This is the question I chose to open my business model innovation workshop last Monday at the Great Ideas Conference in Colorado Springs.  I selected this question because it recently came to my attention that at least some association leaders are concerned about the idea of business model innovation because they see it as “radical.”

Radical?  Really? (Yeah, I was pretty surprised myself.)

In truth, the most radical choice association leaders can make today is perpetuating the status quo as a strategy for long-term success.  The belief that the next trajectory of success will be discovered simply by doing more of what your organization has done for the last 25, 50 or 100 years reflects a profound misunderstanding not only of today’s operating environment for associations, but also the complex challenges our community faces going forward.  From my vantage point, meaningful business model innovation is anything but radical.  It is the only responsible choice for association leaders interested in building “thrivable” organizations for the 21st century.

What does it mean to be thrivable?  For me, thrivability is the capacity to flourish by capitalizing on the powerful forces of paradigm shift.  Thrivability is about letting go of what our organizations have always done, and designing the “next practices” that will enable new value creation.  In the 21st century, it is the innovators that will thrive and associations need to be among them.

The radical choice?  Now more than ever, you cannot be certain you know what it is.

Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Next week, I’ll be attending ASAE & The Center’s Great Ideas Conference at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs.  If you’re planning to be at the conference, I hope you will seriously consider attending my four-hour Business Model Innovation workshop on Monday, March 8.  The session will go from 8:30 am-12:30 pm, and it is really the first session of its kind at an ASAE & The Center event.  No special registration or additional fee is required…you can just show up!  I am extremely excited about leading this workshop, and I invite you to join me for this incredibly invaluable session that is very much about the meaning and practice of strategic association leadership in the 21st century.

In preparation for Drive author Dan Pink’s closing general session talk on Tuesday, I thought you might enjoy listening to my podcast interview with Dan from the end of 2009.  We discuss the book, and its implications for associations.  It’s a terrific conversation!

As always you can follow the Great Ideas action on Twitter using the hashtag #ideas10.  I fully expect to be posting to Twitter during the conference, along with many other friends and colleagues from across our community.  We will do our best to capture both the substance and spirit of the event.

I’m looking forward to seeing many P.I. Blog readers in Colorado, so please come up and say hi when you see me around the conference.  To everyone who is attending, please travel safely!

Register for the my upcoming webinar series, The Future of Associating is Mobile - Powerful Strategies for Third Screen Success for just $299…that’s three high-impact webinars for the price of two!

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until Friday to begin finding out what they are.

I know I’m not playing fair, and I hope you understand why.  I really want you to sign up for the webinar series!

Series registrants will learn my Ten Powerful Strategies for Mobile Success, and we will discuss these strategies over the course of the three webinars on March 5, 12 and 19.  After the series concludes, you’ll receive the complete list of ten strategies as a PDF handout.

The fun begins on Friday, March at 2 pm EST.  If your association is wondering how to make the move into mobile, you do not want to miss this series.  I hope you will give serious consideration to joining me.

And don’t forget that this is a site registration, so you may invite as many people to participate in each webinar as you like at your physical location.

Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

In the category of “stuff we should already know,” the new Barron’s Magazine list of the world’s ten most respected companies includes nine leading innovators.  Before we go any further, here are the top ten companies:

1. Apple
2. Johnson & Johnson
3. Procter and Gamble
4. IBM
5. Berkshire Hathaway
6. Toyota Motors
7. McDonalds
8. Google
9. Cisco
10. Amazon

Do these names look familiar?  The list was chosen by investors who were focused primarily on stock perfomance, but the lesson still applies.  Setting aside Berkshire Hathaway, which as a holding company is a separate case, innovation has been central to the success of the other nine enterprises on this list.  Even with Toyota’s recent public failures, the company still has a long-standing commitment to innovation that has built its reputation.

Why do successful innovators earn this kind of respect?  By now, you’ve heard all of the strategic and financial arguments for the pursuit of innovation, so let me offer a more human one.  Innovators earn respect, because the pursuit of innovation to create radical new value demonstrates respect for today’s customers, employees and investors.  What’s more, innovation is a strong statement of respect for two stakeholder groups that don’t usually get much attention but are especially important to associations:  predecessors and successors.  Innovation pays respect to those who came before by preserving their critical contributions of time, energy and passion, while offering respect to those who will follow by ensuring the organization will not be captive to its past.

So the answer to the question is pretty simple.  Successful innovators earn respect, because they give it.  How is your association showing respect to its full continuum of stakeholders?

Register for the my upcoming webinar series, The Future of Associating is Mobile - Powerful Strategies for Third Screen Success for just $299…that’s three high-impact webinars for the price of two!

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Please join me and Chris Bonney (@chrisbonney) of Vanguard Technology this Friday, February 12 at 10 am ET for a FREE one-hour briefing called “Mobile Matters:  What Association Leaders Need to Know.”  Here is the session description:

As association leaders continue to discover the disruptive potential of mobile technologies, they will need to adopt a clear strategic perspective on how best to capitalize on the platform and all of its emergent capabilities. This FREE virtual briefing, conducted by two of the association community’s leading thinkers on mobile, will explain to association leaders why mobile matters today and going forward, and share invaluable insights that will help their associations act with greater confidence in this new arena of opportunity.

This is going to be a terrific conversation, so please carve out some time to join us if you can.  Please bring your questions about mobile, and we’ll try to answer as many as time allows.  We ask that you register as soon as possible and we’ll send out the login/dial-in info tomorrow late afternoon/early evening.

And speaking of questions, please take a moment to download my list of Twelve Great Questions to Ask Your Members About Mobile (49 KB PDF).  I hope these questions will help your association gain a better of understanding of how your members are using mobile today, and the full dimensions of the opportunity in front of you.

FYI, everyone is welcome to participate in this session, regardless of whether you’re officially registered for the unconference.  Please do register for the call, though, so we can send you the info you need to access it.  See you on Friday at 10 am ET!

Register for the my upcoming webinar series, The Future of Associating is Mobile - Powerful Strategies for Third Screen Success for just $299…that’s three high-impact webinars for the price of two!

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Later this week, weather permitting, I’ll be downtown for ASAE & The Center’s 2010 Technology Conference at the Washington Convention Center.  I’m excited to see many P.I. Blog readers and my favorite association community peeps.  The Technology Conference is always a good time, and this year should be no exception!

My session, The iPhone Volunteer: Why Mobile is the Next Great Platform for Member Engagement!, is on Thursday, February 11 at 4:15 pm.  If you’re going to be at the conference, I hope you’ll join me because this may be the only session during which you’ll be encouraged to have your beloved mobile device out in front of you, instead of hiding it while doing the Blackberry prayer under the table!  Seriously though, in addition to a fun learning experience, all of my session attendees will receive a special bonus resource, as well as the opportunity to win a terrific prize:

The bonus:  During the session, I will provide a link where you will be able to download my list of Twelve Great Questions to Ask Your Members About Mobile.  Only my session attendees will receive this password-protected URL and login information.

The prize:  At the end of my session, one lucky association professional attendee will receive a complimentary registration for my upcoming The Future of Associating is Mobile webinar series, which begins on March 5.  This prize is a $299 value, so you will want to take advantage of this opportunity to win!  (Must be present though…)

In preparation for this session, I wrote an article for TechnoScope, the official newsletter of ASAE & The Center’s Technology Section Council.  The article is now available online, along with a special podcast on mobile strategy.  I hope you’ll enjoy reading/listening to these resources.  (If you do, please take a few moments to rate and review the article.)

Of course, I’ll be doing some social content creation during the conference as well, so I hope you’ll follow along here and on the #tech10 online hub.  (FYI, the hub tag for my session is ld9.) So if you see me around #tech10, please come up and say hello!

Register for the my upcoming webinar series, The Future of Associating is Mobile - Powerful Strategies for Third Screen Success for just $299…that’s three high-impact webinars for the price of two!

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Intention–It has never been more important for associations to have leaders, especially in voluntary roles, who are intentional about building the inventive business models, resilient cultures of shared responsibility and dynamic social systems for collaboration that will enable their organizations to thrive in the 21st century.  This is the new work of governing, which needs to be an intentional and conscious process of value creation and stewardship.  Unfortunately, in too many associations, governing has become a reflexive process of risk avoidance, a misguided intention that paradoxically places the organization’s future at greater risk.

“Intention is the active partner of attention; it is the way we convert our automatic processes into conscious ones.” (Deepak Chopra)

Inquiry–Complex challenges raise complicated questions, and difficult questions require thoughtful answers. Leaders acting with intention will ask these more challenging questions without fear, even when they are politically unpopular or even dangerous.  The deeper value of inquiry is not found in the answers, however, but in the questions themselves, as well as the new understanding discovered between the asking and the answering.  In the context of strategy development, the greatest difficulty is finding the patience to stay with and within the questions for as long as possible to build individual and systemic capacity for inquiry that is truly generative.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” (Albert Einstein)

Insight–A meaningful process of inquiry should help association leaders develop original insights into the rapidly shifting dynamics of strategic success for their organizations.  For the last ten years, all association stakeholders have been confronting a set of increasingly difficult 21st century problems, a reality that will only intensify going forward.  Any serious attempt to solve these problems will require fresh thinking and approaches, and the full dimension of insight needed to develop and implement those approaches will not be realized by constantly replaying conversations from the last century.  Association leaders must end the self-reinforcing doom loop of past perspectives, and embrace a continuous cycle of future-focused learning.

“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Innovation–While some have recently suggested otherwise, the pursuit of innovation is a hugely critical business decision with real-world financial implications.  In 2010, association leaders should pay close attention to the global focus on innovation, as organizations of all types and in all sectors recognize that enduring value creation never occurs through adaptation.  Innovation is all about the fundamental relationship between needs and solutions, and the ability of the innovator to develop deeper insights into both.  As stakeholder needs become more specific and harder to articulate or quantify in traditional terms, tried-and-true solutions will fade away and even more opportunities for genuine disruption of the status quo will emerge.  Associations can either defend their current turf (and sadly many will), or they can start learning the rules of the next game and figure out how to play it successfully.

“Innovation is change that creates a new dimension of performance.” (Peter Drucker)

Integration–Associations must be able to integrate what they are learning everyday into existing practice, while actively discarding ways of doing business that no longer work.  This kind of capacity-building may not seem particularly exciting, but it is precisely what associations need to do to break free of the supremely lame “we have always done it that way” mindset that still prevails in so many tradition-bound organizations.  Identifying next practices will be more valuable in the long run than rehabilitating so-called “best practices” now in decline.  To be intentional about capacity-building, associations need leaders who will consistently choose learning by doing over knowing. 

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (Albert Einstein)

What are your words for 2010?  Please share them below!

Register for the my upcoming webinar series, The Future of Associating is Mobile - Powerful Strategies for Third Screen Success for just $299…that’s three high-impact webinars for the price of two!

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Without question, mobile will be a major topic of, hopefully, generative conversation across the association community throughout 2010.  How will you make sure that conversation occurs inside your organization?

If you’re looking for a way to get the conversation going inside your association, I hope you’ll consider registering for my new three-part webinar series, “The Future of Associating is Mobile: Powerful Strategies for Third Screen Success,” which begins on March 5.

As always, your comments on the mobile post are welcome either with the post or below.  When you have a moment, please vote for the mobile post on Association Jam, and look for my next SmartBlog Insights post on the “content conflict” and “curate to innovate” trends.

Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

While association stakeholders attempt to solve the 21st century problems they face personally and professionally, many associations are still offering solutions better suited to the 20th century. When leaders and organizations are able to reorient their thinking, however, huge and compelling innovation opportunities become clear.

This session, led by the association community’s leading voice for innovation, will explore some of the most pressing problems confronting your association customers, members and other stakeholders and suggest potential solutions that you can integrate into your efforts to create new value through innovation.

I know everyone is quite busy these days, but I really want to encourage you to take the time to participate in this session.  It will be an opportunity to think creatively about your association’s business model, something you probably find hard to do in the middle of the daily grind, and walk away with some different ideas about how you can better serve your members today and going forward.  Plus, there will be free food and prize giveaways!

Register today and I’ll look forward to seeing you on March 4!

Register for the my upcoming webinar series,The Future of Associating is Mobile - Powerful Strategies for Third Screen Success for just $299…that’s three high-impact webinars for the price of two!

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.