John, we're just not innovative
In the past week or so, I've been hit hard by two conversations with major anchors of InnoVenture 2007.
With one, I was reviewing plans for the conference in March and had a statement about serving innovators and entrepreneurs. His comment was, "John, I'm concerned that people in my company will not perceive themselves as innovators or entrepreneurs and therefore will not want to participate in InnoVenture."
With another anchor, I was trying to convince them to make a Community of Innovation presentation at InnoVenture 2007. My contact declined, "John, we're just not innovative."
My friend and mentor Jim Cockman beat into my head, "Be careful what you call things, because words create mental images." I'm hearing this often enough that even I can figure out that vocabulary is an impediment to some people participating in InnoVenture or any other innovation or entrepreneurial initiative.
Going forward, Swamp Fox LLC will continue to publish the Swamp Fox website and weekly email, participate in the Monday update SC Business Review on SC Public Radio, and produce the annual InnoVenture conference. So I've worked on an explanation of the environment we are in, and thus the value proposition of Swamp Fox, in vocabulary that helps people see themselves benefiting from being involved. I'd appreciate your comments.
Environment of Change
The global tsunami of change is so great, no organization can be successful alone no matter how strong its internal capabilities. Globally competitive companies and universities are anchored in regional Communities of Innovation of specialized firms that are more highly productive together than any organization can be alone. In Communities of Innovation, the intersection of diverse disciplines, organizations and cultures is where the richest opportunities are found, as well as some of the most significant management challenges.
While the currency of academia is long term reputation, the currency of industry is dollars over shorter time horizons, which often results in a clash of motivations. The greatest strength of large industry and academic organizations are strong cultures, articulated through their systems and processes, with an incredible ability to execute on a global scale. The greatest weakness of large organizations is often strong cultures that view change not as a source of opportunities but as a threat to the status quo they control. Large organizations are generally most comfortable executing through data driven processes, and they have difficultly realizing value from emerging opportunities identified by champions driven by deeply informed intuition based on personal, informal knowledge and experience. Because these champions live at the intersection and cut across the grain of the status quo, they are often frustrated by a labyrinth of organizational and cultural barriers.
Swamp Fox Value Proposition
Swamp Fox is an open community of champions seeking to create value from new sources of productivity and growth. Unlike closed processes where problems are addressed only inside an organization, Swamp Fox provides access, experience, and processes to identify and manage diverse collaboration partners with distinctive expertise, resources, and relationships to create better solutions faster.
Does this work for you?