Sustainability Evolves from Fad To Force

Sustainability is evolving quickly to become a major force in business practices and in business models. One of the best ways to think about sustainability is the triple bottom line model. This model speaks to developing business models that can show profit in three major areas - environment, economic, and social.

Sustainability holds the seeds of much of the major innovation we will see over the next 100 years. Every aspect of business can, should, and will be transformed. This represents a serious opportunity for competitive advantage in the short term and significant profit in the long term.

On June 30, 2009, Langdon Morris, one of the founders of InnovationLabs was quoted in a CNBC article about sustainability. He mentions that for most large corporations today they need to develop what we call 'edge competence' in order to see where innovation will take place for them. This capability is challenging for large organizations with so much investment in their 'core' business.

“The problem is that change rarely originates in the core,” says Morris. “It originates at what, for them, is the edge. So while they all talk a lot about core competence, what they really need to do to maintain a viable business model is to develop ‘edge competence,’ which is the ability to see change coming and respond to it before it becomes a huge problem.”

You can read the entire article here.


(the image above was taken from AM Consortium - an energy and environment consultant).

Innovation in Tough Times Survey

We've put up a survey about innovation in tough times. Please take a moment and give us your input. We'll share the results with you once they are tabulated.

http://www.innovationlabs.com/innovation_survey_0109.html

Innovation Metrics - a new white paper by Langdon Morris

Langdon recently presented a webinar on innovation metrics and developed a new white paper to go along with that presentation. To download a copy of this white paper see the publications section of the InnovationLabs web site.

Here's a short synopsis:

Innovation Metrics

The Innovation Process and How to Measure It
By Langdon Morris

Like everything that businesses do which involves the investment of capital and time, innovation has to be measured. But unlike many other forms of measurement in business, measuring innovation presents problems for the process that is to be measured. We might call this ‘innovation uncertainty principle:’ many ways that we might want to measure innovation can significantly impede the innovation process itself. This is because innovation involves a venture into the unknown, and if we try to pin these unknowns down too fast we may make them harder to recognize and realize.

For example, we have to look at the very concept of ‘return.’ ‘Return on Investment’ is a standard and accepted measuring tool that managers have relied on for decades. But it’s now an accepted joke in the research and development community that the term ‘ROI’ really stands for ‘restraint on innovation,’ because ROI-based assessments tend to embrace short term thinking, and to exclude the development of long term, breakthrough, and discontinuous ideas and projects. Using ROI to measure innovation thus endangers the very thing you want to measure, and makes less likely the end goal of the process, which is better innovation.

This presents difficult problems for R&D managers. At a recent meeting at HP Labs, a manager commented that they could not even look at any project that did not have the potential to be at least a $50 million business. The problem, of course, is how you can know. What do you include in your research plan, and what do you put aside? Did the researcher who’s work led to the creation of HP’s multi-billion dollar inkjet printing business know what he was getting into when he became curious about the burned coffee he noticed on the bottom of a coffee pot? Could he have said his idea about superheated ink would be worth $50 dollars, much less $50 million? Unless he was inspired by a fit of hubris, probably not. So if someone had asked him for the ROI on his research work, he could either guess, lie, or say he didn’t have any idea.

Yet innovation has to be measured, surely, or else it cannot be managed. So what to do? Exploring some of the best options is the purpose of this White Paper.


Contents

• Introduction
• Innovation Methodology
• The Innovation Funnel
• Stage -1: Strategic Thinking
• Stage 0: Portfolios & Metrics
• Stage 1: Research
• Stage 2: Insight
• Stage 3: Ideas
• Stage 4: Targeting
• Stage 5: Innovation Development
• Stage 6: Market Development
• Stage 7: Sales
• Inputs, Process & Output
• Conclusion
• References