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If you are a facilitator, a change manager … even a program manager, then check this out! The idea of Open Space (a form of large group facilitation) has been going for over 20 years. Michael Lindfield, one of the champions of the approach, described it as ”a simple and effective way of creating an environment where things are possible”. That may sound slightly pink and fluffy but, goodness me, doesn’t it also describe the kind of thing that most organizations need in the struggle to keep a head above the economic crisis and keep in touch with the breakneck speed of social, technological and business change? This year’s World Open Space event is in London, between 11th and 14th October. Gower’s contribution to the concept is Kerry Napuk and Eddy Palmer’s Large Group Facilitator’s Manual, which will be on show at the event.
Gerald Bradley author of Gower’s Benefit Realisation Management recently conducted a webinar for The International Institute of Business Analysis titled – Benefit Realisation Management: A Practical Guide to Achieving Benefits Through Change. You can take a look at this webinar and other expert offerings from the IIBA at their website.
“Innovation is not a process, but an outcome.”
The Forbes Leadership Forum brings renowned speakers and thought leaders who discuss their leadership strategies. As a speaker at the Forum, Gower Author Alexander Manu was interviewed by Shaku Selvakumar for the IBM Impact 2011 Blog. In this interview Manu discusses in-depth the concepts of Imagination and Innovation in business Extract:
The redefinition of innovation as a human behaviour outcome, a dynamic in constant change, requires the shaping of new responses in business and the economy.
The past understanding of what innovation “is”, was generally connected with a breakthrough in technology – some new tool being employed in some new way. This understanding limits the potential of innovation as bound by the tools employed, instead of the imagination employing them. The latent imagination triggered by an innovation outcome is the true goal of innovation. It is not what “I can do with this now”? but “what can I become doing this in the future”? The tool is not a response, but a question. Every innovation is a question. The truly important innovations are a series of questions.
A few definitions: Innovation is an outcome, a new behaviour, a new way of doing things. Disruption is a behavior – an outcome involving a media and a user – changed by invention. Invention is a moment of discovery or creation of something new. Disruptive Business means the sum of new behaviours and their support models. Innovation is a moment of use, a manifest behaviour that engages an innovation object into new uses, and modifies the habitual conditions of the present.
This position challenges the current understanding of innovation, and some of the labels applied to innovation typologies, such as the label “disruptive innovation”. In general, the current discourse around innovation addresses competently the technology side of an invention, at the expense of the motivational side of the user, the human motivation which leads in the behaviour of use.
Alexander Manu is Chief Imaginator and Senior Partner at InnoSpa. He is the author of Distruptive Business: Desire, Innovation and the Re-design of Business published by Gower.
Roger Davies’ video interview around value management highlights the continued problems in project and programme management; the fact that we persist in doing the wrong things, for the wrong reasons and, what’s worse, we do them rather badly. Roger posits value management as a process for ensuring the effectiveness of big programmes. Roger Davies is author of Value Management: Translating Aspirations into Performance, published by Gower.
“We have been pleased to select Kensei Hiwaki’s book Culture and Economics in the Global Community for a prestigious 2011 Book of the Year Award, because we feel that his book provides many new insights into the complexity of important socio-economic issues, significantly enhances our understanding of the relationship between diverse cultures and sustainable development, and shows how new innovative strategies can be 
used to help us successfully solve a variety of many, seemingly intractable/unsolvable economic problems.”
Prof. Dr. George Lasker, President, International Institute for Advanced Studies
p.s. Kensei Hiwaki discusses discusses sustainability and the future. in this you tube clip mentioned in a previous blog. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCkGo5ojRa4
At the Research Across Boundaries Conference, Luxembourg, June 2010 – Gower Transformation and Innovation Series editors and authors Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer argued that social science research, in order to lead to social innovation, needs to cross many boundaries. And, that in order for such research to effectively contribute towards resolving today’s burning social and economic issues, not only our understanding of and approach to social science research needs to be transformed, we also have to fundamentally rethink and ultimately rework the design of a university and thereby its specific role in and for a particular society, and also for humanity in general… read their conference paper here
For anyone unfamiliar with the process of business wargaming, Daniel Oriesek’s series of slides provides a very helpful definition as well as a number of pointers to help you reflect on whether this is something of value for your organization. With an increasing focus on the using scenarios for future planning, helping with risk management and the development of new product and service offerings, I anticipate that the use of these techniques will spread significantly over the next five years. Daniel Oriesek is Principal with A.T. Kearney in Switzerland and co-author of Business Wargaming: Securing Corporate Value.
Sadly, in a number of companies, there is still something of a gap between the rhetoric around developing employees and the reality. Stuart Emmett’s refreshing article on the subject, ‘Learning in Companies’, offers you a mirror to hold up to your own organization’s performance in this area. Stuart Emmett is co-author of The Relationship-Driven Supply Chain.
