Discover business, market and technology insights

Understanding the organisations innovation capabilities and position in the market is essential to the process of discovering important business, market and technology insights. Important capability domains can be mapped against the company’s current position with respect to competitors in the marketplace. By peering through a business lens and examining the competitive context the organisation can better understand its positioning of innovation value propositions. Using a business model canvass (BMC) can also assist in this process and there are many examples of how to use a BMC available on the internet. Plotting the current positioning of the firm’s performance against selected competitors in respect to the key innovation capability domains can be done using a similar approach as shown below.

Assessing current positioning against competitors in relation to innovation capability domains

Performance against each of the key innovation capability domains can be plotted clockwise from a scale of zero (0 = no capability) to ten (10 = highly developed and highly effective capability). The organisations key innovation capabilities to leverage from can then be effectively identified; as well as the opportunities for innovation capability improvement. Additionally, the organisation should seek to understand its innovation core competencies as these are essential to the application of a market lens and the understanding of value propositions. Harvard Business Review published a superb article and video on understanding a firm’s core competencies.

Peering through a market lens lends heavily to understanding customer preferences/needs. (De Jong et al., 2013) Customer engagement should feature heavily in any company’s strategic objectives and business plans. The participation of product/service users in the development and implementation processes has also been identified as an important characteristic in social innovation literature. (Dodgson. Gann. Nelson, 2014) In relation to solving social problems users have intimate first-hand knowledge and lived-experience of the social problem and legitimacy among their peers. (Dodgson. Gann. Nelson, 2014) Legitimacy among their peers makes them ideally suited to generate and diffuse new solutions. (Dodgson. Gann. Nelson, 2014) Customer engagement in planning, co-design, and evaluation will remain key and evidence and research supporting the role of peers in diffusion of social interventions is well-developed already. (Brown, Crawford, Perry, Dunne, Reeders, Corry, Dicka, Morgan, Jones, 2019; Brown, Reeders, Cogle, Madden, Kim, & O’Donnell, 2018) This requires approaches that co-create solutions with the individuals and communities that are intended to benefit from the social innovation. (Lawrence et al., 2014) Central to this approach is that solutions can be found in a community’s assets and as such a useful method may be to seek out those who seem to somehow overcome difficulties that defeat others through a focus on ‘positive deviance’ among cohorts. (Lawrence et al., 2014) The organisation should seek to drive innovation derived from customer insights that identify and address key social needs by focusing on the lived experience; thus understanding the journey of customer segments is key to this process. Organisations can thus be well served by investing in customer engagement activities to drive customer feedback engagement and high-level customer co-creation in key innovation projects. Organisation’s can then seek to prioritise top unmet customer needs for customers of each business unit as well as the company overall – and seek to build their innovation plans around this. A company with core values that are committed to remaining ‘customer focused’ should also serve well in ensuring a cultural commitment to customer co-creation.

An organisation must also seek to improve its technology lens in order to increase its innovation core competencies. A deeper knowledge and understanding of the application and benefits of emerging technologies can create and help sustain competitive advantage and can often enable a novel solution associated with social innovation. (De Jong et al., 2013; Lawrence et al., 2014) Technology can also facilitate participation of users in the design and development of new products/services and it can also assist in the diffusion of new solutions. (Dodgson. Gann. Nelson, 2014)

While technology is an important innovation competency it is not the only driving force and attention to a firms human resources, culture and social environments are essential to remain successful. (Oeij et al., 2019) A key innovation core competency identified is often people and culture, the innovation strategy should focus on a framework that leverages on the strength of its people and culture across the organisation and seek to nurture a culture of creativity and innovation.

In our next blog we will discuss why it is necessary to evolve beyond just the creation of new products & services to creating new business models...

#innovation #innovationstrategy #strategy #corecompetencies #EdgeBig

References

Brown, G. Crawford, S. Perry, G. Dunne, J. Reeders, D. Corry, A. Dicka, J. Morgan, H. Jones, S. (2019). Achieving meaningful participation of people who use drugs and their peer organizations in a strategic research partnership. Harm Reduction Journal, 16(1), 37. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-019-0306-6

Brown, G. Reeders, D. Cogle, A. Madden, A. Kim, J. & O’Donnell, D. (2018). A Systems Thinking Approach to Understanding and Demonstrating the Role of Peer-Led Programs and Leadership in the Response to HIV and Hepatitis C: Findings From the W3 Project. Frontiers in Public Health, 6, 231. https://doi.org/doi:10.3389/fpubh.2018.00231

De Jong, M., Marston, N., & Roth, E. (2013). The eight essentials of innovation. McKinsey Quarterly, Strategy(2), 36–47. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-eight-essentials-of-innovation

Dodgson, M. (2019b). Innovation strategy (Lecture 8). TIMS7811 Inovation Leadership, University of Queensland [UQ].

Harvard Business Review [HBR] (2016). The Explainer: Core Competence. HBR, 29 September 2016. https://hbr.org/video/5146717725001/the-explainer-core-competence

Dodgson, M. Gann, D. Nelson, P. (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management (P. Dodgson, M. Gann, D. Nelson (ed.); 6th Editio). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199694945.013.010

Lawrence, T. B., Dover, G., & Gallagher, B. (2014). Managing Social Innovation. In The Oxford Handbook of Innovation (Issue April, pp. 1–14). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199694945.013.032

Oeij, P. R. A., van der Torre, W., Vaas, F., & Dhondt, S. (2019). Understanding social innovation as an innovation process: Applying the innovation journey model. Journal of Business Research, 101(August 2018), 243–254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.04.028