Advancing Innovation: Galvanizing, Enabling & Measuring For Innovation Value! - Softcover

Stroh, Patrick J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996729305 ISBN 13: 9780996729307

Publisher: Ima Info Center, 2020

Synopsis

See coverage in: Fortune, Inc., Forbes, USA Today, The Business Journals, CFO.com, Vox, Investors' Business Daily, Bulldog Reporter. It Takes BOTH Creativity & Discipline to Generate Innovation Value! As markets grow increasingly unpredictable and value propositions need to evolve, innovation isn’t just a buzzword with a hashtag; it’s a lifeline for any business that wants to sustain its value. But business leaders face a challenge: Innovation as a concept can seem amorphous. How should we define innovation at our organization? How do we go about implementing innovation processes and channels? Can innovation value and progress be measured? In Advancing Innovation, Patrick Stroh, CMA, offers a solution that sits right at the crossroads between the dreamer and the doer. The book inspires organizations to use best practices while considering thoughtful customizations for success. Advancing Innovation also gives readers specific tools and guidance to execute, measure, and optimize for the most impact. The result is innovation governance—a Yin and Yang combination that fuses ideation and creativity with execution and discipline to drive value. Most important, as the book reveals, this framework can be measured by Stroh’s unique Innovation Value Score (IVS). IVS uses a balanced scorecard model but with a focus on innovation value. The metrics and functionality of this model hinge on and morph with an organization’s “strategy archetype” (how it goes to market with its value proposition). Those results can then be used for competitive benchmarking and goal-setting. With an engaging, first-hand narrative, Stroh’s book invites readers to discover how managing and measuring innovation opens the door to greater and sustainable organizational value.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick is president of Mercury Business Advisors providing management advisory services in business strategy, innovation and risk management and is author of Business Strategy; Plan, Execute, Win! and Advancing Innovation; Galvanizing, Enabling and Measuring for Innovation Value! Mr. Stroh serves on three boards of directors including: The Institute of Management Accountants who serve 90,000 finance professionals worldwide; Technology Village, a business incubator in Prior Lake, and Vail Place, a Minneapolis based agency supporting those with mental illness. Patrick was appointed in 2014 to serve on the COSO Advisory Board to review the update of the 2004 COSO Enterprise Risk Framework. Prior to consulting, he most recently held positions within UnitedHealth Group, including chief strategy & innovation officer, client experience officer, and president consumer health products. Patrick also writes a column entitled Innovation Elixir® for the American City Business Journals covering 43 metro markets across the U.S., is an active member of Rotary International and is a classically trained chef having studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Minneapolis.

Review

Forbes -- Entrepreneurs and startups are big believers in innovation, but sometimes they forget that innovation must be continual to assure long-term success, rather than the one big-bang idea that initiated their journey. Getting innovation to happen this regularly requires some real disciple and processes. I just finished a new book, “Advancing Innovation: Galvanizing, Enabling & Measuring for Innovation Value!” by Patrick J. Stroh, which details the principles and metrics to follow for fostering innovation in any organization. Here are three recommendations from my perspective: Recognize that customers care about the whole experience. People pay for a great user experience, in finding the right product, buying it, using it, and getting support. Today they demand it or walk to competitors, who are not far away. Target a portfolio of solutions, not just one product. A startup may start with a focus on one solution, but long-term growth and success requires a range of solutions, with annual innovations on everyone. Sometimes the hardest thing for companies to do is to retire a cash cow product, before its declining market is reinvigorated by a competitor. Align the interests of partners and other constituents. In many cases, those that appear to be your competitors can actually be your allies, and through partnerships (co-opetition) and agreements you can create more value together than you can achieve separately. Aligning interests fosters growth and innovation from all constituents. That fact should convince you that galvanizing innovation only gets harder as your company grows and matures. Thus it behooves every new startup to build the suggested innovation practices into their culture and organization from the beginning. Catching up later is not a viable strategy for survival.

Fortune -- Part of what makes successful innovation so elusive is that people tend to confuse it with creativity. Stroh notes that, as you’ve noticed, “thinking up exciting new ideas is usually the easy part. Taking a step back and deciding what result you really want, and which ideas will get you there, is harder. It takes discipline.” He devised a system for evaluating innovation, and describes it in a new book you may want to check out, Advancing Innovation: Galvanizing, Enabling, and Measuring for Innovation Value. Stroh says that companies are often led astray by thinking too big, explaining that “tech giants like Apple and Google, who are always looking for the next big breakthrough” have had an outsize influence on the zeitgeist. By contrast, Stroh’s research shows that, for most successful innovators, a series of incremental improvements to the products or services they already offer prove just as profitable as inventing a whole new line of business, and it's a lot less risky. Of course, if you believe an idea could appeal to a whole new customer base, then fine, “but define the market,” says Stroh. Then be ready to spell out to higher-ups in your company how you would launch your new product, and to whom—and why its potential makes it worth diverting sales and marketing dollars from your existing business. Next, think about whether an idea can get enough support in the organization to make it fly. Is it strong enough to withstand internal skepticism? How much of your own time and attention are you willing to devote to making it work? “Would you be willing to set aside other priorities that you’re currently working on, in order to see this through?” Stroh asks. Lots of promising new ideas fall by the wayside simply because no one sticks by them.

Inc. -- Some principles of great leadership never change--but others do, in response to evolving technology and work force demographics. Here are timely leadership tenets to keep in mind for the new year. 1. Innovate relentlessly around your value proposition. You're thinking: Yeah, I already know that. But too many leaders aren't doing it, says Patrick Stroh, author of the newly released book Advancing Innovation: Galvanizing, Enabling, and Measuring for Innovation Value. "If you're not reinventing your value proposition every three to five years, you'll become irrelevant," he says. You need to take steps toward making sure you're innovating at the proper pace. For starters, listen directly to your customers to learn about the weaknesses in your current value proposition. Ask them: If we developed this idea, would you be thrilled? Also, don't feel as if every innovation has to be a game changer. Stroh is a fan of the innovation approach used by Malibu, the boating manufacturer based in Loudon, Tennessee. At Malibu, inventions can fall into one of three buckets: breakthrough, distinctive, or incremental.

CFO.com -- What have your suppliers done for you lately? Or, a better question might be: Have you partnered with your suppliers to drive value? The former is aligned with an outdated view of suppliers as mere commodity vendors: squeeze them for cost reductions and hold them accountable to deliver. The latter addresses what more enlightened companies want from their suppliers today: a strategic relationship and partnership to drive value for both organizations. With busy agendas, stretched employees, and insatiable demands, we must recognize the value add of supplier partnerships and should hold suppliers to higher standards. But it’s also up to companies to create an environment where suppliers can thrive as a strategic asset. So how can suppliers provide strategic value for your company? Let’s first consider your value proposition. You are selling your products and services, and your suppliers handle either a piece of the product/service execution or delivery of the products and services, or possibly both. How can you work together to drive more value to your end customers? Recognizing the potential value of partnering with suppliers for support and thought leadership is only the first step. For example, all or a select group of suppliers can submit ideas, and others can “like” or vote on the idea from a standpoint of likelihood of success, value creation, differentiation, etc. This also creates the potential for suppliers to create an alliance, working together to find joint solutions for your organization’s toughest problems. This creates open communication that may have otherwise been impossible across vendors. Until a few years ago, business was not conducted this openly, and we did not have the tools to collaborate at scale. Today, we can and already do use many technology solutions to quickly solicit, evaluate, and test innovation ideas to create value — even before beginning to execute the ideas.

Investor Business Daily -- Patrick Stroh, author of “Advancing Innovation," shares that only 52% of organizations get cutting-edge ideas from their employees; 31% draw them from suppliers. “Are you asking all of our constituents for innovation insights?” Delegate brilliance. You don’t need to be Steve Jobs to facilitate new ideas. You can be a chief financial officer or some other numbers type. “In fact, some of the best facilitators and leaders of innovation come up with few ideas themselves, but they empower and create the conditions for others to innovate and be successful in their organizations,” Stroh said. Recognize advances. The latest thing isn't about just swinging for home runs. When it comes to big ideas, Stroh said, look to hit “innovation singles and doubles as well, for a balanced approach and robust portfolio of varied shapes and sizes.” Further, innovation “can mean leveraging someone else’s idea in a new way. PDE (proudly discovered elsewhere) is about leveraging existing ideas from other sources and industries and can be adopted to your organization. You need to have an innovation portfolio that contains an amalgamation of projects that are incremental, distinctive and breakthrough — you need them all.” Take stock. “You can’t begin "meaningful actions until you can have dialogue around those results,” Stroh said. “Establish your strategy and targets, measure the results, then discuss and debate where you want to make improvements to your value proposition through innovation.” Keep reinventing. Stroh reports 75% of CFOs say they need to significantly evolve their business value proposition every five years to maintain relevance. “Innovation is the key to evolve,” he said. “It comes from many sources: alliances, partners, suppliers, customers. Preparation is key to enable execution and reap innovation success.”

Edition details

• Publisher: Ima Info Center
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0996729305
• ISBN 13: 9780996729307
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250
• Editor: Management Accountants Institute Of