Axel Schultze

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement

Terms like incremental innovation, gradual innovation, or architectural innovation have been coined and used to look like being innovative. Turns out, using those terms is the worst decision one can make. Companies need to be actively improving their existing products and services. AND in today’s time and age, companies need to decide if they want to engage in innovation. But one is as different from the other as apples and oranges (Äpfel und Birnen).

Let me explain the most significant differences between genuine innovation (real innovation) and improvements:

How genuine innovation began

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement - the beginningAround 12,000 years ago, we not only improved how we sharpened and used stones or threw wood formed into a spear but also made a breakthrough in survival techniques. Homo Sapiens began to farm. For 300,000 years, we were hunters and gatherers. But the food was almost abandoned once we understood how corn grows and how we could seed and water the seeds. Thanks to the innovation of farming, there was more corn and wheat than the people who planted it could consume. At that time, some people invented plows to farm better. Others focused on building more robust tents and huts to store the harvest. They traded their work for the corn others grew. The invention of farming allowed us to specialize. The most massive elevation in how humans did things.

Still, today, a genuine innovation elevates how people do things to a degree far above and beyond general improvement. Every innovation sparks new opportunities, jobs, and on top new innovations. It allowed us to overcome limitations like lifting more than our body could stem. Dive longer than any human could before – even reach out into the Universe. Every genuine innovation is a solution or product created from scratch in all its aspects. A new product with new and never seen before functionality and today, most likely a new business model will quickly accelerate the company to a market leader. Bringing such a product to market, teams usually also use new ways to sell it, new ways to market it and create a new customer experience. With such a new solution, customers experience a new, easier, faster, or safer way to do things.

After a few years, genuine innovation is typically far more profitable than any comparable solution. It has a significant competitive advantage and attracts top talents, new customers, and even the corresponding capital market. Apple, Google, Samsung, and countless other disruptors are part of the most profitable company list. At Apple, developing a new computer, then iTunes, then the iPhone means heavy lifting. But profitability leads to new and equally profitable products and so forth. We see a similar pattern at “Musk Enterprises,” where it’s less prominent but equally diverse with Tesla, SpaceX, StarLink, etc. It isn’t just the product genius – but also the business genius to innovate continuously.

Examples of Genuine Innovation

* A rocket may be considered as just another aircraft. But a rocket like a Saturn V can go far higher and faster than any other air vehicle.

* Uber may be seen as just another Taxi. But with an Uber, you know the cost of the ride before you get in, and the driver cannot cheat. You don’t need to pay cash, and the driver does not have the theft risk.

* A Tesla can be seen as just another automobile. But the electric motor combined with high-performance batteries is more environmentally friendly, uses renewable energy, and can be charged wherever an electric power grid is, not restricted to old town centers. It has an entirely new digital experience and can be purchased online without an overly complicated selection of option packages.

* A fully digital bank like N26 is built from the ground up for the best digital experience. Users can make all transactions themselves, anytime, anywhere, and in any transaction. Transparent costs and easy to track. It elevates the user experience by order of magnitude.

Improvement Comparison

* A faster, more comfortable airplane may be a nice improvement, but it cannot reach other planets.

* A better Taxi system would still have the massive overhead of a local taxi organization, still dependent on the drivers’ orientation skills. It must still be paid with standard payment systems, different in most countries. And altogether is still not as easy and trustworthy.

* The next car model may look nicer, is more comfortable, and may have more power. But it still has a combustion engine and a proprietary car computer system. The complex way of selecting and buying a new car also needs to be considered. Selecting the features from conflicting packages impedes the process.

* E-Banking in a conventional bank is still just a conversion of their complex standard processes. The old processes requiring manual reviews have usually not been optimized and are not even part of their e-banking.

In all the examples, improvement is necessary – or complete disruption.

Those examples give only a rather superficial insight into those differences. Under the hood, it is even worse. Mergers with brute force IT integration have made the product in financial services companies far more complicated than easier. Those companies often still today think it’s their human experts that make the difference. Of course, those experts are also needed in the future. But the real difference is a hyper-fast and super-easy transaction system for billions of people. Similarly, in the energy sector. Most oil and gas companies need to change towards renewable energy. And most follow what already exists: Solar, Wind, and Water. Disruption would be focusing for instance on the earth’s core. Our planet’s geothermal energy reservoir is good for at least a billion years. It can constantly deliver millions of petawatt of energy. It is independent from day and night or cloudy or sunny. It is independent of wind and independent of the necessary gravitational force of water turbines. Of course, it is not easy, but innovation is never easy. That is the reason why genuine innovation is always profitable and pseudo innovation is always under high pressure from the competition, high pressure on profitability and there is always a country that can deliver cheaper.

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement

Genuine Innovation Pseudo Innovation or genuine improvement
Team qualification Diverse backgrounds with specific cognitive abilities Dedicated innovators Experts (Tech, Bio, Chem…)
Timeline   5+ years     Months/Years
Budget     Small but scaling   Higher budget, shorter terms
ROI  7+ years          1-2 Years
Impact  Market Leadership Business as usual
Capital market Increasing MarketCap Declining MarketCap
Biz Transformation High    None
Expanding markets Possible and likely Rather shrinking
Declining demand  Can be compensated Accelerates the degradation 

This tables tells a very important story: Engaging in innovation or remaining in improvement mode has significant financial and strategic implications. And the decision to go in one or the other direction, can only be made by CEOs and their board.                              

Making the distinction between genuine innovation and improvement is strategically important for the respective team that should either innovate or improve. A leadership position such as “we need to be more innovative and you, team, have to figure out how to do this”, cannot lead to success.  

Goals, processes, team composition, financing ways to go to market, and production flow are all fundamentally different between the two types of product development. As long as a company mixes both terms interchangeably, the result is worse than focusing only on improvements. But to stay relevant modern businesses need to do both: Continue to improve the products and services they have and with a different team to develop the next breakthrough innovation.

 

Genuine Innovation versus Improvement

GENUINE INNOVATION
At least we at BlueCallom consider Breakthrough innovation, groundbreaking innovation, disruptive innovation or radical innovation all the same thing. All of that is genuine innovation. And everything we do as a business, is to empower people to make genuine innovation a reality in very timely order – six to 9 months. 

PSEUDO INNOVATION
At the same time, we consider the terms incremental innovation, gradual innovation, architectural innovation as pseudo innovation. It is misleading for innovation teams when they are tasked to make incremental innovation. Moreover, it is dramatically harming their career because when hired at another company, they can present nothing but improvements – which is a given in companies since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

I’d love to hear your opinion or experiences.

And if you want to discuss live, in person with innovation thought leaders from  across Central Europe, please join us Nov 3 in Zürich, at our first BlueCallom Innovation Night, a pure networking event.

 

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Axel Schultze
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Stop idea hunting for innovation

Stop idea hunting for innovation

Creating breakthrough innovation is still the holy grail or even a mystery to most innovation teams. It is perceived as random, serendipity, and accidental. Hoping to get innovative solutions that transforms markets from some magical “ideas,” means waiting for a coincidence, but winning the lottery would have far more chances to succeed than “finding” the right idea. Is this the end of an innovation center? Yes, already in many corporations. But it would not have to be that way. It is only the end of idea hunting, trend scouting, startup observation or acquisition, and similar activities. 

REVISE YOUR INNOVATION APPROACH

Every market, every ecosystem, and every target audience has large amounts of unsolved problems. Solving those problems is what most unicorns do today. Lack of understanding of problems and needs is also a prominent reason less than 10% of startups make it to their initial round of funding.

Imagine you have a great idea that just popped into your mind and want to create a business with it. You craft a concept, maybe a prototype, and try to get funding from an investor. Any decent investor will ask these is first two questions: a) Who is your team? B) What problem are you solving?

Idea hunting

Problem-solving
1) Who will be your customers? 1) You will understand almost immediately who the potential customers are
2) Why should they buy your product 2) The solution to the problem is why they should buy your product.
3) Why will they want it? 3) They want it to improve their work, life, or entertainment.

 
4) How many people will want the solution (market size) 4) You size the market by knowing who and how many have the problem.

 
5) How big is their appetite at the moment? 5) You can directly ask them how big their appetite is to buy it.
6) Do they have to change their behavior? 6) You can explore if there is any behavior change they need to make.
7) How significant will the impact be on your customer? 7) You can ask your current customers about the impact.
8) What would be their current or potential alternative? 8) You can explore your competitive advantage.
9) What would be your value proposition? 9) You can define a value proposition even before prototyping.

 
10) What would be your business model? 10) You can have a unique business model when you go to market.
HIgh uncertainty
Low likelihood to get product market fit
Very high failure rate
Very low likelihood for innovation financing 
High certainty for a needProduct market fit can be quickly tested
Much reduced failure rate
High likelihood getting finance




Innovation Center Decision
While entrepreneurs may still try their ideas whether they get funding or not, for an enterprise, it is almost irresponsible to go on an idea hunt or idea-scouting to find random ideas. The probability that the “idea” is helping transform markets, transforming organizations, and bringing a significant elevation in how people or customers do things is extremely slim. Why bet resources on the least likely path to success?

Instead, when focusing on significant existing problems, most of the top 10 questions are answered based on the fact that there is already a consequential problem identified.

 

INNOVATION RISK PREVENTION

Shifting from idea hunting to problem-solving is essential to innovation risk prevention.

Why spend time, money, and resources to find a market that possibly doesn’t even exist or not know if the idea solves a problem? Focus on solving already existing significant problems.

Why you and not others?

Because usually, companies from all corners of the earth are not interested in solving problems but in selling what they have. Startups, on the other side, don’t want to build another existing solution but solve problems nobody is addressing. And as such, most successful startups grow into enterprises by doing precisely that. And on their way to the top, they displace older enterprises that were created before them.

The risk to get one day being disrupted and displaced is larger than the risk of failing to invent new solutions. But the remaining risk of failing can be significantly diminished when moving from idea hunting to solving existing and known problems.

Known problems can be managed – ideas cannot.

Moreover, once you have identified a significant problem, the anticipated outcome will be initially unknown, but the goal is so clear that you can strategically manage the innovation process. Market research, problem identification, ideation, concept validation, etc. Such an innovation process dramatically reduces the risk further. Neuroscience and Neuro Innovation help us understand how ideas for solving problems are composed; it helps us market into early adopters and finally re-invent so you will never stop innovating.

CAPITAL MARKET SHIFT

The capital market is a significant driver, shifting companies to embrace innovation, product and business model advances, and competitive advantages. Highly innovative companies like Tesla have a valuation allowing them to buy the Mercedes among all automobiles: Mercedes Benz. And this is one of the key motives for the C-Level to turn their otherwise well-running business into an innovative enterprise. Executives know that one of those random ideas will never create a billion-dollar market. They also believe that an idea, no matter how cool it may sound, cannot provide a significant competitive advantage to move the needle of their market cap.

Summary

  • Reducing innovation risks by moving innovation from idea hunting to strategic and targeted breakthrough innovation efforts that are solving existing significant problems makes all the difference. 
  • Methodical innovation not only teaches how to make the start of an innovation effort smarter but also how to manage many other aspects including team assembly, innovation strategy development, concept validation methods, innovation financing, and much more. 
  • Modern innovation frameworks additionally increase manageability and success predictability not only in the solution creation phase but during the equally important innovation-to-market and scaling phase.

Making Of

How did we get here? Our own, previous companies and the hundreds of companies we accompanied in their startup phase, later on, were determined to solve one problem – and one problem only. In our research, we could not find a single company that hoped to realize an idea, then find a market for it, and become successful.
The most successful VCs in this world invest only in companies that solve a big problem – for a reason. Our learning: Only when understanding the entire innovation journey from early innovation opportunity discovery, all the way to global scaling, success is very probable. Experimentation is the least intelligent way to innovate.

Axel Schultze, CEO BlueCallom
AI-Driven Neuro innovation solutions 

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Axel Schultze

When enterprises acquire startups to get to innovation

When enterprises acquire startups to get to innovation

When venturing out for ideas on how to create innovation, enterprises may explore the idea of acquiring startups to get innovative minds and a complete team. It seems like a quick way to get innovative ideas that can be integrated into the corporation. Essentially the old make or buy decision. However, of 1,000 acquisitions, less than five have been successfully integrated. And none delivered the sought-after genuine innovation. So, is it a bad idea? Maybe not, but let’s look at this as a whole. There are a few very strategic steps to be considered that most enterprises did not think through.

1) THE INNOVATION MANDATE

Independent of acquisition or not, enterprise leaders want to ensure they have a clear innovation purpose for their organization. Some companies let their teams experiment randomly because they believe in magical random ideas. But that thinking failed with nearly 100%. The Innovation Mandate aims to help the leaders of innovation teams understand the significance, scope, and magnitude of the innovation effort, its expected long-term results, and how they can be achieved. Moreover, successful innovation should be in the context of the company’s long-term development strategy, values, markets, and ability to deliver. Those innovations must be defined by their Significance, Scope, and Magnitude.

Significance

The significance of innovation for the company.  I.e., We experience a massive shift in the XYZ industry and need to…
Or we see an opportunity in the rising TBD-Market and want to play a leading role there – and so forth.

Scope

The SCOPE of the innovation effort. I.e., we expect our innovation teams to create a solution and bring that solution successfully to its designated markets. Our existing resources are unavailable to bring new, possibly competing products into our market. Or our team is fully utilized with our existing business and won’t be able to be entirely focused on disruptive innovation.

Magnitude

The MAGNITUDE of innovation
The new solution should bring € 8 Billion in the next seven years and be able to replace our declining 5 Billion OMG Business. Or, the new solution should generate € 1 Billion in new business and ensure our strong market leader position in this market segment. In any company north of a billion in revenue, having a new product with a 50 Million potential would not make a difference – and the innovation team or startup needs to know.

TO-DO:
A so-called >>CEO Mandate for Innovation<< needs to be documented independently of any innovation effort. The bigger the enterprise, the more relevant that mandate is. It explains in detail the Significance, Scope, and Magnitude of the expected innovation engagement. This mandate must also be accompanied by an innovation strategy to get there. Innovation teams struggle with their effort without it, and investing in startups without a clear mandate almost never gets any positive outcome. In one of the following blog posts, we will discuss those mandates in more detail.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

The organizational considerations are very similar when enterprises acquire startups to innovate or build from within your organization.

  1. General Integration
    Your existing organization is highly optimized for what you and your team have been doing for years. Employee utilization of all your thousands of employees is above 80%, and there is no room to do something entirely new – like an innovation. When Google acquired YouTube, it was wise NOT to integrate the company until it was big enough to have found its structure and culture. Today everybody is happy that they never did.
  2. Innovation-Specific Sales
    Innovation needs to follow a specific audience pattern of early adopters to succeed. Also, initial orders are small, and your existing sales force is tremendous, so they have no room for extras. Moreover, they are unprepared to deal with early adopter customers within your existing customer base. At Tesla, the early adopters were not clearly defined until the first cars were ordered, almost exclusively by venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.
  3. Innovation Financing
    Innovation is all about growth financing. Growing by 100% and ramping after a few years from 100 Million to 200 Million is a challenge for every CFO. The innovation team needs to manage their own financing with the knowledge of all the unique aspects. Nespresso was a new era in the coffee business and a financial business model novelty within Nestle.
  4. Innovation Marketing
    Marketing innovative solutions are profoundly different than conventional enterprise marketing. The team must understand how to evangelize a new solution and keep customer behavior changes at the forefront.  They must understand advocacy development to bring those solutions to the market successfully. Also, the innovation team needs to deliver a different marketing concept that doesn’t need to align with the extensive brand marketing. Remember, “The biggest advertising company in the world never placed an ad – Google.” Tesla, Vorwerk (Thermomix), and many others use unique direct marketing techniques far from advertising and promotion. Mostly marketing is embedded in the whole business model.

The deeper we look into those aspects, the clearer it becomes that integrating an innovative product into the conventional organization for production, sales, marketing, and finance is a considerable risk and a big mistake. Innovation cannot grow inside a massive and highly optimized organization with rules and regulations that do not allow experimentation and ignore those rules and processes. On the contrary, an innovative team NEEDS to change rules, build new processes, and find new ways into markets to expand its innovative footprint.

TO-DO:
Take Innovation as a holistic process that starts before ideas are created and finishes when the innovation is successful in its designated market. Think through all aspects of organizational development, team skills and talents, team selection and compensation, culture and motivation – BEFORE you make any decision on how this will be happening.

When enterprises acquire startups to get to innovation

COMPANY & TEAM QUALITY ASSESSMENT

There are a few strategic questions to ask the founders before even considering investing time to go into more details. Professional Venture Capital firms ask those questions one way or the other before even letting them pitch.

  1. How is your leadership team structured?
    Make sure it is a diverse team of subject matter experts, business minds, and marketing creatives who all can think boldly and execute fast.
  2. Why did you start? What drove you to do this company?
    Make sure it is more than an idea that a few angels possibly found. Ensure there is some subject matter expertise behind it. Moreover, ideally, the founders experienced a problem they are now solving.
  3. In what way are you genuinely unique, globally
    Understanding their innovative character or at least the uniqueness of their solution. Know what the competition looks like and what the difference is.
  4. Are all founders fully invested in the company
    Solopreneurs are a show stopper for any professional investor. They would never get funded and may see an acquisition as a nice exit. But they are still a single founder organization that may not be stable or holds for the future.

Acquisition specific questions

Ask the founders:

  1. Are you willing to sell?
    If your business concept is bold enough to bring it to Unicorn status, why not do it yourself?
    Why should we not do it ourselves if you need a partner like us?
  2. Do you understand enterprises?
    We are successful by streamlining organizations to the max. Perfect processes, no risk, no change. When being integrated into our enterprise, what will you do to prevent being absorbed by our structure of rules and regulations?
  3. Do you think large-scale innovation?
    Will you and your team be able to build a billion $ operation in parallel to our existing organization?
    And if yes, what is your plan to get there?

99.9% of enterprise innovation attempts fail because nobody took the time to think through all its aspects – and the invested millions and even billions did not help.

TO-DO:
Make your detailed list of interview questions. Remember the Significance, Scope, and Magnitude of what you expect from the team. Hire a team you can see building a billion €/$  business operation.

Summary

When enterprises acquire startups to get to innovation, an extensive goal development, planning, and strategy how to get there is mission critical. Because of the significance innovation has for the company, the scope of organizational development, and the magnitude of capital and time needed to be successful, the CEO is the only person who can decide to engage in any form of innovation. When buying a startup, remember what it takes to bring a young team with crazy ideas that nobody has tried before to succeed. If not exquisite investors working with them to help them to get all the way to the top, it will be you who needs to take over that role. When acquiring a startup, enterprise leaders must first understand the Significance, Scope, and Magnitude of their innovation effort. Then making professional considerations about the organizational structure and guidance of those teams who usually never saw an enterprise from the inside. Only then diving into the sea of startup acquisition makes even sense. At that point, the question of whether it even makes sense to buy and integrate a startup. So far, more than 1,000  startup acquisitions have failed, and not a single startup helped an enterprise get to innovation adds to those considerations.

Alternative

The alternative of building such a startup inside the organization is much more promising. Considering all the above aspects, you will find people familiar with your business, particularly interns and people who have been with the company for two or so years. You will not be able to win or afford your top teams for innovation, and you will need them to keep your current business alive. In our own experience, the most effective way is to assemble an internal Innovation Dream Team that is 100% dedicated to the job and stays there for the next few years. With the proper selection, assembly and onboarding method, motivational aspects, and culture development, they will stay and make the impossible a reality.

 

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Axel Schultze
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Innovation Market Dynamics

Innovation Market Dynamics

Before starting to innovate, it makes sense to understand the general market dynamics for innovative solutions. For decades, enterprises struggled when their innovative solutions did not take off within 12 to 24 months and killed the projects. Little was known about innovation diffusion. Everett Rogers coined the term in 1966 but the actual timeline of an end-to-end innovation was too long to even measure accurately. Today we know that any innovation takes and took 7 to 15 years to become mainstream. Obviously, that was a stretch for any enterprise executive. Yet, telephony, TV, personal computer, Internet, Social Media, 3D-Printing, and electric vehicles took, on average, a decade to become mainstream. A normal consumer however does not see that timeline. In 2012 Facebook was a big talk when it went public with horrendous valuations and no profit. “Already” in 2016, just four years later it became an acceptable mainstream platform. People tend to forget that they started in 2004 and took 12 years to become “mainstream”. And Tesla took much longer.

Hoping to have an ROI in 3 years is virtually impossible – why is that?

Why conventional enterprises fail to innovate

It’s not the innovative solution that takes so long to build – it’s the market that takes so long to decide. Agile leaders or agile consumers start to give almost anything interesting a try. It is what keeps them at the forefront of things. The large majority of conservative buyers wait and see and move only when the “New Thing” is tried and tested. Usually, in the early days of a product researchers, analysts and experts see great danger in the new products and delay the market acceptance even further. But when the late majority decides to buy because it seems to be “a good idea” the market opens up to mass markets and volume. It doesn’t matter if it is B2B or B2C. It is the human factor – no matter where they sit.

Leading businesses keep staying on top – time and time again

The people that represent such a leading company are typically early adopters. Just a little more risk-takers. Their experiences with new technology keep them ahead of the competition. When years later the competition catches up, the leaders are perfectly set and experts in the respective technology. And in the next few years, that same game repeats itself.

Why conventional enterprises have a hard time

Of course, they are not stupid, so they could make a leap and catch up with leaders fast. The problem is the composition of people. You cannot jump on every opportunity because who knows what is really successful in the end. Why did the Nokia executives not jump on modern technology? Why did Sun Micro not see the writing on the wall? Why did Nixdorf not adopt in time? Why did Digital Equipment merge with HP and almost both failed? Why did…. the list is long. But the answer is easy: They just did not see it. Far too busy with their own organization instead of having eyes and ears in the market. Trying things that make logical sense instead of waiting until others found it out for them is a terrible price to pay. And that is not only for NOT EXPLORING THEIR OWN SITUATION. IT IS WHY THEY CAN’T INNOVATE and develop a long-term view of what the market needs.

Innovation Market Dynamics Considerations

1) Make yourself familiar with the idea that your innovation will take 5+ years for notable impact in the market.

2) Understand the full scope of an innovation engagement to keep the time to innovation as short as possible. Meaning your innovation team has no time to rest.

3) Have a very robust strategy in place to be able to manage such a long-term engagement with all its changing landscape underway.

4) Never even think of integrating the innovative solution into your conventional sales and marketing operation. The go-to-market approach is far too different.

5) Make sure you have a complete picture of your innovation engagement and the fact that if you need innovation to transform a business unit or an entire business, your innovation will need to produce NEW Billions of Euros to make the transformation successful.

6) Ensure that innovation is led by a Chief Innovation Officer, not by the CEO or any other executive as a side business.

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Axel Schultze

A glimpse into the future of innovation, AI and human ingenuity

Allow me to start the year with a perspective on the future of innovation.

Despite everything that went on in the world, BlueCallom had a great 2021 and 2022 started with a big boost.

LINEAR VERSUS LATERAL THINKING

It is no news that linearly managed business process transformation like digitalization or creating breakthrough innovation, has never really worked out. Linear thinking for any type of complex structure is not really a good idea.

In the fall of 2021, we worked feverishly on finding better ways to visualize the difference between linear and lateral thinking. At the same time, I was asked by our data scientists and engineering team to visualize the data flow in each innovation process episode that feeds the AI system. All charts I’ve seen of lateral processes were hopelessly convoluted visuals where virtually every piece of a process was connected with at least half of all the other processes.

To visualize the complexity we had to build a bridge to a linear model. Once I looked at the process connections, I realized a pattern of parallelity – some actions ran in parallel, and some even in different directions. While a core process is active, a few processes can break out and run outside the core and some even in different directions.

AI is the first technological way
to build laterality with a computer.

Laterality could be shown in a linear manner, visualizing the lateral process. When looking at the AI from autonomous driving, we see a very similar mechanism. 

The chart below compares a linear process on the left column with a lateral process and its many columns to the right. How it works and how this can serve the human mind is described further down.

BlueCallom Lateral Business Process Network

Managing complexity is a very difficult task – no matter what. And if we need to ask teams to creatively innovate but also manage highly complex processes we will either lose the creativity or the manageability. Is that the end of managed innovation? No – not at all. We decided to use Artificial Intelligence for managing almost infinite complexity and all we need to do is to train the system in a way that guides their human companion through the maze. GPS? Compass? Stars? Yes, nothing new but in a very different world transforming the future of innovation.

HOW AI CAN SERVE THE HUMAN MIND – NOT DISPLACES IT

With the above learning we made two important decisions:

  1. We will not ask anybody to become a lateral thinker – instead, we decided to build solutions that do what humans are not so good at, like following complex lateral processes. We are using AI, Neuroscience, and Genetic Computing as the first Human Intelligence Augmentation solution. It is designed to help people stay on top of processes no matter how complex they are. This is freeing the brain to do what it can do best, including innovate, create, socialize, identify meaning, see opportunities, work on unique things, entertain, and countless other talents. 
  2. We will focus on making those innovative and creative jobs highly predictable so they can be judged, assessed, and analyzed before making major investments and giving long-term commitments. Therefore, we developed a unique and very powerful Innovation KPI Framework with 1 core KPI: “Success Probability”. Roughly 200 “Contributing KPIs” and approximately 20,000 data points are used by multiple algorithms to compose the one, ultimate Innovation Success KPI. The BlueCallom KPI Framework is a novel design of cascading KPIs leading to one “Mother Of All KPIs”.  

Human Intelligence Augmentation was an original idea from Douglas C. Engelbart, documented in October 1962. It was Engelbart’s hope that very intelligent machines will help the human mind to perform tasks of nearly endless complexity. However back then this was technically not yet possible. Today we are stepping on his shoulders and are introducing what he has envisioned.
Deep Innovation Design-based innovation processes consist of 10 episodes, with approximately 12 major tasks each and approximately 10 activities in each task. More than 70% are creative, ideation-related tasks that work with stimuli and patterns that we learned from neuroscience. With an innovation team of 10 people, we are dealing with approximately 1,200 thought, research or feedback objects. With reviews, considerations from previous episodes, predictions into new episodes, we reach a staggering 20,000 aspects to consider in such an innovation project. Far too much for a normal human brain to keep in mind while being in a creative process. Either you work more creatively than you can’t manage administrative work at the same time or you follow the rules and never create any substantial innovation. Our laterally organized AI system however can take off all the administrative and coordinative work and let the ingenious minds flow freely, Reports, worrying what the next steps should be, process orientation, and other administrative works are taken care of by the AI system.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM BLUECALLOM IN 2022

VISION – Our vision remains unchanged, we exist to build the most predictable innovation and business transformation solution helping teams elevate the way people do things.

GROWTH – You may have noticed that we are looking for quite a number of people to join the team and support our vision in the future of innovation. A pretty elaborate hiring process is helping us to find the best possible talents including AI experts and neuroscientists. If you have any connections or ideas to help is get the right talents, we would really appreciate it.

PRODUCT – We can imagine that you want to get your hands on the new system or see it in action. A beta test version and demos for BlueCallom DEEP II are scheduled to be available for selected customers soon. We will publicly introduce it in May 2022.

IN 2022 – We will be able to demonstrate a first step of what was thought to be impossible any time soon: an AI system that will augment human’s intellectual capabilities beyond its natural capacity – and – without drilling holes in the skull. The dream of the late Douglas Engelbart to create Intelligence Augmentation is now becoming a reality. 

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION This year we envision the first customers to work with human intelligence augmentation to run their innovation projects. The BlueCallom AI solution is built so that executives will experience a never-before-seen degree of predictability from complex processes in real-time. Innovation or change management teams will experience a level of intellectual support by getting suggestions, reminders, data, and feedback. Envision using BlueCallom, similar to driving a car with GPS and augmented reality. You will still want to decide where to go, what to see, and where to stay – even to drive if you want. But the GPS will tell you the fastest way to your destination, where to find gas stations, restaurants, and points of interest. It even navigates you around traffic jams or accidents. Also in BlueCallom you will still need to create the ideas, explore the hopes and dreams of your customers and define the purpose of your innovation, But reporting, reminding you on meetings, not forgetting what your previous research indicated, reminding you to consider how to bring it to market or not forgetting to consider a great user experience and hundreds of other consideration for an excellent outcome is managed by the AI system. Soon you will be able to do all that by talking and listening to your team and to your BlueCallom – no more computer.

INNOVATION SUCCESS PREDICTABILITY – BlueCallom’s Human Intelligence Augmentation and its approximately 20,000 data points, aggregated throughout the entire process, is allowing the AI system to calculate a never seen before innovation success predictability. Executives can observe the success prediction in real-time and conduct their own risk assessments, decisions to move forward, and any financing approvals.

WHERE WILL WE TAKE IT LONG-TERM?

To build a better future of innovation, we need everybody to be able to innovate and rapidly resolve complexity. Our contribution is to build a solution that allows almost everybody to build their own future. A future of new materials, new technology, new medical systems, new renewable energy, new medication, new transportation, new mobility, new distribution structures, new education models, and more. BlueCallom will further invest in research and science, both on computer science and on neuroscience getting a deeper understanding of how our brain behaves and how we can interface with its natural “APIs”.

Our future lies in building systems and solutions that can amplify and augment the human intellect. With our learning from Neuroscience and AI, Human Intelligence Augmentation is the core of our own development. By the end of 2022, we will invite all our business friends and customers to the first BlueCallomPredict, a small conference for Innovation Thought Leaders to look ever deeper into that future of innovation. :)

INNOVATION THOUGHT LEADER ROUNDTABLE – If you are interested to contribute and supporting our work from the outside, we will continue to develop collaboration with our customers and Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable members. The next Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable will be in March 2022. You will find more info at: https://bluecallom.com/innovation-thought-leader-roundtable/


This is the most exciting, most compelling, and also the most challenging venture I ever had the opportunity to work in. I’m deeply grateful for having amazing minds support this journey.

I wish you a great 2022, whatever is around us, and thank you for all the support!  Together we can do even more for the future of innovation.

Axel Schultze and the BlueCallom Dream Team

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