TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN INNOVATION

“Simultaneity”. Leverage multiple streams of interdependent technologies to establish a transformation continuum.

There are essentially two factors critical to success in innovation through technology (assuming, that is, you have already identified such an innovation opportunity):

• Getting the right technology properly deployed
• Getting the organisation to use it to its advantage

Only when both are achieved can business transformation realistically occur.

On this page:

• New technology and its risks
• Technology and technologies
• Is innovation risky?

Innovative technology, be it the potentially powerful “disruptive” or exploratory variety, or the less threatening ‘though generally less powerful “incremental” or exploited kind, can make a huge positive impact on an organisation – but only if that impact is understood and embraced by the entire organisation.

A new technology, of itself, can appear innovative – but unless your organisation can make “valued use” of that technology, it may, at best, be an amusing distraction.  At worst, of course, the distractive power of ill-considered technology can indeed become destructive – consuming company resources and management attention in equal measure.

The subject of “right technology” is increasingly one of “right technologies” as most of today’s strongly beneficial ones are interdependent. Indeed arguably the greatest innovative leaps are being made through convergence, i.e. several technologies melding in a symbiosis that yields benefit > sum of parts. This equation is a significant challenge for many organisations, particularly large, conservative ones, as they tend to evaluate all projects and project elements as if they were independent – even when they’re not. This is due to the often stated need for “repeatable process” stemming from concerns around previous failures attributed to: scale, complexity, resource availability and risk, etc. – with the view that such singular focus on each project in isolation will yield greater accuracy and certainty.  This process approach – the reductionist method – has great power in understanding isolated things (and is the basis of much scientific method) but is ill suited to the necessary holistic view required for innovation, as it struggles to stay open to available synergies and at best identifies contingent liabilities in the “risk register” thus playing to the conservative, risk averse members of the management team and greatly reducing the impact of any associated business case.

Let’s be honest, innovation is inherently risky – but therein lays its power.   The risk versus reward relationship alone suggests that higher rewards bring with them higher risks, but higher risks can also stimulate an organisation (and individuals) to greater efforts – to strive to meet the challenge.  The key is to ensure that communication of the risks is done in a way that identifies them as stepping-stones to success rather than as possible show-stoppers – in other words, that the risks are mere requirements definitions that will need close attention. That does not downplay their potential impact – it merely reminds people that problem = opportunity and invites them to view risks as problems from the opportunity perspective.

• Pessimist = The glass is half empty.
• Optimist = The glass is half full.
• Engineer = The glass is twice the size it needs to be.
• Innovator = Why the glass? Why not a bag! Or a straw? Or a…

One of our key strengths is our ability to understand the entire scope of technologies and thebusiness impacts associated with specific innovation – and to be able to communicate these in language appropriate to the audience. Rather than resort to mere “dumbing down” and reductionism, we take the entirely different approach of synthesising the whole and explaining the: strategic objective, the business case and the technologies and processes that need to be deployed to deliver on the promise of the business case, through plain languages and appropriate analogies – thus effectively selling the benefit. In this way the staff (and management) can better understand the whole and their role in its success – a success they will have bought into.

Our 25+ years of experience in technology innovation has taught us, amongst other things, that “fear of change” can be turned into excitement and a can do/will do attitude – it just takes the right story telling skills.  We have those skills.

Malcolm Duffield