Business Innovation Approaches

🗺️ User Journey Maps vs. Service Blueprints (+ Templates) (https://lnkd.in/d8tNmKe2), a fantastic article explaining differences between the two, when to use each, along with a free practical guide to get started. Kindly put together by Morgan Miller and Erika Flowers. As Morgan and Erika write, mapping experiences is a key part of a human-centered business. We need to look at both perspectives — what the person experiences (UX, front stage), and what went on outside of their view to make it happen (Service Design, backstage). With user journey maps, we visualize and document user’s experience. We interview customers to capture their insights, then map patterns. We list steps and actions they go through to meet their goals — sometimes with storyboards, or Jobs-to-Be-Done, or emotional responses. The outcome is an aggregate, real-world experience (front stage) — framed as a narrative. Those user journeys often start way before users start interacting with your product — so we need to include non-digital touch points as well. Customer journey maps are just like user journey maps, just for a different persona: e.g. in B2B, customers might not be end users. Service blueprints are not about documenting the user experience. They apply user experience as starting point, and unpack it to expose how it is *internally* created — with technology, people, operations, processes involved (backstage). Journey maps and service blueprints highlight different sides of the experience story. But they have one thing in common: they help us understand the broken parts and fix them. The outcome, then, is a great UX and great internal processes that shape and enable it. Useful resources: Guide to Journey Maps + Templates, by Stéphanie Walter https://lnkd.in/erheegtf UX vs. Service Design, by Sarah Gibbons https://lnkd.in/d5mw3vVu UX Mapping Methods: A Cheat Sheet, by Sarah Gibbons https://lnkd.in/eSnExG4h Guide To Customer Journey Mapping (+ free template), by Taras Bakusevych https://lnkd.in/e-emkh5A User Journey Maps: Guides and Templates, by yours truly https://lnkd.in/dY5NtqSf ✤ Service Blueprints Service Blueprint Design System (Figma), by Jacopo Sironi https://lnkd.in/d-qrSFRY Service Blueprint Kit, by Julien Fovelle https://lnkd.in/dXmkCPDm Service Blueprint Templates, by Theydo https://lnkd.in/dUsDzYCA A Guide to Service Blueprinting (PDF), by Nicholas Remis https://lnkd.in/ejY82P5M Your Guide To Blueprinting (free PDF + Miro), by Morgan Miller, Erika Flowers https://lnkd.in/efFPAeU9 #ux #design

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐆𝐂𝐂 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐃𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 In the dynamic financial landscape of the GCC, innovation is no longer a “nice-to-have” but a necessity. As banks explore various avenues to accelerate #innovation—ranging from venture building to venture studios and Corporate Venture Capital (CVC)—it’s time to take a hard look at where the focus should be. While these strategies may appear complementary, the internal and external realities of the GCC banking sector make a compelling case for banks to prioritize #CVC investments. Here’s why: 🟡 The Speed of Innovation Matters Building ventures from scratch, is a long-term game. In contrast, CVC #investments enable banks to tap into the innovation of startups that are already operational, reducing the time to impact 🟡 Monetary Muscle Can Be a Game-Changer GCC banks are among the best-capitalized in the world. With substantial balance sheets and strong #liquidity, they have the financial firepower to make meaningful investments. Rather than deploying resources to create #ventures — often with uncertain outcomes—banks can flex their monetary muscle to partner with or acquire startups 🟡 Access to a Global Innovation Network CVC investments provide a gateway to global innovation ecosystems. By participating in funding rounds, #GCC banks can establish partnerships with global startups 🟡 De-risking the #Innovation Agenda Building ventures internally puts significant operational and reputational risk on the bank. Failed ventures can also damage the bank’s credibility. CVC investments spread the risk by creating a portfolio of diverse bets 🟡 Complementing, Not Competing with, the Startup Ecosystem Venture building strategies can unintentionally place banks in competition with #startups - by investing in startups, banks can strengthen their relationships within the fintech community 🟡 Faster Go-to-Market with Proven Ideas Startups often have the agility and focus to bring innovative products to market quickly. Through CVC, banks can identify proven ideas, invest strategically, and integrate those solutions into their platforms 🟡 Aligning with Regional Trends Governments across the GCC are prioritizing #startup #ecosystems and #digital #transformation as part of their national visions. Banks can align with this macro trend by channeling resources into CVC, demonstrating their commitment to supporting innovation A Call to Action for GCC Banks While venture building and studios have their merits, the realities of the GCC banking sector and the pace of global innovation necessitate a more pragmatic approach. #CVC offers a faster, lower-risk, and higher-impact path to innovation, enabling banks to deliver value to their customers and shareholders What do you think? Are CVCs the smarter play for banks in the GCC? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Innovation is the lifeblood of progress, but it doesn’t happen by chance. It’s cultivated in environments where team members feel safe to share ideas and challenge the status quo. Creating a culture of innovation means nurturing an environment where bold ideas can flourish. It’s about openness, diverse perspectives, and the freedom to experiment. When people feel empowered to speak up, creativity thrives, and true innovation follows. So, how do you create such a culture? 1️⃣ Embed a Growth Mindset: Encourage continuous learning and development across all levels of the organization. Provide resources for professional growth and celebrate learning milestones, fostering an environment where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving. 2️⃣ Facilitate Cross-Functional Collaboration: Break down silos and encourage teams from different departments to work together. Cross-functional projects can bring fresh perspectives and spur innovative solutions that wouldn’t emerge in isolation. 3️⃣ Implement Structured Feedback Mechanisms: Establish regular feedback processes focused on constructive criticism and actionable insights. Ensure psychological safety so team members feel secure, viewing feedback as an opportunity for growth rather than critique. 4️⃣ Encourage Calculated Risks: Promote a culture where calculated risks are welcomed. Empower your team to explore new ideas and approaches without fear of failure. Recognize and reward innovative efforts, even when they don’t result in immediate success. By embedding these principles into your organizational culture, you can pave the way for continuous growth and success. Let’s create spaces where innovation is not just an aspiration but a tangible reality. #Leadership #Innovation #FutureOfWork

The deeper our understanding of systems, the more wisely and skillfully we can impact sustainable change and improvement. Way back in the 1940's, General Systems Theory showed us that systems could NOT be fully understood by breaking them apart and analyzing the pieces. Instead, systems had to be observed as wholes ,seen in context, with attention to how the parts interacted, evolved, and influenced each other over time. This shift in thinking (from analysis to synthesis) changed everything. It taught us that organizations, supply chains, customer experiences, and even simple production lines are not collections of isolated parts. They are dynamic, interconnected living systems. And THIS perspective is what's needed to guide Lean thinking and Lean practices. Lean is not just about cutting waste or speeding up production. At its core, Lean is about seeing the system- how value flows (or fails to flow) across people, processes, and technology. It’s about understanding that the performance of a system depends far more on the interactions between the parts than on the performance of any single part. When Lean asks us to "go to the Gemba", to the real place where work happens, it is inviting us to observe with curiosity, to understand and not judge or measure. And when Lean guides us to improve processes, it teaches us to create flow and pull systems instead of pushing work downstream blindly...and it teaches us to seek out the communication and collaboration practices that create or prevent flow and pull. When Lean practitioners don't 'get' systems thinking, three major things happen: 1️⃣ They focus too much on local improvements. They optimize one department, one process, or one step but unknowingly hurt the system as a whole. 2️⃣ They treat symptoms, not causes. Without a systems view, people often chase the obvious issues (like bottlenecks or rework) without seeing the underlying system conditions that are creating those issues. 3️⃣ They miss the bigger opportunity. Lean isn't just about making tasks quicker, it's about redesigning how value flows across the organization. Without systems thinking, efforts stay tactical, fragmented, and superficial and real transformation never happens. Systems thinking reminds us: 👉 Optimizing one piece without regard to the whole can cause greater problems elsewhere. 👉 True improvement happens when we see the relationships and dependencies , not just the activities. 👉 To create sustainable change, we must first understand how the system behaves, not just how it is designed. Why is it so hard for many organizations to think in systems, not silos? Is it anything to do with the people/leader traits highlighted below? Leave your thoughts in the comments and lets chat! 🙏

This is a pivotal time for business leaders to apply strategic foresight and systems thinking. Go beyond tariffs and stock market trends and consider the broader, longer-term impacts: 1. How might a trend toward AI deregulation in product safety affect the AI products my business relies on? 2. In what ways could shifts in immigration policy influence my workforce strategy for maintaining a competitive edge with emerging technologies? How could these policies reshape PhD talent pipelines? 3. How will evolving U.S. geopolitical relationships impact my third-party suppliers and global partnerships? 4. With the increasing influence of techno-politics, what new considerations emerge for my business strategy? Scenario planning is key in moments of change and uncertainty.

🇸🇾🇸🇹🇪🇲🇸 🇹🇭🇮🇳🇰🇮🇳🇬 This was the single biggest learning I took from my years as a #diversity and #inclusion practitioner at Google, thanks to my brilliant former colleague Dr. Myosha M. – who introduced the concept to me. And seeing Harvard Business Review spotlight it this month reminded me just how pivotal it's been in shaping my career. The article makes a clear point: many "innovations" create as many problems as they solve, because they're designed in silos. Plastics made life cheaper and more convenient – and created an ecological nightmare. Ride-sharing expanded access – and gutted livelihoods. Breakthroughs and design thinking alone can't handle wicked problems. That's where systems thinking comes in: zooming out to see interdependencies, ripple effects, and relationships before zooming in to act. And honestly, DEI are the definition of a wicked problem: complex, entwined, yet unresolved despite the best efforts of people with noble interests at heart. Too often, we see linear, surface-level fixes like: ‣ Rolling out #UnconsciousBias training hoping that alone changes culture; ‣ Announcing hiring targets without rethinking criteria nor shifting retention practices; ‣ Celebrating "heritage months" without shifting power or budgets. A systems lens flips that: ‣ Instead of just bias training → embed equity checks and accountability loops into promotion processes, feedback systems, and manager incentives; ‣ Instead of hiring targets → redesign career paths so that minoritised employees stay, grow, and lead; ‣ Instead of one-off cultural celebrations → rewire procurement, governance, and leadership pipelines to shift actual resources and decision-making power. The HBR piece – written by Tima Bansal & Julian Birkinshaw – outlines four moves that resonate deeply with DEI work: 1️⃣ Define a desired future state (equity not as a slogan, but as the organisation's actual vision); 2️⃣ Reframe problems so they resonate across stakeholders (it's not "fixing women" but redesigning systems of overwork, pay, and recognition); 3️⃣ Focus on flows and relationships, not just one-off events (think: sponsorship networks, not just mentoring matchmaking); 4️⃣ Nudge the system forward with experiments (pilots that test structural change, then scale). These may sound abstract at first, but they're actually more grounded and effective than the window-dressing that burns out practitioners and disappoints employees while fuelling anti-DEI rhetoric. Because here's the thing: equity work should never be a side project, something delegated to an amateur, or a PR play. It's inherently a system redesign. And once you see it through that lens, the work gets harder — but also genuinely transformative. 💬 Curious: looking at your own org's DEI efforts, which feel most aligned to #SystemsThinking? ⬇️ Link to the article in comments.

Corporate Venturing Squads & Open #Innovation. Corporate venturing squads (CVSs) are a groundbreaking new kind of multi-partner strategic alliance formed by a small group of corporations joining forces to innovate with one or more start-ups. They represent a novel governance structure enabling corporations to pursue corporate innovation as a team alongside #startups . •Emerging Trend: CVSs are an emerging trend in the innovation ecosystem, increasing steadily across five continents. This trend is driven by widespread competition, fast-moving markets, limited resources, technological disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, and regulatory overhaul, suggesting that collaborative relations are more important than ever. •Open Innovation Catalyst: CVSs serve as a catalyst for adopting open innovation, where members collaborate by sharing unique information about specific innovation challenges. This allows corporates to increase their value proposition to start-ups and gain access to assets and capabilities for competitive advantages. •Typology of CVSs: CVSs are not all equal and can take various forms. The study provides a typology of six distinct categories based on two criteria: the main activity (Scouting, Testing, Investing) and the frequency of collaboration (One-shot, Recurring). The six types are Scouting force, Scouting platform, Joint proof of concept (PoC), Partnership, Co-investment, and Joint fund . •Potential Benefits: Joining a CVS offers specific benefits for corporate innovation. The top reported benefits are - ◦Better access to start-up deal flow: (37% of benefits) Allows sharing scouting capabilities and provides a more attractive value proposition to start-ups than working alone. ◦Improved network access: (29% of benefits) Enhances the corporate's network position in the innovation ecosystem. CVSs often reinforce existing relationships, with 80% involving companies that had previously worked together. ◦Learning and sharing best practices: (26% of benefits) Provides access to new knowledge and acquisition of best practices. ◦Improving credibility and visibility: (4% of benefits) Enhances the firm's standing, though less critical for already large, established companies. Source -  IESE Business School Report EmpowerEdge Ventures

Embracing #systemsthinking is essential for businesses seeking long-term success and sustainability. Important steps include learning how different parts of complex systems interact with each other, evaluating the effects of several variables over time, and using this knowledge to make informed decisions. These strategies can help businesses in mitigating risks, overcoming unexpected challenges, and seizing opportunities to become industry leaders. #Insurance companies' traditional reliance on historical data for decision-making is changing, particularly in the context of climate change. Traditionally, the industry has looked backward, using past events to forecast and price future risks. This approach, however, is proving inadequate in the face of climate change, as past patterns are no longer reliable predictors of future events. As businesses shift their attention from reactive, short-term actions (such as adjusting premiums after a disaster) to proactive, long-term strategies that take into account wider implications and long-term challenges, the value of systems thinking becomes clearer. This shift in perspective recognises the complex relationship between climate change and various societal elements such as urban planning, building codes, community resilience, and overall population health and economic stability. Transforming from a passive entity that compensates for losses to a proactive agent of change enables the insurance sector to make a significant contribution to society's ability to adapt to climate change. This shift in approach benefits both the insured and the insurer, but it also plays an important role in the societal response to emerging global challenges, aligning the industry's objectives with the collective goal of building a sustainable and resilient future. Systems thinking plays a role in today's interconnected, technologically advanced, and rapidly changing world. If businesses want to thrive in a world that is constantly changing, they must consider how their decisions will affect society, the environment, and the economy. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dbsybsNb #sustainability #esg #climatechange #climateaction

FSG's Systems Thinking Toolkit is one of the most practical, thoughtful resources I’ve seen for turning systems thinking into actionable practice. It helps answer key questions like: 👉 What kind of mapping will surface patterns in our system? 👉 How can we bring multiple perspectives into view, equitably? 👉 What activities build shared understanding and momentum? "We tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.” The toolkit introduces tools like: 👉 Actor mapping: Visualise who’s involved and how they relate. 👉 Ecocycle mapping: Spot renewal, stagnation, and energy flows. 👉 Appreciative inquiry: Learn from what’s working and amplify it. 👉 World café & timeline mapping: Create spaces for deep dialogue and shared narrative. One standout feature is the “System Tools Matrix” which makes it easy to choose tools based on your purpose, whether you’re understanding context, diagnosing connections, or refining a strategy. "The first step in selecting an appropriate tool is to consider where you are in the systems thinking cycle" https://lnkd.in/e2XDJd4J