BQF Innovation

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation special interest group will take place in Westminster on the morning of Wednesday July 30th.  The topic is competency traps and the main presentation will be given by Richard Granger, Senior Associate at Arthur D Little.  What are competency traps?  They concern the aspects of a company’s skills, experiences, competencies and successes which inhibit innovation.  In this session we will learn how to spot the traps and how to avoid them.  There will be an interactive element where delegates review the potential competency traps in their organisations.

You can see details of the event and book your place here:

http://bqf.org.uk/cgi-bin/eventdetail.cgi?Event_Code=728&ID=1688

Please book early as places are limited.  Members, guests and non-members are all welcome.

Paul Sloane

I read an interesting post on the E-myth blog about UPS.  They found that they could save time and fuel by instructing drivers not to turn left.  It sounds crazy but by planning their routes to include only right turns they saved time spent waiting to turn left.

‘In 2004, after evaluating their CO2 emissions, UPS announced that its drivers would avoid making left turns. They calculated that the amount of time spent idling waiting to make a left turn would save millions of dollars in fuel costs every year. For example, in 2006 UPS trucks drove 2.5 billion miles, and with their unique package flow technology combined with their right-turn routes, they estimate saving 28,541,472 million miles, and three million gallons of fuel. ’

How many things are you doing in your organisation that seem natural and inuitive but need to be challenged?  What are the left turns you are taking that should be replaced?  Time to start some counter-intuitive thinking.

Paul Sloane

The BQF annual leadership conference went well.   Here are some of the key messages I took away from the speakers:

Tim Cross, former army officer, gave an inspirational talk.  He argued that the key thing missing for most modern leaders was a sense of moral purpose.  We think we can solve society’s ills by exercising levers in politics and economics but without a moral imperative we will not succeed.

Susan Scott-Parker, founder of the Employer’s forum on Disability, asked whether the world was a frog or a bicycle.  Is it one organic whole or can you replace and upgrade parts?  She believes that assumptions are more powerful than facts.

Tim Peach, MD of Taylor Woodrow Construction, believed that everyone in the company could improve by 15 to 20% so he set about a programme to change behaviours.  This started with 360 feedback sessions and went on to a series of actions and activities that have affected everyone.  His message was very well received and he was bombarded with questions.

Nigel Risner, superstar speaker, gave an energetic and entertaining performance which challenged the audience in many ways.  Do leaders know the key personal priorities of their people?  What represents success for you and are you spending time on making it happen?  Are leaders handling different types of people in ways appropriate to their (animal) characters?  Each message was delivered with humour, interaction and creativity.

The was lots more excellent stuff from the speakers and it was good to network.  Make a note to come to next year’s event.

Paul Sloane

Last week I ran a session for GBPA corporate members where we discussed innovation metrics.  We reviewed the Boston Consulting Group 2007 research on the subject and the results of my innovation metrics web survey.  It was agreed that most organisations find it difficult to measure innovation in any satisfactory way.  The most common measurements are backward looking - e.g. % of revenue from products released in the last two years.  The BCG report recommends that you select a small number of metrics appropriate for your business and have some for inputs, process and outputs.  At the meeting we discussed which were the best metrics to use and here are some of our choices:

Input metrics:

• Number of ideas generated
• Resources allocated to innovation - people and budget

Process Metrics

• Average time from idea approval to implementation
• Number of ideas approved and number implemented
• Stage-gate pass rates
• Value of the innovation pipeline

Output metrics

• Number of new products or services launched
• Revenue from new products or services
• ROI on innovation spend
• Market Perception
• Number of new customers

We also found it useful to draw flow-chart diagrams of the innovation approval and pipeline processes and ask some searching questions about this.  Are we getting enough ideas coming in?  Is it taking too long for good ideas to be implemented?  Are we getting enough innovations out of the process?  Are our approval processes too complicated or too difficult?

It was agreed that everyone should have targets or objectives for innovation.  In collaborative ventures it is particularly important to agree goals, expectations and metrics for innovation at the outset.

There are no perfect measurements for innovation.  All the metrics are limited in value.  But that does not mean that you should not use them.  By choosing and applying a small number of metrics appropriate for your business you can add innovation to your balanced scorecard and give it the high level attention that it needs if you are to succeed.

Paul Sloane