Why The Building Industry Won't Innovate, How It Can and Why It Must

I don't ever want to hear another engineer say I am not creative after attending a presentation on innovation and creativity by Tristan Carfrae, Senior Fellow at Arup, the designers and structural engineers in the consortium who amonst landmark projects constructed the Water Cube for the Olympic Aquatic Centre at the Beijing Olympics and where the engineers on the construction of Sydney's famous Opera House. What was particularly interesting about Carfrae's presentation was his proposition innovation in the building industry is very difficult and when you look at the simple physics of his proposition, he has a point. Every building is a prototype that mustn't fail.

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Early Warning: A Global Business Model Tsunami Coming Your Way

The word tsunami keeps appearing in my conversations with senior leaders around innovation and the future. Why? Because they like I believe disruption is now too weak a term to describe what is happening in business models in many markets and industries globally. Business model tsunami more appropriately describes the phenomenon as social media and the digital world emerge from the edge and enter mainstream business and our daily lives. Indeed, a senior executive from one of Australia’s leading insurance companies in a conversation this week likened the eruption of digital to

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How Social Media is Democratising Banking

Recently I was reminded of how social media has emerged into the mainstream of organizational life along with our personal lives. How it is disrupting all forms of business and organizations in the most dynamic, uncertain and yet optimistic way I think I have ever seen over the 30 years I have been involved with organizational innovation. Over the past weeks, I have been working in the financial services industry assisting an organization’s team of future leaders develop their creative thinking around the organization’s design of future products and services. And I am surprised to report, there is a high level of creativity amongst the leaders in this large traditional governance dominated organization and a high level of belief the leaders can bring themselves to work and make a difference. More importantly the new generation of leaders coming through have a social conscience with more than a passing curiosity in social media and innovation. Banks, in particular, are under threat because web based technology platforms built by PayPal, Amazon and eBay, based on social media technology and principles and the notion of personal trust in commercial transactions, have begun to democratize the flow of ordinary funds in the global economy. Banks' positions as controllers of the flow of global funds has meant they have been able to dictate market terms and conditions on a whole range of financial services products. However, their position as the central processing hubs for payments is now under severe threat. As a result,

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The Fear of Organizational Innovation Thinking and How To Overcome It - an HR Industry Case Study

It has taken a decade for social media to finally deliver on its promise of democratising the work place. We might not have the paperless office but we certainly have free social media that poses a huge problem for the revenue, profitability and very existence of service driven organizations. The problem now for services organizations is not when to change but what to and how. This means organizational innovation is no longer an imperative. It is a must do. Yet, organizations find it extremely difficult to implement innovation as it requires strategic, tactical and behavioural change and to align those elements can be an Herculean task. This difficulty was highlighted recently when I was invited to a meeting with the MD of one of Asia-Pacific’s leading HR services companies. The MD has responsibility across all divisions for revenue, is passionate about innovation and recognizes the HR market is changing rapidly

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Data, Digital, Discovery - the Future of Innovation

Two recent examples show how digital disruption is having a huge impact on traditional businesses and business models and how rapidly innovation as a practice and process will need to change to keep up with the impact. Over the last two years, one of Australia’s largest publicly owned talent management organizations has seen one of its major client’s spend fall from A$30million per annum to $15million per annum, with expectations the total spend year ending 2012 will be around $5million. For any company this is a huge drop in revenue and as the Managing Director said “It is not only a huge drop in revenue for us, it is a huge drop in revenue for the total HR industry in Australia.” This contraction has come about because of

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