Table Of ContentMake Your
Organization
a Center of
Innovation
T ools and Concepts to Solve
Problems and Generate Ideas
―
Stijn Van Hijfte
MAKE YOUR
ORGANIZATION A CENTER
OF INNOVATION
TOOLS AND CONCEPTS TO SOLVE
PROBLEMS AND GENERATE IDEAS
Stijn Van Hijfte
Make Your Organization a Center of Innovation: Tools and Concepts to
Solve Problems and Generate Ideas
Stijn Van Hijfte
Gent, Belgium
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-6506-2 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-6507-9
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6507-9
Copyright © 2020 by Stijn Van Hijfte
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For my loving family
Contents
About the Author vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Chapter 1: The Call for Innovation 1
Chapter 2: Company Strategy 15
Chapter 3: Innovation Frameworks 39
Chapter 4: Change Frameworks 81
Chapter 5: Digital Solutions and Trends 95
Chapter 6: Continuous Learning 113
Chapter 7: Focus and Expertise 123
Chapter 8: The Innovation Process 137
Chapter 9: C oncluding Remarks 179
I ndex 185
About the Author
Stijn Van Hijfte has experience as a consultant,
a lecturer, and an innovation officer and has
worked over the years with cloud, AI, auto-
mation, and blockchain technology. Since 2015
he has been experimenting and exploring the
blockchain space, gaining deeper insight into the
entire ecosystem. This insight ranges from
setting up nodes and writing smart contracts
to the legal implications of GDPR, ICOs, and
cryptocurrencies. Among others, he holds
degrees in economics, IT, and data science. He
currently works at Deloitte as a senior consultant
and as a lecturer at Howest University of
Applied Sciences.
Acknowledgments
For this book I would like to acknowledge the people close to me. I have
spent quite some time again on this book and this isn’t always easy for the
people around me. So I thank you for your support and for standing by my
side during these periods of me writing.
Specifically, I would like to thank my fiancée for her continued support and my
parents and brother for believing in me. Also my parents-in-law deserve a
special thanks here for their continuous support.
My friends and family also have my eternal gratitude for dealing with me, even
when things tend to get a bit crazy. I know that I can be a handful at times, so
now you have it in black and white: thank you.
Finally, I would like to give special thanks to Joost Van Ginkel for giving me the
opportunity to work as an innovation officer for 2 years and helping me get a
better understanding of how innovation can work in a changing organization.
Introduction
In this book we are going to discuss each of the aspects that make up an inno-
vative organization. We cannot skip one of these steps or risk losing control
over the innovative strengths of the enterprise. In the first chapter, we will
discuss shortly the importance of innovation and how you might approach it
as an organization. We will have a closer look at how the company strategy,
mission, vision, and values can affect innovation in the second chapter. We will
go a bit further in the following chapter with what innovation frameworks you
can make use of to help you along and what problem solving techniques can
be applied in the innovation process. Next, there are the views on change and
what change frameworks can be applied to your company. Too often we
ignore the effect of change on people in the company so that we should suf-
ficiently focus on what impact innovation can have on our stakeholders. We
continue with some trends and technologies that are currently heavily impact-
ing organizations all over the world. In the next chapter, we make a deep dive
into the innovation process. What steps do we need to create and how can
we facilitate continuous innovation in our organization? It is fundamental that
we spend ample time on each of these steps before we move forward.
If we spend proper focus and time on each of these steps, we can help our
organization to move forward in the right direction and accept that both
change and innovation are crucial for the survival of the company in the long
term.
C H A P T E R
1
The Call for
Innovation
The call for innovation and change both within society and the enterprise
grows ever louder. If companies don’t prioritize change, it almost feels as if
they are doomed to fail. And in some sense that might be true. We are living
in an environment that changes ever faster, and those that aren’t willing to
adapt will fall behind. Change involves taking more risks that can create more
pressure for decision makers. What is the right action to take, how do we
begin, and when is the right moment? There is no clear answer on these
questions so that management has difficult choices to make.
A famous example is the advent of the smartphone. When the first
smartphones were introduced to the market, there was a lot of debate
whether it would become a success or not at all. I remember that even at my
house there was a clear debate whether anyone would buy such expensive
phones. A mobile was for texting and calling, right? Why would we want to
pay so much for a small computer if we already have one at home? Nokia
clearly didn’t see any value either in the smartphone market and chose to
ignore its development in the beginning. They were at the top of the mobile
phone industry and believed that they could steer the future of the industry
as a whole. And at the time it almost seemed impossible that Nokia would
lose control over the market. Smartphones became very quickly very popular,
and when Nokia realized that they had missed their chance, it was already too
© Stijn Van Hijfte 2020
S. V. Hijfte, Make Your Organization a Center of Innovation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6507-9_1
2 Chapter 1 | The Call for Innovation
late. They still entered the market but other competitors already had too
much of an advantage and they would never really recover again from this
miscalculation. However, entering the smartphone market wasn’t just an
automatic recipe for success. This was proven by the Windows phone that
only had a short life span before it disappeared again from the market.1
To be able to successfully innovate, organizations need to attract talent that
has the necessary insights and is able to understand the needs of the
generations that are following. It is far from an easy task to try to provide
the answers for the future. How do we predict what customers and internal
stakeholders alike require from us? It can be a shot in the dark and even
more alarming is that that shot in the dark could incur a huge cost that leads
to nothing. Microsoft tried to jump into the smartphone market, but
unfortunately for them the smartphones that Microsoft produced never
really found a market of their own and eventually they had to pull the plug.
Was it a complete failure? No, as certain aspects of the software they had
developed are still being used for their numerous other projects. The
knowledge and experience they gained from the smartphone market can
still be used internally.
Innovation and change are never a sure thing, and as you will learn in this
book, there are several positions you can take. You can be a front-runner or
you can be a laggard. Both strategies and approaches to the market come with
their advantages and disadvantages. Both come with their own unique risks to
the organization. Understanding the consequences from our choices is of key
importance for decision makers as they have to decide over the changes that
need to be implemented in the company. Strategic choices can make or break
the enterprise, and all knowledge we can share with them to help them make
the right decision is of key importance. One wrong step could mean the end
of leadership in the market and one right choice could lead to profits for the
next decade.
But not all is despair and chaos, as the people that make up our organization
have expertise and experience. They understand better than anyone else
what problems they are dealing with and what frustrates both internal and
external stakeholders. It is this untapped source of knowledge that is too
often ignored by people with power in the company. If someone has been
dealing with the same job for years, they better know what deserves attention
for change, improvement, or innovation. However, it is often not easy to
1 https://www.computerworld.com/article/3336057/how-microsoft-failed-
with-windows-10-mobile.html#:~:text=At%20the%20heart%20of%20
Windows,into%20a%20little%20screen%20product.&text=So%2C%20Windows%20
Mobile%20was%20crippled,%2Dlate%2C%20strategy%20regarding%20funding
