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Innovation should be the lifeblood of business, yet its very existence is threatened in most businesses as explained in part one of this series, in spite of the facts that innovation fuels growth, cements collaboration with clients and ensures ‘ahead of the pack’ leadership.

Innovation in many companies is an accident waiting to happen and often predicated on customer demand. Not a bad thing, a limitation, usually brought about by the need for companies to reduce and streamline production costs.

Innovation As Business Development

When instead you view innovation as a must-have a component of business development, you consider innovation as an essential cost of sales as well as insurance. Now the chances for Innovation to play a key part in an organisations future are much enhanced. This kind of positioning of Innovation are commonly found in long term view, successful companies. 

There is constant innovation in the generally considered ‘dull’ companies such as insurance and banking for instance. On the inside, operations are far from dull, crisscrossed with all sorts of difficulties with risks spread across a range of diverse partners covering all sorts of eventualities with some even leading the way in areas such as cybercrime.

The Financial Solution

An increasingly accepted method of innovation funding is referred to as metered funding, where an amount is agreed and come what may, whether results are forthcoming or not, a supply of finance is maintained.

As otherwise, without metered funding, innovation teams are constantly in survival mode, fighting for a budget. Not knowing from one quarter to another if they are going to remain is wearing. Lack of consistent funding, no matter how bright the idea is great for triggering good people to leave.

Innovation Saves HR

People in most organisations become complacent, what was once new, competitive and perhaps innovative becomes the status quo. After every innovation, there is a competitor that will catch up. These are the normal, expected traits. The question is would you like to copy others or lead them? The answer by many is a preference to lead.

There is a reason that small companies often get great talent and for talent to leave the larger companies, it is simply because talent has a better chance of standing out and gaining recognition, and of course, financially they are more likely to share in the rewards. This is not to say that this cannot happen in larger companies. However, the truth is that larger companies do not create these conditions of opportunity and so good people with bright prospects leave. 

In the same way as ring-fenced, metered funding works, larger companies can create divisions that are designed to cultivate, recognise and reward individual contribution, a simple structural change is all that is needed to harness innovation and share in the success of bright ideas.

The opposite normally occurs. Bright people leave, their ideas germinate and flourish, now the former employer buys the entire company for millions or billions. A regular event, it’s obscenely evident and a regularly recurring, overly expensive, unnecessary wasteful strategy.  The defence invariably a good one: we did not know ‘it’ would work until it did.

Yet countless organisations merge and acquire often resulting in separated operations, duplicate functions and disparate systems that all need to join up, made difficult if not impossible as a result of the brain drain that inevitably occurs. There is rarely a practical integration strategy (beyond the normal platitudes), instead, there are fights and tussles where the strongest inevitably wins to the detriment and destruction of the business. Mayhem rules and sometimes this results in the sum of the parts becoming worthless as opposed to being worth more.

Instead, simple conversations should be encouraged to create open spaces to encourage collaboration and innovation, to discover and explore the areas of potential. Simple conversations create the glue of collaboration and spur excitement to innovate and create instead of destroy and dismantle. 

Where enormous financial pressure may be the catalyst, simple conversations can be the tonic. Conversation in negotiation is quite different from collaborative and innovation.  A company needs to recognise the phases where the different approaches can work to better effect. 

Simple solutions can be created through easy to organise, very low-cost exercises, ran as workshops or roadshows. Forthcoming ideas and positive sentiment can be quickly rolled out.

It’s always a great time to create a buzz and provide reasons for people to stay beyond the pay. 

Bookmark this page, part 3 is almost ready.

Many companies refer to themselves as offering new and innovative services. However, the problem is that most businesses are not built or designed for innovation. In most cases, the focus of a business (rightly) is to focus on making profits and so it is incumbent upon it to find the least cost method of making sales and deliveries to clients. 

The most common problem with innovation is that the metrics are difficult. For instance, just as soon as you start, and sometimes before, the forecast for Return On Investment (ROI) is typically negative. Especially if you are innovating in a new area that your business operates within.

It is difficult as you are most likely to compare against a known known that has already been pared to the bone. There are also political issues. In small companies, it is often harder as we can look at innovation as a process that reduces earnings in real terms. 

For these reasons most innovations come from new entrants, businesses that are driven by passion, and as a result this makes innovation look cheap. The flip side, if you consider all the money spent on business incubation, is that innovation can look expensive as few win through. Either way, it’s not an especially good look.

There’s a lot more running against innovation too.

Yet the real world constantly revolves, client needs change and competitors arrive, market share reduces and eventually the business that was is no longer. This is so well known and expected it is defined and depicted in business as a bell curve. A curve that many know too well. The classic curve is to incline, followed by a peak and potential flattening then a decline. 

In spite of this, the fascinating truth is that most companies pay people to make sure that costs are trimmed and this stops innovation, even though companies might state the opposite, the truth lies in what they actually do. 
There is a solution and it is in insurance. The whole idea of insurance is that you pay a fee to provide cover in case of an emergency. Yet all the while you pay for the cover the best result is that there is never a claim and at the end of the year the money is lost and written off as sensible security against adverse loss. 

Innovation should be seen in the same light. Except with innovation, there can be a range of upside opportunities.  When mastered, innovation works more like a saving scheme than insurance. In other words, you pay money in, a little over time, continuously. You choose the amount and every now and again you review progress and decide to spend more or simply continue at the same rate. At some point, good results can occur. 

The result may prove that a certain direction is not worth pursuing – and that can be huge. The process should lead to deeper customer relationships. Experimental results can be amplified and play well in a number of areas. Over time, substantial or incremental breakthroughs will add to the longevity of your business area. Your leadership credentials will improve and new found differential will ultimately lead to richer and longer lasting successes.

Click here to read part 2 in this series

After a year of coding, I had come to realise it was time to start again. In my frustration, I was searching for a phrase and I came up with a metaphor. 

Coming up with a swear word is easy, yet not quite right or particularly bright or as descriptive as the metaphor I came up with when speaking to my mum. I know she understands gardening and that she has not got a clue about software development and although I was concerned, I had no need to be upsetting anybody least of all my mum. 

The metaphor I needed to use to explain why it was I was now about to rewrite my software for the third time was a planting metaphor. As in you know when you take a cutting and plant it in the garden and then you wait to see how it works out and it doesn’t grow quite as tall or doesn’t fruit, well that is what my software is like. It works, it’s just not right, so then I planted it somewhere else, it fared quite well that time and yet was still not right, however from all I have learned, I now know the perfect place to plant that cutting and I am certain it will not just prosper it will thrive.

In reality, we continue to learn, not necessarily from mistakes, sometimes it is a matter of maturity. Although it is obvious I now have a personal handle on why experience counts, especially as concerned with software development.

In truth I have not taken any kind of exam in thirty years, so certifying as a cloud developer was quite a shock to the system. In fact, I was amazed and encouraged I went on to take the System Architect certification and most recently certifying as an Associate AWS Developer. I am now considering professional certification.

You may be wondering why would I bother. Why not do what most people seem to do – outsource it all. Well, I am quite proud of my outsourcing capability. I have outsourced millions of pounds worth of work over the years, but here for my current project, I had a problem. I did not know what I wanted.

I had come to the conclusion that I wanted a software solution that would help people get more business by referral. A great objective, but what did it mean in practice? I have used CRM solutions extensively over the years and planning tools and kanban boards and other project management tools including Project and of course Excel. I am pretty handy with functions, complex maths and pivot tables. Writing software is really the next step.

I was emboldened when I found a statistic by the established, well-respected business research firm: IDC who claimed that 80% of all business was done through people who already know each other and that only 20% of businesses have any kind of system to help them. So I knew I would be onto a good thing. I already owned some books on referral marketing and set about buying more and signing up to anything that looked like it would provide me with insights. 

I discovered two things. First that most people ask for referrals when starting out and then stop for some reason and second that all the books have great stories and only a few really talk about the methods.

Coincidentally, a while back, I attended an AWS event (Amazon Web Services) who have this new cloud thing. I was inspired.

This then led me to take an AWS exam, as I thought whichever way you look at it, it would be useful to know what’s available and how these things work. I then decided I could put some of their systems together. With their help, I managed to hack a little bit of code together and decided I liked what I saw. 

I could see a project coming together, one where I would need to do a lot of thinking and planning. I needed to pretty much reinvent the wheel to fully understand how referral marketing works and to make it work online.

I had worked on many projects for clients in the past. I was aware of the Rapid Application Development process (RAD) used for software development from the 80s and knew that things had moved on and the topic to focus on was Agile. So I studied and achieved certification as an Agile PM (Project Manager). Mission accomplished I registered the trademark Iterative Innovation. I don’t know why… I just could, so I did.

As a result, I have been asked to train students in a range of topics which in the main has been law, security and most recently AWS too. Do you know what they paid me money too! I have been to Cardiff for an assignment with the Welsh Government, Reading with the Reading Borough Council, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, London of course and even Leamington Spa.

My next assignment is with one of the top three consulting companies in Britain. So I am pretty happy with the unexpected seedlings that have sprung from all this education I have been taking recently. What is more, I have gone from hacker to system architect, where I started to properly string things together to now a full-blown developer where I am now creating serverless solutions. It’s like I now own my own garden centre!

Quite happy I did not outsource this little lot. Although now I do know much more about what I would like to spec out and I realise there is a world shortage for what I do and it would be very expensive to outsource the kind of work I do, if I could find anyone to do it, as according to AWS there is a worldwide shortage in this area and demand for over 500,000 people with the kind of qualifications I have been achieving.

We’ll just have to see if this new found acorn will turn into ye olde oak tree, won’t we? 

Disasters easily occupy our minds as they often make us glad that we are not part of them. We see them as a warning. It is why coverage is so common in the news. Similarly death.

Disaster and death are two dark subjects yet the truth is that death can follow disaster. If not death, then often damage. In life as well as in business. 

During the development of my own software I find I have to consider risk a lot. There are risks inherent from my providers and partners, they could give me bad advice and or bad service. If I happen to get through and work with a solid platform (I use AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft DevOps to make sure) and I do, I still have to consider my intended users who eventually could be clients one day too. 

You Are A Data Custodian

Even in the short term as I ready for beta testing on a current project I need to make sure that those who test do not suffer from ‘accidents’ and do not overtly share with competitors or are not so inspired that they may become competitors themselves. In the past I have had to deal with all of that, even before I get to release a finished product. More than once. It happens all the time. You can’t legislate against it. Yet you can protect.

In effect my partners, suppliers, beta testers and even future clients will become data custodians. Even though I do not give my code away I still need my data custodians to do their best to protect my data. Not just because I always strive to protect their data.

From the outset, the first thing, was to put protection in place. Even when the only thing to protect was the protection itself! The two primary systems I use for data protection are encryption and limitation. As we are all in one way or another data custodians, we could follow suit.

Online encryption is easy

Essentially I will only run data through a secure (SSL) website. This means that data between the end user and end server is 100% encrypted with the encryption unique and determined according to the SSL encrypted standards. So whether your access is in a hotel with an open wifi, or from within an otherwise secure cabled environment my users are automatically afforded the same level of protection.

As a custodian of our own data in most of the things we do, we should all take the time to make sure that we only use sites whose urls start with https, as this is the sign of an SSL encrypted website. This is not to say that the website is encrypted, as SSL merely encrypts the data you enter for transportation to the server. For instance an app on your phone connected to your bank would employ SSL encryption and a lot more besides.

With regard to a lot more besides, internally to my projects I employ Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems too. This means a user only gets access to resources when they are supposed to (limitation). So if someone were to get hacked the damage that might be done would automatically be limited.

The third key in the puzzle is that all variable data, such as that stored in the cloud is encrypted automatically at rest. 

Truth is, all of this sophistication is supplied to me, although I do have to know it is there, take action by configuring it, turn it on and finally work with it. Many apparently take action and configure only to forget to turn it on. Actually a tall order in many ways as each element presents its’ own difficulty. Yet it is done. 

The Shared Responsibility of Data Custodians

I have just outlined how I have shared responsibility with my suppliers and the lengths I go to in order to ensure protection and security is built in from the inside. I am a data custodian of their systems. I have to protect my access so people can’t get into the systems I use too. It with this that we should all consider ourselves data custodians.

Most people it seems consider that they are protected from outside threats on the basis that it is not their responsibility. While a car should not hit you when you cross the road, even though the driver will be found guilty, you will still have to live with the damage done. 

You can get insurance and this may cover some of the costs. Yet it has been recently revealed that Hiscox an insurance company that specialises in Cyber Protection recently became a victim itself. Recently it had to admit that documents from a Hiscox lawsuit were taken from a law firm by a hacking group known as Dark Overlord. Oh dear.

Freedom Of Speech

For all those people who use and abuse social media, they abuse themselves too. Digital records become permanent as many a prospective MP (some current) know only too well.

You can’t blame social media for keeping a record, you have to accept personal responsibility for making it in the first place.

So although freedom speech is a good thing, you have to still be careful what you say as what you say you will have to live with. We all hope that there is little that will come back to us. Yet it is one of our responsibilities we all share.