Trends, Futurism, and Research

    Fractional Chief Innovation Officer (CINO)

    A Practical Solution for Medium Sized Companies to Grow

    The 80/20 Solution for the MisFortune 10,000

    The Fortune 1,000 work innovation process like mad. Many have fine-tuned frameworks with a high level of sophistication. That lowers risk. However, elaborate innovation frameworks slow things down. This mild paralysis is an opening for small and medium sized companies. They can grow by beating bigger players to the punch. But the “MisFortune 10,000” tend to miss this opportunity.

    Time to consider a Fractional Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) to load up that innovation punch. Here’s why.

    Speed and momentum matter in innovation, even more so to smaller firms. Leverage the innate agility. The best way to ramp up and grow quickly, beyond having a great initial business idea, is to continuously innovate. It’s strategic for a growth oriented organization.

    This means you need a bona fide innovation professional on staff. A full time Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) is a large line item expense, and, most small and medium sized companies simply can’t afford one — or think they can’t. Instead, it’s up to the skeleton C-Suite team, already maxed out, to not only formalize operations, but also, continue to invent. That never works. Those functions are polar opposites.

    Real expertise is expensive and many second stage companies get sticker shock when faced with hiring expertise. CEO’s and founders of these companies are used to the high performance/low pay model they got used to in the first phase of growth.

    Lack of innovation expertise is a major reason MisFortune 10,000 struggle to grow. A Fractional CINO addresses these missing skill sets:

    The MisFortune 10,000 Tend to Lack These Innovation Skills:

    • Process and Innovation Project Management Skills — including: team building, culture leadership, innovation project roadmapping, and more. If you’re mid-sized, paying attention to growing these skills helps you grow.
    • Market Research — qualitative, quantitative, and ethnographic research are rarely done in mid-sized organizations. In general “insight development” (finding opportunities to grow) is something that should not be purely intuitive. Doing even basic market research takes training and experience.
    • Facilitation — who conducts strategy, visioning, ideation, and solution development meetings? It’s almost impossible for an insider, with other duties and biases, to do this well.
    • Prototyping — including: design, graphic arts, and concept writing are skills that go beyond engineering. New ideas need to integrate product development with marketing and sales as well.
    • Product Development — taking good ideas and fine tuning, branding, and packaging, all require informed creativity, and, hands-on, knowledge and experience.
    • Digital Technology and Marketing — It’s hard to emphasize what a big innovation opportunity (or a huge pitfall) the plethora of new digital tech is for a second stage company.

    Fractional Trend

    It’s the 80/20 rule. Hiring a Fractional CINO gets you most of the pricey benefits of having innovation process experience. Don’t be put off by the new jargon, a strategic part timer isn’t a new concept, but it is an emerging trend.

    Look at what GigX is doing, or Toptal in the software/financial space. There are many firms and consultants offering CxO fractional services. The Edward Lowe Foundation provides strategic growth assistance as part of their many and varied programs for second stage companies. The win for the fractional person is straightforward — it’s flexible, part time, interesting, well paid, work.

    Hire a Fractional Chief Innovation Officer, It’s the 80/20 Solution

    A Fractional Chief Innovation Officer is a practical, high value solution. A part time strategic asset gets your organization focused on the most essential, growth oriented, innovation projects.

    A Fractional Chief Innovation Officer is a MisFortune 10,000 solution for growth.

    GFi does fractional CINO work. Final thought: Non-profits need CINO skills too.

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    USA Now an Innovation Also-Ran — 11th in World

    USA, Now An Innovation Loser STEM Skills the Major Culprit Suggests a CCC-ish “American Science Corp” This is my annual blog reporting on the Bloomberg Innovation Index 2021 edition. The USA was 9th last year. Now, the USA has fallen to 11th in the annual ranking of innovation by country. Like last year, the continued slide (we were #1 in 2013) is due mostly to lack of investment in hard science, manufacturing, and technology education. See the Bloomberg Innovation Index report for 2020 here. It’s a truly rich report and it gives a great picture of which countries are primed, and are doing, great things. Is it a perfect measure? No. But it’s a hell of an indicator. The USA

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    Creative Flow Challenge

    18 Day Challenge Builds Creativity Create An Amazing 2021 Register now for a transformative experience The Creative Flow Challenge is an 18 day adventure in personal self-expression. The benefits of better access to your creativity AND consistent creative effectiveness are achievable. You’ll create daily, inspired by prompts to get you into flow. Don’t wait for lightning to strike. Join the challenge. Learn how to light your own candle. The challenge starts December 14th and goes through December 31. It requires at least a half hour of daily creative work. Every Day during the challenge. Register now. Benefits of the Creative Flow Challenge Strengthen your belief in, and access to, your creative power Gain fluidity in generating better ideas Get perspective

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    The Shining Digital City On the Hill

    Digital Technology Remains An Unharvested Field There is so much innovation potential being left on the table, right now, that our future could truly be that shining city on the hill. The potential, much of it, lays in digital technology. Your future could be that company that thrives amidst chaos. Your future could be that person who surfs above the waves of massive change. But there’s a big IF isn’t there? You won’t get any results if you don’t invest in innovation now. That phrase “city on the hill,” thanks to Ronald Reagan, has come to represent American exceptionalism, but, here, I intend it to mean something bigger, and more akin to the biblical source it comes from. What it

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    USA Falling Behind in Innovation

    Main Culprit? Lack of Education in Science, Manufacturing, Construction, and Engineering Infrastructure and Education Project Idea: Learn, Build, Innovate USA The USA is 9th in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index. The USA leads in a couple of categories, including “High Tech Density” and “Patent Activity” — so that’s good. But that’s not the whole story. Can we agree that innovation drives economies? The stock market is actually a questionable indicator of economic health, particularly looking to the future. The Bloomberg Innovation Index shows broad trends related to a countries ability to create. The ability to create is at the heart of any economy. So, this is our future USA citizens, a slow slide into mediocrity, unless we change. It’s true at the national level, and

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    Accelerate Innovation — With Experiential Learning

    Experiential Learning Accelerates Innovation Innovation Session Designs Don’t Engage New Study: Drawing is the Fastest, Most Effective Way to Learn I read with interest an article stating that drawing accelerates learning. It does. Using experiential learning tools like drawing isn’t really new in innovation process. What’s new is the hard proof, and, using tools more deliberately. Sunni Brown, Dave Gray, Dan Roam, and yours truly all use experiential learning tools in innovation projects. In spite of many success stories it’s not done nearly enough. The reason? Most corporate innovators have no training in using experiential tools. They don’t know how to scaffold a learning experience. They go straight to brainstorming without preparing minds, and that’s a big reason sessions fail. The article I reference is in Inc. Magazine by

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    Disaster: CEO’s Ignoring Digital Innovation

    Does Any CEO Have the Luxury to Ignore Digital Transformation and Innovation? Gregg Fraley and Karen Kirby, copyright 2017 Innovation + Business + Technology = Digital Leadership Turnover of CEOs is already high, about 14.9 % a year as of 2016*. The demands of digital leadership and the enterprises of the future could dramatically accelerate that rate in the next few years. The conversation CEOs need to be having, to remain in the shrinking 85.1%, is about how to integrate digital technology and seize new pathways to industry leadership. In HBO’s Game of Thrones there has been that recurring foreboding phrase, “winter is coming.” For years, the phrase has been whispered in the ears of CEOs “digital is coming”. They

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    Five Ways Incivility Decapitates Innovation

    A Culture of Incivility Harms USA Innovation Five Ways Incivility “Decapitates” Innovation The recent flap around Kathy Griffin’s posting a picture of a fake severed head, of our President, was a sad attempt at humor, but incredibly successful at provocation. It has brought up the discussion, once again, of the civility of our discourse in America. I think Tiffany Quay Tyson does a nice job of summing up how many people are reacting to the Griffin incident, and the subsequent howls of reaction. No matter your political persuasion, civil discourse, and it’s close cousins, politeness, gentility, tolerance, compassion, and good manners have slipped far from where we once were. Those who keep track of civility are in agreement about the

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    To Innovate, Invest (USA, UK, listening?)

    Ben Tarnoff’s recent article for the Guardian hits hard. America has become so anti-innovation – it’s economic suicide This article is worth a careful reading. If you care about American Innovation, or UK Innovation for that matter, you’d better realize something; our governments are currently committing economic suicide. They are doing this by not investing in deep theoretical science and in infrastructure. Small “i” innovation is something we do well in the USA, but we can’t live on that kind of innovation forever. We need to create new markets and build new jobs based on new science and technology, new materials, and new infrastructure. This means countries like China, who are investing, are paving the way for their future success.

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    Innovation MoshPit

    What’s Really Needed is an Innovation MoshPit Reinventing Combinations, Concept Blends, and Mash-Ups I’ve been touting concept blends in innovation for some time. My reason is simple, it’s a fast path to new and different ideas. From the Printing Press to the iPhone, big new market-creating innovation happens when concepts from two different domains are combined. These Mash-Ups are not intuitive for most people to do and maybe that’s why some people try it and fail. Take heart, smart people can do concept blends with careful mental scaffolding. The key benefit to concept blends for organizations is finding breakthrough innovation. It’s my contention that a lot of breakthrough innovation is left on the table because not enough thinking work is

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