Reinvention - Necessity in Business

Innovations - ultra new - have received a lot of method based attention while business change has been given less focus. Situation is now leveling while business changes are becoming more frequent and demanding.

The purpose of reinvention is to help you not only to survive but thrive in a world of constant change!

Reinvention is a relatively new approach and in this brief article I dig into some questions related to reinvention and organized business to anticipate the future role of reinvention in them.

Reinvention is Ultimately People Changing

Currently in many business organization contexts old change systems have failed. People are frustrated and even rebellious towards changes. If people are not taken into consideration a change is a failure even before it starts. Reinvention offers a new framework for more successful changes.

Change is not a bug but a key feature of modern life. On a long run change mindset and skills even on a personal level are needed as a key precondition for successful changes in businesses and organizations.

Explore and Exploit

Explore and exploit are a generic logical combination. First you explore and then exploit. In current business thinking the exploit side is linked to operating business units. It gives an impression that an existing business is only about exploitation.

In practice we know that every running business unit needs to reinvent itself in shortening time intervals. Successful reinventing in turn requires exploration. Organizational culture that fails to recognize this and forces existing businesses only to exploit in a narrow efficiency sense kills businesses prematurely.

Reinvention and Hierarchy

1. Reinvention is needed every time when there is a need to go beyond organizational structures, practices and conventions set for daily work. That gives the basic layer of reinvention.

2. In the VUCA world the average reinvention cycle of a business is getting shorter. It means that in any organization people that have proper mindset and have respective skills need to do reinvention on a higher business level ever more often.

3. In corporations reinvention is needed even on the highest level. A corporation needs to reinvent itself from time to time.

Reinvention approach is already progressing. Methodological work by Dr Nadya Zhexembayeava and Reinvention Academy has already created The Reinvention Method and also many tools to be used in reinvention from personal to organizational levels.

Reinvention Function

It is to be expected that as reinvention becomes more common in business organizations it becomes a function. The main task of such a function is to ensure that reinvention takes place timely, coordinated and on all levels and that related capabilities are increased. Due to its integrative and cross-functional nature reinvention has features like quality function has.

Permanent Status of Reinvention in an Organization

R&D&I is typically considered the cornerstone leading to a successful organization's future. R&D&I are fundamentals even from every leaders' perspective. But what is modern content of D? A major problem in many companies is that D is typically seen only from a technology perspective.

Reinvention is a core topic in any organized business that aims for sustainability. It emphasizes people's aspects in creating a business and organization future. Reinvention is not one of those phenomena that come and go so shouldn't it have a status also as part of R&D&I. How much do you currently invest in reinvention?

Co-Reinvention and Informal Organizations

It is not only formal organizations that matter in business. Business model based activity is an example of organized business that is typically not formalized even though usually critical from a success point of view. In business change situations a co-reinvention type of activity is needed as business model described relationships are seldom of a simple and straightforward "supplier type".

Same need to co-reinvent applies to SMEs that typically operate relying heavily on networks. In a volatile world such network changes need much more attention and they should be anticipated to avoid network collapses.

All in all there are many reasons why reinvention is becoming a more important topic in business contexts and even beyond as the businesslike way of doing things expands.