Posts Tagged ‘Innovation’

Big “I” or Little “i” – What’s it to be?

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Big ‘I’ or little ‘i’ – What’s it to be?

© Roger La Salle 2010

A revealing statistic!
In a recent book called “Creating Wealth” by Lester Thurow some interesting statistics are cited.

“…..In the 1920’s the life expectancy of a publicly listed company in the USA was some 65 years, by the 1990’s this figure has fallen to less than ten years. Of the companies forming the original list of the Standard and Poor’s Index, only one, General Electric still survives today, and to do so GE has had to constantly re invent themselves to remain relevant.”

Innovation versus Invention
Interestingly, some of the less initiated in this business often use the word innovator interchangeably with inventor. This is often done in a polite and misguided endeavour to differentiate the person in question from the classic stereotypical inventor, represented as some excentric weirdo with fuzzy white hair wearing a white dust coat.

In fact innovation and invention are different.

Whereas innovation may be defined as “change that adds value”, invention may be perhaps best defined as something “new, novel and without precedent”.

Notwithstanding the above, most inventions are in fact created by making improvements to existing things. Indeed there are few totally new inventions.

However, whereas novelty is an essential part of an invention, novelty is not an essential part of an innovation.

Big ‘I’ and Little ‘i’
When it comes to understanding innovation further, some texts refer to so called big ‘I’, and little ‘i’.

The former refers to big or disruptive innovations that totally change the landscape of a business, its products or the dynamics of the market. In contrast, little “i” refers more to incremental changes or improvements to businesses and products.

In theory, or more likely with the benefit of hindsight, many thinkers and writers on the subject refer to big ‘I’ as essential for businesses to survive for the longer terms. The push is for businesses to “disrupt” themselves and radically change for the better following in the footsteps of companies cited as case studies that have successfully done so.

Rear Vision is a wonderful thing!
NOKIA is one exceptional example of a company that successfully migrated its core business from timber to electronics. They did this after they saw the growing resistance to the use of the dwindling natural timber resource and the emergence of the new mobile phone business with almost unlimited market potential. This is a wonderful success story operating on the big “I” model.

General Electric is another company that has reinvented itself to become strong in the financial sector. However, in doing so GE took the safe option in that whilst creating its new enterprise it did not turn its back on its traditional engineering business, instead it used its brand strength to underpin the new endeavour.

Many texts refer to these case studies as a blueprint for the future and an endorsement of big “I” as the means to renewed riches as companies model themselves on the NOKIA style of rebirth. Unfortunately, all of these case studies are just that, studies in hindsight of a few “stars” that have successfully crossed the bridge to new horizons.

Rear vision is a wonderful thing, but if one looks at the history of disruptive pioneers you will find the path littered with the corpses of those who dared to be first with disruptions but failed, as is so often the case. The problem is that these pioneers are seldom heard from.

Consider some of the so called disruptive technologies that have either failed, or undergone a very difficult and expensive birth.

The ill fated COMET jet passenger airliner, a revolution in its day, plagued with technology problems whose ultimate solutions enabled Boeing, untarnished by the pioneering COMET failures, to win the world market for passenger jets. Concorde is another example of a technology before its time. Ultimately supersonic passenger transport will become commonplace, but not to the benefit of the Concorde pioneers.

Even the ubiquitous computer took many years to be adopted by the greater community. Indeed had it not been for the development of both word processing and spreadsheets, computers today would be little more than scientific novelties and platforms for games.

So too the computer mouse which was a complete novelty when first conceived in 1968. In fact it was some 13 years before this disruption in the way we use computers was actually commercialised.

Similarly for the internet, this was possibly one of the most disruptive technologies of the 20th century and has revolutionised the way business is conducted worldwide. But it was the application developers, not the creators, who have won the rich spoils offered by this disruption.

Failure is more the norm
There are countless examples of pioneers who failed with disruptive ventures and seldom rate a mention in the end game. Unfortunately, too often we are encouraged to follow the path of the very few successful winners who steal the limelight, as they should. But be warned, these people are few and far between.

What about little “i”
The “incrementalists” are the little “i” operators and there would be no better example than the car makers. Incrementally these people release face lifted new models with perhaps just one tiny added feature almost annually. They do this for no other purpose than to render your current model obsolete and to keep you continually upgrading to the newer one.

The cell phone and computer games companies are also wonderful exponents at this art, and what abut Microsoft? None of us can even use all the features of Windows 98, yet we still get a new, non backward compatible supposedly more featured version every couple of years. Indeed Microsoft even today, still owns this market and drives it through incremental innovation.

There can be no doubt that little “i” is far easier to manage than big ‘I’; and little ‘i’ carries far less risk.

So what is it to be?

For my money, little ‘i’ wins pretty well every time. However, if you do wish to have a go at investing in a disruption, use the tried and tested “outrigger model”, as discussed in my previous insight, as this certainly mitigates much of the risk.

**** END ****

Roger La Salle, is the creator of the “Matrix Thinking”™ technique and is widely sought after as an international speaker on Innovation, Opportunity and business development. He is the author of three books, Director and former CEO of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC) as well as a number of companies both in Australian and overseas. He has been responsible for a number of successful technology start-ups and in 2004 was a regular panellist on the ABC New Inventors TV program. In 2005 he was appointed to the “Chair of Innovation” at “The Queens University” in Belfast. Matrix Thinking is now used in more than 26 countries. www.matrixthinking.com

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Invention – Innovation – Opportunity – Is there a difference

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Innovation – Invention – Opportunity Capture – What’s the difference?

                                                                                                  © Roger La Salle 2010

 Change is the order of the day!

 There would be little doubt that businesses, whether large or small realise that in order to stay ahead of the game it is essential to be constantly renewing their offerings. Whether it is products, processes, services or simply the way you do business, change is essential.

 Long gone are the days when we could be complacent and expect things to continue as usual. If it’s not the internet and the rise of e-commerce, ever changing government regulation, the growth of credit cards, new technologies and materials, things are constantly changing. Further, the pace of change is ever accelerating.

 Many businesses challenged by the need to change have embraced “creativity” as a change medium. But what does this really mean – and can it be systematically applied to a business?

 I believe that “creativity” as a tool that endeavours to identify new opportunities is a little too generic. Just asking somebody to “be creative” really has no starting point.

 This is where the more focused approaches of Invention, Innovation and Opportunity Capture come to the fore. These are “hard tools” that are immediately applicable to any business.

 So what’s the Difference?

  •  Invention

 An invention, by definition requires an element of novelty in that there needs to be some part of the idea for which no “prior art” exists.

 Perhaps a good simple definition of Inventions is: “Products without precedent”

 Game changing inventions are often the result of Pure Research, such as the development of the semiconductor transistor, the laser, the early day vaccines that completely revolutionised medicine or new materials such as nylon, plastics and Teflon etc..

 Applied research, is work done to develop an invention with a clear target market in mind and is vigorously pursued by many large companies. But in this case, the outcomes are possibly best described as Innovations as their starting point was the knowledge of a real need if a solution to a particular problem could be found.

 The flat screen television is a classic example. Though the technology it embodies includes many inventions, the clear market aim was to “innovate” the large square box TV with the sure knowledge that a market success would be the result.

 How right they were.

  •  Innovation

 Innovation is best defined as “Change that adds value” and this is a call to action.

 This definition is founded on two important principles:

 There is nothing that cannot be changed in some way to add value, whether it is a product, process or a service, or simply the way you do business

Changing something that is already well accepted in the market place and making it even better is a sure way of almost risk free new business. Simply find any product, process or service that is in widespread use and make it better. In doing so you can almost guarantee that you will have removed the single biggest risk in business, that of market failure. Of course the flat screen TV is a classic example.

 The principles of Innovation are extremely simple, all that is needed are some simple tools and some people willing to explore anything you perceive to be in widespread demand – the outcome will be a clear winner in all but a few cases.

  •  Opportunity Capture

 This is what I like to refer to as the big picture as it encompasses both innovation and invention.

 Ideally with both invention and innovation we require a starting point, something on which to focus our attention.

 “Opportunity capture” offers just that, it’s the seed we need to spawns both invention and innovation.

 Opportunity, defined as “An observed fortunate set of circumstances” can easily be taught to people and systematic opportunity search methodologies can be put in place that not only teach your people to understand what an opportunity looks like, but moreover inspires them and provides the tools with which to search.

 Opportunity is the real game changer and perhaps a better term to describe what is presently referred to as “open Innovation, though even in that case the open innovation model still fails to put in place a systematic opportunity search mechanism.

 Where to from here?

 It goes without saying that the need to change is ever on us, research based invention is both expensive, risky and has in many cases has an extraordinarily long time to market.

 Innovation is both simple and relatively risk free, if done properly.

 The real secret that should underpin all change endeavours is that of structured opportunity capture, that’s the big picture.

                                                          **** END ****

 Roger La Salle, is the creator of the “Matrix Thinking”™ technique and is widely sought after as an international speaker on Innovation, Opportunity and business development. He is the author of three books, Director and former CEO of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC) as well as a number of companies both in Australian and overseas. He has been responsible for a number of successful technology start-ups and in 2004 was a regular panellist on the ABC New Inventors TV program. In 2005 he was appointed to the “Chair of Innovation” at “The Queens University” in Belfast. Matrix Thinking is now used in more than 26 countries.  www.matrixthinking.com

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Do You Connect the Dots?

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Do you Connect the Dots?
© Roger La Salle 2009
www.matrixthinking.com

How do you operate?

Have you ever worked in a company where the boss or your manager hordes information? Unfortunately this is not all that uncommon. The old saying goes that “Knowledge is Power”, and those of us that are insecure in our abilities or feel threatened by those around us try to remain in control by hording information.

In fact I know of one company where the Managing Director actually leaves notes lying around with incorrect or inaccurate information. The aim of this of course is to retain power by keeping the troops in the “dark” or better still, confused. Can you believe that?

The question is: what’s your modus operandi?

Many businesses have embraced innovation and opportunity capture as an essential business tool to survive and win in these days of ever increasing information flow, market intelligence, and speed to market. There are many innovation/opportunity models including that of so called “Open Innovation”, and what is best described as internal or “Closed Innovation”.

Closed Innovation

In this case the company has all its innovation endeavours conducted and held tightly within, there is little sharing of knowledge and little interest in eliciting the assistance of outsiders to enhance their innovation initiative. Indeed the managers of these tightly controlled programs use their skills to drive the innovation program. Unfortunately, they may be missing a lot.

Open Innovation

In this case, though the business remains in control of its destiny and direction it enhances its innovation initiative by making connections to a seemingly disparate groups of outsiders and companies all looking to expand their horizons by building on combined know how.

These days, there are so many diverse technologies and specialties that it is simply impossible to have a grasp on what is happening on all fronts, thus the connected model has great merit.

Connecting the Dots

One of the great skills of clever entrepreneurs and innovators is to see the linkages between seemingly unrelated issues. This is where in the open innovation model, broadly skilled technologists and open minded thinkers come to the fore.

For example, suppose I run a lumber business. That is the business of cutting up trees to provide timber for the building industry. What possible connection does that have with mathematics? Perhaps none you may think, or certainly the old fashioned timber manager may have thought. But in fact linear programming, quite an old science these days, when employed in that industry can optimise the way timber is cut to provide massive additional profits. But in the closed model, such knowledge may never be acquired, or if it is, only by word of mouth with other operators who may have long since acquired the technique.
Similarly, the technologies developed in putting man on the moon. How could that possibly connect to the business of pots and pans? Teflon coating is the answer.

• Clocks and cell phones or radio paging, is there a connection? Indeed there is. Imagine having a clock equipped with a radio receiver to receive time signals and thus keep perfect time, and even update for Summer Time changes. Such clocks are now available in Australia.

• The packaging business and home insulation? Of course, use bubble wrap as the ideal insulator, it’s light weight, cheap and easy to install and fire retardant grades are available.

• Optics and home insulation? Of course, use a reflective coating on one side of the bubble wrap to reflect radiated heat.

• Physiotherapy and the reduction of carbon emissions?

• The tooth brush and ceramic crystals?

• Extruded plastic “core flute” sheeting and aluminium extrusions?

The reader can ponder the latter three, but the connection in each of these cases has spawned real businesses.

There is an endless list of these seemingly unrelated disciplines that can be connected with an open innovation approach that encourages a wide search horizon.

Indeed this is why the new paradigm of “Opportunity Capture” is now emerging as the preferred approach to the more narrow discipline of traditional innovation.

What’s the Message

Managers in the open innovation space do not need to be great technologists, as perhaps with the closed model. Instead they need to be great net-workers, able to build bridges between people and companies. This is quite a different skills set to that of the managers operating in the closed model.

Thus, stay open minded, expand your horizons and embrace the art of formal opportunity search, where the reach is unlimited.

**** END ****

Roger La Salle, is the creator of the “Matrix Thinking”™ technique and is widely sought after as an international speaker on Innovation, Opportunity and business development. He is the author of three books, Director and former CEO of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC) as well as a number of companies both in Australian and overseas. He has been responsible for a number of successful technology start-ups and in 2004 was a regular panellist on the ABC New Inventors TV program. In 2005 he was appointed to the “Chair of Innovation” at “The Queens University” in Belfast. Matrix Thinking is now used in more than 26 countries. www.matrixthinking.com

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Process Innovation – Reduce your “Cycle Time”?

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Business is tough

The tightening of credit markets has made running prosperous enterprises even more difficult, and whilst some ‘wring their hands’ and lament the good old day of plentiful credit, how many people are looking at their business cycle time as an alternative to extended credit or increased overdrafts?

What is “Cycle Time?”

Cycle time is best defined as “the total time in business it takes from receipt of an order until payment is received and banked” © RLS 2006. In many businesses the cycle time is typically 90 days. In some cases it is much longer. For complex projects payment can be staggered over many years and final payments are often withheld for a guarantee period, extending even further the total cycle time.

Negative Cycle Time

Some businesses have a negative cycle time; that is the money is received and banked even before the goods or services are delivered. Airline tickets or pre-paid phone cards are typically negative cycle time businesses, so too are on-line sellers such as Amazon. Indeed in the latter case there is not even a need to have expensive infrastructure, such as in the case of a telco or an airline. Amazon as a business needed nothing more than a PC and a web site as its investments to get started and create a highly successful negative cycle time business.

“Cycle Time” can mean the difference between Success or Failure

It is important, especially in smaller businesses, to understand the influence cycle time can have on success, or perhaps failure. Indeed there are many stories of business that have failed because they grew too fast and were unable to provide the finance to support that growth.

In simplistic terms, if a business is shipping $100K per month and is operating on a three month cycle time, a minimum of $300k is needed to finance the business. Banks, especially these days, are loath to finance businesses against orders, but rather look for bricks and mortar assets as collateral. If suddenly the business starts shipping $200k per month with the same cycle time, now $600k is needed as working capital, and if that is not available, then foreclosure may be staring you in the face.

However, if the same business can reduce its cycle time to just 1.5 months, then sales of $200k can be supported with the same initial equity base. That’s how important cycle time is, but unfortunately, this is often overlooked.

Customers are slow to pay

Doubtless the greater part of cycle time is the delay in customers paying their debts.

Whilst we can push for deposits, short term financing or even early payment incentives, we should not ignore the inbuilt delays inherent in our own internal processes. If these can be identified and rectified any reduction in cycle time will be immediately seen on the bottom line as pure profit.

So what’s the solution?

Some businesses look to “factoring” their debts. This essentially means taking a short term loan for the period of financial stress, but in many cases the interest charged is sufficient to wipe-out any potential profits. Thus, whilst factoring does have a place, look closely at the costs before seeing this as a panacea. Yet another means is to offer discounts for early payment.

Unfortunately, whilst both of the above may improve cash flow somewhat, they come at a cost.

A better solution to gaining a partial reduction in cycle time is to the take immediate deposits on a customer’s placement of an order. Deposits from customers are seldom seen as your ploy to gain some payment a little earlier, but more likely embraced by many as a means to secure their place in your delivery queue, and thus they are not viewed negatively.,

The best solution is to analyse your entire business cycle time. This is best done by dissecting the business into its serial components from receipt of an order, to shipment, and debt collection and to look for ways cycle time can be reduced.

Process Innovation is one way of investigating cycle time in a systematic manner. It is quite amazing what effect small changes to processes can have in delivering real cycle time reductions, and any gains made here go straight to the bottom line as profit, pure and simple.

What’s the message?

Process Innovation applied to the Cycle Time reduction should be seen as a means to reap hidden profits from transactions that may otherwise cost real money. Dissect and analyse your business, there is always room for improvement.

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Are you asking the right Question?

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Innovation is about finding better ways of doing – What?

As we know, a good definition of Innovation is “Change that adds Value” and embracing this term opens the way to make innovation a relatively straight forward exercise, providing you are asking the right question.

How many times do we solve a problem and even implement a solution, only to then realise had we asked a better question we may have come up with a much better solution. How many times do we convene a meeting without having a specific one sentence idea of exactly what we wish to achieve in that meeting?

Being able to crystallise an issue to a single sentence question is so important, but few people implement that valuable practice.

Have you found the best question?

To put this into context, let me pose the question, and have you think of the answer, before reading on:

  • What is the specific purpose of a written job application?

The obvious answer is to get the job, but this not correct.

The sole purpose of the written application is to get an interview, to get in front of the people making the selection.

With that clear purpose in mind, the written application takes on a different form. Indeed, what you leave out is just as important as what you include. You should lead the reader to a point where they wish to speak with you to learn more. This is quite a different approach from writing everything you can think of in the hope that will win you the job. The written application never wins you the job.

The above is a simple example of making sure you have a properly defined objective, and that it’s the correct objective.

Too close to the problem

To cite another example, recently a workshop was undertaken in a large multinational trading bank, the team came to the session wanting to resolve the question – “How can we reduce the cost to businesses wishing to raise a Letter of Credit (LC)?”  This seemed like a sensible question and was workshopped by the group for a time until they came to the “Re -Question Catalyst in the Innovation Matrix.

So challenged to “Re-question” the group digged deep searching to find the real reason they wished to lower the cost? The answer that crystallised was, so that people would be more willing to use their LC facility.

In fact, the real and best question to ask was, ”How can we inspire businesses to raise more LC’s”?

On investigating this different issue it was soon realised that the cost, maybe $20.00 was irrelevant. Why would that be a “show stopper” for somebody wishing to raise an LC for perhaps $500k or more.

The real reason people were adverse to raising LC;’s was the time and effort involved. The process was just too complex and time consuming. Yet the bank in its daily work transfers multi-millions of dollars around the world with little more than the click of a mouse. So why are LC’s so complex?

The better question, the real question was “How can we make it easier for clients to raise LC’s”? With this question in mind the workshop was continued based on a Process Innovation Matrix.  An answer was soon found.

There are countless examples of this, usually caused by being too close to the problem. Just ask any design engineer.

You can be sure almost without exception, after a complex design is implemented, and maybe even marketed, the next embodiment of the same product will be much simplified. Why, because having done it once, better designs questions and issued can now be resolved.

So what’s the solution?

The classic method of questioning with the “why” “why’ “why” challenge is one way of trying to drill down to the best question.

Another way is to have somebody quite remote from the issue present in any meeting that addresses a problem. You can be sure that a person NOT skilled in the area will ask some very interesting and challenging questions. This always helps in drilling down to the real issue and the best question.

Most often when a group of people comes together to investigate a burning issue, a solution will be found, just make sure the best question has been asked, a question that leads to the best solution.

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Service Innovation – the Next Wave

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

What is innovation?

Simply put, innovation is best defined as “Change that Adds Value”© La Salle 1999.

That is, take an existing product, process or service and innovate (or change) it in some way to add value, this is a very low risk way of business building.

A structured thinking matrix (or rectangular array of “Seeds” and “Catalysts”) for services had been developed that provides a rigorous way of innovating services.

What is less understood are the concepts of Service Efficiency and Quality in the service domain?

Efficiency and Quality in the World of Tangibles

In the world of tangibles, one of the best definitions of quality is “conformity to design”.

That is, decide what is it you wish to make and do it repeatedly without change to meet an agreed specification; and for many manufactured products there is absolutely no benefit to the customer in exceeding the specification or tightening tolerances.

For example, increasing the tolerance on the diameter of a 75mm long nail from say +/- 0.01mm to +/- 0.001mm would be of little benefit to anybody, but would no doubt cause all sorts of production problems and added costs.

In the manufacturing world, for the purpose of Process Innovation it is appropriate to define process efficiency as:

*Process Efficiency   =   Output/unit time ÷ Costs

*Consistent with the maintenance of quality.

Efficiency and Quality in the World of Services

In the services sector things are a little different.

Consider a call centre where the performance specification (or “Service Level”) states that staff shall always answer the phone within three rings.

Suppose somebody then finds a way to answer the phone every time, within two rings. This variance from the specification would be seen as advantageous to everybody, especially the callers. Indeed improving even further and answering after just one ring would be even better.

Unlike the manufacturing sector, in the services sector there is really no limit to the benefit afforded by improving service level (or quality of service). The important consideration is, at what cost, and what is the benefit to the customer.

Drawing an analogy from Process Innovation from the manufacturing sector leads to a useful metric for Service Efficiency as:

Service Efficiency    =   ­ *Service Level ÷ Costs

*The secret in the service domain is in properly defining “Service Level” as one of the key performance or quality measures.

Service Metrics are Essential

It is important to establish typically five metrics or KPI’s for key people and deliverables in your services enterprise and to use these as a basis to systematically “innovate” your service efficiency.

Without these properly defined and quantifiable metrics there is little point in attempting any sort of innovation at all.

Finally, even though the above metric for service efficiency refers largely to the service sector, remember that even a manufacturing enterprise has a significant element of service fulfilment in the interface with your customers. This too can be measured and innovated in much the same manner.

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“Coupling” – A sure way to reduce new business risk

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Failure is the Norm

To anybody involved in the business of new venture, new products and new services the risks are well understood.

Indeed statistics would show that most new ventures fail, either totally, or in reaching anywhere near forecast revenue targets. Most of all, really new things have an alarmingly high failure rate.

Would you believe the facsimile machine was actually patented in 1898? That the personal computer would have been a flop had it not been for the development of word processing and spreadsheets; that the photocopier took more than 10 years to come into common use and the internet more than 15?

Whilst business is tough and fraught with risk; businesses founded on really new and novel concepts is even tougher.

Humans resist Change

It is common knowledge that people resist change, for change has the potential to disrupt life and the status quo and may lead into unchartered waters. Better to remain the same and let life go on. This is quite a normal outlook for most people and quite understandable, after all, who want to embrace the risk associated with change?

Innovation, which has as its underlying principle the value adding of incremental changes to things represents little risk for business and customers alike.

Just look at the motor companies, they are reluctant to completely redefine their models and bring about potential market disasters such as the infamous “sea change” model Edsel Ford on the 1950’s.

Instead, what car makers do is incrementally improve models. Make slight changes, and perhaps every four years, in step with their competitors, bring out slightly modified shapes, but most often retaining the same generic name, such as the Ford Falcon or Ford Mustang.

This is safe and people adopt such incremental change with little or no difficulty.

Whilst Innovation, defined as “Change that Adds Value” properly implemented can largely remove market risk, what is the risk mitigation strategy for really novel ideas.

The answer lies in “Coupling”

Would you believe that one of the most successful technology products in history was the Compact Disc, and what a new and novel technology this was, but its impact was immediate, despite its total novelty?

How did this happen?

The answer lies in clever marketing where the CD was not introduced as some weird “off the wall” contraption, but simply as a better vinyl record.

The novelty and newness of the CD was virtually eliminated by coupling it to the “common or garden” record. It was not new, it was just a better way of doing something we were all doing, purchasing playing and storing music.

This is a classics example of coupling.

Relate what it is you have to the market norm and sell it and simply a better way of doing things we are already doing.

There are countless examples of this, even simple ones such as the cordless phone; not a new contraption, but a common phone released from the shackles of its permanent wire connection.

What’s the message?

The simple message is that when launching something of high novelty try and remove some of the novelty be relating it in some way to things or products people are already doing or using.

Couple to the existing mindset and the risk of failure will be far reduced.

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Move your people from Operators to Opportunists

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

How many people really understand the difference between being an operator and an opportunist?

Traditionally

People are usually hired by businesses to perform a job function, usually defined in a job description or specification. Indeed the performance of many job functions is measured by key performance indicators (KPI’s) and bonuses are often tied to achieving these.

However, is that sufficient?

In these fast moving times, with new and better products, processes and services at every turn, and the unforseen market turbulence of recent times many business have recognised the need for change. Formal innovation programs have now been established as a means of equipping people with the tools that may enable them to go beyond their designated job function to add extra, perhaps even breakthrough, value to the business.

In addition to the innovation endeavour, a new horizon of “Opportunity” has now emerged as a means to move staff from operatives to opportunists, and the business risks in doing so are virtually non existent.

What is an Opportunity?

Unlike the dictionary, which defines the work opportunity as “fortunate intersection of events” – which is essentially “luck” and leads you nowhere in the opportunity search, a better definition of the opportunity is:

“An Observed Fortunate Set of Circumstances”© RLS 2000

Indeed, opportunities do not occur in nature, opportunities only occur though human observation.

Take the realisation of gravity as the force that pulls everything towards the earth. Gravity has been in place since the birth of the planets but it was not until 1665/6 that Isaac Newton made the observation that all things fall to the ground that led to his understanding of gravity and his gravitational equations that even today underpin much of physics.

If we accept this definition for the word opportunity, and its key word “observed” we can actually work to teach our people the fundamentals of observation that routinely result in an opportunity.

Can you teach people the art of Opportunity Capture?

Essentially the search for an opportunity requires just five fundamental observation criteria and eight ways of working on each and of these observations in order to explore new and different wealth generation activities for your business.

Opportunism does not have to be a matter of luck as many people may think. In fact the systematic search for an opportunity is perhaps a more reliable way of finding new business horizons than some of the quite abstract creative thinking techniques or innovation programs. Further, the beauty of opportunism is that it is largely market driven, and of course markets are the key to business growth.

Where to from Here?

Whilst innovation and its techniques may be one way to think about ways to build a business, remember, opportunism should also be embraced and perhaps be given some considerable weight in you business development program. If you can move your people from operatives to opportunists the outcome for the business will be extraordinary, and the risk in doing so is virtually non existent.

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Rising interest rates, maybe ‘tightening of belts’ – is this an opportunity?

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

With inflation in Australia above the Reserve Banks targets, interest rates have risen yet again in an attempt to slow the economy and dampen demand. Is this a “show stopper” for business, or can it be viewed as an opportunity?

Traditionally

The Reserve banks uses interest rates as a questionable means of dampening demand and so slowing the economy, but in the last “sledge hammer” approach to economic control under Paul Keating when interest rates reached the dizzy heights of 17% and more, our balance of trade remained in the negative and consumers were still spending. Eventually, after many businesses “went to the wall” demand did damped and inflation slowed – but at what cost?

The ready availability of credit cards and the “must have it now” culture is one of the reasons that the impact of rising interest rates has little immediate effect on slowing the economy.

Notwithstanding the above, one thing is certain; as interest rates rise people do become more discerning with their expenditure. For the first time in perhaps more than a decade people now look twice at bills and purchases and compare alternatives with a little more rigour than before. Churn in now on the increase, and this is where the opportunity lies. Now is the time to win customers from competitors and increase market share.

Innovation is not the only answer.

Many companies embrace innovation (best defined as “Change that Adds Value”© La Salle 1999) of products, processes and services as a means to drive change and as a way of ever improving their offering and moving both their customers and businesses to an ever better place. Opportunism is perhaps another way of thinking, a way that is seldom even touched on by traditional innovation initiatives.

What is an Opportunity?

The dictionary defines the word opportunity as a fortunate intersection of events” or something similar, unfortunately such a definition is not a call to action for it fails to show one how an opportunity may be found.

Perhaps a better definition is:

“An observed fortunate set of circumstances” (© La Salle 2002).

This simple definition underpins an entirely new search endeavour for business development and has the effect of moving the mindset of staff from that of merely operators to opportunists.

Make Opportunity your opportunity!

There are five important search criteria for finding an opportunity. People need to be skilled in the use of these and to work through the simple opportunity stimulants to find new unthought of initiatives. Not only does this work for businesses, it is equally valuable for personal, job and career development.

Be assured, opportunities are abundant, perhaps more so now in times when people are reviewing spending patterns.

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Process Innovation – A key to unharvested wealth?

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Process innovation can open your business to a complete world of new opportunities if approached from the right perspective!

Traditionally

Process innovation is traditionally viewed as more appropriate to the manufacturing sector, but in fact process innovation applies to everything we do, manufacturing, services and even management processes.. It aims at improving business outcomes by cutting costs. Properly implemented process innovation come with little risk.

Further, a dollar saved in process improvement goes straight to the bottom line as a full dollar, whereas increased revenue targeted from heightened sales activity translates to only some portion as a bottom line increase.

The more common process innovation approaches include, ‘Six Sigma’ with its aim for almost zero defects, ‘Lean Manufacturing’ that focuses on cost down initiatives and waste removal; and ‘Continuous Improvement’ that aims to involve the entire organisation in looking at ways of endless incremental improvement.

Innovate and remove market risk

If we accept that the by far the single biggest risk in business is market risk, that is the risk that nobody will buy the product, then logic would have it that the best way to mitigate this risk is to find something people are already buying and simple improve it. This in fact is what innovation is all about and leads to the ideal definition of innovation as “Change that Adds Value” © La Salle 1999

Nokia is one of the world’s greatest innovators with new improved more featured hand phones coming on to the market every six months. They understand this game perfectly.

Car companies are pretty good as well with face lifted models every 12 months and models bearing a new shape, aimed at rendering your present one obsolete, almost every three years.

Why should the message be different for processes?

Create a Paradigm

Have you ever realised that some of the world’s great businesses have grown on the back of nothing more than improved processes!

FedEx, DHL UPS, did nothing more than look at the very successful postal service and innovate it to provide faster deliveries.

So too Dell Computers, Reuters, and even the Ford Motor company.

Henry Ford did not invent the motor car, he simply innovated the way they were made.

The list of such innovated process that spawned new global businesses is almost endless. And in the case of Amazon, they created a business with a negative cycle time, doing nothing more than finding a new way to sell books.

A structured approach to process innovation can identify complete new paradigms, if only conducted in the right mindset.

Remember, there is always a better way.

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