Remo Knops Personal Blog
WRKSHP.tools is the latest online project of Erik van der Pluijm, who is one of the designers of the book Design a Better Business.
I’ve reviewed the book on this blog back in 2017, when I wanted to learn more about Design Thinking (check out this Standford University webpage).
Operating Model Canvas – Aligning operations and organization with strategy is the title of the latest book of Andrew Campbell, Mikel Gutierrez, Mark Lancelott. The look and feel is very much like the Business Model Generation handbook from Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur Alan Smith, Patrick Van der Pijl and Tim Clark.
I this book review I will get you through the Operating Model Canvas book structure, the Operating Model Canvas Toolbox and compare it with the Business Model Canvas and Process Model Canvas. Finally I will give a business analysis view on the Operating Model Canvas.
I will review the Elite Fly Team Water Bottle and ordered a set of the Fly Granfondo Elite White version. I will try to answer the question “How did Elite further innovate the water bottle ?” and compare the Elite Fly Team with for example the Elite Corsa-, Tacx Shiva- or Zefal Arctica thermo water bottle. [Read more…]
Design a Better Business is the result of a hunderd-day-race of Patrick van der Pijl from Business Models Inc, Justin Lokitz from Business Models San Francisco and Lisa Kay Solomon co-author of the bestseller Moments of Impact. Designers Maarten van Lieshout and Erik van der Pluijm completed the Design a Better Business (book)team.
Based on the design thinking model (double loop) various must-have tools, skills and case studies are discussed for each phase in the model. So let’s dive into the book structure first and see if the highly visual work book consumes as easy as the Business Model Generation Handbook.
The Process Model Canvas is developed by Marco Bijl, James P. Devlin and David Ruting and is complementary to Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas. The Process Model Canvas will help you define the operating model that needs to be adopted, but HOW do you do that?
Creating employee networks that deliver open innovation by Eoin Whelan, Salvatore Parise, Jasper de Valk & Rick Aalbers is (recently) published in MITSloan Management Review and got my attention via a Twitter message of Jasper de Valk.
“A small number of idea scouts and idea connectors are disproportianately influential in producing successful open innovation outcomes. Smart companies make sure they are linked.”
The leading research question for Whelan et al. is “What kinds of capabilities facilitate a company’s success at incorporating outside knowledge?” Research of Whelan et al. unfortunately shows that many companies are failing because they neglect to ensure that the outside ideas reach the people inside the firm that are best equipped to exploit those ideas.
Organization Network Analysis (ONA) is used in various case-studies to research the network structures and communication patterns of the idea connector- and idea scout roles.
The picture above shows an overview of the idea scout- and idea connector roles in a company’s network of employees.
Idea scouts (green) are well-connected to knowledge sources (yellow) outside of the company, but the research of Whelan et al. shows that idea scouts tend to have very few strong connections inside of the company.
An idea connector (orange) has an extensive network inside of the company (blue) together with knowledge to distribute technological information. In other words an idea connector needs to have an understanding of the technical innovation and should know who in the company can integrate it with the internal projects or roadmaps. An idea connector should have a basic understanding of the overall strategic direction.
Idea scouts and idea connectors are two different, but very needed complementary specialist roles.
A little while ago I’ve reviewed the books Open Leadership – How social technology can transform the way you lead ~ (Charlene Li, 2010) and Hoe je goed gevonden wordt – Profileer jezelf met social media ~ (Scholte & Coppes, 2012) that both describe the value of social technology for modern companies.
At first you would think that only an idea scout would benefit from the use of social technology in order to easily connect to knowledge sources all over the world. But social technology is extensively used to connect with people inside of your own organization. From my own experience I see the value of Yammer, since it helps me connecting to different knowledge sources within Microsoft and driving collaboration. Idea Connectors will therefore benefit significantly from social technology as well.
Summarizing: social technology can benefit both idea scouts and idea connectors.
R&D leaders should consider the open innovation process in its entirety, and -for example- not focus on idea scouting only. Research has shown that breakthrough innovations tend to result from the combination of new and existing knowledge bases inside a company. Please have a look at the open innovation funnel in the article What is Open Innovation?
Idea scouts and idea connectors contribute most in the ideation, selection and diffusion phases of the innovation process. Idea scouts are critical in the earlier phases (identifying valuable ideas), where the emphasis shifts towards the idea connector in later phases. Remark that in the exploitation phase the contribution of idea scouts and idea connectors is nihil. R&D management can optimize the contribution of these innovation brokers to the innovation process, by focusing on ideation, selection and diffusion phases of the innovation process.
If innovation brokers do not exist within a company, management is obliged to assign people to perform these roles. Have a strong HR perspective in place that puts the right people on these roles and not end up like many of the researched firms, where the people filling in the (informal) idea scout- and idea connector roles came as a complete surprise.
Open innovation is more than importing new ideas and technologies into the organization. New ideas and technologies should reach the right people within a company, that combine them with existing internal ideas and technologies in order to mature into successful innovation outcomes. R&D management should carefully look at the innovation broker roles in their company and check the fases where these roles add the most value. If idea scouts and connectors are not present in a corporate structure, than R&D management should assign the right employees to these roles.
In summary:
