The more I read, the less I understand, yet the more I read, the greater my awareness of innovation and all the mountains we have still to climb. It is a never-ending journey it seems, yet I’ve found I have pressed the pause button. I need some time to allow the fog to lift but can I afford too?

There is this increasing intensity of innovation wisdom being produced daily, you can just get utterly and totally all-absorbed in all the nuances, all that advice.

So much that is written is offering the ways forward on past approaches, highlighting where we are going wrong on past experiences, and in some cases providing the “cure all” simply all within one article based on their narrow view of the solution, set in a specific context.

It can bring you to a stand-still but much more than this, it can all be highly dangerous.
Funnily enough, if you do stop and listen, even when there is so much swirling on around you, you begin to hear different voices; you begin to discern new sounds. Often those people who are alert to these faint sounds  like to group these under “weak signals” or “future plausible directions”.

“Futures studies is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. What is likely to continue and what could plausibly change.”  (Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/6bf34a )

A little postulation for possible and probable futures has a long way to go in innovation.

I sort of like this. The key word for me is “postulate” suggesting (for each of us) that the assumptions – the countless words, the proffered advice –  all has grains of truth, and form a small part of the argument or theory of innovation – trying to make the business case for change. Are they or holding us in the past?

It is really getting harder to sift through all this advice, this deluge offered in the name of innovation to pick what is sound and valid and applicable to our needs expected from innovation? Much within these messages is actually holding us back. In truth, much of it should be totally ignored. It is missing the future, it is far to rooted in the past.

I often do wonder why innovation is so elusive and seemingly hard.  Should we simply agree to manage innovation as individuals differently, or should management recognize finally that innovation is actually different and turn their serious attention to it?

We do need to allow those in the organization to think, to have time to personally think, to be creative, and to become fully aware of each of our own powerful contributions to all our future well-being through innovating.

The need for emerging fusion needs amplifying.
Innovation relies on engagement and exchange, on relying on people wanting to be involved. We need to cut through the chatter, blow away the fog, the swirling advice and go back to basics, otherwise we continue to confuse.

We are actually discouraging serious investment in all that makes up innovation as it seems, on the surface and in all the countless, often highly conflicting opinions, as just simply impossible to get our ‘heads around’ yet we do need a seismic shift in our thinking.

Where we do need to take innovation is in combining all of its fusion points that we have available to us. Those that can combine aspects of art, design, engineering, technology, social awareness and in all the different disciplines of science by coming together and coalescing in unique ways is where we will see the great innovations of the future, those that will tackle this set of economic, social and political problems pressing in on us.

It is at the intersections spoken about in a terrific book that still occupies much of my thinking “The Medici Effect” by Frans Johansson that will give us in his words: “the breeding grounds of breakthrough ideas.”

What is very clear to me is the management of innovation needs to change to take on our growing set of global and local challenges in completely different ways. We do seem to need a new generation of top managers to blow away the cobwebs of 20^th century management thinking.

The weak signals I seem to be hearing

I hear new sounds that give me hope on innovation emerging out of its “dark age” of our crude attempts to fit innovation into existing structures that are no more “fit for purpose”.

We need some more enlightenment through the evolution of innovation’s management and all it means.

Possibly I do hear the growing sounds of a new age of enlightenment concerning innovation that is presently confusing and confounding me. It is being mixed in with much that is old, of past value. Perhaps we all need to become more discerning. But we do need to push the advancing of numerous new theories, experiment more to learn new ways because the way innovation is presently structured in organizations is simply not working, as well as it can do.

Maybe if we can gain a new momentum for the management of innovation so we can lift the fog, mine, and I bet yours, if you pause long enough. Until then I think this fog will drift in and out until there is enough behind the reforming wind to allow us to ‘advance’ again. It would help me gain more of the “true north” I need again in my innovation orientation.

So I have to cut out all the extraneous noise and begin to strive even more for the way out of this current fog.

Where is that compass of mine? It points toward the future of innovation, which is so very different from the past, where so many seem to be trapped and suggest many of our answers still lie.

How wrong they are, I must follow those ‘weak signals’ to lead me out of this current fog, ignoring much that is stuck in the past. We must point towards the future, the problem is seeing it!

The post The fog surrounding innovation is disorientating me first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

How can we learn to recognize it more actively as as essential part of our lives, when to trust it, how to teach it to others, how to share what it has offered to us, as individuals, to others.

Then imagine what it could provide us for this knowledge to be leveraged within any broader community use, so it is knowingly valued by others as something they can gain from, not as we often do, simply reject it as not within ‘our’ experience.

That could be pretty valuable. It could give us a deeper understanding and empower us to function better in many sorts of situations. Then surely we must search for understanding this more and what it means, as in this case, for relating it to innovation.

Let’s start off by stating tacit knowledge is inherently inefficient, so is good innovation; it is messy, often unstructured. Why do we continue to not give this TK sufficient ‘head space’ in our thinking? I

s this because it is not tangible, that softer aspect that we reject as we don’t have time for it or simply we don’t ‘trust’ it like those ‘hard’ quantifiable measuring points?
Using Michael Polanyi as my main anchoring point here.

Michael Polanyi, was a scientist and philosopher, who while writing Personal Knowledge he identified what he calls the “structure of tacit knowing”. He viewed it as his most important discovery. He claimed that we experience the world by integrating our subsidiary awareness into a focal awareness.

To quote part of an entry in the Wikipedia and get the ‘heavy stuff’ out of the way:

Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. It involves learning and skill, but not in a way that can be written down. Tacit knowledge consists often of habits and culture that we do often do not recognize in ourselves. In the field of knowledge management, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge possessed only by an individual and difficult to communicate to others via words and symbols. Knowledge that is easy to communicate is called explicit knowledge.

Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” – as opposed to “know-what” (facts), “know-why” (science), or “know-who” (networking). It involves learning and skill but not in a way that can be written down.

The process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit or specifiable knowledge is known as codification, articulation, or specification. The tacit aspects of knowledge are those that cannot be codified, but can only be transmitted via training or gained through personal experience.

Tacit knowledge (TK) is a crucial input to the innovation process
We depend on many of our different levels of tacit knowledge on how to innovate.

Firstly, new and novel problems require TK about ‘ways’ to tackle the unknowns associated with discovery and how to bring this out into a final innovative concept. The more we can form into teams and share what we know or why we do things in certain ways the greater the potential power of the collaborative effort.

So the more interactions we have, especially face-to-face, direct contacts the more our tacit knowledge is seen and applied. The value of knowledge transfer to the innovation process is vital. Often we employ knowledge experts, subject matter experts and have a diversity of specialists collaborating as they are surprisingly as individuals, often unaware, often unable to articulate, communicate and describe what they know; it often requires others around them to bring it out.

The important point is they know but often cannot articulate it without prompting or drawing out what they know in a ‘given’ context to make clearer meaning of it, moving it from tacit to explicit.

Secondly, tacit knowledge can be a real sustainable competitive advantage. The more you can transfer knowledge, tacit and explicit and embed it in group settings, to in-build in shared core values, assumptions and beliefs, the better but as we know, it is often hard to pin this down, to locate this, quantify it, map or value it. Especially without encouraging and stimulating the environment to allow time to draw it out.

Thirdly, TK makes up a large part of our human capital, the knowing part. To give TK the chance to spread or diffuse across the organization or outside, organizations not have to invest in their individuals but bring groups together to greatly increase this human capital. Also this knowledge has to  simultaneously be captured (if possible) so it ‘resides’ and can be diffused out even more.

Knowledge management systems can help here if tacit knowledge was given the appropriate weight of focus it does need and a skill to decide the ‘what’ in its relevancy (and value) to any discussions.

Fourthly, and central to Michael Polanyi’s thinking on TK was the belief that creative acts (especially acts of discovery) are filled with strong personal feelings and commitments. He saw this as ‘creative tension’ where informed guesses, hunches and imaginings are part of exploratory acts and motivated by what he describes as our ‘passions’.

This is why there is always such a strong argument for innovation champions as well as the need to encourage anyone with a strong belief or insight, to find the time to explore it by clearing the path for them to do this as part of their workday- not just in their ‘free time’.

Conviction is always required for realizing innovation.
Polanyi talks of knowledge of approaching discovery. To hold such knowledge is an act deeply committed to the conviction that there is something there to be discovered -what we try to do through invention and innovation?

It is through our determinations and beliefs we ‘push’ our tacit knowledge as we believe this is a path to go on bringing something new into the world, our new innovation. He placed a strong emphasis on dialogue within an open community- our networks for innovation to work. This is why open collaborative innovation is making such headway. We are allowing more ‘convictions’ to enter the innovation pipeline

Polanyi wrote in The Tacit Dimension, we should start from the fact that ‘we can know more than we can tell‘. He termed this pre-logical phase of knowing as ‘tacit knowledge’.

We need to move tacit knowledge out- into the open and main stream- so it can be shared.

Finally, tacit knowledge is certainly very personal, rooted in action and for us needing to acquire new experiences consistently we need to push ‘the organisation’ to find the ways to be more committed, involved and identifying with wanting to strenthen this.

Organizations seek the knowledge owned by the individual as it is highly valuable to be shared, to be drawn out and not, as is often the way, the other way around, imposed upon individuals to bury their passions , guesses and hunches, the mistake we make today.

A top down process by determining only the knowledge they need to know stifles creativity, enquiry and innovation discovery. We need a ‘healthy’ mix and open minds to allow discovery.

Management certainly needs to lead. It needs to give the context so knowledge can flow. For instance leadership inspires and identifies the right targets, while management identifies the right practice and encourages dialogues and sharing.

We need to ‘codify’ as much as we can, hence why I argue, it needs to be built around context. This then allows people, time to explore, to exchange ideas and experiences so they all come together within the appropriate context or ‘spin out’ into something radical that leads to potential real breakthroughs.

Finding time and making connections, simply being allowed to explore is rich for innovation possibilities, set around some even loose context.

Having a more open network that seeks out diversity and through this, delves potentially deeper in this often latent tacit knowledge that resides in the individual does needs significant focus and commitment to allow it to happen.

To encourage the free flow requires extensive personal contact and trust. Do we provide this in today’s organisation? Seemingly we are going the other way and perhaps knowledge attainment might actually be suffering?

For this blog I drew on an exchange I had with someone within my network, Jim Burke, Manager, Futures, Forecasting & Change Mgt at TASC, Inc.  These were in his private capacity for the exchanges we had that covered a range of different subjects we both wanted to explore our thinking ‘out loud’. Also I drew upon different references that explore tacit knowledge to help me in making some of the points expressed here.

The post Tacit Knowledge- Rich in its Innovation Implications. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Sometimes they are, of course in plain sight, but when you alter your thinking lens you might see innovation opportunities in different ways.

We might miss sizable opportunities in not exploring all the different drivers that are around to drive innovation and provide us opportunities. So why not take the time to ‘reflect’ a little bit more on all the different potential drivers of innovation available to you?

So what can and does drive innovation?

I’ve been recently looking at the different drivers that can be explored for innovation. They seem to be many and it can be confusing. I feel there are eight that merit thinking through in a more structured way. Working through these can significantly improve the agility and options of the organization to generate new opportunities and give you a ‘rich’ potential to explore.

My identified eight drivers of innovation

Innovation can be unique, it is complex, it needs careful design and facilitation to extract the most from the rich choices we have on offer to us. Working through these eight can open up our thinking.

• Intelligence drivers– so much today is swirling around, often unsettling and changing. We don’t have long periods of stability anymore and to offset this we need to revert to often artificial intelligence to ‘read, sense and be more interpretative’ of these constant shifting patterns. We need ways to make sense of often disparate flows that piece together in different ways, difficult to initially see, so as to provide insights that can open up our thinking to new innovation. Cognition refers to a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences that allows for development into concepts; individual minds, groups, and organizations need to pick up and explore this driver far more for innovation.

• Technology drivers– The world of external collaboration, leveraging our personal and group networks and the different ways to interacting, are challenging organizations significantly. We all need to open up in areas where internal intellectual property, heavily guarded in the past, is being exposed to a different scrutiny. Technology  needs revisiting to accommodate a new diversity of opinion that extracts value in new more open ways. Also the management of physical and virtual relationships is also needing dramatic change in our behaviours and trust. We need fresh frameworks and designing these into our technology solutions for allowing open thinking. Much of this will come from the management of technology and the new understanding of the needs to capture, translate and extract in new ways. Getting the technology balance right and you open up to innovation in such an unparallel way than in the past. Technology understanding will influence innovation and drive it in some dramatic ways in the future.

• People drivers– “Our people make innovation work, they drive it”. This is heard increasingly yet our actions run contrary to this so many times.  We need to look at what drives people to rise to new heights and performances within themselves? It is getting the mix right- in creativity, in talent, through diversity of opinion, exploring dialogues and having a constant focus on building relationships; it is providing them something in return for ‘driving’ innovation. Keeping people and not shedding them when it suites immediate needs and the bottom line must become a thing of the past. We must treat people as an increasing valuable asset that needs to be prized very highly not in ways that fitted 20th centure practices when supply was plentiful. Keeping experience within organizations is a growing challenge. We also need to value our middle managers more, give them empowerment not more restrictions.  You throw away an incredible investment when you lose people, not just their experiences but often their relationships. Can we afford to keep managing in this way? No, I don’t think so, people drive innovation, we must truly value them as nothing else can make up for their loss in managing innovation for a successful conclusion.

• Customer drivers– Marketing needs to do a significant ‘reset’ as customers shift from price, lower volume demand and seek increased value and personal engagement. Getting into the mind of your customer, understanding their unmet needs and then interpret these into new innovation solutions is tougher than ever. As organizations expand globally there is going to be a need for far more reverse engineering innovation to match need with product or service in these times of diminishing income. Customers are driving innovation more than ever and organizations are presently struggling to catch up and master the new dynamics of the customer and the economics of the markets. Innovation for and with less is very relevant today. Same as knowing customers real needs.

• Rational drivers– Innovation needs greater process and rational innovation thinking. This will come from a greater focus on innovations strategic architecture, the management of the systems to ‘drive’ innovation through to commercialisation, the innovation process designed on shrinking the time line, increased productivity and interventions so  to enable successful movement towards this commercialisation. We need to advance execution and results from this activity and that needs us to approach innovation in a more rational way to get consistent results.

• Social drivers– How we are engaging in the world around us are one of the challenges we need to resolve. Interactions that can transmit genuine desire for the good, which are seen as enduring and meaningful to the lives of people, are going to be valued. Thinking these through, then implementing these in careful, thoughtful ways is going to be critical to growing innovation in social responsible ways that are meaningful for the communities and on a personal level will provide a completely new avenue to innovation activity.

• Emotional drivers– We need to gain permission to enter people’s lives. We need to learn, create, and to explore people’s dreams, desires and hopes. Exploring the eight fundamental human emotional drivers of 1) connection and sense of self, 2) maintaining security over our lives, 3) wanting more diversity, seeking variety, 4) achieving recognition and significance to grow beyond the present, 5) having a sense of achievement and progress, 6) opportunities for challenges and personal growth, 7) achieving self-satisfaction and pride in what we do and finally 8) the wish to contribute and be responsible. Mastering this set of emotional drivers through different innovation activities can be very powerful.

• Environment drivers– the culture and climates provided that we operate within can allow or deny innovation. There is a growing need to increase cooperation between the diverse aspects of innovation activity and other organisations on third party platforms so as to involve as diverse a group as possible. We need to consider the organizations complete value chain and its diverse networks across the whole organization, than in the present silo form of present open innovation thinking (just R&D departments for instance). There is a difficult choice to make between quick results, always needed, and longer term structures to ensure sustaining innovation on a broader platform. Innovation is increasingly driving sustainable society in new products, processes and organization designs. Environment has to date seldom been an explicit targeted comprehensive process for many in innovation activity. It has been experimental. Increased attention to understanding the broader environment we operate within, how finite and sometimes fragile it is, will play a greater role for innovation development. The effectiveness in addressing environment problems will drive innovation significantly in the years ahead.

Within each of these eight drivers for innovation activity is a bountiful harvest of innovation opportunities to explore. Understanding what can drive innovation opens up significant possibilities.

The central meaning of innovation relates to a quest for renewal. For this renewal to take place it is necessary for people to change the way they make decisions, to see things, they must choose to do things differently, make choices outside of their norm.

Schumpeter stated that innovation changes the values onto which the system is based. So when people change their value (system) they ‘drive’ the old (economic) system to make room for the new one.

When that happens innovation has occurred.

Understanding the options within the drivers of innovation is important. Knowing the options of what can drive innovation can help you choose multiple paths to explore and then grow from.

The post Reflecting on the drivers for innovation we have choices? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.