The Innovation Ecosystem: Built from Your Intangible Capital

Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. It happens inside your existing business. The ideas you develop will arise out of the competencies or experience of your employees and your external network. They will build on your existing strengths to perfect something you already do or to apply your knowledge in a new direction. There will almost always be a connection with your core competencies. There’s nothing wrong with that, who better to compete in an arena that needs your organization’s skills than you, who already have significant expertise?

As our research with Chief Innovation Officers found, it is not enough to just have an innovation process. The process needs to be supported by an ecosystem that has the right people, knowledge, culture, and external relationships, in other words, the right intangible capital. What are the right components for your innovation ecosystem? Let’s look at each component in more detail. Read more

Innovation is the New Strategy

In the tangible economy, strategy and strategic planning typically occur within a defined market space. To form their strategy, senior managers study opportunities in the market and align the company to take advantage of the available opportunities. The path laid out for a company is usually clear and concrete. The strategy says, “We know what we need to do and here’s how we will do it.” This is often termed “deliberate” strategy.

But the other face of strategy, emergent strategy and innovation, has been getting a lot of attention lately. Read more

Thoughts on the Shift to the Knowledge Economy

I had a great time last week with the Association for Strategic Planning in Boston. I shared with the group a summary of the shift to the knowledge era and then led them in an exercise to talk about the significance of this shift to business.  Having been involved with ASP and well as the Institute of Management Consultants (IMCNE), I told the organizers that I wanted to avoid being a talking head–but rather to engage the group in a conversation. And it worked really well!

The group was great. It included consultants and corporates as well as grad students and professors from Suffolk University’s business school (our hosts). Read more

On 1/28/10 Make A Fresh Start By Leveraging Your Intangibles

On Thursday evening, January 28th, I will be speaking at Suffolk University for the Association for Strategic Planning. Well, I hope to do more than speak. The idea is to engage the audience in a conversation about how to face the challenges of today’s economy using the most important weapon in today’s business arsenal:   intangible capital. Here’s the invitation from ASP:

The last couple years have been challenging. We have all been busy with the business of survival. Before that, we were caught up in the challenges of the boom economy.

All the while, under the surface, the shift to a knowledge economy accelerated. Today, roughly two thirds of business investment and value now come from knowledge intangibles. This shift presents significant challenges-and opportunities-for the way we do business. A fresh start is needed because almost everyone in leadership positions in business today was weaned on management tools and principles optimized for the industrial era.

In this program, Mary Adams is going to introduce the sweeping economic changes that have occurred and then convene small group discussions to dig deeper into the implications this knowledge revolution has for every business. The discussion topics will distill the essence of the new principles of action and the benefits in the areas of: competitive advantage, strategy, management and measurement. The small groups will come back and challenge everyone in the room to forever change the way they understand the future of business and strategy.

I look forward to sharing these ideas with our community in Boston. More information and registration.

IAFS Call on IP Metrics, Innovation Strategy and Metrics

On Friday (6/5/09) at noon EDT, I’ll be hosting the June call for the Intangible Asset Finance Society. This month, Andy Gibbs, former CEO of Patent Café and now CEO of Andy Gibbs IP CXO, will talk about IP metrics, innovation strategy, and value: you can manage what you can’t measure. The call is free. Recording is available for a small fee. Sign up at IAFS Events.

I’m looking forward to this conversation as Andy takes a very aggressive stance on IP. He feels the intellectual property will become “the core product” in the future. I’m an advocate for the power of seeing IP in the context of an organization’s full intellectual capital. But we share a passion for helping companies understand the power of the intangible. Hope you can join us!

Who is in Charge of IP and IC?

I have really enjoyed getting to know Andrew Watson and Jordan Hatcher at ipVA over the last few months. I met with Jordan on my recent trip to London and he sent me a new article that he and Andrew wrote called Fix Your Broken IP Structures from www.managingip.com.

The article makes a case for a position called the Chief Intellectual Property Officer (CIPO) who is outside the legal department. They use color-based Insights Discovery Learning System to look at the personalities of different departments. Legal departments, they assert, are blue (accurate, ordered and cautious), not the red traits that are needed to exploit IP (decisive, risk taking and results driven). This means that the CIPO would need to be in the sales or strategy areas. It’s a compelling case. Read more