Smart growth: The system integration imperative

We have reached the boundaries of a certain type of growth: Dumb Growth, which is productive but unsustainable, unfair, fragile and driven by incomes.

A new economic model is emerging, recognizing that Business can no longer be driven by a Profit-led logic that would, on one hand, neglect the larger system it operates in and, on the other hand, expect sustainable financial growth.

The System Integration Imperative

Businesses can be a formidable leverage to human and societal progress.

If they are "smart".

Smart Businesses are run while integrating the “Triple Bottom Line” - People, Planet, Profit - into their core purpose and processes. Their Vision, their strategic intent and their way of making Business allows meaningful Value creation for all stakeholders and issues.

Smart Growth is innovative, sustainable, fair, resilient, driven by outcomes. For Businesses to succeed, the Win-Win nature of Smart Growth must replace the Win-Lose nature of Dumb Growth.We can connect Purpose with Profitability.

See also Michael Porter in Harvard Business Review

http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value/ar/1

Five common mistakes Business leaders make about innovation

In this excellent article, claritty is made about five main usual mistakes in managing Innovation in a strategic way. 
They show how "conventional wisdom" might be very conventional .. and not wise at all 
Here is a summary of this article 

1. Believe the numbers. One common mistake is to insist on “seeing the numbers” too soon.  If a CEO insists on hard numbers before the project is even started, it will by sheer definition kill off any truly innovative ones, simply because you cannot compute the size of a market that does not exist yet.

2. The success trap. When an organization becomes very good at something, it usually starts to focus on the thing (product, technology, or business model) that made its success–thereby crowding out other options and points of view. 

3. Believe they know the competition.The most threatening competition often comes from a completely different angle: an adjacent industry, innovative start-up, or substitute.  Thinking your biggest competitor is the company most like you will leave a company dangerously exposed to outside innovation.

4. Believe that because everybody had always done it this way, it is the best way of doing things. Industries are rife with habits and business practices from which no one can quite remember why we do them this way.  In many businesses, practices emerged with good reason, but once the circumstances changed, firms carried on using them for no reason whatsoever. The greatest innovations often come from challenging industry convention.

5. Asking the customers for their opinions. Consumer research often is useful but not for truly innovative ideas and markets that do not exist yet. In conclusion, if you want to be really innovative, you have to be leading the customers; not be led by them.

Find the complete version of this article 

http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2011/05/23/five-common-mistakes-business-leaders-make-about-innovation/?mod=google_news_blog

The Creative Thinking imperative

To design innovative ways forward and shape our Future for the best, it is vital to move away from just recognising standard situations and providing standard answers.

Today's challenges call for us to tap on all of the Creativity and Knowledge at our disposal. They require a Creative - even "Revolutionary", not incremental - Thinking to invent the widest range of solutions for the challenges now facing our lives.

The 2010 IBM Global CEO Study, conducted among 1541 leaders accros the world, reveals that today's CEOs consider that Creativity trumps other leadership characteristics.  "We need to embrace ambiguity, take risks that disrupt legacy business models". "We need to find, recognize and reward creativity." CEOs saw the need to seed creativity across their organizations rather than set apart "creative types" in siloed departments like product design.

With few exceptions, CEOs expect continued disruption in one form or another. The new economic environment, they agree, is substantially more volatile, much more uncertain, increasingly complex and structurally different.

Still, decisions must be made. As CEOs turn their attention to growth, a significant number said their success depends on doubling their revenue from new sources over the next five years.

This means CEOs must shake up their portfolios, business models, old ways of working and long-held assumptions. They have to address what customers now care about and reassess how value is generated.

Insight about the path forward. It will require entirely new leadership styles, new approaches to better understanding customers, and new and flexible structures for their businesses

It is no longer sufficient, or even possible, to view the world within the confines of an industry, or a discipline, or a process, or even a nation. A critical aspect of their learning will be to determine which elements of complexity — for example, overcomplicated internal processes or inflexible customer interactions — are unnecessary or hinder value creation. Likewise, they will need to identify which aspects can be harnessed for greater efficiency, innovation or growth.

Tectonic Change area

Do you remember what happens to a frog which is drop in boiling water?

It immediately jumps out of the pot.

On the contrary, when placed in cold water which is progressively brought to a boiling point, it remains in the water and dies.

Do you know why?

Because the signal of change is too weak in the second case to create a survival reflex.

Aren't we all a big "froggy"?

Arent't we all a little blind to the signals of change that are all around us?

That's exactly the point we refer to in our Corporation Map if we look at The "Tectonic Change Area" 

This is where some of the most destructive "Business Tsunamis" have originated! like the financial "crisis" of 2008. High waves of Innovation keep washing out the old-fashioned Businesses and Industries, obsolete Management systems, decaying Thinking approaches etc. etc. Today, new warning signals appear and are getting stronger. But a majority of companies continue to ignore them.


We should all learn to better feel and sense the world as it emerges, instead of treying to make it fit in our old perceptions and models. 

"We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history — a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world."

— Willis Harman, Global Mind Change

The Corporation Map

Our "Corporation Map" is a metaphorical island on which you will find the majority of natural, structural and irrational elements that are present in organisations, companies or working communities. After all, all of them are human and economic ecosystems.

Contrary to what happens on a "normal" island where the weather imposes itself to the population, on our island, the leader and the managers are responsible for the quality and the consistency of the overall climate.

In other words, strong, enlightened leadership and management keep correcting,

reducing and/or eliminating the "sinister" elements which plague the left area of the island.

At the same time, they create and constantly optimise operating conditions to generate results and contribute to the success of their customers! While inventing the Future!

As any island, ours is surrounded by an external context made of various seas

and oceans on which and under which things are taking place: events, changes,

paradigm shifts etc.

Next week, we will start the guided visit in more details 

In the meantime, you can have a look at the Corporation Map on our website.

The Corporation Map

Our "Corporation Map" is a metaphorical island on which you will find the majority of natural, structural and irrational elements that are present in organisations, companies or working communities. After all, all of them are human and economic ecosystems.

Contrary to what happens on a "normal" island where the weather imposes itself to the population, on our island, the leader and the managers are responsible for the quality and the consistency of the overall climate.

In other words, strong, enlightened leadership and management keep correcting, reducing and/or eliminating the "sinister" elements which plague the left area of the island. At the same time, they create and constantly optimise operating conditions to generate results and contribute to the success of their customers! While inventing the Future!

As any island, ours is surrounded by an external context made of various seas and oceans on which and under which things are taking place: events, changes, paradigm shifts etc.

Next week, we will start a guided visit of specif areas. 

In the meantime, you can have a look at the whole Corporation Map on our website. 

We have been interviewed by PUB and Greenhouse|BBC as part of a group of 12 experts about the growth blockages CEOs are facing today and how to overcome them. In the interview, we share the learnings and insights gained through our work with CEOs and what can be done to avoid these pitfalls. 

We think that you will find the interviews interesting and revealing. Here's the link 

where you can read more and get your copy www.UnlockYourGrowthPotential.be

Every week, you will discover the insights and recommendations of one of the 12 experts. 

You can choose to download, read or listen to the interview - whichever suits you best.