward is the biggest sin of all.

When you reverse engineer a strategy and work from the customer inward, the most startling revelation is often how more straightforward and agile you need to make your organisation versus the complex and multi-layered behemoth you have in place, which has grown exponentially over a long period of time. This is a key reason why larger companies with these huge, complex back-ends with structured process and formalised procedures find it harder to innovate.

Many are now forming innovation units within their organisations to work and partner with start-up incubators and accelerators, to engage with innovative and game-changing start-ups (a lot of the work I do). This includes larger corporates acquiring these nimbler and more agile start-ups, looking to integrate them and their services in to their front line services to their feature-hungry clients.
The main problem here is that the more creative staff that they bring across quickly tire of the formalities and procedure laden nature of their new host and look to exit quicker than planned.

This rigidity and reluctance to ‘free up’ these more creative individuals from your normal working practices not only contradicts the very reason you acquired them in the first place but continues to stifle innovation, as well as making it a very expensive and time-consuming process to boot.

Don’t let the complexity of your organisation and your faith in the past stop you from innovating and charging ahead.

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

Mentor at IncuBus Ventures

By Christian on 19th February 2016 in Innovation, Start-Ups, Strategy, Thought Leadership

I am delighted to have become a mentor at IncuBus Ventures providing hands-on mentoring to entrepreneurs, founding CEOs and their teams across a variety of industries especially around innovation, strategy, product development, technology, business development and investor relations.

IncuBus Ventures is helping get entrepreneurs and their startups ready for the world’s best accelerators and funding via our 12 week incubator programmes.
The programmes include skills based workshops, mentoring and access to workspace.
Learn more about the programme at www.incubuslondon.com

Everyday Innovation – Small steps to big progress

By Christian on 24th December 2015 in CEO, CIO, Customer Experience, Innovation, IT-Enabled Business Innovation

Organisations can be obsessed with producing the next big industry innovation, and then become profoundly disappointed when it does not occur at the pace or scale they want. Naturally, everyone wants to speed up their innovation cycle beyond one or maybe two genius ideas every one to two years, but this cannot be expected and is exceptionally hard to maintain.

In recent years, we have all seen Apple release game-changing products that disrupt entire markets, but what we don’t know is the lead time from initial idea to market release. The company concentrates and focuses on innovation at a level never before seen in the commercial world: for example, it has over 800 people solely dedicated to working on the iPhone’s camera. It is open about the power of its open and innovative culture, which supports its ability to deliver these amazing products, and more importantly, it’s always quick to register that without the support and efforts of the whole organisation they would not be achievable.

To maintain a level of innovation or to bring your organisation up to speed, you will need to alter or adapt the culture and mindset of your organisation to one that not only fosters but also rewards it. This focus is important, as being able to produce the next big industry disruptor will happen more readily within a culture that fosters everyday innovation. By creating this type of culture within your organisation, you will be producing a foundation for the delivery of game-changing and more disruptive innovation through the small everyday advances and innovative solutions to everyday problems that create an inventive business culture.

Through working with an everyday innovation mindset your employees are more likely to spot small issues before they spiral in to larger concerns, or industry trends you may be adhering to for too long, which your competitors are moving away from with tangible results.
With this mindset, your staff are more likely to broaden their personal horizons and working practices to a more inquisitive one that includes studying the commercial advances or stagnation of competing offerings and to engage more with your clients, so as to provide them with the highest levels of relevant product and customer experience.

The culture of innovation has to start within the leadership of your organisation and then instilled in every employee with a sense of common purpose and practice. Crucially time, reward and resources must be given to individuals to allow them to develop and nurture their ideas, with a view to possible implementation, or at least further discussion.
There is no point in permitting a culture in which individuals or teams can recognise and discuss possible issues, and then not allow them the time to foster, nurture and implement them.
In fact, it could be the most counterproductive tactic you could take, and the fastest route to upsetting and demotivating your staff.

Empowering your workforce with this culture will not only lead to commercial success but enable you to create a challenging and enjoyable place of work, which will allow you to retain your best staff and be a draw to others. This may mean making your culture less risk averse, but if you always play safe, then your results will remain stagnant and innovation stifled.

Fostering a culture of everyday innovation where incremental advances are made steadily and at a manageable and digestible pace will deliver a commercially successful and healthy organisation, which others will want to emulate.

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

Judge and Mentor for the MassChallenge Accelerator Program

By Christian on 15th December 2015 in Innovation, Leadership, Start-Ups, Thought Leadership

I am honoured to have been selected as one of the expert judges presiding over the choice of start-ups for the annual intake and overall awards in the MassChallenge Accelerator Program as well as providing hands-on mentoring to founding CEOs and their teams across a variety of industries.

MassChallenge is the most start-up friendly accelerator on the planet with intakes from over 75 countries, and the first to support high-impact, early-stage entrepreneurs with no strings attached.

Global Network – With accelerator programmes in Boston, London, Jerusalem, Geneva and Mexico City and a plan to grow to 10 locations by 2019, MassChallenge is fast becoming the world’s largest global accelerator market
Top Backing – MassChallenge is supported by many of the world’s top companies such as Pfizer, Microsoft, IBM, Visa, Pepsico, Fidelity, Unilever, Verizon, Cisco, The Kauffman Foundation, Bose, UPS, EMC and Honda
Impact over Equity – They take no equity and the high-impact start-ups that get in to the 4-month program compete to win a portion of several million dollars in equity-free awards. MassChallenge is a non-profit, which means they can focus entirely on helping entrepreneurs from any industry win
Scale and Results – MassChallenge is making an impact on a grand scale. Since 2010, they have accelerated 835 high-impact start-ups who have collectively raised $1.1billion+ in funding, generated $520m+ in revenue and created 6500+ jobs to date

Don’t become the disrupted

By Christian on 7th December 2015 in C-Suite, Digital Disruption, Digital Transformation, Disruption, Emerging Technologies, Innovation

The Oxford Dictionary defines the word ‘disruption’ as a disturbance, or problems that interrupt an event, activity or process. In modern terms, it’s defined more simply as the change that occurs when new digital technologies and business models affect the value proposition of existing goods and services.

The truth is that its mere definition can strike fear and elation into senior executives, depending on which end of the disruption stick they are holding, and break the most confident and entrenched market leaders.

It’s not about being trendy or cool, as these monikers only last for a finite period, but if a new technology or disruptive service hits the market and ticks the boxes of both practicality and price, even the most trusted brands will suffer and their market share ebb away accordingly.

It’s up to organisations to stay sharp and continue to innovate their own products and services, while all the time monitoring emerging technologies to not take their eye off the ball.

Even when taking this in to account, one of the biggest barriers I have seen within large organisations is that even once an external disruptive influence has been identified and a solution defined, time isn’t given to the person or team to implement it properly to stave off the competition.
If you don’t allocate time to these types of employees for such activities, they will quickly migrate to organisations that do or even start their own to compete with you.

The oft-mentioned words of, “it will never catch on” or “we’ve got plenty of time before it claims any serious market share” are immortalised around some of the objects such as the internet and Apple’s iPhone, which we use so readily today. Those now extinct organisations who failed to catch on quickly enough are now only remembered for these ill-timed statements, and the quality of how not to do it case studies at leading business schools.

Companies like Netflix, which owns a large proportion of the streaming market, are savvy enough to know that having initially been key disruptors of their own market, they must constantly innovate and develop new services to maintain, let alone grow, their market position.

Almost all industries are now ripe for disruption, with the position of market leader now somewhat meaningless with the fluidity and emergence of new technology happening almost daily. Even regulated markets such as insurance and financial services are being disrupted, with smaller more agile startups providing meaningful and innovative disruption.

In the current era where the world’s largest taxi firm, Uber, owns no cars, the world’s largest accommodation company, Airbnb, owns no accommodation, and the world’s most valuable retailer, Alibaba, carries no stock, you could say that the commercial vista is unrecognisable from only a few years ago.

We are in a fascinating time where the boundless leaps technology is making, and the complex products and solutions it now allows us to create, are infinite. Far beyond what we could have imagined.

Key to all of this is the rise of consumerisation and the thirst for digital services that make once awkward activities, such as banking and shopping, all capable of being completed without ever leaving your house.

It’s up to organisations to keep pace with these disruptors and emerging technologies, and adapt their products and services accordingly to meet the changing demands and needs of their customers. Those that don’t will be consigned to the past and rightly disrupted by those that can!

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

The Innovation Dilemma

By Christian on 7th December 2015 in C-Level Executives, C-Suite, Innovation, Start-Ups, Strategy, Thought Leadership

In todays commercial arena, innovation is critical to grow and position your company as a leader within its market(s), and position it above its competition but many don’t know where to begin nor how to foster and drive it within their organisation.

At a recent roundtable I ran, we discussed innovation and its use as a driving force for revenue growth. The roundtable attendees were IT leaders from a number of large enterprise organisations and hailed from all over Europe ready for an engaging discussion (no pressure!).
We started the discussion by going around the room asking everyone what the barriers to innovation were in their organisations.
There were a number of recurring points which weren’t surprising, such as who should own innovation across the organisation, and how do they foster and engage innovation within their organisations and prioritise the elements of it accordingly.

What did surprise me however were comments such as “what exactly is innovation?” and “is delivering new products, ideas or services that improve revenue just me doing my job well?”
I hadn’t expected to hear this but it really made sense and drove our discussion on to how do you measure innovation against doing your job well – not an easy task but if you are set an innovation target within your organisation be it revenue or service focused its a crucial one you will need to resolve.

This really highlighted to me that though every organisation is trying their damnedest to deliver innovation, what they are really struggling with is how to foster, engage with and measure it accordingly in relation to it adding tangible value.
How do you truly measure innovation? Is it through your product creation team delivering the right products to the right markets and capturing critical commercial momentum or simply altering an online process to make it easier for clients to register themselves?

The truth is that in any organisation where free thinking and entrepreneurial activity is encouraged, not stifled and is coupled with hard-working smart employees, you are going to get innovation.
You are also going to create a great working environment which will attract more smart, hard-working people who can create better products and services which create additional revenue and clear competitive advantage – what’s not to like!
Many of you will be thinking this is a brave commercial stance but you cannot argue with the results of those that do change their business strategy and working models like this. It may be hard work and anathema to some but the changing of the guard with relation to that of the traditional executive way of thinking is underway as millennial ideologies and commercial practices seep further into enterprise organisations as they rise up the executive ladder.

There are many ways in which larger organisations are trying to increase their rate of innovation such as creating innovation labs and associated teams to partner with start-up incubators like MassChallenge who do a fantastic job in this space and are non-profit.
JLAB at John Lewis is an excellent example of one such innovation hub where they are encouraging start-ups to come to them and compete to win unique access to John Lewis who will help them refine their products and their business models with the final prize being the opportunity of securing a contract with them.
Others such as UBS who are looking at new technologies which will disrupt their industry such as Blockchain and have set up labs and an open competition for entrepreneurs and technology startups around the world to compete for funding. These are fabulous opportunities for new and established start-ups to work with established corporates and really fosters the growth of innovation and entrepreneurship in our society and I am very much in favour of these efforts.

In today’s world where technology enables us to achieve so much of what we only dreamed possible a few years ago and most people now so attuned to it there really is no argument for not enabling and fostering innovation within your organisation. You now have to concentrate on changing your culture to incorporate, foster and grow innovation within your organisation. It will be hard work, but boy will it pay you back, and it might just be the best thing you’ve ever done.

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

Transformation – What level of surgery do you need?

By Christian on 27th August 2015 in CEO, CFO, CIO, Innovation, Strategy, Transformation

In a surgical analogy, a transformation programme is relative to ‘open heart surgery’ as it is one of the most important and powerful opportunities you can undertake to change the purpose and strategic direction of your organisation.
Transformation programmes are a blend of business, people and technology change including root and branch process review. They are mainly focused around improving customer engagement, commercial return and re-energising the customer experience.
In the planning of any transformation programme, its imperative you fully understand the objectives you are looking to achieve and that your board or leadership team are fully aligned with and agree on the prioritisation of its primary objectives. Everyone must agree that the results you’re looking for are not only achievable and affordable but necessary for you to progress as an organisation.

For any transformation to be successful you will need the full support and buy-in of your whole organisation. Not just key stakeholders but all affected parties including key clients and partners, so you will need to have a full and open communications strategy at all times.
You will need to work out through internal and external consultation the level of necessary change and thus ascertain the degree of transformational surgery you need to perform including the level of process change you can readily consume alongside any necessary new systems, platforms or infrastructure to support it.
It is imperative you keep this communications line open and a continuous dialogue with your key clients to understand what they want from your organisation, what products and subsequent features they use or need and how they wish to consume them (don’t forget to focus on mobile consumption as this will affect your design and performance criteria). You should also take this opportunity to learn of competing solutions and how your products rank against them, which will often give you valuable feedback.

Strong leadership is required during any transformation programme so that it stays true to its principles and delivers its agreed objectives whilst staying open to internal and external client feedback throughout.
The leadership team will need to control the direction and pace of the transformation so that business as usual operations are not interrupted or allowed to veer off track (an obvious but often overlooked dilemma).
It is imperative the leadership team understands both the technology and business goals and how decisions in either can have a knock on effect in the other. Managing this critical symbiotic relationship will not only ensure adherence to the project plan but also limit costs and surprises along the way.

Most transformation programmes will require fine tuning and subtle alterations through their lifetime as not all necessary objectives will be deliverable without some form of tweaking.
Some objectives may not act as desired once in development or testing and require reworking, postponing until later in the programme or removal. This is where strong leadership and a firm hand on the tiller is imperative.

A full training, implementation and internal/external support plan is a major but often overlooked component of any transformation programme. Skip this stage at your peril as it will cause your transformation programme to fall spectacularly and very publicly at the last hurdle.
Transformation programmes of any size are major surgery on your organisation and subsequently need constant follow up and handholding of both internal staff, partners and external clients to make sure all of your implemented objectives are delivering as planned. This will allow you to make any necessary amendments and fine tuning whilst showing proactivity and desire to deliver the best possible results you can.

Transformation is an important process in reengineering an organisation and ensuring it stays relevant in how it operates, making sure its products and services are commercially relevant as well as improving the strength of the customer experience it delivers. It should not be taken lightly but when done well it can give you an enormous competitive advantage, re-energised staff, revenue generating products and an engaged client base.

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here and here on the IBM Middleware site in my position as a member of the IBM VIP Influencer Programme

Review of the Gartner Symposium European IT Expo 2013

By Christian on 19th November 2013 in CDO, CEO, CIO, Cloud, CMO, Digital Leadership, Digital Transformation, Disruption, Innovation, Internet of Things, IT Leadership, Mobile, Strategy, Suppliers, Vendor Management

I attended the Gartner Symposium IT Expo 2013 in Barcelona last week along with 5000 others.
It was an intriguing event with lots of excellent speakers, sessions and content.

Some of the main themes being pushed out by Gartner were:

The Nexus of Forces: Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information – A nexus of converging forces is building upon and transforming user behaviour while creating new business opportunities
Master the six essential elements of a digital strategy – 60% of organisations report they have no effective digital strategy. As uncertainty recedes, the digital future emerges
The function of IT in business is changing and Gartner believes the best way to cope is to establish two-speed IT, where innovation can be separated from operational IT
Gartner describes three types of IT function: systems of record, systems of differentiation and systems of innovations
Innovation will require IT to become more agile and work differently, changing your primary suppliers and lots more partnering with smaller, leaner IT companies
The Internet of Everything – How the Internet of Things is reinventing industries and driving new usage and business models
CIO’s have to master power, manipulation and warfare – they must become comfortable with the idea of power, gathering it, and using it as an essential leadership tool
By 2017 smartphones will be smarter than people – not because of intrinsic value but because the cloud and the data stored in the cloud will provide them with the computational ability to make sense of the information they have so they appear smart

There were a couple of things, which caught my eye that I wanted to lift out:

IT Leadership Roles in 2020: The keynote at the Gartner Symposium IT Expo raised a number of interesting points but something that leapt out at me were the references to what IT leadership roles they see will be in play in 2020.
Interestingly and in a different twist to what others are saying, they see the CIO role continuing and the CDO role coming to an end having played its significant part.
They see the CDO role as a transformation and change agent who will lead the digital transformation and implementation of a digital leadership culture within the organisation between now and 2020 before bowing out gracefully with a job well done.
You can view a more in depth piece about this on my blog here.

Who Will Be Your Primary Suppliers in 2017? In confirmation of what I have noticed in recent months is a distinctive trend emerging whereby CIO’s are switching from larger, well-known suppliers to smaller vendors who are leaner and more agile.
This was backed up by the feedback in the sessions and the CIO’s who I spoke with at the Gartner Symposium IT Expo.
This is an interesting and positive trend as it allows the market to thrive with more up and coming vendors allowed to pitch for and win contracts by showing real innovation and enthusiasm to get the job done where they may have previously been frozen out at the RFP stages through staid supply chain processes.
To further highlight this shift, Gartner stated in their keynote session that their recent CIO survey showed that the majority of CIO’s would change their primary suppliers by 2017.
You can view a more in depth piece about this on my blog here.

The Gartner Symposium European IT Expo is a very worthwhile event for CIO’s and IT leaders to attend with excellent networking potential.
Couple this with a great location, excellent local restaurants and warm sun in November and you can see why it’s such a popular event.

This piece has also been posted on:
The Business Value Exchange in my position as CIO ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Contributor

Don’t make yourself an island

By Christian on 12th November 2013 in Career, CIO, Collaboration, Communication, Digital Leadership, Digital Transformation, Disruption, Engagement, Enterprise, Innovation, IT Leadership, Strategy

I fear that the pace of digital and social disruption is catching out a number of CIO’s who aren’t moving at the same pace as their organisations.
Couple this with the naturally accelerated rate of change that is currently rippling through many organisations, and the need for technology to be leveraged to support it is causing CIO’s many a sleepless night.

My advice to them is: don’t make yourself an island.

Don’t retreat in to the abyss of technology and speak only in forked tongues; learn the language of business, get out there and engage with your peers and organisation.
It’s easy to lose track of what the organisation needs and suppose that you have got everything covered including what you think they need.
This is such a dangerous way to think and act, as it shines like a beacon to the rest of the organisation that you aren’t open to communicate with them and understand their pain points.

You will find that if you communicate and work with your peers to understand the issues they face, they will be more open to discussing with you the best ways you can leverage technology to help them.
Better still, you can work together and start to pick these things up before they become issues and deliver real innovation and value across your organisation.

If you find that you are making yourself an island, nip it in the bud as quickly as you can as the truth of the matter is that others in the organisation will have noticed it long before you do.
This could mean that you have an increasing shadow IT problem as others in your organisation have gone out and gotten their own solutions rather than through your organisation or involving you.

Don’t continue to resist change as the current digital and social disruption means that change is inevitable.
Those that resist it will be left behind pretty quickly and as the CIO you really cannot afford that to happen as your organisation will quickly find someone else who will engage.
Better still, you may find that you really enjoy it and as they say, change really is as good as a rest.

This piece has also been posted here on the Samsung Business site

Flexible IT Systems – Building Systems that can Overlap Across Functions

By Christian on 16th July 2013 in C-Level Executives, CEO, CIO, CIO/CTO, Cloud, Collaboration, Cost Efficiency, Costs, EA, Enterprise, Enterprise Architecture, Executive, Innovation, Internet, IT, IT Director, IT Leadership, IT Process, Leadership, Platform, Process, Software, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Transformation

My latest ‘CIO Thought Leadership’ piece entitled, ‘Flexible IT Systems – Building Systems that can Overlap Across Functions.’
This piece is available in the IT-Enabled Business Innovation topic section on The Business Value Exchange.
Read it here and get involved by leaving a comment.