Business Model Innovation – Organisational capability, are you set up for success?

Even before the current advances in AI, most companies had invested heavily in digital enablement. It’s fair to say that circa 70% of all such projects fail to deliver the required benefits, the reasons for such are well understood. We all know that organisations are ecosystems, the fragility and strength of which are inherently connected to the organisational culture.   

Successful innovation requires an organisational culture which both supports and celebrates the uncertainty, failures and learnings which are required to build the organisational muscle essential for developing future and resilient business models.   

Tendayi Viki’s seminal book “Pirates in the Navy – How Innovators lead Transformation” provides great insights and a step-by-step guide on how to develop a continuous innovation culture. He talks about the paradox of providing the optimal environment (for this read RACI, processes, systems and incentives etc) to enable innovation and value proposition development, whilst effectively and efficiently driving the existing revenue engine (aka proven and profitable business models) of the corporate organisation.

In his book, Tendi notes the following 7 key paradoxes in the respect of innovating for resilience whilst optimising the core:

1. Searching whilst executing

2. Creating new products, managing established products

3. Deliberate strategy, emergent strategy

4. Decentralised decisions, increased transparency

5. A single company, not a single business model

6. Fail fast, make money

7. Impatient for profits, patient for growth

Several large corporations have invested in establishing innovation labs to ‘ring fence’ the innovation activities, separating the development work from the core business. Whilst several of these have been highly successful, many more have failed due to the disconnect with the core business, in effect acting as an innovation theatre.

The concept of Tendayi’s ‘being a Pirate in the Navy’ is exactly that – how to succeed as an innovator positioned firmly within an existing and highly efficient organisation. Walking you through the key elements of how to ensure the required leadership support, optimise organisational design elements and build innovation capability, Tendayi’s step-by-step guide will see you not only flourish as a Pirate but also develop business resilience to effectively address future business needs.

Definitely one for the reading list! Grab your copy here 📚