Welcome back to the innovation universe series. I'm Dr. Nancy Tennant, and we're in chapter two. Let's look at our innovation universe wayfinder, the one that you saw in the introduction. Here you can see that frame is one of the four critical platforms for innovation within a company. In this module, we'll look at how frame helps transform your company to be more innovative frame is the platform that ensures that the strategic mandate for innovation is in place and understood by all innovators. It's the linkage between your enterprise or business unit strategy and innovation.

You know, in the Innovation universe frame is the Northstar. Okay, let's get started. We have three learning objectives in the frame module. First of all, we want to understand frame and its role in innovation within companies. Secondly, we're going to practice using framing tools to help you improve your strategic innovation skills. And lastly, we're going to use frame to focus and gain alignment within your company.

I'm going to tell you a secret about the innovation universe. frame was not always in the model. If you would have seen the model, let's say four or five years ago, it would have only had three platforms in it embed, lead and generate frame was not there. It was the black hole in the innovation universe, just a empty space that I learned, needed filled. So here's why the black hole was there. The black hole was there or frame didn't exist because I just assumed that companies are already linking innovation to their strategy.

It's ironic that I fell into the same trap that many companies do, which is I just assumed it was there. So here's really what brought me to my senses, observations that helped me close the black hole. And to add frame to the innovation universe. Let me give you a scenario one that really happened. And let's see if you can spot the problem one frame is non existent in a company that's trying to innovate. I recently worked for a large international food company, who had led their market for over 60 years, but now because of competitive pressures and changing consumer demands, and a host of other reasons, they were rapidly losing market share.

And so they decided that they needed innovation to help solve their problem. I was lucky enough to be invited to their annual senior leadership meeting and they were going to use this meeting or conference today. How to move forward and to gain alignment. And in the midst of my presentation, I asked the group this question. Does your strategy address your end user problems? And how will innovation close those gaps?

Well, there was a long pause in the room and people started to make eye contact with each other. And then this sound coming back to me that was more like an orchestra tuning than a symphony playing it was everyone talking about and shouting about what the problem was and everyone's opinions about customer demands, and there is no harmony. It was a room full of opinions about their customers, and the marketplace problems. Now sitting at the front table are two people that I met as I came into the conference they were recently hired. It was their new vice president of innovation and a new innovation scout. They were at the racing box, if you will ready in the next week to launch teams to start innovation.

Now, let me ask you a question. How would they know what to focus on? How are they going to launch these teams? How would the innovation teams know what to focus on? Let me be really clear. This is not a poorly run company in this scenario.

In this example, this is actually a really well run company. This scenario plays out over and over again in companies in very good companies. I read this startling statistic recently. It's from the Innovation Research Report. Entitled reinventing innovation. It's from 2017.

It's a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. I urge you to get it it's excellent. And they survey thousands of companies every year and in 2017. One of the things they found was 54% of the companies in their survey are having a hard Time linking innovation with their business strategy 54%. Now the good news is frame can help you address these problems of linking innovation to your strategy and helping innovators focus on what's important to the company. I hope you're beginning to see why frame is so critical to innovation and to innovators.

Frame not only saves your company time and money, it can help unleash innovators to work on areas that are important to the company and to your customer. Another part of this black hole problem was me realizing that no i did train me to be included that it needed to be its own platform. A lot of companies a lot of models, a lot of consultants fuse the two together, fuse frame and generate together And while that may work in some places, my strong belief is that when you're learning to do innovation as a company, it's better to separate them out. So I've separated frame from generate. Now, even though they're separate but equal, it's important to realize that they're both part of a very important cycle a virtuous cycle. The strategy aspect of frame helps you draw a sandbox for innovation so you can focus your resources on the highest leverage areas that are coming out of your strategy.

Remember, none of us have a limit have unlimited resources. But over time, as you're going through the steps of generating innovation, as you're launching innovations out in the marketplace, and getting feedback from customers, competitors, partners, etc, you quickly begin to realize that what you learn from innovations this generate inform The strategy so it informs frame what you learn why generate is helping you re frame rethink about your business, your marketplace, etc. So keep in mind that it's is critical to keep them separate. But none of these platforms exist in a vacuum they work together, as we saw in this example as a system to compel your company toward becoming more innovative. Now, it's important to realize that frame is not the strategy. It's the connector that links innovation to the enterprise strategy.

And there are lots of strategy creation models out there for you to consider if you don't have a strategy, or if you want to work on it and improve the one you have. Some of the more famous strategy models are Porter's five forces model strategize your business model canvas, BCG matrix, McKinsey's seven S model, Blue Ocean Strategy, balanced scorecard, their SWOT analysis, gap planning, scenario planning, organic planning, you get the idea. There's a lots of model models out there. And that's just a partial list. So we're not at a loss for strategy models. But remember, frame is not a strategy play.

It's a linkage play. Let's look at five reason why frame matters. First of all, if the strategy sets the direction for the company in the businesses, then frame helps set the direction for innovation. And oftentimes, it does this through an innovation concept that we call sandbox. The concept was brought into the innovation lexicon by ck prod and it's From an article called innovation sandbox or the innovation sandbox, it's found in the journal strategy in business from 2006. Now, here's what he said how he defined sandbox.

He said, the sandbox involve things like freeform exploration or even playful experimentation. And this is represented by the sand with its flowing boundaries. And that this exists within fixed constraints, the walls that are straight and rigid and the box that holds the sand. And in this article, he describes the sandbox for healthcare in India. And he said the boundaries were world class quality, scalability, universal access, and new price performance levels. So it's a great example of a sandbox.

Now, a lot of times In workshops that I'm hosting a lot of executives who really rebel against this notion of constraints within innovation. But think about it this way. All creativity relies on constraints of some type. In fact, it's part of the process. It's part of the creative process. Think about a canvas, for example, and painting.

It's a space for your work for your creativity. And sometimes not always, you can, as an artist, use the boundaries to go beyond and create something that's really different and creative. So constraints and innovation are really important. The other thing to think about if sandboxes are done, while their vast spaces their enormous untapped opportunities, they're not micromanaging, so to speak, but instead they're pointing us to a large space of opportunities. In the example of ck, perhaps a sandbox. Have healthcare in India, that sandbox is enormous and full of opportunities.

It's not restricting. If something comes up beyond the sandbox, you have this nice problem on your hand hands. Whirlpool Corporation had this happened a few times. And the one that I recall was a group of innovators that came up with the ideas that eventually led to Gladiator garage works. It's a well documented example that you can look out, but at the time, it was outside of our sandbox, if you will. And so we had to deliberate and decide what we're going to do with it.

And luckily, Whirlpool decided to resource it and move it forward. And now it's a really profitable important business for Whirlpool. So, as I said before, sand boxes help focus scarce time and resources on the highest leverage areas of the strategy. The second part to think about frame is It's an alignment mechanism. It forces a dialogue among leaders and innovators, about how innovation is going to help the company and the customers and how it's going to help deploy the strategy. Getting to frame is harder than it looks from an alignment standpoint, but it's a really important process to go through and accompany.

Now the third thing about frame is it creates a call for action for potential innovators. When you're seeking innovation from everyone, and everywhere, you need to cast a wide net you don't know where the next innovator is going to come from. And you need a way to communicate what's important and you need to communicate beyond the usual suspects. So a crisp framed document or picture or video or concept becomes like a clarion call that helps people move into action. It moves the playing field from Vegas to specific and helps potential innovators imagine the business in new ways. The fourth item about frame is it's critical to leaders.

It's a skill that leaders in the innovation economy must adopt. So it's the opposite of micromanaging, framing a problem for teams and people that work in your group allow space for innovators to create. It allows people to solve the problems for themselves. And lastly, frame is a vehicle for changing your company and your company's culture. When it's done well. It signals to everyone a new direction and becomes an important embed action.

Let's do a drill down in the four elements of frame they are strategic artists. texture, initiative blueprint definition and criteria and structure and fit. And we're going to start with strategic architecture. And I think this picture is a good representation of the elements because depending on where your company is, you may need more or less of each of these elements. For example, you may already have a definition and criteria. So you won't need to spend as much time on that, but you may not have a blueprint.

So for now, let's go through all the elements. Let's look at the first element of frame and that strategic architecture. Let me define it this way. First of all, the term has been around for a long time, and I like it a lot. Because it talks about something bigger than strategy. Strategic architecture is a formal description of the enterprise and its future oriented, and includes enterprise strategy.

Top line goals, areas of focus, competitive advantage. Business human assets. It looks at mission, vision and values. It sets direction for businesses and all employees. Now some nice to have our it shows how elements are connected. And it's all found in one place.

It's easy to read and easy to understand. I did a workshop recently for a large manufacturing company. And I asked the executives that are in the workshop to work in pairs and go out on what I call a strategic architecture scavenger hunt. Now using a punch list that you'll see here, I asked them to find the documents for each of these items in the strategic architecture or at a minimum, find the person who might be able to describe it, and then bring in the results to the workshop bring in evidence. Here's the results of one of the pairs from that workshop. The formal discussion of the enterprise that was really hard for them to find.

They went to the Strategy Group that people had lots of different pieces. And then someone recommended that they go to the deck that the chair uses when he onboards new board members, and in that deck was a fantastic description, a formal description of the enterprise. Now for the future oriented, aspirational discussion, they had a hard time with that as well. And then someone recommended that they look at the annual shareholder meeting transcript. And in that transcript, the CEO did a really good job when she described the future of the company and where it was going. So they got that clipped it and brought it back.

Now enterprise strategy was something they had to piece together. They compiled PowerPoint slides from Annual senior leadership meeting, they went into the Technology Group and found some 10 year product plans. They went to the strategy and financial groups and found operating plans in Excel spreadsheets for each businesses and pull all that material together. vision and mission were not quite separated and they found evidence of it in the marketing materials. Not sure if it was right, but they brought it and then vision, I'm sorry, values values. They really had a hard time until someone recommended they went on the company website that all of us could go on.

And sure enough, there they were. They weren't something that was used inside the company as much but they found them as far as direction for the business units and employees as a whole. That when they had to pull together as well found in PowerPoint slides from quarterly ops reviews, employee direction as a whole was not found. But some of the elements of mission and vision could show traces of that some quarterly hands on meeting texts they found. And so they could roll that up. Now the nice to haves, they couldn't find they couldn't find the connection.

And they certainly didn't find it all in one place. They assume that the connections existed in the CEOs head. But they thought for this exercise, it didn't make a lot of sense to go to her and try to interview her and get this information. So that was the strategic architecture scavenger hunt. And let me remind you again, that this company in this example, this is was not and is not a poorly run company. It's an every company.

You know, I mean, it's like each company that we work with has pieces of it, but very rare to find it all together. So the results I think were fairly typical. Now, when you think about that experiment, I have Two questions for you. Would having the formal information of the strategic architecture in one place help innovators in your company? Would that help them as they started thinking about and framing their innovation? And if the answer is yes, do you want every innovation team that you launch going on this scavenger hunt?

In isolation? And I think the answer is no. So the good news is this can be easily fixed. In fact, many companies have parts of the stretch strategic architecture, it's just putting them all together. So let's see if we can find a simple tool that can replace the scavenger hunt. Okay, we're going to look at the strategic architecture tool.

And in this case, we're going to use a tool called the innovation linkage map. So for each element of the innovation universe, I'll provide you with an exemplary tool, a simple tool that you can use. I like to think about it As an MVA a minimal viable approach. I'll ask you to use the tool as we go through the series. Now just a note on tools themselves. Tools and innovation are really methods to get groups of people to discuss ideate and advance ideas together their ways to solve a problem.

Now, sometimes we don't like to use a tool or we rebel against the tool. Or sometimes go the other way. If you give them a tool, they fill out every box on the tool whether they need to or not. They're just following the directions so neither extreme is good. In other words, tools are merely aids to help teams get to a new place to solve a problem in a new way. So for this series, I'll ask you to try each tool and understand what the troll tool is trying to do.

You know, think about it. Christiansen work about what jobs are you hiring the tool to do? And think about the tool that way, what are you hiring it to do, it's just not a form that you need to fill out. Often the value is the alignment behind the tool that it forces. After the series, you can decide if these tools or some other tools are going to help you remember these tools or the MVA there are lots of different ways to solve the problem. And once you get the hang of the tool, you can branch out and solve it in new ways.

Now you can download these tools or go to the linkages that I've given on the proprietary tools on my website. So you can go to their website and look at the information the websites innovation universe calm. Okay, so the first tool for strategic architecture, the NVA that I'm going to recommend is a tool that I call the innovation linkage map now It's based on a strategy map and strategy map comes from this excellent article by Kaplan and Norton, it's called having trouble with your strategy, then map it. It's it's a Harvard Business Review article. It's from September of 2000. Now, because frame is about linkage, the map that we're going to use is a linkage map.

It's going to show how innovation links within the strategy. Okay, I went into my archives to look for some examples of an innovation linkage map. And here are two examples from my practice over the years. The first one is from a global Products Company, and it's dated around 2006. Now, note, this one has highlighted the areas that innovation is really going to help drive the strategy. So if you're an innovator or an innovation team, and you're trying to link you idea to the strategy.

This underscores why you are doing what you're doing is so critical. And you don't need to look very far to figure that out. Now, the second example goes in a bit of a different direction. I was fortunate to be the chair and President of The First Tee of Benton Harbor and on the board for many years and as a volunteer, and we created this innovation linkage map as we're working through the strategy. Now this one shows some different labels to give you an idea how you can adapt this tool to fit your unique company. And again, the yellow text and highlights are areas that are focusing on innovation to help deliver the strategy.

So if you're a member, a staff member, a volunteer of this organization and you want to offer ideas or innovations, you don't have to look very far to see what's important and what will be valued. Now I'm going to ask you to do this for your company to create an innovation linkage map. So if you are at the point of a scavenger hunt, then I'd like you to stop the module and collect the information that you need from your company. Some of these materials may be hard to find and some may even be confidential and not available to you. So find what you can seek help from innovation leads or strategy groups or business unit groups. Anyone that can help you just explain what you're doing and why and gather what you can.

MPAA tools are simple, but not easy to create. And as with any tool, you have to adapt it to fit your unique needs. Now, if you are beyond the scavenger, hunt, and have all our most of the information available, then practice putting the information on the innovation linkage map and you can then draft it and then go out and vet it and seek help from others. Now I do need to caution you. Some companies are very sensitive about the format that their strategy takes, and who has access to that information. So I'm cautioning you not to trigger the immune system in your company, use your good judgment on how to approach this task within your company.

Your outcome is to have one page, this document that you see in front of you, so that new innovation teams can use it at the beginning of their ideation process to create an innovation team product project that they will use for their idea. We'll talk more about that later in generate for now, I urge you to download the tool and try it when you're finished. And if you'd like to share it, go to innovation universe comm to the tool section and upload your innovation linkage map. So please stop the module and practice your innovation linkage map and I'll see you when you get back Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed the practice of the MVA tool for the innovation linkage map. Now I want to look at the second element of frame and that is the initiative blueprint. Having an enterprise strategy is not enough you have to have an innovation strategy that I call an initiative blueprint.

It's critical to your success and innovation. It's a two to five year plan. It focuses on your intention for the Innovation Initiative overall and how it's going to fit with the business strategy, including things like scope and positioning. You know, one thing I learned at Whirlpool, among many is that innovation is a continuous improvement opportunity. You're constantly looking at where you are and trying to get it to the next level, and building it on a platform of new skills and knowledge because you're always learning. So it's hard to have an exemplary initiative blueprint because every company is different.

But I worked with one large multinational organization to help create an initiative blueprint and it makes we made one of the best ones I think I've seen, mostly because of the way they use it. And to give you a notion of the scope, I have it here. Here's some of the headers titled vision statement for innovation. problem we're trying to solve the definition. We'll talk about that piece later creating a poll alignment, communication types, leadership accountabilities, how they're going to scale it over a tenure frame, how they're going to measure the initiative, resource utilization, knowledge capture, etc, recognition and rewards. So it was a blueprint that they kept updating yearly as the business teams met and presented and decided where they were and the next steps that they wanted to achieve in the overall initiative.

It's also a great way to communicate to employees and key partners what you're trying to do in the innovation space. Now, not all companies need a blueprint that's this detailed. You know, when I started at Whirlpool, and we started the Innovation Initiative, our blueprint had only three areas, business plan for innovation, building capability, and a startup plan to really focused innovation on the core on the product, core of the company. And that's how we used to get started. And then about every two or three years we updated, and we keep adding to it to get us to the next level. three areas of information that are important when you're building an innovation blueprint.

There are additional to the other information and there ways to think about innovation and they are horizons types and approaches. Let's look at horizons first. There are multiple works in the business world around horizons or phases of innovation that result in a portfolio approach to innovation. I'd like to point you to the seminal source of all this work. It's McKinsey. It was published in the alchemy of growth.

This model helps you think about three concurrent horizons of your business. They would be those would be core emerging and new and I use this horizon model with senior innovation teams and senior leadership teams to help them create their innovation blueprint. Again, it also helps you think about innovation in terms of terms of a portfolio of innovations across these three horizons. You can even set goals and the three is eventually you want to place bets in all three of these, but maybe starting out is start in one of them. The second area to look at for a dimension would be types of innovation. There is the seminal work that I think is really useful to innovators that I'll point you to it's from Deloitte and Dodd Doblin, and it was work led by Larry Keeley and others, and it's on different types of innovation.

I think they list 10 types. So here's a reference to their website and these are some of the types they talk about. The information they have on the website is outstanding, so I highly recommend you to go and look at it. They also have have additional products like tactics cards that you can use across the types that you can get on Amazon. So these tools tend to be really helpful for people creating their innovation blueprint. And the last dimension I'll ask you to look at is approaches.

It's from my work, it's looking at all the different ways that companies can approach and have approached innovation. Now, this slide shows a lot of ideas and you're not going to start with all of them, you know, Whirlpool started around product and then over the years migrated across all of these. So now think about how you're going to approach innovation and these other dimensions, types and horizons as you're creating your blueprint. Here's the NVA for the innovation blueprint, it really is a template for how to create the blueprint. Your blueprint should be no more than six pages in this first try. So here's what it looks like.

There's an introduction. on the page zero, the first page, it's the title page, put a vision statement, always add a graphic or something that represents innovation in your company, the author's, the date and the timeframe. And I would suggest a two to five year timeframe. page one is the why and we're lucky here you already have this completed. This is your innovation linkage map. So cut and paste it here.

And that's your page one. page two is the one that's the problem. You're trying to solve the scope and benefits, what innovation is going to emphasize what are the customer benefits and the definition now we're going to do the definition next in this module. So I'll ask you then to come back and And then what is your intention on what you want to learn from what you're doing around the innovation? And then secondly, put here where the horizons, the markets, the customers that innovation will target. page three is the how that's the types, the approaches, maybe what is work today, if you have a history, how are you going to measure it?

The resources and think about time people and money training, partnerships? And then last would be the the who those are role definitions within the company who's going to lead it? What are the different councils maybe that will help drive it? What are the leadership accountabilities? And how might it be included in the business planning cycle or in the rhythms of the company? And last is the when those are next steps, timings milestones, immediate problems that you're trying to solve, and show how you're going to get immediate results.

I would suggest In six months or less to be able to show a concrete result. So please put this module, the course on pause and start working on your blueprint, it should just take you to draft it only a few hours. Now, when I write books, one of the things I do is I take the headline, and I paste the headline out over the pages of a Word document. So at the top of each word document, I have a piece of the outline. And then I start writing in the areas that I'm most interested in. And eventually I write the book.

That way you can do the same thing, take these, these pages, put them at the top at whatever you're using, whether it's Word or PowerPoint, or storyboard and or whiteboarding, sticky notes, whatever medium you're using, and put those at the top of those and start working on the different pages and pretty soon you'll have this completed. Now as you're doing it, talk to people in your company. And once you have a credible draft vetted with other people Get some feedback and figure out how you want to finalize it. Remember the first time you do it, it might be like a scavenger hunt, the one that we talked about earlier, but trust me, it gets easier. It's important to not create it as a final product. But it's important to have this dialogue that forces the leadership at your company, to have the right kind of Outlook and the right kind of blueprint for innovation within your company.

Congratulations, you just finished part A of frame. Now let's go on and look at Part B