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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Innovation Outlook 2022

BlueCallom is officially a year old now. In the past three years, before we started, we learned so much from neuroscience that it turned our perspective of innovation upside down. In 2021 we hosted several Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable events and learned about how innovation is done in most enterprises today. We learned about the struggle to be more innovative and heard from many that the lack of innovation culture is a considerable challenge. Also, in 2021 we completed our first version of BlueCallom DEEP, our cloud-based neuro innovation management solution, and conducted our first Deep Innovation Design training. BlueCallom has released two critical white papers: “Innovation is a CEO Mandate” and “Innovation Master Plan.” Now it is time we look at the innovation outlook for 2022.

From randomness to strategic innovation

One of the biggest frustration for CEOs is the random experimentation with no results. The fact that all enterprises have the same challenge doesn’t set anybody apart. But that is the goal for several enterprises for 2022. Most innovation centers today end 2021 with several improvements but no genuine innovation. While almost all of today’s innovation methods help manage ideas to get to the prototype stage, non have reached the market. In a few cases, it did but died within a few months. It’s time to get strategic. There are 800 unicorns, bolstered with a billion $ or more, ready to disrupt whatever market they are looking at. One CEO asked, “Why did I never see a unicorn in the making? I saw hundreds of startups, but most didn’t make it.” An excellent question. We answered: “Because you saw only those who ran around from startup event to startup event, trying to raise capital.” A unicorn is far more strategic than most people think. They are relentless executors, have brilliant talents, and run faster than any other business. Many enterprise leaders have yet to learn what it takes to bring innovation successfully to the market. But there are several who just now do that – with a dedicated innovation development strategy.

From improvement to genuine innovation

Another early shift we saw for 2021 is that enterprises realize that improvement is not innovation. Improvement has been made for 200 years in every R&D center. Some enterprises have already learned the hard way: an R&D center is not an innovation space and cannot be just “tasked” to be done. Using improvement as a step-by-step path to innovation is like a sailor using a lake to prepare for circumnavigation. One major force to make a clear decision to engage in innovation is the CEO. Without a clear direction from the CEO, innovation cannot happen in any enterprise. That shift to genuine innovation bares the question, “Should that innovation center remains a department, be a business unit, or even a separate company?” The trend is already seen by companies like Kärcher who separated the innovation activities into a legally separate unit which is still owned by the mothership. There is a slew of advantages included above and beyond the risk mitigation. Those separate units don’t have to be integrated into the massive bureaucracy of the main enterprise, they may have different legal contract frameworks and more.

From Students to top-level teams with exceptional cognitive abilities

Another interesting trend comes actually from the innovation consultant space. Very often, students had been hired to innovate for a company. The task was simple, “find a great idea”. It has been that way for quite some time because innovation was associated with a brilliant idea. Only now do we understand that a brilliant idea is always coming from solving an existing or in the future envisioned problem. Today we know that a human is producing thousands of ideas every year. We are even drowning in ideas. Ideas are of no value. Solving a problem is a hard and complex task and the solution may be considered a brilliant idea. When Elon Mask hires people, he still focuses on people with exceptional abilities. When Amazon employs people, they spend more time on soft skills than hard skills. The search for people with exceptional cognitive abilities for the innovation job is on the run. Several software companies emerged from this trend, like Pymetrics, which exclusively focuses on a hiring process for those soft skills.

2022 Summary

In the past two corona years, businesses of all sizes learned to be far more agile or suffer enormously, if not pushed out of business. Innovation has shown its positive effect on some companies where it resulted in innovation efforts that brought even significant improvements to the market capitalization on the stock exchange. We see even a trend of amplification in innovation efforts as the past growth also encouraged investors and the capital market.

In 2022, we will see

  • More enterprises investing in intelligent and strategic innovation, away from random experimentation.
  • More explicit use of the term innovation by refraining from using “gradual innovation” as an excuse.
  • A big challenge is finding talents with innovation-related soft skills.
  • A surge in upskilling teams to gain innovative thinking and become more entrepreneurial.
  • Finally, by the end of 2022, we may see some significant innovations created by enterprises.

We, the BlueCallom team, wish you all a happy, healthy, and innovative 2022.

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Key Thoughts: Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable | November 2021

In November BlueCallom hosted its fourth roundtable where the primary goal was and still is, making innovation a better-understood practice. The whole idea of the Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable is the exchange – dive deeper into the innovation processes. 

Axel Schultze opened the roundtable with a topic that has been current for some time among the BlueCallom community: Innovation is a CEO Mandate. What do CEOs need to do to empower their teams to become truly innovative? 

In the first place is clear communication between the C-level managers and innovation teams i.e. define the innovation goals, directions, and methods. We have already mentioned several times the importance of identifying team members with unique abilities to move the team and project forward. 

How to identify innovative minds? 

When we talk about successful innovation, execution is a part of it. As Christian Weh, Senior Director Innovation & Global Projects at Johnson & Johnson, said: “all successful innovators are playing an important role in the execution process.” The Maverick traits of a person are always visible through their independence, creativity, and experimentation. Truly talented individuals exist and they are the ones who always tend to be the best performers in the organization. Christian also mentioned capability building training as a part of human resources management, where organizations provide talent programs, incorporate continuous learning and improvement which is focused on specific capabilities. This tool is used to identify innovative talents. Ambition is another powerful trait and its impetus for success and achievement since ambitious people are goal-oriented and always strive for the next achievement.

Luuk Houtepen, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation at SThree, sees exponential thinking as one of the important factors when it comes to recognizing talent. Individuals who possess this trait can envision the future and reveal new opportunities. We need to start visualizing the future to harness the potential of technology and positively impact our lives, not just in five or ten years, but also in a few generations.

“If you are really driven to make a change, to prove yourself, you won’t just settle down. You will be ambitious enough to push forward, to identify problems, and opportunities,” said Christian. He gave us an example, “Amazon did disrupt the book industry with audiobooks and Jeff Bezos can be described as an ambitious leader who set his targets and went beyond the next business plan.” 

Innovation is not only the CEO Mandate, it is also a CEO Task

Instead of having more and more innovations, most of the organizations are just followers with no concrete business plans. And this is the reason Luk said that “Innovation is not only the CEO Mandate, it is also a CEO task to open people’s minds up to where the world is going.”

Axel Schultze agreed that innovation is a CEO task, but when we look at their daily life, which includes political ambitions, involvement in the investor industry plus running a company, there is very limited time left for an extra assignment. But if innovation becomes the core of a business, the CEO has to give his/her best to encourage the innovation team and support the innovation project. 

As Luuk already said, exponential thinking is important, I would like to point out the following: 

Exponential thinking brings us to innovation and the BlueCallom Equation, G = I * E² (Groundbreaking Innovation (G)  = Ideation (I) * Execution(E)²), where the brilliant ideation plus exponential execution describes the foundation of any innovation process. 

Culture of Failure

A culture of failure is something that should be present in most organizations. Failure also means learning and if we want to make a change and personal progress, we need to be willing to identify our weaknesses and maximize our strengths. Luuk explained that we, unfortunately, don’t have the “Culture of Failure” and therefore most people are afraid to make decisions – it is less risky not to make decisions at all. 

What Axel has noticed is when it comes to large organizations where the CEO makes decisions, there is a risk that some decisions are not good which can result in job loss. On the other hand, making no decision because of the risk is a good idea.  It turns out that making no decisions is the best thing a CEO can do. Unfortunately, this is a common practice in the western world. 

Even when we look into the eastern societies, Asian countries, the decision-making process is also a long process. They might be faster in the decision-making than Europeans and the reason for that is that the whole team is included in the decision-making. Also if it turns out the decision was right and the first results are visible, employees are getting the rewards. 

The biggest advantage of startups over enterprises is that the decisions are made by people who have invested their own money. As soon as you hire a CEO, very rarely that person will become a decision-maker. 

When a company is determined to make groundbreaking innovations, that division has to be extracted as a separate legal identity. In this way, the innovation team has, so to say, “free hands” to do things and make decisions without being controlled. 

Summary

When it comes to the innovation process the most important is to have the right team on board. Innovative minds can be found in any organization and the CEO’s task is:

a.) recognize innovative minds 

b.) nurture innovative minds

c.) encourage innovative minds 

People with an innovative mindset think ahead, are creative, are likely to experiment, and are visionaries. These professionals involved in the day-to-day running of an organization can overcome obstacles, idealize, and generate truly disruptive processes, products, and services.

If you are interested in joining our next roundtable by-invitation-only event, please send us an email: tanja@bluecallom.com

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Team Assembly – Importance of Innovation Dream Team

When enterprises acquire startups to get to innovation

The last topic of the BlueCallom Podcast, Navigation of Ingenuity, focused on the importance of building an innovation dream team.

To find out more about the innovation team assembly, BlueCallom invited Luuk Houtepen, Director of Strategic Partnerships & Innovation at SThree, as a guest speaker of the fifth BlueCallom podcast episode. 

SThree is a leading international staffing company. They provide specialist contract and permanent recruitment services in the STEM sector. If someone knows what the recruitment process looks like and how to create the best selection of talented candidates for a company, it’s Luuk with his rich experience at the SThree company.

The importance of the Innovation Dream Team Assembly 

Since ideas are created from past experiences it is extremely important to have a diverse team. Why is that so? Providing diversity within your company creates a conducive environment in which employees can learn from and about one another and as a result, we get a comprehensive team that can handle any project. Just like educational background, the possession of soft skills is vital for the organization. 

It is not easy to define what innovation talent is but Luuk describes it as the doers, thinkers who get things done and dare to go for their dreams. They have to be driven by passion, be courageous, creative, collaborative but at the same time with extensive knowledge behind them. Innovation talent can be recognized only if they get the right nurturing and the right foundation to grow. 

Soft skills are becoming more and more important and employers recognized that. Thanks to soft skills one can grow its network, gain confidence and maintain relationships – grow a career. Luuk also mentioned that new management methods lead to having more collaborative skills since they are essential for success in the workplace, and ultimately the company’s success and productivity. For innovative talent, one thing is crucial – believing in the long-term goal which has to be clearly defined to attract the right people. 

From Luuk’s experience, candidates are looking for purpose-driven roles that are not only financially motivated. Once people notice their job really matters and their significant work can only motivate them better. 

A good example of this is a consultancy business where in the past this was one of the most desirable jobs because it offered material benefits: the usage of the company’s car, PC, mobile phone, etc. This was in a way a measure of business success. Luckily this has changed and today most organizations are purpose-driven whose employees are highly engaged and passionate about making a difference.

Career in Innovation

We ask Luuk, what is important to have a successful innovation career? Open-mindedness and broad interest come first on his list. These skills are difficult to train and it gets more challenging if your educational background is old-fashioned – in order to be acknowledged, you must become a specialist. Also, we have to keep in mind that innovation is unpredictable and it doesn’t always mean success. And here is where The 8 Cs of innovation talent come into play: Curious, Courageous, Continuous, Collaborative, Creative, Communicative, Confident, and Connected. 

Recruitment Industry Problems 

Other than the lack of talent available, the other problems SThree company is facing are home office efficiency, online hiring process, legislation regarding the working hours (working in a more flexible way), and legislation in terms of tax obligations, social securities, civil obligations. The positive side is more openness. Countries that were more local-oriented when it comes to recruitment, are now accepting foreign candidates. 

Digital testing of soft skills is very limited and can be helpful in the preselection process but it can also cause a counter-effect: how do you know people are answering honestly? Face-to-Face interviews still offer a higher level of engagement and you can get a better sense of someone’s interpersonal skills. 

Groundbreaking innovation in recruiting industry 

We asked Luuk which groundbreaking innovation would truly impact their business. Here is what is said: having a recruitment organization whose main business is advising not selling with an emphasis on the trusting relationship. 

Summary 

An innovation dream team is always a diverse team, with different backgrounds and experiences. By bringing different skills, talents, and unique solutions to the table, diverse employees strengthen creativity and innovation. 

There are many benefits of having a diverse team: 

  • superior problem-solving 
  • increase productivity and motivation 
  • attract top talents 
  • Increase profit

If you would like to listen or download the whole episode of the Navigation of Ingenuity podcast with Luuk Houtepen please visit: https://bluecallom.com/podcast/

 

Authored by: Tanja Sopcic

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Axel Schultze

Cognitive abilities to groundbreaking innovation

It takes unique cognitive abilities or so-called soft skills or talents to get you to groundbreaking innovation.

Talents or Soft Skills matters – in some cases, even more than hard skills. One of those cases is with Innovation Development. Creating a groundbreaking innovation needs a new perspective, open-mindedness, creativity, courage, and other cognitive abilities deeply ingrained in a person’s mind. We prefer ‘Talent’ over ‘Soft Skill’. A skill is something people can get by training on. Talent is something that has evolved early in a person’s life, beginning as a newborn. For the sake of this post, let’s use talent as something we are looking for when attracting innovation team members.

Cognitive abilities as a Critical Success Factors of Innovation Teams

About ten years ago, we asked ourselves, what critical skills an innovative mind should have? After many long discussions, we realized: No skills at all. We learned that 20-year-old innovators with no developed skills could quickly create unique ideas and form a company. An early reaction was that age is a crucial factor for innovators. Startups should be run by young people that are unbiased and can change the world. Later on, we all learned that 50-year-old Elon Musk unfolded his full potential in the mid-30s. Regardless, all highly successful innovators have a few things in common, independent of age, skills, or educational background – TALENTS.

Those top innovators are without exception highly curious, very courageous, continuous, or relentless in their execution and exceptional collaborators. While looking deeper into the fabric of the innovator’s talent, we discovered eight key aspects: Curious, Courageous, Continuous, Collaborative, Creative, Communicative, Confident, and Connected. You may wonder what about PASSIONATE? We put it consciously out. Passion is not necessarily a specific talent or wiring in one’s brain – it is a result of a particular neurological trigger. Any person can be extremely passionate about something. Passion is undoubtedly a success factor for innovators but not a talent.

The 8 Cs of innovation talent

Curious, Courageous, Continuous, Collaborative, Creative, Communicative, Confident, and Connected

Curious - important talents or cognitive abilities(1) Curious

We learned that new ideas are composed of past experiences. Unrelated experiences to solve a problem or create a new solution are especially valuable. People who are curious above average have more and broader spread experiences than others. Curiosity is also an essential talent when learning how customers work today and what it may take to make a significant improvement. In some cultures, curiosity has a slightly negative connotation as it is used for people snuffing around other people’s private life. However, curiosity is a key driver in knowledge acquisition driven by an interest and not so much by an external force to learn something. That mind-driven curiosity makes a person find out things to satisfy the overall interest or the interest in the context of a purpose.  Why want people to get faster with their car? What distances do they go? How important is it to be on time? What do they do while driving for 5 hours? What are the alternatives? What would be the most convenient way? Even if we don’t have fast trains, would they use it if ……? In the innovation space, innovation teams need to ask questions that may have never been asked. They need to construct their own paths to acquire knowledge that may not be available in that form. What is the max width of a train trace to make narrow curves at 300 miles an hour? This is not about having ideas – but all about asking related or connected but unrelated questions.

Courageous - important talents or cognitive abilities(2) Courageous

When radically new thoughts get created, it takes a lot of courage to share them with others. It takes courage to stand your ground, despite others laughing at you. In an enterprise, it takes courage to push for a change and, at the same time, take the risk to get fired. Courageousness is the basis for bold thoughts. It allows to break any rule except the law. And if the law is hindering innovation it takes courage to make all efforts to change the law.  Innovation is not just inventing new products but also building new business models. Should it be necessary to question the current business model, then it needs to be discussed. If the company’s structure is in the way to bring radically new processes forward, it takes courage to say so and not only mention it but make every possible attempt to make it happen. Genuine innovation is touching many people; employees, customers, partners, vendors, alliances, unions, and possibly many more. It takes courage to not stop at this overwhelming undertaking but to work through all the groups, interests, and aspects that may need attention. Enterprise employees are typically best when they follow the rules, don’t question the set structure, and get great results fast. Courage is not part of the recipe to success – but it exists in many people without using it in business but in sports or hobbies.

 

Continuous - important talents or cognitive abilities(3) Continuous

Brilliant ideas are just an episode in the entire innovation effort. Relentless execution makes innovative ideas and concepts a genuine innovation. Missing that duality between ideation and execution is why so many innovation projects failed. Successful innovation is the entire work from pre- ideation market observation to a multi-year engagement to scale the new solution globally. Innovation teams, therefore, need to be continuous in their work. Never give up and never surrender. Once an idea is found the innovation team will want to validate the idea, make sure to finance the project and then bring it successfully to market. There is no known case where the existing organization was able to bring an innovation to market. The only exception may be if the company is virtually dead and has nothing to sell anymore and the innovation is their last hope. The innovation process is a 5 to 10 years marathon. Look at any significant innovation created in the past 50 years; you won’t find a single one that became globally successful in less than five years. It simply takes time to make a dream a reality. It isn’t because all the teams so far were slow – it is the adoption time of conservative buyers, which represents the most significant part of almost any market.

 

Collaborative - important talents or cognitive abilities(4) Collaborative

Sharing ideas, not owning them, is part of a strategic ideation process component called Idea Confluence. Working with others to extend the brainpower and accumulate more ideas is critical in the ideation process. Also, when ideas are realized or brought to market, the innovation team needs to be highly diverse but also collaborative in every aspect of their work. When in exchange mode, ten brains produce more than ten times as much value than just one time ten. The time of solopreneurs or isolated researchers or engineers is over. Not that they cannot come up with good ideas, but they won’t outperform a diverse team of ten amazing brains. And a well-assembled team is usually 5 times faster in the market than a single expert – no matter how smart he or she is.

Moreover, collaboration is far more than a team sport. Innovation terms need to know their limits and quickly pull external experts, science, research into the operation. If an innovation team member is not collaborative, their knowledge and experience would not be shared, discussed, extended, and so forth, and therefor that team member is far less valuable in an innovation team.

 

 

Creative - important talents or cognitive abilities(5) Creative

Creativity has very many faces. In the innovation space, creativity is not only creative ideas but also creative business models, creative ways to produce things, creative ways to finance development, get to the market, and more. Creativity in the innovation space means going ways nobody else went. Creativity is the talent to connect many unrelated things, thoughts, or experiences, construct them in their head, and come up with a structure, shape, process or anything of that order that has just not been done but at the same times provides a significant advantage over what exists today. Creativity to be different is of no help in the innovation space; however, when created in a collaborative effort, it may trigger new ideas and new structures in somebody else’s brain. Creativity, in a collaborative process, is what makes innovation work. An innovation team member lacking creativity will very quickly feel uneasy, not contributing, and not successful.

 

Communicative - important talents or cognitive abilities

(6) Communicative

Compared to other biological life forms, one of the most significant advantages of being human is communicating thoughts and visions for the future. That talent is needed in every phase of innovation, every collaborative event or meeting, every ideation session, and every other collaborative engagement. The more communicative a person is the more content of their thinking gets across. A big innovation dilemma is that the human brain can think extremely fast and has a large number of thoughts and ideas within milliseconds but can’t communicate them at the same speed. Communication talent is key for every innovation team member. The best thoughts, ideas or brain constructs are rather limited of value when they cannot be communicated. Communication talent is not only important during the ideation processes. Communication becomes extremely important when it comes to involving others. Those “others” include early customers when it comes to idea validation, the management team when it comes to approval financing of the concept, business partners when it comes to the early building and production validation, the market when this radical innovation needs to attract its early adopters.  

 

 

confident - important talents or cognitive abilities(7) Confident

Confidence is needed in communication, motivation, investment phases, and in the interaction with the market. Confidence is derived from very well-thought-out solutions and concepts that have been explored from hundreds of different aspects. Confidence is not about convincing others but transforming a vision into a realistic model that others can adapt as well. Confidence is needed by every innovation team member as the new “thing” needs to be explained with confidence to attract others. Confidence is an essential connection in the brain between a variety of aspects of a brand new solution. In particular, knowing it will help many people, realizing it is possible to build what is shown, and knowing that even if not everything works today, it will be possible to make it work in the coming years. Confidence is a form of being visionary by translating all that is known about that envisioned future today will be possible through certain actions that are yet to happen. At the same time confidence is not being afraid to say that there is no guarantee about the anticipated outcome.

 

 

Connected - important talents or cognitive abilities

(8) Connected

And finally, a strong networking ability connects a person with relevant people from all backgrounds and levels. Connection skills are critical when unique expertise is needed to augment an innovation team. Ideaconfluence sometimes requires very rare experiences or skills that are not present in the innovation team. Making those connections in timely order – typically on the same day is a talent that every innovation team member should have.  Well-connected people are inherently open and open-minded, involving others in whatever needs to get done.

Isn’t Passion a Cognitive ability?

So what about passion? Being passionate is not a soft skill to qualify for an innovation team member in general. People can be passionate about anything – they can even be obsessed about anything. We learned that passion or obsession kicks in if a specific action or environment, religion, or people captivates one so much that they can’t stop being engaged. Suppose everybody can develop passion about what they care about most. In that case, it is not a soft skill to probe for – but – it is utterly essential to find out in an interview process if innovation in your space would be a passion for the candidate.

Open-minded and other traits

In our research, we found that people with the above eight Cs are inherently open-minded. Openness is a relatively fast identifiable characteristic of a human but doesn’t necessarily include our talents. But to the contrary, people with the 8 Cs are always open-minded. Otherwise, those specific abilities would not show. This is true for many other soft skills that seem to be important in innovation but indicate some of the other talents we mention here. However, we want to clarify that we are just at the beginning of understanding the brain’s ability to compose ideas and what it takes to get there. We continuously research behaviors during innovation processes and learning as fast as possible, including using tools like AI to improve our work and results.

Testing Talents /Cognitive Abilities

Unlike well-trained and adopted hard skills, it seems that testing soft skills or cognitive abilities is not so easy. Exploring the soft skills of a job candidate is far more difficult today as there is only little experience. Hard skills are trained and the person will need to repeat what they learned or applied and then get tested on the results. Those repeat/linear jobs are rather easy to test while lateral activities like being curious, communicating, being creative, and so forth have no exact outcome as they have no exact input.

Here are a few tips for testing a candidate for specific soft skills. Instead of having multiple-choice questions or questions that you expect either a right or a wrong answer, try to understand how they behaved in certain situations by asking questions about their experience in various situations.

  • Ask them to remember a situation or time where they had to solve a problem that they never had or don’t know anybody who solved it.
  • Ask them to remember a scene where they had to help another college while they were under stress themselves.

We will publish a separate blog post just on soft skill testing and probing.

Where to find the best talents?

Most business managers tend to hire their innovation dream team from the outside. Reasons may include that they don’t trust their own culture, don’t know anybody who has the right profile, or fears that the organization already blinds them. However, our research indicates that most enterprises that desire to innovate have the top talents already in-house. We have seen amazing creative and ingenious people in all kinds of departments within enterprises. Attracting talents from within the organization has various advantages. It would help if you did not fear that they may already be blinded by the way things work in the company. If they have the 8 C’s as soft skills they will make a better organization and culture faster and with more intensity than newcomers.

Summary

  • Make yourself familiar with the value of the 8 C’s
  • Look inside your own organization first
  • Make sure you have a very compelling offering
  • Be aware that you will deal with exceptional talents that other companies will try to hire away.
  • Don’t protect your talents, give them a dream environment
  • It takes teamwork to make a dream work

Looking for a career in the fast-growing innovation space. Take the Innovation Talent Test to see if you have the 8C’s to start your innovation career opportunity.

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Innovation Culture

Tackling a main corporate “Innovation Blocker”

When we talk about innovation culture, the first thing that comes to mind is a work environment where people can develop their ideas. To hear more about this topic, I would like to share amazing insights from Erik Wirsing, Vice President of Global Innovation at DB Schenker, the latest guest on the Navigation of Ingenuity podcast. 

What is Innovation Culture? 

Innovation culture is all about bringing new knowledge into the organization. As Erik pointed out knowledge has to be shared among the people, let them learn something new, and encourage them to create new ideas and solutions. 

One thing DB Schenker is proud of is their innovation department – a place where they bring experience to the right people, train them, empower them and let them be creative. When you create an environment of constant change, networking, agility, and collaboration, employees’ motivation brings increased productivity and higher levels of output that will help organizations reach their important goals.

The biggest obstacle to innovation is having too much guidance and instructions that have to be followed. Put all this aside and give employees the freedom to work independently. This is the recipe that makes DB Schenker successful in their industry – logistics. When empowering team members it is important to provide them with resources, funds, time, and place but keep in mind that this might fail. 

How do you encourage your team to be innovative?

Team members and employees need to feel confident and comfortable to express their thoughts. Therefore the right communication style is the answer to this question. 

We also have to mention the importance of team diversity since their varied backgrounds and experiences allow them to bring broader ideas and new perspectives. Curiosity, openness, and emotional intelligence are crucial when it comes to empowering. It’s not all about monetary incentives and the best way for empowering your employees is to enable them to reach their full potential. Just like Erik said: “Help them to shine”. Erik tells us the story of how DB Schenker’s sparked innovation within their organization:

When Eric joined the company, he was responsible for global innovation and all the innovative activities. Since he had no idea how to run this globally, one of his team members came up with the idea of an innovation magazine that collects stories from colleagues and their experiences. Since everyone wanted to be a part of this magazine, the idea was very well accepted and the storytelling approach got more popular over the years. With time, the sales team recognized the value of the innovation magazine for their customers, which resulted in the new format – an external magazine. With the approach of bringing people together and promoting their success through the “Innovation Champion of the month” column, DB Schenker continues to be a leader in supply chain management and logistics solutions.

What was your last innovation?

As Erik stressed, it is not about establishing something completely new but adopting from different industries. 

His last innovation was not planned, it just happened accidentally at one event he participated in. Talking to one of the attendees who work in the roofing industry he found out about a special paint which keeps the roofing firm. Erik realized a potential use for the paint and adopted it in the logistics industry. As a result, we have a transport vehicle whose floor is coated with this paint to prevent the movement of cargo while driving. Now customers are using it for the forklifts. Such an easy and spontaneous idea provided benefits for different industries.

Creating the next groundbreaking innovation

We also asked Erik if there is one thing he wants to invent or see invented, what would it be? This is what he said: having one device (ie smartphone) with the possibility of the screen adjustments just like we do with Windows on the PC. He wants to stop traveling with his phone, tablet, and computer, one device that can expand or contract based on the use. Other great things he would like to see in the future are self-driving vehicles and space tourism available for everyone. 

Bringing different innovative minds together and being able to manage a big global innovation culture it is important for all the team members to know that within organizations there are people who are going to support their “crazy ideas”. Structured organization, developing a business model, and taking into consideration customer feedback is the foundation for tackling a main corporate “Innovation Blocker”. 

We thank Erik Wirsing for being a special guest on the Navigation of Ingenuity podcast. With certainty, I can say we all learned a lot from his experience in the innovation world. To listen to the episode please visit: https://bluecallom.com/podcast/

Authored by: Tanja Sopcic

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