Reflection 1: The Innovation Value Chain

In the Reflection series on this blog, I want to consider lessons that can be drawn from some of the earlier articles. This Reflection is devoted to the idea of an innovation value chain.

The value chain refers to the sequential steps that support the achievement of a particular outcome. The word sequential is italicized because innovation is a complex set of interrelated processes with both positive and negative feedback loops that have deep roots both within and beyond your organization. But to make the discussion easier it is best to separate them into themes in a value chain.

Organizations can only be considered distinctive if they have distinctive value chains. So, it does not help to prescribe generic value chains. But it is important to establish the innovation value chain for your firm within your industry.

You are bound to find that your firm may not be able to describe its value chain, even though your firm may be considered innovative. Establishing your innovation value chain (at any level of detail) allows you to measure and diagnose where to place your emphasis; in some industries recruiting the right people might dominate, in others R&D effort, in others their patent process or relationships with academic research institutions.

More importantly, working in groups, you are able to conduct a focused conversation about innovation in your firm and what it means.

Here are a three starter topics to consider in these conversation. I will explore these and others in later blog posts.

- Organized for Innovation
Consider how your organizational structures, both formal and informal, support or detract from innovation and its success. Who are the power brokers? How do they respond to new ideas? From where do they take their advice and counsel? Are you or your team part of that power structure? Is there a tolerance for 'underground' experimentation?

- Generating ideas
What processes do you have generate ideas? Are they formal or informal? Is idea generation rewarded? What happens to the ideas once they are generated?

- Attitudes to experimentation and failure
At the heart of all real learning is an action, response, observation cycle that needs to be understood. How does your organization create opportunities for experimentation by doing? How does it respond to failures? How does it reflect on the experience?