JEFFREY PHILLIPS
Jeffrey Phillips leads OVO Innovation, an innovation consulting company in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jeffrey has led strategy and innovation projects in a number of industries including pharmaceutical, high tech, financial services, insurance, medical products. He is the author of three books, including Relentless Innovation, and writes the popular Innovate on Purpose blog.
When the crew from Marlowe Innovation meets for lunch they review their recent projects and new clients. With more requests for innovation training, they realize that many firms are discovering that they can bring in house a lot of the work they’ve outsourced to the bigger consultancies.
When concerns are raised that Accipiter's scenarios might be wrong or perhaps placing too much emphasis on the wrong market, Marlow must step in to provide encouragement. The point of scenarios isn’t necessarily to be able to predict the actual future, but to identify discontinuities and anticipate them, and bring new needs or opportunities to light.
Scenario Planning never fails to identify one or two people who seemed promising on the surface but can’t, or won’t, extend their minds into more ambiguous situations. When Marlow and Susan discover that a member of their innovation team is uncomfortable in her position and holding the team back, they discuss how to assign the ideal role for each employee.
Just when the Accipiter innovation team is finally ready to start scenario planning they realize that no one on their team understands any of the trends that might shape the future of their industry. How will they find the demographic, technological, governmental and social market trends?
When one of the team members expresses concern about his ability to balance the demands of his regular work with those of the innovation project, Marlow is quick to respond. Will the team be satisfied so that the innovation work can continue?
With Accipiter's new innovation team and communications under way, Marlow sets out to establish their first focus area. In this case the pressure provided by their competitors' advantage turns out to be a guiding light.
Though not a new concept, “reverse innovation” is hardly straight-forward in practice. Govindarajan and Trimble’s showcasing of successful projects, Fortune 500-type best practice and essential theory in the field endeavors to lay down a modus operandi, yet one which lacks a lasting echo. In this review Jeffrey Phillips argues that despite its good intentions, the book seems to cater only to multinationals, ignoring the needs of small/mid-sized players whose drive is high, yet resources low. Reverse innovation requires a different mind-set, workflow and altogether pace for socially and economically consistent results to emerge.
Any experienced consultant knows that effectively communicating the goals, purposes and outcomes of an innovation effort to the workforce is vital to the project's success. Can Marlow manage to convince Accipiter's management of the importance of their communication plan?
Marlow is eager to get his client new products and services to stave off a lot of overseas competition. Now he just needs to identify the most significant challenges or opportunities and begin to define their risk tolerance.
Everyone is for innovation until someone has to be innovative. Marlow and Susan are searching for one of the core business units to step forward, with the hope of creating interesting new products and drawing the attention of the rest of the company. Who is willing to be Accipiter's innovation guinea pig?
Susan and Marlow are busy recruiting people who will take a proactive stance and push against the status quo. Slowly the outlines of the central innovation team start to take shape.
Susan and Marlow are off to do what could be the most trying task of all in their innovation effort – finding the right people who are willing to work on an innovation project. How will they get the necessary connections, ideas and passion in their team? Marlow has a plan.
Marlow combines his plans and experience with Susan's knowledge of the organization to create a rough outline of the innovation game plan. Can they refine the details to make sure their plan aligns with the goals and budget they’d been given?
Marlow and Susan start to build the momentum around the innovation project by tackling several important issues simultaneously. They desperately need to demonstrate short-term, actionable results in order to lift off.
While working hard to push the innovation plan forward in record time, Marlow is surprised to find he has been assigned a new team member. He discovers quickly that the new colleague is very invested in the existing processes and methods. They've thrown him yet another obstacle instead of a much-needed catalyst.
