THE INVEST SKILLS

SKILL ONE – Being able to critically evaluate and make decisions on business plans

Whether you have a complex proposition that needs comprehensive analysis with supporting evidence of a market opportunity or a smaller scale project or new business process, you are going to need some sort of plan. The detail and depth of your plan will depend on what you are trying to do but, regardless of the scale, developing the ability to create, assess and, where appropriate, sanction a plan, is a core invest skill. What you are trying to do is understand if there is proof of market (POM). The investigate phase is concerned more with proof of concept (POC) – is the value proposition addressing a real need? The invest stage is taking it a step further, what is the size of market opportunity, does your business model work and can you deliver on the plan? Even if you are in an entrepreneurial venture, where a plan may have to be more flexible, you still need a plan. At least you are aware that it is changing, rather than blindly moving forward into implementation without a clear idea of what you are doing and how you are planning to make it work. And do not leave it to hope. Hope is not a strategy.

SKILL TWO – Being able to keep cool and make decisions despite difficulties

Cool, objective, dispassionate – qualities that are important in making decisions under stress. Innovating can be a stressful endeavour, largely because you are treading on unfamiliar territory. You are trying something new. Even if you are not putting your personal money into something, you still need to make choices about time, resources and other forms of investment material. This requires a particular type of pragmatism. The ability to evaluate decisions with the facts that you have, as well as discern, with your gut instinct, whether you should act or not is a curious combination. At this stage of innovation, many ideas stop. Even good ones. Even those that have been developed using a robust innovation process. The investigate phase may have proven that there is desire for what you want to develop but, unless you can get support for it, amidst the stress of other demands being made on time and funds, the idea can end up collecting dust on the shelf. In corporate life, one of the biggest reasons we have observed is the lack of funding focused on innovative initiatives outside of business as usual (BAU) or core business activity (Horizon 1). There can be great excitement at training people to generate ideas, creating innovation teams, getting people to be more customer-focused, but, if you cannot support the outcomes of this training or coaching, then both the enthusiasm of people, plus the potential of new ideas, is not embedded or reinforced in the organisational culture.

SKILL THREE – Being able to sense where and when resources should be provided

As part of our work, we coach managers on how they can drive innovation in their workplace. Some are corporate, some are more entrepreneurial, and they have very different challenges.

Here are two such examples:

David is a Chinese manager in a large multinational based in Shanghai. He has limited time, and budget, to allocate to projects that are not about day-to-day operational issues (Horizon 1), but he knows that, if the business focuses only on what is important in the short term, it will miss out on new growth opportunities (Horizon 2) and bigger, more disruptive innovation opportunities (Horizon 3). He also wants to encourage his team to think differently and create improvements in their day-to-day operational projects.

Samantha is a Singaporean entrepreneur who has left her corporate job to set up her own business. From having a range of support available in her former organisation, she now realises she has to become a master at many things she formerly knew nothing about. How much time should she spend meeting potential clients? What about developing her website and social media strategy? When is she going to have the time to spend improving her product and working with suppliers?

Both David and Samantha have to make a judgement call about where and when to allocate resources. For David, it is not just about money, but coaching support and management. For Samantha, it is about where and when to allocate her most limited resource: time.

TOOLS

Decision evaluator

1. Draw up a grid with four boxes. On one axis, write Potential benefits, on the other write Potential costs, both with high and low at each end of the scale.
   • Think through your value proposition(s) and place them onto the grid in the relevant box.
   • What insight does this give you?
2. Go back to your business plan.
   • What is your budget?
   • Where do you need to allocate resources?
   • Create a cash flow projection of what you will need to spend versus where your anticipated revenue will come from and when.
   • What decisions might you need to make about how you allocate the resources that you have? Cash is king.

Investor Warren Buffet says part of making good investment decisions is to look at the bad ones you have made and work out why they did not work. What can you learn about bad investment decisions you have made in the past?

Dyson’s story, while quite well-known in the UK, illustrates just how tough it can be to raise capital to invest in an innovative solution and take it to market. No doubt, this type of story can be replicated many times across many different examples and countries. He identified an area of opportunity; he ignited a solution to the problem that he saw. He investigated it through prototyping and testing – 5,127 prototypes – he invested his own time and money but, actually, it was not until he leveraged his networks and connections that his big break came. This shows how important a multitude of skills are, and the connections we have, when it comes to innovation, also serendipity and being in the right place at the right time. What you want to do is increase your chances of success by optimising your skill set and positioning yourself where lucky breaks can happen for you, too. Control what you can, but do not underestimate the power of synchronicity.

SKILL FOUR – Being able to be good at convincing others to collaborate

When my husband and I moved to Singapore in 2010, we engaged the United Kingdom Trade and Industry (UKTI) to help us set up meetings with potential clients. If we did not have that partnership, we probably would not have been successful getting started. We were clear on who our customers were and what we offered, but we needed help to access the right decision makers. The UKTI knew the right people that we should talk to, and could access them through the relationships that they had with companies in Singapore. If we had just gone door knocking, I am not sure we would have had the same response. It certainly would have taken us a lot longer to build the business.

If you are going to make a success of what you want to do, in innovation more than in other aspects of work, you need to think through what partnerships will accelerate market access. Depending on the nature and scale of what you are doing, there may be a range of partnerships that you will need. Marketing, sales, technological development, legal, intellectual property, finance, design, to name just a few. Your ability to influence others is a critical skill, if you are going to get off the runway and start to fly.

SKILL FIVE – Being able to be willing to step into the unknown despite challenges

‘How can senior executives promote value innovation? First, they must identify and articulate the company’s prevailing logic. Then they must challenge it,’ say authors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their international bestseller, Blue Ocean Strategy. This takes courage. Courage requires risk. If there is no risk of loss, then one does not need courage. If you are going to challenge the prevailing logic of how an industry or company works, and the competitive dynamics in which it operates, then you are going to have to go against what is perceived as normal, given and safe. For example, who thought Apple would become a music and entertainment platform (iTunes) or that flying would become ubiquitous for ordinary people (AirAsia, easyJet)? Flying was a premium-priced experience for wealthy tourists or business travellers. Not so any more and, even those markets, and many others, are changing dramatically. To have courage, one has to have faith and vision. You need to see in your mind’s eye the outcome of what you want to create. This is needed at the invest stage. To innovate is a creative act, but the act of creation is more than getting an idea; it requires courageous action to drive momentum and energetically move an idea into existence.

SKILL SIX – Being able to help others develop the skills of persuasion

I had the opportunity, a few years ago, of studying with one of the world’s foremost thinkers in the field of group dynamics and non-verbal communication, Michael Grinder. For 10 months, we learnt how to increase our range of non-verbal influencing and communication skills and each week we had to submit an assignment about how we were incorporating the skills into our daily lives. Grinder says, ‘Influence happens in the mind of someone else.’ Think about that for a moment. If influence happens in the mind of someone else, our ability to see their perspective – of why they should back our proposition – is a very important skill to develop. In our work, we train and coach as much in the ability to influence as we do in how to be creative and generate new ideas. If you want to develop a culture of innovation, it is not just about your personal ability to influence, but whether you can help others do the same. Time and time again, ideas, often good ones, stop at this phase of the innovation journey. People may well have great ideas, but because they lack the ability to influence other decision makers they do not get visibility or support. It is often the loudest voice or the person with the most political influence that will be heard. If ideas can come from anywhere, this is not a great recipe for innovation.