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Innovation capabilities

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The Wealth Paradox. In baseball and in business, there is a “wealth paradox.”

The Wealth Paradox

Teams and companies with extreme riches often fail because that wealth reduces creativity, judgment, and focus. This year, three baseball teams spent more than $170 million on player salaries, and two of them (the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies) have losing records. Meanwhile, the Oakland A’s, with the lowest average salary ($55 million total payroll), have the second-best record in the American League. As if to underscore my point, the A’s swept the Red Sox in a three-game series this weekend by a combined score of 33-5. A’s General Manager Billy Beane of Moneyball book and movie fame has been scrappy and creative, while the Red Sox overpaid for bad talent. In many businesses we see this same phenomenon.

In 1970, Kmart dominated discount retailing, and Wal-Mart (WMT) was a startup with just 24 stores. Why That New Innovation Effort May Not Be Worth It - Vijay Govindarajan and Manish Tangri. By Vijay Govindarajan and Manish Tangri | 2:16 PM June 25, 2012 Nowadays, almost every company claims to be innovative, if only to attract top talent, please investors, and strengthen its brand.

Why That New Innovation Effort May Not Be Worth It - Vijay Govindarajan and Manish Tangri

Some companies are innovative, but many are not. If you are going to lead or be a part of a new initiative, how can you tell if your organization is really committed to supporting that effort? Is the innovation effort only inducing fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the market, or is the company really walking the talk? Or is this just another aspirational flavor of the month? Innovation readiness depends on two key factors: motivation and competence. Motivation: How hungry are you for innovation? The Leader: Understanding the leader’s motivation is the critical first step. The Team: Does the team believe in the vision and the leader? CEB Tech Views » Have You Identified Business Capabilities Correctly? Business capabilities are the superstructure for good IT investments... so get them right Business capabilities help establish clear connections between business strategy and the projects intended to help execute that strategy.

CEB Tech Views » Have You Identified Business Capabilities Correctly?

We see a growing number of CIOs using business capabilities as a common language between IT and the business, to ensure that IT delivers on business needs. But building a clear understanding of what those important capabilities are can be harder than it sounds, and involves working closely with the business partners and stakeholders. IT organizations realize that business capabilities provide them with an opportunity to build stronger relationships with business partners by providing them clarity into the role played by IT and gaining insight into their long term plans. We’ve written before about how the business capabilities help define IT services and ensure they deliver on business outcomes. Innovation QuickStart Guide. You know how sometimes when you order a product you get this inch-thick instruction manual that you never read, but also how there is sometimes a QuickStart Guide of 5-10 simple steps to get you up and running quickly?

Innovation QuickStart Guide

Well, Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is the instruction manual that an increasing number of organizations are ordering for teams to help them with their innovation efforts. But, I’m sure companies could also use an Innovation QuickStart. So, here is one you could use (excerpted in part from my book):

Service Design

CEB Tech Views » Have You Identified Business Capabilities Correctly? Orchestrating the new dynamics of innovation fitness. In my work investigating different aspects of innovation activity one thought tends to dominate my thinking: “How do we achieve a better understanding of the dynamics of innovation within our capabilities to be more successful?”

Orchestrating the new dynamics of innovation fitness

I’ve already written in previous blogs about the need of “constantly checking for the pulse of innovation” ( and suggesting the way to “open up your thinking to dynamic capabilities for innovation success” ( Linking innovation context to the process. Time passes extremely quickly, particularly when you enjoy yourself, or so it seems for me.

Linking innovation context to the process

I was surprised, going through some of my past blogs, the time between related entries on the need for having in place a sustaining competitive advantage framework on innovation, has been longer than they it should have been. This blog is the third entry on this subject. Always, always and always do I see organizations struggle to align themselves for their innovation activity, why is this? Either alignment of innovation into the strategy they are (assumedly) following or shaping innovation into the context of where and how innovation can fit. I’ve written on this often enough actually, and argued the need for building a more sustaining innovation framework. Required past reading possibly needed here. The 8 Essentials of Innovation. Innovating for the next three billion - Our innovation capabilities model. The innovation capabilities model Use analytics and technology to gather information about specific markets and turn this into actionable insight.

Innovating for the next three billion - Our innovation capabilities model

To succeed in this new environment, companies need to execute a strategy based on expanding into new markets, finding new ways to innovate, and implementing new approaches to talent management to grow faster than their local and, increasingly, international competition. Innovating for the next three billion requires that companies address four key capabilities, including customer insight; people and culture; research and development; and operations and business model to be successful, relevant and globally expansive.

The key to success will be for companies to combine these local and global components to ensure that their products and services will be relevant to local customers, while still enabling the company to leverage global resources, capabilities and scale. Customer insight At a local level At a global level.