Innovation built to last

Over the past few months, I’ve explored what I believe to be the elements of successfully implementing digitalisation in any organisation. This includes being intentional and holistic about digitalisation; looking at talent creatively; and managing culture effectively.

For my final piece, I’d like to begin by asking this question: “How does an organisation continuously stay ahead with new innovative ideas that can not only be developed, commercialised and replicated at scale but are also unique enough to be different from a crowd of competitors?”

To do this effectively, I believe that innovation must be nurtured from within rather than be bought. Over the past decade, we’ve seen rapid developments in technology, which have brought about many significant changes in how companies operate and even impact their very core business models.

Take computing for example. Gone are the days when any organisation would buy stacks and stacks of servers just to run their computing needs as today, most storage and networking have shifted towards the cloud.

Accompanying this is the dramatic shift from a hardware-enabled focus towards a virtualised, software-defined world and the imperative use of advanced data analytics to enhance the customers’ experience. Complementing the use of analytics is to ensure that systems and data are proactively protected from increased cybersecurity risks.

Then there are issues spanning complex logistics and supply chain challenges, the shorter attention span of consumers today and talent shortage due to the rapid pace of technology changes. The implication of such a hyper-rapid pace of technology change means it’s hard for any organisation to keep up and consequently, it may inevitably fall behind the innovation curve.

The knee-jerk reaction in this case, is for an organisation to contact vendors and service providers and buy technology in an effort to “create innovation”. But doing so will not help. This is because every organisation’s competitive advantage is unique; it is quite impossible to buy off-the-shelf solutions to fill the gaps faced by such an organisation.

Examples of unique advantages are talent, culture, leadership, core technology and infrastructure-- and all these elements spawn new innovations, thereby hastening products and services to market, lowering operational costs while increasing productivity. Of course, there are some gaps an organisation can buy but generally, an enterprise’s competitive advantage must be built from within for it to stay unique.

Looking Introspectively to Make Positive Changes

So, if a company's competitive advantage can't be bought and must be built, how does one go about building it from a strategic point of view?

I believe that every organisation first needs to honestly evaluate what its strengths and weaknesses are before even discovering its competitive advantages. Start by asking key questions along these lines:

●?????Consider running discovery sessions with your top management and section heads to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Celebrate your strengths but at the same time be honest about assessing your weaknesses, resolving to cut off what impediments are holding you back. Don’t be afraid to survey what your competitors are doing better than yourself and honestly reflect on why they are more effective than you;

●?????Don’t be hemmed in by how you have always done things within your company or with competitors, or even within your own industry. Look outside your industry, even non-competing ones, for inspiration in trying to think differently from what you’re used to. Then identify the core, adjacent and blue ocean opportunities that are there in emerging business models and/or technologies and see how you can adapt them into your business; and

●?????Set up a multi-stakeholder team that will challenge every legacy assumption in your current business model, practices and processes. Establish this team with old hands as well as your millennial generation and tap their creativity and ideation potential to shake things up. Challenge them to be creative with their recommendations and empower them to act on ideas minus the bureaucracy.

When undertaking all of the above, it is important to be steady and stay focused on the broad goals of your organisation. It’s not helpful if one starts to move away from those goals as that would create chaos within the organisation.

Thinking Makes It So

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, there will still be bottlenecks and challenges blocking an organisation’s innovation agenda. Which begs a question, how do you unblock them and turn opportunities into competitive advantages?

One of my favourite quotes comes from William Shakespeare, who said, “Every situation is neither good nor bad [but] thinking makes it so.” ?And I like this quote simply because it exemplifies what an organisation faces in real life.

Very often, an innovation agenda is affected by certain circumstances and at times, they turn out badly because the people involved in those situations keep thinking badly of them. ?I believe leaders need to approach every situation with a positive mindset and enforce this mindset to the rest of the team and organisation by aligning their message with a coherent and consistent communication strategy.?

A sound communication strategy helps a leader keep the men and women in the organisation informed and not leave them in the dark. To do this, I would propose a 3-pronged approach. Firstly, have a broad concept that encompasses the overall message you as a leader want to make. Think of this as a "roof" to your message house.

Secondly, come up with three “pillars” to support this message. These would be your concrete arguments that hold up your message house roof. The third prong is to ensure that the “doors” to your message house are kept open as frequently as possible. This is akin to delivering timely, consistent and accurate messaging to all your people – from top to bottom – within the organisation.

Final Words

As I end this series, I must re-emphasise that behind every great company is its people. No amount of strategic and process reengineering can ensure a successful digitalisation agenda unless its people are committed to it.

In thinking about digitalising your organisation, we must acknowledge that the CEO’s role is to understand what are the right skill sets needed for the job and assess which personas to bring into the organisation, where they are to be positioned and why they are to be placed there.

With all this in place, I sincerely believe that your company’s digitalisation efforts will have every chance of success.