Create Three Distinct Career Paths for Innovators
• Gina Colarelli O’Connor
• Andrew Corbett

• Ron Pierantozzi
https://hbr.org/2009/12/create-three-distinct-career-paths-for-innovators?autocomplete=true


Remember our work at Kellogg and MDG—we need the right skills along the growth journey

Big companies are much better at incremental innovation than they are at radical innovation. That’s as true now as it was 20 years ago, despite countless programs aimed at strengthening innovation capabilities. To understand why, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute studied 21 large companies’ efforts to build a capability for breakthrough innovations over several years. They found that even though companies pay lip service to innovation, most fail to provide the formal structure and support that programs need to succeed, such as an autonomous organization, processes tailored for highly uncertain work, and well-designed metrics. 

What’s more, the research reveals that companies fundamentally mismanage their innovation talent. Typically, large companies rotate high-potential managers in and out of the innovation leadership role on a regular basis. That may give the rising stars broad experience, but it deprives the company of any real innovation expertise at a senior level. Even more damaging, companies don’t provide meaningful growth opportunities for their innovation professionals. So although there are plenty of great jobs in innovation, there are no careers. One member of an innovation hub in a large consumer products company explains, “I could help launch $4, $5, $6 billion businesses over the next five years, and I won’t get promoted into leadership for this company.” 

To remedy that problem, companies must first understand that breakthrough innovation consists of three phases: 

Discovery: Creating or identifying high-impact market opportunities.Incubation: Experimenting with technology and business concepts to design a viable model for a new business.Acceleration: Developing a business until it can stand on its own.

Consider the unique competencies each phase requires. During discovery, employees often do bench science or technological experimentation as they think about how an innovation might satisfy a marketplace need. During incubation, employees experiment recursively with technology and market opportunities and try to anticipate the impact the breakthrough business may have on the company’s strategy. During acceleration, established-business capabilities such as scaling up processes, imposing discipline, and specialization are needed. Each phase lends itself to distinct career paths, as well. The bench scientist, for instance, may eventually want to be involved in policy discussions about emerging technologies and how they may influence the company’s future. The incubator may want to pursue a technical path—managing larger, longer-term projects—or to manage a portfolio of emerging businesses. And the accelerating manager may want to stay with the business as it grows, take on a leadership role in a functional specialty, or move into other general-management roles in the corporation. 

Rather than develop those paths, however, many firms assume that an individual will be promoted along with a project as it grows from discovery through to acceleration. In reality, individuals with that breadth of skill sets are extremely rare. In other words, companies have essentially been setting their innovators up to fail. Imagine how much a company might improve its innovation if it allowed workers who excelled in, say, the discovery phase to focus on emerging innovation opportunities rather than forcing them to acquire the skills needed for incubation or acceleration. The accompanying exhibit can serve as a guide for executives who are ready to build career paths for their company’s innovators—and to reap the rewards of a sustainable innovation function.

Four Business Models for the Digital Age
John Sviokla

https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Four-Business-Models-for-the-Digital-Age?gko=67c74&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20180417&utm_campaign=resp

Start thinking the future

Digitization, which is of course happening all around us, is opening up a whole new spectrum of opportunities to create value. But how do you navigate this new horizontal world? 

Opportunities for companies in every industry are occurring on two critical dimensions: knowledge of the end customer and business design, i.e., breadth of product and service offerings. These dimensions combine to form four business models for creating value (see exhibit): Suppliers, Multichannel Businesses, Modular Producers, and Ecosystem Drivers. 

Suppliers, in the lower left quadrant, have little direct knowledge of the preferences of their end customers, and may or may not have a direct relationship with them. These companies sell their products and services to distributors in the value chain. Due to the ease of digital search, they are vulnerable to pricing pressures and commoditization as customers look for less expensive alternatives. Washing-machine manufacturers are a good example of Suppliers, as are companies that create mutual funds sold by someone else. 

If you are a Supplier, you need to make sure your operations are as efficient as possible, but that’s only the first step. As digitization continues, end customers will increasingly expect you to cater to their likes and needs. So if you don’t know much about your end customers and aren’t intent on solving their problems, you’ll need to find other ways to ward off commoditization. That means making sure that your product is highly differentiated or that it goes through a distribution channel other than one controlled by an Ecosystem Driver, another of the business models, which has a broad supply base. Otherwise, you risk losing all the value your enterprise has created 

Haier, the world’s largest manufacturer of white goods, has deployed various strategies to differentiate itself from competitors. It has developed a variety of niche products, including washing machines that accommodate the long gowns worn by women in Pakistan, and freezers that can keep food frozen for 30 hours in the event of a power outage in Nigeria. More recently, Haier used the Internet to open up its innovation process to people outside the company, enabling an unprecedented level of customization. 

Multichannel Businesses, in the upper left quadrant, have deep knowledge of their consumers because they enjoy a direct relationship with them. Companies in this category provide access to their products in various digital and physical channels to ensure the seamless experience their end customers have come to expect. Many banks and brokerage houses are Multichannel Businesses, as are some retailers and insurance companies. 

If you are an Multichannel Business, there’s no such thing as too much customer knowledge. Broadening your understanding your customers’ life-event needs is essential for building out the integrated experience that will retain existing consumers and attract new ones. 

IKEA, the world’s largest furniture company, is an example of an Multichannel Business that continues to find ways to enhance the range of offerings within its value chain. Building upon its global presence — currently more than 300 stores in 41 countries — IKEA used its extensive knowledge of its customers (gleaned through visits to homes, for example) to develop “products for an everyday life” — from bedroom furniture to prepared food, all under IKEA’s iconic brand. After decades of focus on the customer experience in its stores, IKEA recently launched online shopping, making the purchasing experience truly seamless and gaining a way to learn even more about its customers.Modular Producers, in the lower right quadrant, offer a distinct capability that spans the ecosystem, but they have little direct knowledge of the end customer. Their plug-and-play offerings can work with any number of channels or partners, but they rely on others for distribution as well as for guidance on what the customer needs. A good example is payment companies that enable the consumer to pay for a wide range of goods and services, such as groceries and college tuition. 

If you are a Modular Producer, you need to be the best at everything. As is the case with Suppliers, competition is fierce, so your offerings need to be innovative and well priced.Square Inc. fits the profile of a Modular Producer. Founded in 2009, the B2B payments company has continuously launched innovative software and hardware products that are ecosystem-agnostic. Square’s point-of-sale, payroll, employee management, and appointment apps can be used on Apple and Android devices alike, as can its chip and magstrip readers. 

Ecosystem Drivers, in the upper right quadrant, have the best of both worlds: deep end-customer knowledge and a broad supply base. They leverage these dimensions to provide consumers with a seamless experience, selling not only their own proprietary products and services but also those from providers across the entire ecosystem. Thus, they create value for themselves while extracting rent from others. Large internet retailers in the U.S. and China are good examples of Ecosystem Drivers, as are some healthcare providers. 

If you are an Ecosystem Driver, you’ll want to keep pushing the boundaries in both dimensions, increasing your knowledge of end customers and the breadth of offerings available to them… 

…research demonstrates, the prospects for creating value are greatest for companies that participate in ecosystems rather than in value chains, so Ecosystem Drivers have the greatest potential for value creation and Suppliers the smallest. All four paths are viable routes to enduring success, provided you are clear on what your generic strategy is and what that strategy requires. If, however, you are losing customers or growing more slowly than your market, you should consider moving to a different quadrant, either by expanding your knowledge of your end customers or by becoming more of an ecosystem.Or even by doing both: GE is moving from being a Supplier of industrial products to an Ecosystem Driver in the Industrial Internet of Things, with the help of Predix, the cloud-based operating system it launched last year. Serving as a platform for services provided by third-party vendors as well as GE business units, Predix helps companies collect, analyze, and leverage operational data so they can optimize the performance of their entire system. As Predix’s customer base grows, so will GE’s status as an Ecosystem Driver. 

As digital becomes the new normal, the paths to success are there for the taking. But be sure you know your destination before setting out.

Office Politics make BEST PEOPLE quit.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/office-politics-make-best-people-quit-oleg-vishnepolsky/

Oleg Vishnepolsky

Strong Cultural issues

Office politics are defined by self-interests and agendas that run ahead of business goals. Management is ready sacrifice success in order to look good or to maintain control.
Sure signs of a highly political environment:

Office Politics 101: Blame-games, finger pointing

Office Politics 102: Mind-games and manipulation.
Office Politics 103: Managers operate by pressure - not by inspiration nor by support.
Office Politics 104: Setting up people to fail.
Office Politics 105: Honesty is considered to be a threat.
Office Politics 106: Not sharing relevant information in order to maintain control.
Office Politics 107: Responsibility avoidance and dilution.

Office Politics 108: Not hiring nor promoting strong performers so as not endanger own position.
Office Politics 109: Spreading rumors to damage someone’s reputation.
Office Politics 110: Misrepresenting own accomplishment to make oneself look better at expense of others. Taking credit for other people's successful work, and "crediting" them when their efforts fail
Office Politics 111: Favoritism and nepotism.
Office Politics 112: False promises to get someone to do something, e. g. to accept a job or a responsibility.
Office Politics 114: Micromanagement and excessive control.

Sure signs that you work in a healthy environment free from toxic politics.
1) Leadership is open, fair, authentic, honest, friendly and supportive.
2) Failures and mistakes are treated as lessons. Finger-pointing is frowned upon.
3) Employees are trusted and empowered.
4) People are promoted and rewarded on the basis of their accomplishments, not political favors.
5) Leadership takes real risks for employees, stands up for them, gets them what they need, is there for them when they run into problems.
6) Best ideas win.
7) Employees come first.
8) Loyalty, talent and hard-work are appreciated and recognized.
Seek respect, not attention. It lasts a lot longer.
Seek loyalty, not obedience. It is worth a lot more.

Why Companies Need to Build a Skills Inventory
Jeff Hesse

https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Why-Companies-Need-to-Build-a-Skills-Inventory?gko=8b016&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20180425&utm_campaign=resp

Critical for the future –dollars are fungible, people are not

Here’s a question every leader should answer: Do you have a clear understanding of your people’s skills, and where the gaps are? 

Odds are, the answer is no. Although the cloud, digitization, and the Internet of Things allow businesses to gather and analyze all sorts of data, few organizations today have a system in place to track the skills they have. And even fewer apply that knowledge to gauge what skills they lack, both now and in the future — which presents a challenge, given that in tomorrow’s automation- and data-driven workplace, talent will be scarce and the needs of your organization will change often. 

It’s clear that digital disruption is already here. In our Workforce of the Future study, which draws on research begun in 2007 by a team from PwC and the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, we envision what the workforce will look like in 2030. While it’s impossible to predict exactly the skills businesses will need even five years from now, every scenario we imagine will require workers and organizations to be ready to adapt. PwC’s most recent CEO survey found that more than half of CEOs said they were exploring how machines and humans can work together. And 39 percent said they’re considering the effect automation will have on their workforce. 

Even now, with automation still in its early days, CEOs told us that finding the skills they need has become the biggest challenge to their business — a situation that will only get more acute as technology evolves and competition for talent tightens. Companies in a range of industries are scrambling to find people who can work with AI or train industrial robots, disciplines that may have been esoteric just a few years ago.Given the dynamics, it is vital for you to have a system in place that can track and analyze the skills your people already have — and those they may need soon. Building such a system is a significant undertaking. Breaking it down into four steps can help you get started. 

Step 1: Make an inventory of your people’s dynamic skills. Before you can even begin to think about the future, you need to know what skills your people have. Start by considering the particular skills your business needs, and then categorize them. This categorization could be done by functional skills, such as financial modeling or accounting, or by technical skills, such as programming. While doing so, you should also categorize the level of those skills, from novice to expert. It’s also important that employers look beyond workers’ job titles to consider what skills they have that they may not be using.Next, think about the best way to inventory those skills. Organizations that are small- to medium-sized don’t necessarily need a high-tech solution to create this inventory — it could be a simple system in conjunction with your HR platform, or even just a spreadsheet.Larger companies with hundreds or thousands of employees will need a more advanced technological solution, such as an app. At PwC, we created a widely available app called Digital Fitness Assessment. We’ve been using this easy, intuitive workforce platform to help our people assess their own technology skills and create personal learning paths to improve professional development. Imagine if your organization had a candid assessment of your people’s digital proficiency.Creating an inventory can’t be a one-time exercise, or a static project. You’ll need to update it as your people’s skills evolve, as your organization’s needs change, and as people come and go. 

Step 2: Organize your inventory. Once you have the basic inventory in place, begin to organize it in a way that makes it highly searchable. The key here is to make sure you can search and access the data quickly, with good results. The inventory won’t be useful if you can’t efficiently search for a specific skill or attribute, or easily access the information you need.CEOs told us that finding the skills they need has become the biggest challenge to their business.Free-form keywords aren’t reliable, because someone might refer to a certain skill using one term, while someone else might call it something different. One person’s “coding” might be another person’s “software writing,” or people may describe sales skills in fundamentally different ways. So it’s critical to figure out how you can organize the data to produce useful query results. Or you can implement a powerful search engine that doesn’t rely on how the data is organized. 

Step 3: Analyze your skills. With the data in place, you can begin analyzing it. This can be simple (comparing rows on a spreadsheet) or more complex (using people analytics or apps to find and assess certain skill sets). The goal here is to gain insight into where your employees’ skills are the strongest, where they’re thin, and where the gaps are, and then whether those gaps are on the functional side or the technical side.As with building the inventory, analysis isn’t a one-time exercise. How closely you track your people’s skills depends on the needs of your business. In manufacturing or retail, where a lot of people may be doing the same job, you might not need to track skills too closely (unless you’re looking at roles you’re seeking to transform). But if your organization demands certain unique skill sets, such as those in financial services, pharmaceuticals, or some highly technical industries, you’ll want to give skill tracking more time and attention. 

Step 4: Plan for the future. Once you’ve built an inventory and analyzed your people’s skills, you can start planning for the future. Trying to gauge the skills your company will need two to three years down the road with a few viable scenarios can be a valuable exercise. Rather than being caught off guard by a sudden gap in skills or having to hire people with certain skills at the last minute in the open market, companies armed with such knowledge can plan ahead through hiring, training, and career development strategies. 

These steps inform a broader workforce strategy. It’s important not to forget that planning your strategy shouldn’t happen in a vacuum — it should always be connected to larger, unified business goals. All functions must work together to build a skills plan for the future. 

There’s a lot we don’t know about tomorrow. But workers and organizations should be as ready as possible. By identifying the skills you need and starting to concentrate on how to build them, you’ll be better prepared for the changes coming your way.