Moving Into a New Innovation Era

Coming your way in 2017

There is a profound shift taking place, relating to innovation. Increasingly we are seeing a growing dissatisfaction on the impact that innovation is having; in growth, in returns, in market and customer impact. There is a search for new solutions.

One of the implications is this growing recognition that innovation is rarely succeeding in isolation but it is growing on a more highly dependent type of complementary innovation, a collaborative network, working around this new emerging innovation to deliver a more connected, radical experience, requiring innovation ecosystem management.

This dramatic change, facing us all, will have a significant impact on each organization’s innovation management design. It will require new connected thinking, built upon a substantial network of collaborations and partnerships.

I believe innovation has needed change and 2017 will be the transforming year

I sense innovation will change dramatically in 2017 as we are coming very quickly to a refraction point in how it’s going to be managed. The underlying change is the contribution of technology and digital, enabling the opening up of our world of possibility, through ecosystems and platforms that provide the collaborative base for a new, complex, diverse set of connections.

This ‘connected world’ can deliver a new higher’ value set’ of innovation solutions, increasingly based more on understanding the customer’s demand for a seamless connected experience, through a greater set of contact points and the increasing levels of data and analytics gained from theses ongoing engagements

For many, innovation has, for a long time, been struggling to gain a new growth momentum

For many years there have only been many disappointing incremental steps in how we innovate. Now innovation will require significant changes as the digital transformation momentum takes hold. This transforming will require a radical overhaul of the innovation management process as we will increasingly be operating in this different world of ecosystems and platforms.

Today I believe we are on the cusp of a new innovation era and it is a powerful set of enablers that are combining to bring us to this point. There have been many potential innovation change points I felt needing challenging over the last few years.

So a new innovation era is upon us. Will you recognize, or ignore, it?

2017 will be a defining year for innovation, no actually, it will be a transforming one.

I believe innovation needs to enter a new era of prosperity and for me, that requires this recognition we are moving towards a new innovation model, one highly connected, and collaborative and this will come about in 2017 for most organizations to embrace.

The big change will come increasingly around the growing participation upon digital platforms and the being involved in multiple ecosystems of solution providers, all leveraging technology and highly digital. It will have transforming potential with how it will increasingly connect into the customer needs in collaborative ways, to provide greater seamless experiences.

So we are entering the world of innovation ecosystems where broader, more complex innovation challenges, through greater collaborations can be achieved. So Jeffrey Phillips and I decided to launch a dedicated posting site to build the arguments on the multiple changes occurring and this can be found at: ecosystems4innovating.wordpress.com

The ability to form new networks, to collaborate, to connect to others on common cause through technology working through platforms and ecosystems is going to revolutionize the way we think about, and certainly manage, innovation in the future.

Yes, welcome to the new innovation era, coming your way in 2017.

image credit: freepik.com

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Paul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities. Find him @paul4innovating