We help leading companies around the world to enable, embed and embrace innovation as a way of life in their organisations.

The challenge of embracing innovation as a way of life in any organisation stems from a basic paradox. On the one hand, getting people working together effectively and efficiently – aligned – is easiest when they hold similar perspectives. On the other hand, changing direction rapidly and repeatedly in the face of new opportunities and threats – agility – is fundamentally dependant on integrating different perspectives. Mastering and balancing these seemingly conflicting requirements at the same time is the sine qua non of being able to embrace innovation as a way of life in your organisation.

Most innovation improvement consultants focus on front-end ideation. It’s the obvious place to start, since innovation cannot exist without new ideas. But it’s not the whole story… Less agile companies may find it hard to engage in purposeful business-focused ideation, but that’s actually the easy part. The much harder part is stopping the organisation from killing off, smothering or otherwise bogging down great ideas before they have a chance to create and capture market value. Our experience of 25 years focused on helping leaders to enable, embed and embrace innovation as a way of life, primarily in science, engineering and technology based businesses in Europe, Asia and the USA is that despite the challenges of the ‘fuzzy front-end’ it’s in the ‘boggy back-end’ that even the most promising ideas often meet their demise…

Do a quick web search and you’ll find many sources to help you with the fuzzy front-end. Where we are unique is in our ability to help you master the hidden forces that undermine or uplift your innovation activities from the front-end all the way through to the back-end. Think of these hidden forces as the organisation’s immune system; ‘white corpuscles’ lurking beneath the surface of day-to-day organisational life, protecting legacy attitudes, perceptions and behaviours that sustain the organisation in repeating its past and prevent it from reaping its future.

Some of our clients describe us as ‘innovation catalysts’. Just as chemical catalysts both speed up physical reactions and also transform noxious by-products, in the same way we help you speed up the journey from ideation to market success and transform noxious perceptions, attitudes and behaviours that bog down ideas, stifle innovation and otherwise pollute your organisational ecosystem.

We are world-leading experts at discovering, highlighting and leveraging these hidden forces in skilful ways. We are uniquely placed to help you master the root cause hidden forces that stifle or stimulate the front-end, and boost or bog down the back-end of your organisation’s innovation activities.