- Welcome Theis Barenkopf Dinesen to this episode were we go deep into the topic “Innovation as business growth enabler”
- This is a more experimental episode were we left my standard questions and focus on Theis experience as a innovation facilitator and his experience from many industries, studies and jobs.
The overall structure of the interview looks as following:
1) Who is Theis:
- Educational background: Digital design, design future, Business Administration
- Professional background: As an employee, consultant ,startup/personal business owner and innovation facilitator
- His overall approach to innovation in a business context
- Theis’s Professional triad
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- 1. Product Service Experience
- 2. Methodology, Process, Innovation and Quality of Ideas, Honing of Ideas, Qualifying Ideas, different stages of innovation process
- 3. Business Angle, Business Administration
- It wasn’t a conscious or strategic move
2) What is innovation - in a business context
- Ideas are like horses - you need many to before you can choose the fastest. Quality is in the Quantity
- It is more risky not to be innovative and take chances, than it is not doing it
Innovation/ideation:
- Is not a one-man-band, it’s a collaborating ensemble
- Is not a luxury, it's a necessity because the world is changing and customers are unholy bastards
- Is not confined to products and services, it can happen in many areas, from processes, costumer service to logistics, payment and customers experience
- Innovation terminology is not important. Better to ask yourself “What do I want to achieve?”
- Few companies, consultancies are using the same strategy, approach or terms for innovation
- A better word for Innovation is “Ideation”
- Innovation doesn’t have to be new and revolutionising
- Is a sliding scale, from super shallow (paint you product in a new colour) to infinitely deep (intergalactic space travel)
- The Innovation Ladder, Low vs. High Complexity, Organic to extreme innovation. The further up you go on the latter the more expensive it is.
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- 1st step. Simple Organic growth, improve what you have
- 2nd Strategic target. New market, new process, new technology in you products
- 3rd and 4th steps. Hyper Innovative to extreme innovation: Intergalactic travels
- Organic Innovation => Input market, add ambition, strategic targets (new market, service, technology or area of business)
- Aim for the moon or the stars then you know what you are aiming for and then you can compromise as you know what you are compromising from
- Needs to have boundaries the same way as the rest of the organisation departments (regard it on equal terms with other organisational efforts)
- Needs to be a constant, not a one day event
3) Innovation as a strategic business development tool
- The innovative environment: Organisational innovation enabling as one of the key competences of top management
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- Stop just talking about:
- A zero fail culture - live it
- Tearing down silos - allow them to overflow
- Being agile and change ready - and then hire next quarter accountants
- Cases on strategic briefs
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- LEGO: "A brick centred for girls age 6 to 12"
- Newspaper from burning money to be profitable again
- Trophy games: "Make more money (without spending more)”
4) Innovation as a employee development tool
- Be open with your idea. And ideas is just an idea. Taking action makes the idea valuable.
- Focus on adding value to each other
- As a collaborator: Innovation needs to happen in an open and sharing environment with many competences present, being the perfect environment to make cross-organisational collaboration happen
- As a change-maker: Many people are afraid of change and will thus resist it. But bringing new product/services to the market and thus continue to be a relevant company is understandable for everybody, and changes happening because of that, are easier accepted throughout the whole organisation
- As a personnel developer: When employees get to show new sides of themselves, they feel better and you as an employer get to realise more of their value
- As an overall growth enabler: Be able to see and realise new opportunities
- Give the employees relevance in their job so they will not resist
5) 5 primary takeaways:
- An idea is just an idea - work you ass off on “THE Idea!”
- Innovation is about SHARING - NOT Protecting
- Let yourself be inspired from other areas than you core competence ground (art, business, departments, children…)
- Don’t shy away from aiming for the stars - you can always compromise later. Go for what you really want to do
- Don’t draw rockets - build rails
How to do an Innovation/ideation project:
- Regard Innovation like your production. Set deadlines, timelines for different funnels
- Set a frequency for your ideation activities that are set in the calendar
- Start your ideation,
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- Workshop (most effective in his experience) 2-5 consecutive days at least once a year, make it easy, set the participants
- Avoid Mailboxes (digital, physical) they tend to become invisible to the employees, forgotten, and lower engagement
- Needs to be done but should not be a burden, with a reoccurring frequency (twice, once a year).
- Don’t set boundaries for the ideas
- Draw your ideas. Don’t overthink or think of feasibility
- Merge ideas
- Normally create new ideas every 30 sec. => creates lots of noises but they can be easy removed
- Theis gives a price to the person with the most ideas in a session.
- Don’t work on An Idea. Work on “THE IDEA”
Innovation/Ideation Process/framework
- Start with a strategic brief (From top management)
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- Where am I lacking relevance in the market?
- Innovation is a process that starts with ideation
- Invite more people that you think you need to invite or other people you might think relevant
- You start with creating a lot of ideas (lots of horses). E.g. Lego 10s of thousands of ideas. The quality is in the quantity
- Don’t set boundaries; they limit you. Aim for the stars. Then you have the direction and can always compromise if needed
- Mix ideas. Everyone has many ideas but you need to go through a funnel
- Put ideas in patterns and clusters
- Hone the ideas, breed and mix them together and create new ideas
- Define where to go
- Spend your time with the most potential ideas. The earlier in the process you can evaluate which ideas have the most value (business, sales, market, cash, necessity…) the better.
- Cross pollination
- Input from outside innovation department and your industry can be very helpful to grow
- Marketing entry
- What is the outcome of the ideation and who gets the outcome (defined for each step of the process)
- To be able to work on “The Ideas” you need to create many Ideas
- The idea is to kill many ideas through the panel
Cross Pollination
- Share ideas don’t protect them
- Where to draw ides from to get inspired
- Marketing Innovation
Reach out to Theis Barenkopf Dinesen:
Company Idea & daughters www.idda.dk
His future Book: “How to stay infinitely customer related”
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