Innovative Enterprise Scale-Up Design
Getting innovation to scale can be divided into three main areas: Emergence, Networks, and Waves. This article is on Waves, the last in a series of three. Through scaling, smart movers can quickly build substantial market shares – or define entirely new markets.
We operate in business and societal environments that are complex, dynamic, and uncertain. This environment provides new challenges and at the same time great opportunities through scaling – which we have defined as the successful introduction of innovations that spread rapidly in non-linear fashion, seemingly self-propelled and with relatively little effort, resulting in an outsized impact.
Applying these new scaling techniques can be significantly more cost-effective than traditional advertising, or lobbying activities.
Successfully developing and introducing innovations is the lifeblood of any enterprise and requires a special kind of leadership – innovation leadership. Innovation leaders guide their organizations and employees to produce more creative ideas, products, services and solutions. When it comes to scaling innovation leadership can make the biggest difference by having an understanding of scaling that they can incorporate into the design phase of an innovative project or concept. Designing for scale in an early phase will make the likelihood of scaling successfully when implementing much larger.
We have identified two dozen practical Scaling tactics that can be designed into the concept during the concept development stage. This should lead to accelerated diffusion and adoption upon introduction. Our research draws on scientific approaches such as Complexity Theory, Behavioral Economics and Systems Theory. We have divided the topic into three main areas: Emergence, Networks, and Waves. Within these three areas, we have identified different tactics for leaders to benefit from scaling. We call these scaling frames. This article focuses on our six Waves Scaling frames.
Emergence. This is essentially collective behavior. It refers to the phenomenon of patterns becoming apparent in complex systems of interacting agents. Innovation leadership can look to make use of emergent collective behavior by designing openness into a system and designing rules for interaction, which allow successful behavior to surface and spread. We have distinguished 13 separate tactics or scaling frames that we have clustered under Emergence. More on this topic can be found in this article.
Networks. Innovation leadership can take advantage of the properties of networks, the structures and technology supporting networks, and the social conditioning that exists with network members to scale their innovations. We have identified 6 distinct Networks scaling frames. More on this topic can be found in this article.
Waves. Waves are a naturally occurring phenomenon in complex systems. It is one thing for innovation leadership to be prepared to watch for waves and catch them when they appear. It is another thing altogether to create, nurture and sustain waves that are steered in the direction of your entrepreneurial vision. We have 6 Waves scaling frames.
