Your client wants rapid innovation, but at what cost to your business architecture stability?

Innovation centric thinking allows change management at the pace where business like to see them in a future horizon and be a leader in a race. There always be a risk in a change and that should be mitigated with thorough assessment and aligning with business vision and mission. Those who keeps innovation at center of their business model are the one who wins in a long run and keeps adding value with existing customers, partners and investors.

Key aspects of rapid innovation is aligned to the following principle segments of the organization: 1. Strong decision engine to support the transition process from a comprehensive ideation phase to experimentation journey 2. Ethical and Compliance aspects to discover early pitfalls and curve out the potential adverse impact or risks of the outcome (direct or indirect) 3. Adoption of the end outcome by the TIME, GEO, END USER and other respective variables with the effective suitability of the circumstance 4. Wider governance to guide the entire process of quality assurance and guardrails to support adoption 5. Value chain and value-function analogy to associate to the innovative outcome - with the glance of tactical and strategic pov

I agree that there should be balance between innovation and navigating the business architecture. Without innovation, over a period of time, the business is likely to collapse. On the other hand, the stability to business architecture should be maintained to service the existing/new end clients - this will help fund the innovations. Agile approach will help achieve continuous incremental innovations whilst minimizing risks to the business architecture.

The key to managing risks associated with innovation is creating the proper governance or guardrails within which innovation can occur. The model of ordered freedom, first articulated in Biblical text is a great principle to start with. Enabling experimentation within hierarchy of responsibility both maximizes an organization's ability to innovate and reduces risk by limiting the scope of impact until the experiment is proven useful. In addition, this approach offers other beneficial side effects like providing creative outlets for individuals and teams, opportunities to engage with meaningful purpose, and recognition to those who are successful in their efforts.

The question implies that innovation results in an unsayable business architecture. This is only true if you inject experimental business capabilities (“innovations”) into the operational environment without full consideration and mitigation of potential impacts (negative implications). So, don’t do that. Either run a parallel sandbox environment for testing new capabilities, have an awesome DevOps capability and process, or have meticulous understanding of your existing and new capabilities and an incremental and fully recoverable transition plan. Or, some combination thereof.

An agile strategy to minimize innovation risk involves staging innovation in manageable chunks, allowing teams to focus on incremental improvements rather than large-scale changes. By breaking down innovations into smaller tasks, teams can integrate changes gradually and continuously evaluate their impact. This reduces disruption risk by ensuring each change is tested and validated before proceeding. Agile’s iterative cycles and feedback mechanisms enable teams to quickly adapt and refine strategies, keeping them aligned with business objectives. This approach fosters innovation without overwhelming systems, balancing creativity with risk management while maintaining focus on strategic goals.

Para llegar a un rápido proceso de innovación, debes capacitar a todos en tu equipo de trabajo, para que todos en el grupo interioricen y hagan de si los nuevos cambios. Así se garantiza que todos en la organización remen para en mismo lado y se logre la innovación en la empresa.

To ensure effective technology alignment within your business architecture, focus on thoroughly assessing how new innovations will integrate with existing systems. Begin by mapping current workflows and identifying potential areas where new technology can enhance efficiency or capability without causing disruptions. Conduct comprehensive compatibility checks to ensure new solutions work seamlessly with legacy systems. Utilize integration testing to verify that data flows and system interactions remain consistent and reliable. Maintain alignment by setting clear objectives that new technologies should achieve and continuously monitor their performance against these goals. This method ensures new innovations complement rather than conflict.

When driving innovation, maintaining a strategic vision ensures that each initiative contributes to long-term goals rather than just offering short-term improvements. Unlike simple enhancements that focus on immediate issues, a strategic vision aligns innovations with the broader business trajectory. This requires a clear understanding of future objectives and how new technologies can bridge the gap. Testing should include assessing how innovations advance strategic goals, not just their immediate functionality. By embedding strategic considerations into testing phases, businesses can ensure that innovations not only enhance current capabilities but also propel the organization toward its envisioned future.