Any innovation common language needs working upon. It firstly needs recognition it is in our best interests to find a common point. It needs to be relevant to each of us, it must be current, appropriate, accurate and highly visible throughout the entire organization. It also needs to be allowed to grow and flourish, to evolve and become the lingua franca of all our innovation work. It needs building and constructing in conscious ways and design.

Let’s step back just for one minute, these ‘sentiments’ are fine, yet we actually do, seriously lack a common language for innovation and we should find the ways and the means to change this. It holds innovation back significantly. It can’t continue in a world of greater networking and collaboration.

Languages unites us or keeps dividing us

Language can have the power to unite us or potentially divide us. Developing a language to unite us in our innovation efforts goes some way to reduce disagreements and egos, to qualify individual interpretation or bias, often a key inhibitor that can block a team’s success. It lays in a common foundation. It builds confidence and understanding.

Once we have a common language, we can set about building and creating a more robust innovation management system. One that builds on this framework so it can relate to the relevant context, conditions, and environment for innovation, to offer within this building block, the common identity.

These identifiers can build into better understanding how to structure governance, process, and functional structures, to build a culture that is responsive as ‘they’ can identify a need for a common cause of understanding. It is in this central innovation language that becomes our clear unifying context, the enabler, and sense of personal identity with the purpose of what we are wishing to achieve.

In any common language, we need to master the understanding, the nuances and how it all fits together. We need to exploit it and extract what it can offer to enhance all the work we do in innovation. We need to appreciate always its terms, its definitions (and limitations) and the related performance values that can help to improve our performance and in our achievements of working increasingly with others.  A common understanding of our meaning to ‘innovate’ becomes an imperative.

Today we all having a different meaning and interpretations within our innovation understanding.

Each organization has specifics in meaning that can often end up in results that break down and so deliver results totally different from their original intent. As we grow out our collaborations into ecosystems the need for a common language becomes even more vital. For example:

• Often misunderstanding occurs, even though we initially thought we had communicated well but those that receive this often apply different interpretations that confirm their personal views,
• There is always this risk that others often apply subtle nuances and variations built on their experiences or understanding on how ‘something works’, and it is within these different readings we can suffer costly errors, extensive delays and wrong end results in the final product or service delivery.
• We suffer significant inefficiencies because we don’t pay enough attention to ensuring the correct meaning is well understood, we simply believe our way of thinking is the only way it is conveyed to be understood, and as we all know, this is often far from the reality. Context and Communications are kings in my opinion.
• We need to seek explicit language and context to allow innovation to do its final job, of delivering a valuable new contribution that builds on the existing and meets new market and customers’ needs or the jobs-to-be-done.

Innovation becomes highly constrained if we fail to find that common language, that common purpose, the understanding of the right context and ended up providing something that was not as good as it could have been, or we simply veered completely off track, on the original insight. It somehow got lost in translation, in applying individual meaning. Translation is one of those keys that can unlock so much within innovation but often it just simply goes the other way and gets “lost in translation”

To apply a common language, we need to invest in its practice

The more we practice and move towards a common understanding of innovation, we are moving towards clarifying and reconciling, as best we can, within the constraints of what common language or context offers. We give innovation a greater chance to succeed. A common language enables greater transparency, clarity in accountability through its definitions; we achieve greater collaborative dialogues and meet more concurrence than without this move towards a common understanding.

So much of innovation is piecing together many fragmented pieces, strands of knowledge that can be unstructured can be very ambiguous, yet requires sound judgment. Innovation builds on shared experience and the quality of its interaction points. The more we learn to collaborate, the more we begin to share experiences, the more we achieve a growing common language. We need to bring together increasingly the parts that growing specialization, our limited grasp of all the complexities that can influence a decision. We need to constantly reconcile incoming information with our own language of understanding, so we need to strive towards improving the common parts surely?

I think as we build a common language we need a certain learning rhythm.

This is where absorptive capacity can come in, as it offers a structured way of building our knowledge understanding and fits within this. Absorptive capacity has the different steps of acquiring, assimilating, transforming and exploiting but these need a clear sequence, structure, and commonality to their approach, to gain the lasting benefit.

A common language of innovation working to a common end cause also allows for a knowledge learning repository to be built up, so all can potentially prosper as their starting point to innovate, as they learn from past experiences and insights. Innovation is something we all can do, not just a selected few but it is sharing our knowledge can encourage others to find the time and then invest in all of what it can mean to them; liberating them to explore alternatives and exploit their experiences by applying something ‘gained’ as something

Innovation is something we all can do, not just a selected few but it is sharing our knowledge can encourage others to find the time and then invest in all of what it can mean to them; liberating them to explore alternatives and exploit their experiences by applying something ‘gained’ as something enhancing.

A bedrock for building and sustaining innovation is a common intent, language, and context

Forming a common language should be the bedrock for how we set about innovation. It cannot be silo driven or developed to fit one individual team, unless you want stilted results with incremental innovation being most likely as the best you can achieve most of the time, within this ‘constraint’, as we increasingly need to reach out and learn to collaborate

How we go about our communications, what and who you can connect with and your level of innovation engagement, do matter significantly. It is the ability to find the common identity, a real unifying sense of purpose that sends positive signals to all involved and those interested parties, often external to your ‘inner’ innovation process, to engage fully.

A common language can change much within innovation. Can we find the investment time to build this into the work we need to do? We should. It is in all of our future collaborating interests.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

The post We are in need of a common language for innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

People disconnect because they lack what is needed to connect!  Innovation thrives from the knowledge and you need to make sure this is allowed to flow.

To achieve those essential knowledge connections, you need a shared understanding of innovation, that common sense of purpose as a framework. This will though, always stay a work-in-progress.

You need to begin to build a common language of greater understanding. We need to unite around innovation. Imagine if you work consciously to put knowledge in the hands of people willing to make innovation happen, what the potential might be?

Give people the power of the context for their innovation engagement and that shifts everything to give them a clearer shape and meaning. You are laying out the conditions, criteria and circumstances, giving innovation its foundations.

Connecting the seven parts of the Innovation Work Mat

In this series of articles I will be looking at each of the seven components within the executive innovation work mat to raise questions, to probe and prompt the necessary thinking that needs to be made in organizations around building innovation that sustains and delivers to the strategic need.

This is the fifth post in the series, here I’m exploring the essential need to build a common language, gain growing identity through knowing the context for your innovation activities by communicating these to build a lasting innovation connection and organizational awareness. This flows from the top and cascade down the organization to make the essential connections and alignment.

Giving people space through communicating the common understanding

What would happen if you allow people to openly invent, to brainstorm, to generate initial concepts and prototypes because they understand the strategic innovation framework. One that lays out a vision of meaningful innovation that would be valued as it is more aligned to the strategic direction.

For me, the executive innovation work mat moderates an organizations innovation. It can go much towards reducing the multiple interpretations and personal agenda’s of a variety of initiatives often described or justified as essential innovation but constantly miss the strategic mark.

If you have in place a clear innovation framework you offer a communicating mechanism to guide innovation activity. The framework can establish a common language, a growing sense of common cause for this to ignite innovations focused activity.

You can cascade this down the organization and actively look for the cascading effect to flow back up in new ideas, a sense of engagement and purpose.

You are looking for everyone involved to understand ‘the bigger picture’, to look towards the communicating platform so they can move their innovation activity back and forth within the structures, processes and systems designed for innovation to align them to the organizational strategic need.

Innovation becomes increasingly more connected as it is more integrated in its designs, use of resources and outcomes, to meet the more complex challenges being face in a competitive world.

Engagement can become the behavioural footprint needed for change 

If you give each person a sense of meaning, that explicit and implicit encouragement because this is coming to them in an integrated message- the seven components of the executive innovation work mat – it can shift their mind, it can direct their energies. Engagement can become the catalyst for exciting innovation if there is this sense of trust, continuity and the identification is well-constructed and makes sense.  Organizations do need a commonly shared framework that moderates innovation

There are so many aspects to get right in innovation. These can be ensuring the culture, climate and environment for innovation are working well, it could mean setting up processes, well-designed procedures and structures, it can be providing innovation governance.

Each part has a vital part to play in being combined for innovation, so it can function but these are not the core. Our identification with innovation is that core.

Working on innovation needs a deep commitment

We need to work hard to communicate that innovation is different than ‘business as usual’.

The fact ‘we’ are building something different and we need to build this together.  A counter to existing processes, the commitment need is to overcome practices honed over many years.

This needs thinking through in its value and importance.

If the Senior Executive is not totally involved in creating the imperatives needed in innovation then the organization lacks the context. Signalling the kind of innovation and breadth of impact – delivers the vital aspects.

Well stated innovation objectives can shift the focus of the organization substantially. It generates collective building capacity.

Incremental to Disruptive require different engagement points – actions send signals to the organization and having clear governance provides guidance to risk, principles and the mechanisms to manage these two ‘extremes in innovation and all in-between.

By providing a strategic innovation framework you provide consistency in purpose, you are aligning innovation to strategic need and by actively engaging across the seven components, sharing their conclusions, these can create the dynamic aspects and sense of growing identity. You need to send a compelling set of messages throughout the organization.

Innovation engagement needs a common language, a clear sense of purpose of innovations context and the mechanisms to communicate and cascade these intents throughout the organization to bring people onto the same page.

Obtaining a ‘given’ flow for innovation

Designing a new strategic innovation framework at the top of organizations helps close the many gaps we see today. There is a flow for improving innovation performance. If we don’t frame the business context how can we compare and contrast?  How do we know what we are missing or what it is meant to be achieving? When we go about seeking out opportunities we need to understand the context these are placed in.

Educating, informing, clarifying constantly simply helps formulate understanding and aids execution. We need to find ways to communicate a common language, a common way to frame the needs expected from innovation.

When we work together we can move mountains

You can eventually achieve a common identity that begins to move ‘mountains’ through collective achievement, one that is both distinctive and unique to your organization. A clear uniqueness that can never be copied, one that allows you to stand out as true distinctive innovators, admired and even envied.

We get closer to achieving a consistent, more vibrant innovation as it becomes more routine and embedded, for it becomes increasingly linked to everyone’s goals, a certain oneness and because of this, it is sustaining.

We identify as we understand what our contribution will be, then the leadership has done its primary job, its aligned innovation purpose to the goals, by laying out the parameters to achieve this.

Successful CEO’s achieve organisational connection

CEO’s that are seen to be successful achieve connections, what is often called that emotional connection through describing the context, setting the values and vision-driven criteria and by often pushing the organization towards ‘impossible goals’.

It is amazing how this brings alignment as long as it is consistent, constant in its messages and widely shared and understood and the organization see’s the leadership engaging, visibly seeking and believing in innovation and what it can potentially deliver.

Delivering a coherent and consistent innovation message that resonates

This engagement needs a different honing than most organizations are certainly not capable of delivering, without thinking long and hard about the way they must undertake a more transformational pathway.

I suggest the Choice – Cascade integrated innovation model. One that can connect and deliver a consistent and coherent innovating performance across the organization.

I believe there is an essential gap within the way we set about innovation today. There is needing to be well-articulated and well-communicated innovation strategy that flows both ways in searching for the best solutions that align to the organizational strategic needs.

We need to find more fluid and flexible organizations that respond through searching for innovation consistency. They need to have a ‘flow’ of knowledge, of clarity, of a sense of scale in their learning and dialogues that promotes greater successful innovation outcomes as the sense of on-going mission.

The orchestrator needs to orchestrate.

 We need to align, offer clear vision and purpose and this needs orchestrating from the top of the organization to the bottom. Organizations need an integrated innovation strategic framework that can deliver commonality in understanding, in purpose, in language. Then this needs to be cascaded

To do this you must orchestrate the capabilities, to purposefully build innovation. Orchestration is fundamentally dynamic, full of uncertainties but the need is still to connect the parts. To orchestrate you need to communicate and conduct to make the innovation music

The important “C’s” of innovation

For me, the central part of the Executive Innovation Work Mat has been deliberately placed, it conveys the important “C’s”of innovation.

This is made up of the search to build a common language, to put innovation in its appropriate context, to work on communicating and cascading this throughout the organization can spark the distinctive aspects.

The ultimate aim is identification, understanding and then build up the capability, capacity and competencies required to deliver on the integrated approach taken. This is led from the top through this work mat approach and fully cascaded throughout the organization to align and bring innovation to life for all involved.

The post Successful Innovation needs a common language, context and communicating first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Innovation happens all around us, same as with our places where we live- it is determined by many factors but given a choice we want to live somewhere nice, safe and hopefully going up in value!

The same with innovation we want it to be good, attractive, useful and valued by many, hopefully, willing to part with their money because it fulfils their need.

Innovation should always start of by being placed in its appropriate context otherwise it will lose its initial connection, dilute in the eventual value and arrive as less desirable because we somehow and somewhere went off track

We lost the context because we never really established the real ‘sense of purpose’ for that specific innovation or given direction to explore.

Why do I believe context is the king when it comes to innovation?

The power of context shifts everything and then gives it ‘shape’. It provides the conditions and the circumstances of time and place and why we need to find and deliver something different. It provides the innovation marching orders.

If we place innovation in a certain set of contexts, then those setting about the task are more sensitive to the needs and understanding, they can relate or can reject this. It can allow them to work more clearly and effectively, not necessarily efficiently as innovation is inherently messy.

Context gives us certain guard rails or borders to help gain a more united focus. Where we go after that, by pushing those borders will depend on those involved by seeing a greater value in an evolving context of mutual understanding. The ‘setting it in context’ allows for dialogue, adding more value to the thinking.

If we don’t know why we are doing something in our innovation activities, there is a good chance we will just stop innovating and switch to auto-pilot. We become disinclined to be creative as we don’t understand the “what for”. Knowing the context allows us to engage.

Context needs to also become, increasingly the arbitrator of success. Around this, you form your community that seeks out the possible solutions to this. Context gives knowledge into the hands of others to go and work on finding possible solutions. Knowing the context, gives us something highly relevant to judge eventual outcomes on.

Context must lead, functionality and capability then follow

There is a flow for improving innovation performance. If we don’t frame the business context how can we compare and contrast?  How do we know what we are missing or what it is meant to be achieving? When we go about seeking out opportunities we need to understand the context these are placed in, the avenue of competitive advantage the new solution is attempting to address.

This requires a ‘decent’ vision, often beyond a product brief that might be adjusted as we learn more, it needs to fit into the context of our business strategy and goals, our ambitions of what we want innovation to achieve. We need to have something we can measure ‘it’ against with all the commitment of time and resource.

We need to give our search for innovation some function and form. We begin to reveal our ‘gaps’ when we have a ‘reasonable clue of where we are heading.

Then we each have of our personal contexts that form our identity and motivations to help in delivering the innovation, these will lead us into our performance and contribution. Here by knowing the context does helps us assess if we have the capabilities in knowledge, skills, experience and expertise to deliver on the context or not.

Knowing the context actually empowers us, it gives us the reference points of our engagement. It allows us to work towards plugging those gaps to lead to improved functionality and capabilities gained.

We can apply our capacities to absorb and learn.

We can become adaptive. We can set about acquiring, assimilating, transforming and exploiting knowledge far better if we know the context it is needed to be applied. I wrote an article on absorptive capacity recently where I stated “The value of absorptive capacity is that when organizations have some prior knowledge they are more receptive to adding new understandings and new ideas”

The lessons of placing ‘it’ in context are powerful. We are more than sensitive to change; it can be a negative or positive experience. If we place great attention to context always, in our conversations, in our goal setting, in our innovation work it becomes one of the powerful enablers of bringing about change.

Context does not just ‘set’ but it ‘allows’ innovation to happen.

You are putting knowledge into the hands of the people willing to make it happen. Allow them to invent, to brainstorm, and to generate concepts, prototypes because alongside the mantra of “context, context, and context” you place equally “people, people, people” as innovation only happens through people.

You give each person the explicit encouragement, by laying these in the right context, then you can simple ‘get out of the way’ and let them go to work in delivering innovative solutions to that context. You are all working off of the same, often ‘dynamic’ page, as the innovation evolves, so does the context get refreshed. Innovation takes on a distinct identity for all involved.

Of course context is going to be fluid

It is going to be needed to be adaptive as we learn but it will be placed in ‘certain bounds’. If we start from a much clearer starting base then the learning and discovery allows people to want to find solutions as they gain increased knowledge and provide fresh inputs, they begin to strongly relate.

The innovation activity becomes eventually a thriving community working in the innovation context where new beliefs can be practised, expressed and nurtured.  As Malcolm Gladwell put it in his book “The Tipping Point :How little things can make a big difference”, the lesson is in the value of the Power of Context.

Context sets us the dancing music, the ‘one-step, two-step’ of learning and knowing, searching and discovering. As we ‘tune in’ we begin to move and respond, it sets the conditions to build the rhythm needed for innovation.

It allows for the further steps, the pivotal ones, those that lead you to a better chance of producing winning innovation simply by knowing the critical aspect of “it’s”context.

Context gives our innovation activity its meaning and sense of purpose.

Save

The post Learning the mantra of innovation context first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Each part has a vital part to play in being combined for innovation, so it can function but these are not the core. Our identification with innovation is that core.

The core lies in the scope and definitions, the context that innovation is set and the identification with these. How often do organizations fail because they rushed into innovation, along those classic lines of: “let’s experiment and learn as we go” as their mentality.

We fail because we don’t take the necessary time to examine the significant differences in innovation terminology, in the different ways or types of innovation, in gaining from ‘evidence based’ research and experimentation.

What we expect to see from our day-to-day work seems not to apply to our innovation selection criteria. We experiment indiscriminately, poking a stick around the opportunity haystack looking for that elusive ‘golden’ needle.
Random selection and discarding practices
Organizations have been randomly selecting, then discarding practices constantly, in a never-ending search of more of other organizations best practices, without understanding what these truly entail, or what this truly requires in commitment. No wonder innovation continues to receive a bad ‘rap’ when you often have the innovation blind, leading the blind.

There are so many facets within innovation that need a much deeper, extensive understanding that is so often lacking. We love to collect or synthesise and then quickly dismiss what doesn’t work, dispensing with some valuable utility on the way, as we move onto the next ‘complete’ package.

Then the cycle repeats itself, perhaps not immediately but in its quiet eroding way that throws innovation even more into question and doubt.

Lost identities, lost opportunities

We have lost our identification, yet this one word strikes at the core of innovation as the essential to have. Everything we do should have an overly binding context to it. If we don’t place innovation within its appropriate framework we fail to contextualize our activities, the intended fit, which offers the real relationship we need.

We need to fit our work to the strategic goals.  If this is simply missing then innovation is likely misfiring, or not hitting the targets because it is scatter-gun in approach and its interpretation.

Innovation cries out for an integrated innovation framework.

Offering an integrated innovation framework is the place where we can gain the necessary identification. It is central to what we should be doing; it establishes the boundaries within which innovation should take place.

This is the one essential place for leadership engagement. If innovation is never placed in its context, then how do we expect the results often asked for by the CEO? Innovation is adrift, it is actually unsupported, and we don’t achieve that precious identification.

If we don’t  have provided that innovation framework, we leap into innovation, often in good faith, as asked, so we become often hyper-active as we all find our own ways forward. Eventually we stumble along and finally work out our own language and understanding of what innovation means, different to even the persons sitting at the next desk.

Just take a look at all the different definitions of innovation you will find, just in one large organization alone. This lack of a clear context is so harmful we add further unnecessary complexity and over time frustrate the organization and confuse the majority.

People disconnect because they lack what is needed to connect! They continue to work hard, often very hard, but sometimes never truly understanding how their tasks and roles contribute to the strategic direction.

We need to make sure each person makes their specific connections to an integrated approach for themselves. To achieve these connections you need a shared understanding, a common framework and a common language, to reduce the mental traps and misunderstandings of what innovation is individually meaning. We need everyone to try to get onto the same page.

Educating formulates the understanding

Educating, informing, clarifying constantly simply helps formulate understanding and aids execution. We need to find ways to communicate a common language, a common way to frame the needs expected from innovation.

That needs to come from the top of organizations and then built up by a growing contribution from all as they become engaged. If you can achieve this, you can move to a growing consensus but this takes time.

You can eventually achieve a common identity that begins to move ‘mountains’ through collective achievement, that is both distinctive and unique to your organization. A uniqueness that can never be copied, perhaps just admired or envied.

CEO’s that are seen to be successful achieve connections, what is often called that emotional connection through describing the context, setting the values and vision driven criteria and by often pushing the organization towards ‘impossible goals’.

It is amazing how this brings alignment as long as it is consistent, constant in its messages and widely shared and understood. Then the leadership makes it their business to position individuals and the decisions over what, where, when and how in the context of this, to allow them to make their decisions, as individuals and within their teams. Innovation activity becomes ‘orchestrated’ not micro-managed.

The value of the middle makes for the new connectors we need.
Middle managers tasks should be increasingly become more those of connectors and facilitators, not the guardians and gatekeepers for the decision makers.

Their work should include the encouragement that everyone is engaged in innovation work, for each person to constantly go back and check against this integrated innovation framework to work out their place to relate to this and become aligned. The middle manager carries through connection and identification.

Through this new work they achieve this ‘shared understanding’ or set about correcting any areas of concern through their own dialogues with senior managers of where any shifts have taken place or seem in conflict with the understanding.

This is identification again, for it lies at the core of innovation. Making sure everyone has a ‘sight-line’ and identification into this innovation framework so they stay well-connected. Communication and relationships becomes the key.

Today we are living in a world of knowledge-intensive innovation
To build distinctive competences for sustaining those often elusive competitive advantages, is very much context specific. We need to provide learning events as competence is actually firmly embedded in the specific context in which it is created.

If an organization lacks that context of innovation then how can it acquire the appropriate knowledge to give it any advantage? If the CEO and his leadership team can’t articulate the context, then they can’t expect winning at the innovation game. It is not their people failing to deliver innovation, it is them, as leaders, failing to deliver this integrated innovation framework where context sits and identification is gained to seek out knowledge-specifics needed.

Until the CEO identifies with his core role in innovation, the organization remains rudderless.  If he can’t supply what is expected, then it is more than likely the corporate strategy will be ignored, as it has not been placed in its appropriate context.  It fails because it is not communicate in ways that can be understood, it lacks personal identification.

Without the appropriate identification of the opportunities seen for growth not communicated then how can the right innovation be applied? Innovation stays disconnected to strategy. It is arbitrary based on interpretation and choice designated down the organization hoping it aligns.

Context set in a clear framework for innovation changes that. It gives innovation a real chance to contribute.

Boundaries and Freedom

How we harness our innovation activity does not need the advocating of tighter controls, it needs articulating the potential and releasing people by underpinning how that will be managed through innovations organization.

Ideally this can come through having a clear governance structure and providing the right environment that is needed, so as to allow others to do the work that needs to get done and see how they contribute in meaningful ways. Management’s dictates or rules should not stand in the way, they should be swept aside.

What should be put in that critical space is a common set of agreed organization definitions, a real clarity made up of what connects and why and then ensuring the resources are made available to achieve the innovation ‘called for’.

This calls for a focused yet adaptive and flexible leadership, that constantly looks to engage and provides the clarity necessary within a corporate  innovation framework that can cascade down the organization.

Leaders need to actively ensure through clear designation that everything is in place for all the appropriate conversations, and is equally ready and listening to the new ‘pulse’ of innovation, they are generating from this new intensity of focus.

Identification becomes the core to innovation
Eventually with enough of this leadership engagement, constantly being articulated and framed for the challenges identified, there emerges a common consensus and organizational language around innovation and its intent.

It connects and gains both organization and personal identification and this ‘identification’ sits at the core of innovation.

We get closer to achieving a consistent, more vibrant innovation as it becomes more routine and embedded, for it becomes increasingly linked to everyone’s goals, a certain oneness and because of this, it is sustaining.

We identify as we understand what our contribution will be, then the leadership has done its primary job, its aligned innovation purpose to the goals, by laying out the parameters to achieve this.

The post Identification sits at the core of innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

When you are dealing with the innovation process you naturally have tension. Often if you have no tension or simply too much slack built into the process, you don’t end up in achieving a good result. Results fall well below expectations.

It is often this lack of designed-in ‘tension’ that is not appreciated like it should be within the innovation process. The wrong tension is left to eat away at the innovation process. Getting the right balance of tension is critical to get the best out of the ‘system’ of innovation.

Firstly a cautionary warning here.

Now this is about to get into the realms of theory but I hope you stay with me on this. Why? Well knowing why innovation does fail can be useful (to your future) and what you can design into it, so as to reduce this risk has some value, I would think. So tune out or hang in, it is your choice.
Using theory often helps- really!

According to Professor Clayton Christensen the only way to look into the future is to use theories. “The best way to make accurate sense of the present, and the best way to look into the future, is through the lens of theory.”A good theory provides a robust way to understand important developments, even when the data is limited. “Theory helps to block out the noise and to amplify the signal”.

The theory of innovation helps to understand the forces that shape the context and influence natural decisions. You should consciously design in tension into your innovation process.

Let me explain this in its different parts.

Coherence in purpose & consistency is what we all desire

It is accepted wisdom in today’s environment, enterprises cannot design and impose from the top down, it stifles far too much and limits creativity. Strategies do not only emerge from the whole but from the sum of all the parts and it is the diversity within the parts gives the ‘richness’ to innovation.

These parts are the emergent strategies that combine with a deliberate (approach) to strategy and become the realised and appropriate strategy. Within an organization we seek to have coherence in purpose and through this a consistency in behaviour. Innovation needs that as well.

Creative tension

Clarity of the vision (our strategic mission) of where we want to be and an honest assessment of ‘where we are today’, our current reality point, signals always a clear gap. It is this gap that is a natural tension for organizations to bridge and close.

They do this through this creative tension of moving from reality to the vision. “I have a dream” by Martin Luther Kong Jr resonated with equally ‘where we are today’ to make it a defining moment. Innovation equally requires both, the vision and the honest assessment so the solutions are worked upon to close the gap. This is the creative tension we need to design into our process. This is one of our appropriate tension points.

Context and co-ordination

For me always knowing the context is critical. If we do not have a deep understanding of the why, what, how, then we are never going to offer the best solutions or come close.

Far too often, context is forgotten in many new initiatives and the reason they flounder. It is like our current reality point. If you don’t know these, innovation becomes really hard to deliver the results you want.

Context is made up of many things, this can include the purpose and bounds, the capabilities and role structures within any social system that innovation tends to work within.

By being explicit you actually highlight the tensions and you get closer to producing a ‘decent’ innovation brief.

We should look at the context within this thinking through in this way:

1. The purpose of innovation as a whole is to do what? What’s its contribution to the total mission, its primary function, its value.
2. You set the bounds of innovative behaviour, experimentation and guiding principles to provide a growing empowerment and governance, this unleashes creativity and promotes the boundaries where innovation can play!
3. Capabilities to produce certain outcomes (deliverables) need to be in place to meet the mission and it is critical to understand these and set about providing these skill sets needed for innovation to be managed robustly and with a depth of diversity and understanding of their contributions to the process.
4. The roles that will be held accountable for producing the outcomes need defining and articulating and then managing consistently and well.

This clarity of innovation purpose is the leader’s role to co-ordinate and through the structures provided, you can begin to manage the outcomes as well as to evaluate if these outcomes are achieving the goals and closing that gap between vision and today’s reality.

If not, then he or she needs to loop back and tighten the tensions, to adapt them in design for achieving the appropriate innovation system. This is a critical leadership task, like designing a talent development structure to achieve your goals.

Recognizing there are different rates of exchange
“Achieving this coherence between context and co-ordination of outcomes is subject to natural tensions”

Organisations have layers, a hierarchy to deliver the means, and these change at different rates of ‘shear’ against each other, these are often natural tensions sometimes mistaken as politics, inability or poor understanding.

Management often fails to recognize these natural tensions.

One classic example is the horizon of an end result that the different level of the organization sees. This has a sheering effect between the layers involved. Innovation gets badly caught up in this.

When is the right timeframe for innovation delivery? Is this next quarter, next year, in three years or in what period?  Setting about establishing that innovation simply does not conform to annual financial calendars and needs to be accounted for differently become important to establish.

This can allow innovation concepts to move within their more natural discovery /development cycle to achieve the right delivery of innovation value. Far too often it is being shoehorned into an unnatural calendar that limits the original concept and compromises the potential result, one that could allow for delivering more game-changing innovation.

If only innovation could have this recognition that it is different from finished goods and allowed to be set within a different cycle than financially driven based on financial calendar would have a most positive effect.

You are designing in a more natural set of tensions and resolving some of those sheering effects that are occurring that are negative in their tensions. (Sheering is when tectonic plates are forced together and create this sheering effect – earthquakes, tsunamis, disruption).

If we could place innovation into three different time horizons, you will find I’ve discussed this concept in previous blogs in some detail it offers different aspects to give a focus too that are more central as  recognized in there nominated and different horizons:

1. Goals- achievements within the period covered (by a financial review)- milestones
2. Objectives- attained later but are progressed and those parts accounted for within the period
3. Ideals- unattainable within the time period but progress is possible during and after the period under review.

These are actually different rates of exchange that can apply a consistency of behaviour (and understanding) and be configured within the innovation process accordingly. These need to be appropriately designed into the system.

As we study ecosystems we see they reflect the sheering effect.

In a study of ecosystems by Robert V O’Neill and others, published in a book called “A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems”  by observing rates of change of different components you see the dynamics and tensions within a system.

For example, hummingbirds and flowers are quick, redwood trees slow, and whole redwood forests are even slower. Most interaction is within the same pace level- hummingbirds and flowers pay attention to each other, oblivious to redwoods, who are oblivious of them. Meanwhile the forest is attentive to climate changes but not the hasty fate of individual trees.

The insight can be often applied to innovation:
“The dynamics of the system will be dominated by the slow components, with the rapid components simply following along. Slow constrains quick, slow controls quick”

Tension occurs as faster changing layers sheer against slower ones, impatience and resistance ‘kick in’ when innovation is demanded, or promised and is not delivered as expected. Knowing the tension points and recognizing their negative effect needs designing out.

Again we need to have appropriate adaptiveness designed in, we need to place tension into a context and we need to keep it creative in tension.

Innovation should be the regular way of daily thinking

We should view tensions among innovation, values and risk not as conflicts to be avoided, but as opportunities to be managed. It is the impact of appropriate values and organisational culture that create the ‘right’ tension to allow innovation to thrive or wither.

It is the successful ability of encouraging opportunity, of converting ideas into practices and accepting that there are risks associated, without knowing for sure, that generate new products, services or processes that close our gap between a vision and our present reality.

How do we balance and encourage natural tension’s?
These exist between all the parts of the organization that need to innovate and how we manage successfully the different attitudes to risk that will reside there.

How do we organize-to-innovate? What structure needs to be in place to accommodate risk-taking? How do we seize on opportunities quickly?

Adapting the context-and-coordination approach has value here.

The process of adaptiveness is likened to a pilot’s ability to learn through the mental process: “observe, orient, decide and act.”

This constitutes an (adaptive) loop.  It contains the four essential functions to any adaptive organization of:“sensing, interpreting, deciding and acting”

This adaptive loop is a method for institutional learning. The key is “learning what?” then “how should we learn?” but  an organization has to learn to fulfil its purpose, in this case to close the gap with innovation.

To build in tension we need to become more of those innovation learning organizations.

I’m not sure how many people have read Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline” but it offers a roadmap for changing our current organizations into learning ones, ones that build innovation into everyday thinking.

He suggests five critical needs: 1. System thinking, 2. Personal mastery, 3. Mental modes, 4. Building shared vision and 5. Team learning.

I think exploring these you build in the appropriate natural tensions that innovation requires but you firstly have to make that honest assessment of your current reality, and sadly far too many organizations or leaders are not prepared to do this, they prefer to labour under mistaken reality.

Leadership needs innovation to happen
Leadership has to create the environment to successfully handle paradox, complexity and in the end risk. It needs to design in the appropriate system to allow innovation to work, to permit creative tension to take place.

Failure to create this right ‘mix’ will often mean they lose the opportunity both within the organisation and especially in the market place as they have not understood the complexity of the innovation ecosystem they need to manage.

Leadership has the role of getting the right balance, the right design tension into the innovating system, so as to bring out the best from this participation of all the opposing forces for greater innovation opportunity.

Harnessing risk and opportunity for innovation is essential, managing its tension becomes essential to be designed in, not simply allowed to happen.

Understanding this is important for innovation to succeed.

The post Designing appropriate tension into the innovation process. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.