We don’t make all the connections we should; we are too caught up in our little world, beating our existing drum, drowned out by its own noise, to step back and appreciate something new is really happening.

Recently I was investigating one strand of thought and then bingo! Something else leads to something else and the rest, so to speak, becomes history.

I’ve been reflecting on the new era of innovation and opening myself up to exploring alternatives, different thoughts, discussions and viewpoints.

Underlying this is a growing sense of my convictions, still partly forming, malleable but trying to drive certain ‘stakes’ into the ground to keep testing and improving on a hypothesis or two; that innovation and its management definitely have to change, and fast!

Of course the cloud figures in this as a whole new different way to orchestrate innovation. More on that at another time as I need to get into some more robust discussions with one or two others on this and expand on my own position a lot more.

My recent ‘bingo’ moment was as I was listening to a round-table discussion within GE and its lighting division with a panel of outside thinkers. Beth Comstock, Senior Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer was chairing the discussion, so it will always stay lively and stimulating and it did not disappoint on that. Her throwaway line at the end of the panel session was “Perhaps the headline here is the Big Data Mash-Up”.

Mash-up?  So am I missing a certain beat here? Or does it fit into my thinking

This started me off – Mash Ups, Ecosystems, Platforms, Big Data so how about the Big Mash-Up to help the necessary Smash up?

So off I go on one of my walkabouts, needing to plug into mash-ups a little more.

Business jargon is drawing more and more from our software and computer worlds. We have seen lean, agility, scrum and a host of others entering into our business practices in broader ways than the original application; the principles are being extended out.

So what is a mashup?

In web development, it uses content from more than one source to create a single new service, displayed in a single graphical interface. It works if it is fast, easy to integrate and has clear application interfaces that allow this to happen.

The original term of mashup, according to dear old Wikipedia, comes from British – West Indies slang, meaning to be intoxicated or a description for something or someone not functioning as intended.

I like this as it is the way many of our companies are reeling from all the disruptive changes swirling around them. Also within music, it is used when we remix and combine different aspects of music or song from one vocal track to another.

Thereby ‘mashing them’ together to create something new.

So why do I feel the innovation mashup is coming?

The main characteristics of a mashup are combination, visualization and aggregation so as to make ‘it’ (whatever it is) into something more useful, for personal or professional (or organizational) use.

We have a fair number of mash-ups going on already; in business, mash-ups to reveal actionable information, consumer mash-ups that can come through our browser interfaces (maps and info) and data mash-ups that provide new, more distinctive web services.

I’m not going to get into all the technical stuff on this, let alone the challenges but as you read about the taxonomy structures I start thinking innovation taxonomy. Don’t ask me why but I do.

Let’s smoke a little more here (I’m kidding) and think the Internet of Innovation

We have been digesting the internet of things, the internet of everybody so we need to push this a little more and ask “can a comprehensive vision of how this set of events around digital, data etc., alongside our physical needs, be translated into returns for a business wanting to engaged in greater, more valuable innovation”. These will come from platforms and connect everyone.

I hold one additional thought here “virtualizing the core business” and extending this beyond the core, to deliver innovation faster and better by orchestrating its parts to architect the future, based on responding to real needs and extending those existing deliverables that continue to provide value.

We need to manage innovation in more real-time, we need to dramatically improve the process, we need to pull together often the disparate knowledge, we need to inform better, we need to place what we are doing into a greater context and we need greater predictive decision-making.

What we have working the innovation activity is ripe for disruption. Innovation and its management is mostly operating with the 20th-century model.

The move towards digital-physical mashups

Darrell Rigby of Bains & Co., wrote a recent article in the September 2014 Harvard Business Review entitled the “digital-physical mashup”. You could imagine that got my attention in my walkabout.

His view is we are in a period of upheaval, do we see technologies as a threat or a new pathway. The growing reality is digital has the real potential to destroy our existing positions in existing markets.

We see this with digital platforms, those who lean on physical assets to attack the incumbents, take Airbnb for example in its mattress and B&B challenge to hotels or Kickstarter for alternative funding. Value creation is being rethought in totally different ways and business models and being staged on platforms.

Now, what happens when you combine digital and physical? As Darrell comments, there is a growing ‘weaving’ of digital and physical worlds to come tightly together. He cites Nike+ that is giving more than 30 million customers tracking, sharing of runs, workouts and setting fitness goals as the shoe has a built-in sensor and can work with your iPod to see data on time, distance, calories burned and can all be synced back, compared for charting your progress.

Here we see digital sport emerging, the ones not embracing technology will suddenly have their market position erode (and fast)

Then we come back to GE and Beth Comstock’s throwaway line “the big data mashup”

GE when they decide to move into something, tend to do it big time. They make “big bets on big things” according to their CEO and Chair Jeff Immelt. Big Data Analytics is one of these exploding for them. They have housed this under “Industrial Internet” and GE Predictivity TM for asset and operations optimization.

This will come from these analytic insights, through the use of sensors and other technologies in aviation, rail, oil & gas, power generation, wind, power distribution, healthcare, mining, water and process technologies, lighting and manufacturing from machines that are self-aware interacting with other machines and their human operators.

The collecting of data is impossible to manually analyse but if this can be translated into insights through analytics and big data management techniques, visualization and dashboards techniques, that can manage complex machines, save labour, downtime, direct resources and reduce costs it certainly opens up the thinking.

GE’s estimates could be as much as $20 billion in wasted deficiencies per year. Further opportunities will simply occur as this gets understood more as it gets rolled out.

Wikibon analysts believe the analytics market will be worth more than $47 billion by 2017 and Gartner reckons the rise of the Internet of Things will propel the global IT industry past the $3.8 trillion mark by the end of this year.

I can certainly see this as a valuable and seemingly ‘big bet’ sandbox to go and play in and GE is doing this on a strong execution platform. They already have scale, they are just scaling this more into a different business model and value propositions.

Big Data is coming of age, can we handle it?

Big Data is going to certainly drive IT spending in the next few years, yet it is its translation that promises to be within the value extracted, on how we interpret this through analytics, insights and what it then yields in improved productivity, new product designs and service offerings. It all signals a very healthy set of new innovation activities in new products, services and through new business model designs. The fusing of digital and physical for new opportunities is upon us.

So are we seeing the groundwork for a new industrial age where innovation will increasingly play even more of a part, one that needs us to focus on the data, our people and the whole architecture, where the ability to collaborate, exchange, network and decipher what is coming towards you in meaningful ways to turn insight into commercial opportunity seems beckoning?

So is our current innovation systems fit for purpose?

So real-time comes up against old-time innovation processes – something will have to give.

So there is a whole new world of possibilities, a mash-up of the cloud, data, analytics, digital/physical combinations, and real-time activities all crowding into the existing innovation pipeline, manually being cranked along. No, something needs to change. We need to really begin to dump these legacy systems for manual innovation and really step back here.

The BHAG for innovation is needed here
We need to take a very different perspective on the innovation process. We need a greater visual control across our organizations; we need to build a completely new end-to-end innovation management system on a platform approach.

We need to collect and aggregate more knowledge, information and data than ever, the complexity will simply grow as we connect more the digital and physical worlds and innovation is being expected from this fusion.

Fusing the parts, forming the bigger picture

We need to give up on ‘hard end of line’ measures and metrics (so anti-empathy) and go into analytics far more, for driving innovation along its new process constantly at its point of need (note that), embrace data, seek and design new deployment models like cloud and mobility, merge the architecture design of the innovation process onto a visualization platform, seek out those that can contribute both inside and outside the organization.

We need to orchestrate, and provide stunningly different user interfaces (beyond the Excel spreadsheet please) that can come into you wherever you are, tailored to the individual’s role within the innovation development process.

We need to make it highly adaptive, so at a particular time to make it flexible as an on-demand need, drag and drop knowledge into your space to make it hugely dynamic full of interactions, modular and capable of being extended within our more elastic (flexible) enterprises.

A future full of collaboration built on real-time and valuable insight

The future will be collaborative, full of mash-ups to make innovation happen. Innovation management needs to be in the driving seat of changing in response to the next revolution of digital and physical that is ushering in the next era of innovation.

Who is going to take up this grand challenge or is innovation just going to be lagging behind again as efficiency and effectiveness remain as the big brothers dominating the organization’s thinking ‘block’?

We do need a whooping big innovation mashup. By all indications, what is coming towards us we certainly will need some big innovation mashups.

The post Opening Ourselves Up to the Innovation Mashup first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We need to think differently about innovation and why it needs complexity and adaptive thinking as part of its design.

Complexity within systems challenge us to think differently, it pushes us to think outside often our normal experiences, to confront and understand and then restructure, often the unordered, into a new order.

Organizations are in need of understanding the complexities within their systems far more.

Complexity within innovation is always adaptive.
The challenge with managing complexity is that it is made up of many shifting and connected parts, that form much around interactions and relationships. These new ‘connections’ are shifting and challenging much of our previous understanding, built often on past practice and entrenched thinking.
We need to think differently to generate fresh insights and new-to-the-world innovation and this begins by us ‘seeing’ the potential by unravelling the complexities involved. To seek a more radical innovation agenda you need to grapple with much within a complex system to yield the ‘promise’ of really new and exciting innovation.

Innovation is made up of many connected parts when it eventually combines and becomes one, the finished article or concept. You gain constantly from its combining power.

Innovation is highly dynamic (or should be), full of interactions and relationships where the individual and the collective whole, changes as a result of the experiences gleaned from engaging within the process. That is a complex adaptive system.

I wrote a piece a couple of years back, as my initial attempt to explain that innovation is a complex adaptive system. There is so much to add to this but recently I was listening to Dave Snowden from Cognitive Edge and this struck me as a great starting point for many.

David is regarded as an authority on the application of complexity theory to organizations, and I think there is so much to learn from following David and his thinking, I’d recommend it.

Understanding complexity – peeling away some of its layers.
David recently gave a part talk on understanding complexity and how to manage it.

He offered these thoughts with my summary of what I heard as my add-ons relating more specifically to innovation.

If innovation is complex, we need to recognize and manage this. They make sense to me in the context of innovation and managing its complexity.

These thoughts from David are in explaining a complex system. They might provide you a better understanding of the complexity often found within innovation and help in your thinking about the implications through.

* Enabling constraints – without constraints you simply have randomness, you decide the level of constraints for the level of flexibility you are looking for (from innovation) and how much you are prepared for uncertainty. You need to strive for a ‘given’ coherence and place this within a structure.

* Complexity is highly sensitive to small changes (weak signals are too easily dismissed) – small things magnify to produce (over time) major impact. What seems trivial actually might be highly significant. Think new technology, it is often dismissed as you lack the skills or understanding so you quickly dismiss it.

Weak signals can provide the possible future directions you need to orientate around. Identifying the weak signals within the frame of the three horizon methodology, can trigger complexity of understanding.

* Granularity matters – if you make something to big and too connected, you can often struggle to adapt and find solutions. Getting the granularity right is key, so we can see the emerging opportunities and this often means we need to break the big ideas down a level or two, to seize perhaps multiple opportunities as well as allocate resources to ‘bite-sized’ pieces of work. It is from these smaller pieces of work you begin to piece the bigger ‘prize’ together.

* You need sufficient but not excessive gradients– the example David uses is the troubles within inequality. If we all had the same equality we provide little incentive for change, alternatively if we have excessive inequality you begin to get preconditions for revolution and potential catastrophic change.

So you need some gradient but not to much. For example everyone aligned with the same values might be a bad thing to do as it destroys variety, or diversity of opinion and conflict and that is unhealthy for innovation. Within any innovation activity some ‘creative’ tension equally can give that gradient.

* Proximity and connectivity can be managed – this is the who and what we interact with, we evolve through our engagements and interactions, these give us our cognitive structure. The key is defining who interacts with whom, not the outcomes. Relationships and networks need encouragement and managing.

* You need to shift from fail-safe design to multiple parallel safe-to-fail experiments – we need to stop trying to work out one (big) thing to get it right, we need to encourage anyone who has a contribution to make, a coherent hypothesis to be allowed to run with it, in parallel for other experiments in a controlled safe-to-fail experiment.

It is the patterns of potential success that evolves from all these experiments evolves and can ‘collectively’ reveal an emerging pattern or concept that ‘breaks the mould’, sees new solutions.

These can be evaluated in parallel to detect something new and value or presented to others so they can evaluate the emerging patterns of discovery to judge and take forward or not. This more discrete project thinking deploys resources better, gives greater agility and adaptability. You set out to stimulate evolutionary possibilities.

* The inherent uncertainty of complex systems means we have to navigate a fitness landscape of possibilities – You are looking for the evolutionary potential from dispositions (the inclination towards something, the attitudes and consequences) and the propensity (the natural tendencies) to give emerging patterns of beliefs, often called peaks and troughs.

Knowing your fitness landscape for innovation is important as I have previously suggest and laid out a possible pathway. You can use landscaping for capturing individual stories or needs to find solutions that are more relevant to those (their) specific needs. Jobs-to-be-done comes to mind here and mapping solutions to closer needs that derive from exploring real stories, through ethnography as an example.

Each of the above has significant innovation implications

If you treat complexity as something you must overcome, reduce it or try to ignore it, you miss significant opportunities within innovation. You can’t force it. To exploit innovation you need to manage it, coax out the possibilities, managing it well, not as simple problems but within a better understanding of a complex system.

It is deciding what complexity within the innovation design and then set about building and placing the right capabilities where they matter.

Avoid the “Business as Usual” Mentality for Innovation.

We cannot enforce ‘business as usual’ as the modus operandi for innovation to make it ‘fit.’ We are faced with the very opposite in today’s world, the need to ‘embrace’ reoccurring change.

We need to manage complexity within the systems and we do need innovation to exploit this to our advantage.

To achieve this we need to obtain as much diversity and non-linear structure in what we do to allow recognition of all the possible options. We need to move well beyond the obvious and move through the complicated, into the complex and once in a while cross over into the chaotic nature of innovation to extract all the innovation ‘juice’ possible.

We need to think differently about innovation and why it needs complexity and adaptive thinking as part of its design.

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End note and further reading: The Cynefin Framework of David Snowden and Cognitive Edge is most valuable to explore. I discussed this from an innovators perspective recently in this post that was describing the value of the Cynefin model towards innovation.

The post Understanding Challenges Within Innovation Complexity first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Firstly a very brief explanation of the Cynefin Model and why I find it highly valuable for innovation management.

Innovation has many characteristics of a complex adaptive system as I have crudely attempted to explain here.

The three primary states within the Cynefin framework are Ordered Systems (including Obvious and Complicated), Complexity and Chaos.

Order is split into two, as this handles a key difference in human knowledge between those states, where the cause and effect relationship is obvious and those where it requires greater analysis or expertise.

Exploring a process of emergent discovery for innovation

Most innovators are working in and certainly are far more familiar with the ordered domains, for ‘obvious’ innovations that extend, enhance or evolve their existing products and services.

Equally, they understand their more specialised place and contribution to be growing in their comfort, in the part they play in the more ‘complicated’ domain, where expertise, dedicated focus and specialization are often required or called upon.

The real challenges come from the really ‘new’ in innovation as it becomes greater in new designs, changing functionality, different technology or significant improvements on the existing that involved greater research and development the more you travel around the cynefin framework.

Here within this ‘ordered’ domain, the innovation activities are a lot more predictable, and more straightforward in their management. This is more about being trained, using expertise where needed, applying skills, making appropriate decisions, having established structures, processes and measurements and then systematically working towards clear objectives.

When you move across into the ‘complex’ or even ‘chaotic’ domains this takes on far more new learning, more situational assessments, looking and combining capabilities to manage emerging patterns and knowledge, applying experiences, looking for diversity of opinions and searching for new wisdom or insights.

Expertise and experience, collaboration and relationships need significantly leveraging. You often diverge/converge constantly as you work through the potential answers. The mindset here is different and it is more one that is based on the detection. Innovation is far more demanding, pushing frontiers, exploring discoveries, dealing in a series of exchanges and recognizing emerging patterns to piece together as real ‘new to the world’ innovation activities.

Let’s describe the domains within the framework

In the obvious domain of order, you assess the facts, categorize them, and then apply established practice. The system is well set up and you work through this in very controlled ways, you tend to adhere to the practices, always looking to improve and apply best practices. You sense- categorize- and respond as your work through the approach. Most of our incremental innovation ‘sits’ here as an extension to what we have established and where most systems, processes, technology understanding and controls are already established, all we are required to do is manage within a defined set of controls (constraints).

The complicated domain is where you tend to need greater expertise, initially, you might have multiple answers to your emerging concepts and you need to work through a better cause and effect so all involved can see the relationships. This is often termed the “known unknowns”. You sense- analyse- respond. This domain requires degrees of expertise and investigating various options and working eventually through the trade off’s. If a decision remains elusive then perhaps you have a more complex issue.

In the complex domain, you need to really work to extract the right answers. This is regarded as the realm of the “unknown, unknowns” and where much of our organizations have to work. Why simply because situations and decisions are far more complex as much is swirling around in unpredictability and flux. You are looking for more for the emerging patterns and you should avoid the attempt to impose a course of action or place ‘increased’ constraints here, you should allow the pathway to reveal itself.

For innovation here, you firstly probe- then sense- and then finally- respond. A solution or breakthrough will emerge and then you can begin to impose growing constraints, looking to move unordered thoughts or patterns into more orderly ones to evolve into final or potential solutions.

Avoid imposing order too early as this can preempt the opportunities for these ‘greater’ patterns to emerge. Leaders need to set the stage, step back, allow patterns to emerge and then determine which ones are more attractive or desirable.

Design thinking works well in this domain, where you visualize, synthesise, create narratives, build on learning stories, and explore multiple prototyping and safe-to-fail experiments.

When you are faced with a chaotic domain, this needs a rapid response. Searching for right answers can waste time, this is the realm of the “unknowables.” Cause and effect are impossible to determine as no manageable patterns seem to exist, only turbulence, challenge and threat.

The need is to quickly act, gain an early sense and respond. It tends to be the domain for top-down decisions, there is limited time for seeking input in ‘normal’ ways. This is the space where you ‘impel’ or ‘impose’ innovation.

Run a crisis team in parallel with an innovation solution solving team. Have one team managing the immediate to manage constantly changing issues incoming and another team working exclusively on exploring doing things differently to move from this chaos back into complexity.

Your innovation solutions have to counter the disruption or move beyond but the toughest part is ‘getting others to let go’. This requires clear leadership and direct communications to attempt to impose immediate actions and re-establish order.

There is a fifth domain, shown in the middle and that is disorder, not knowing which domain you are in and we often struggle to recognize which domain we want to be in for innovation and this disorder stays with us, until we impose order, structures or clarity to the thinking. The Cynefin model is highly contextual for innovation in my opinion.

Finally, to complete the understanding, the Obvious domain is next to Chaos because complacency (the extreme of Obvious) can all too easily produce catastrophic failure.

Thus that boundary is represented by a cliff, or more technically a catastrophic fold. You can find yourself moved from an orderly, steady-state, the business that is obvious to you and then thrown suddenly into chaos, by the sudden change. You fall off the cliff.

Recognizing and applying the different practices to each domain

Another important distinction within the model is around the type of practices each domain seeks out. In the obvious domain best practice rules, you are looking to constantly improve the innovation activity with repeatable, efficient structures and processes. Whereas in the complicated domain it is the search for good practices, the expertise deployed should bring this into the thinking.

On the other hand in the complex domain, you are searching for emergent practices, as you clarify, evaluate, probe and sense.

Finally, in the chaotic domain, this is more the application of novel practice, as you are ‘reacting’ to numerous situations where judgement and experience are applied to find original solutions to tackle mostly unique situations where you are learning as you go.

 You achieve a greater depth in discussions and sense-making around different innovation needs using this framework

Cynefin thus contrasts how things are, with how we know them, with how we perceive them. The overall idea is that the more you allow these three to interact with each other the more likely it is that your actions with be authentic to the situation.

Cynefin goes well beyond a categorisation model that many try to use it for; it is about dynamic movements. So in the model shown above the prime dynamic is shown by the blue arrow.

Sometimes you can move between all four domains and this is shown as the green line (in the above depiction of the framework) and as innovation tends to be more in the complicated and complex space, you ‘operate’ more in these two modes.

So where does the model come from? Dave Snowden from Cognitive Edge. David is regarded as an authority on the application of complexity theory to organisations. David offers so much that is relevant to our work within or for organizations, to listen and learn from.

Innovation is complex and works well within the Cynefin model
I like this as a discussional and resolution solving framework for innovation, as innovation can move across and between complex or complicated at different times, if it is more than ‘obvious’ incremental innovation. It attempts to place orders into the often unordered.

New ideas of innovation emerge in the complex domain and are often dependent on the constraints you impose to ‘extract’ and ‘yield’ choices.

You ‘toggle’ from exploration to exploitation across domains. The more you relax the more constraints can allow new possibilities to emerge. You want to eventually bring the unordered more in control and become more ordered.

From time to time the dynamic within an innovation concept may have ossified in which case a reset is needed; a shallow sudden dive into chaos. You are looking to bring the innovation out of this chaos domain as quickly as possible and impose some order (or constraints).

Only when change is no longer significant is it shifted to Obvious (formerly Simple) as the domain where incremental innovation resides as it relies more on repeatable structures and established practices.

We need to recognize different types of innovation need to be managed differently

I believe truly new (to the world) innovation is in mostly the complex domain and should be treated as such, often we don’t. We need to start with very open minds and then bring the thinking down.

We try to apply our existing practices and experiences best suited to regular or incremental innovation, found in the complicated and obvious domains, where practices constrain the idea more than we often want but sometimes need, as the ‘demands’ are imposed. We start to immediately probe and do not take the necessary time to analyse. We reduce the potential for greater innovation impact in applying constraints.

When you look at the four domains described here think of incremental innovation for working in the obvious, distinctive innovation for the complicated domain, radical or breakthrough for the complex domain and disruptive innovation when it comes to the chaotic domain. Think disorder when you have no established innovation system in place, just expecting innovation to happen!

Each of the above has significant innovation implications

The Cynefin model helps determine the ‘type’ of innovation and its complexity and the constraints you impose upon ‘it’. Recognizing the complexity that can hamper the effectiveness to innovation is very different from our usual management of effectiveness and efficiency.

Innovation requires boundaries but it needs the appropriate thinking, analysis and probing, this framework provides the ‘mechanism’ to promote this.

You need to build flexible systems that adapt, are dynamic and responsive and need that bandwidth for innovation exploration. It is a series of challenges evolving to be exploited, not reduced or eliminated.

Using the Cynefin model allows you to begin to think about the appropriate innovation and what is needed in practice and thinking approach.

It allows you to begin to be prompted in what the possible constraints might be, to allow you or not to explore innovation in these different domains.

To exploit innovation you need to manage it, manage it well, not as simple problems but within a better understanding of being a complex system, to extract the most from the investigation and discoveries.

It is deciding what complexity your innovation might have within the innovative design and then setting about building the right capabilities and framing these appropriately, where they matter.

My endnotes: I have drawn from different material associated with the work and explanations of David Snowden and Cognitive Edge extensively.

My innovation interpretations are built on this growing understanding and by using this model in my innovation discussions, by seeing its value and power for myself and through others. I just hope I have given justice to this fantastic model here.

BTW– The name Cynefin is a Welsh word whose literal translation into English, as explained by David is “as habitat or place fails to do it justice”. It is more properly understood as “the place of our multiple belongings” or “a sense of place” It is pronounced cunevin. The frame’s intent is to explore the relationship between man, experience, and context.
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The post The Use of the Cynefin Model for Innovation Management first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Even managing the present portfolio of innovation initiatives gets caught up in these underlying tensions as it becomes another opportunity to open up the old wounds of bruising past battles and get back into those discussions again.

Suddenly the CFO becomes animated over the uncertainties; the research director grows defensive, and the marketing director more strident in why it is constructed that way.

The HR director raises their concerns on stretching the resources too thinly and suddenly a fast and furious open debate erupts. Then the Supply Chain director throws in the concerns that the system will not cope with the sudden influx of new introductions in the remaining part of the year.

Each has a valued perspective but much of these are based on past positions, attitudes built up from other pitch battles and scores to be settled.

The CEO listens and silently thinks to himself:  “what happened to the series of bonding exercises that we had all had invested in, suddenly just gone”.
Lingering Dogma
One of these ‘investments’ made within the board was to resolve the strong personalities around the table that tended to push certain views and try to make it the dominant logic.

The very nature of these ‘debates and exchanges’ was that they were not being left in the boardroom but were actually seeping down into the organization and suddenly more of the organization was becoming at odds with each other on where innovation ‘fits’ and what it requires.

Each board member has previously recognized that their own failings in holding onto their positions and acknowledged on one of these away-day sessions they were contributing to this ‘tautness’ that was found across the organization. Yet they simply were falling back into old habits or that fixed mindset. Something had to change and fast.

Fixed mindsets and biases

Holding onto these positions were actually holding the organization to ransom, as it rises up and dominates in these more open debates it freezes positions, alliance are struck that become more opportune and less to do with the right decision for the business.

These have been slowly forming more constraints on the ability of the organization to explore the best options on strategic design, let alone where innovation can support it. This was shrinking the size of the opportunity horizons that could be investigated and linked.

Conflicting needs and holding positions
Often within any debate it is difficult for many individuals to change perspectives; they can’t even change their ‘established’ opinions even when they are being confronted with overwhelming evidence.

They ‘dig in’ and become dogmatic, resort to well established and tested fear tactics. Those old chestnuts come trotted out about “complexity, fast-changing market conditions, uncertainties of key clients, the downturn effects, our limited resources” etc, etc. to hold their favoured position and deliver their ‘push back’ in exchanges like this. No one ends up the winner or loser, it just becomes a further stalemate

Mental dexterity or imposing my authority becomes the choice for the CEO

The debate has gone on well past its allotted time, the issues were getting caught up in more personal attacks and suddenly innovation becomes the ‘whipping boy’ for some of these disjointed failures occurring. Cool heads have left the room, replaced by accusation and counter accusation and rising tempers.

Suddenly the CEO springs into life, he has listened, observing and considering his options. The first idea he had was one of ‘how can I sack the lot’, but this was quickly dismissed as not sensible, because around this table was the best available talent for tackling their given areas of specialisation.

When this team combined it was ‘awesome’ was often made as comments from independent observers.   He recognized his job was to orchestrate this ‘tension’ into a more positive set of dynamics.

The choice he had to make was between the ‘carrot or the stick’. He could impose his opinion quiet strongly and had been known for this ‘stick’ approach many times, he actually had become quite legendary for ‘shredding’ both the good and the bad. This time he hesitated.

Recently he had been going through his own discovery of what made up his mindset with a personal coach. The meetings had been brutally honest, still ongoing, and were open and mind-shifting as they could be, between two people who had shared experiences, enjoyed each other’s life experiences and how they arrived at this point. So he took the option that he saw was the right one –  the one that seeks and cajoles, that shifts perspectives and given mindsets.

Learning different approaches can change perspectives
Gently he brings order around the board table. He asks a series of open-ended questions “where does innovation contribute to strategy,”  “where can it contribute more?”, “what is holding US back from delivering on this promise?”, “why can’t we realize this potential?” and finally “how can WE change this?”. Each question slowly reduces the negative tensions and replaces it with a positive, unifying set of positive tensions, the issue has moved from the ‘you or me’ into the’ us’ frame of thinking.

He begins to draw out the expertise around the table, he gets each to appreciate the proficiency of the other, and he draws out a ‘string’ of positive contributions. The individuals around that table only minutes ago clearly at each other’s throats, have united in finding plausible answers to these questions.

Applying the appropriate intervention

Suddenly the atmosphere changes with the deftness of this intervention. It has not been imposed, it has been sought out, by asking the experts within the room to tap into their areas of knowledge. The debate begins to move faster and faster, one good idea contributing to another, feeding off, building from and breaking down the issues that hold innovation back in its contribution to strategic direction.

He takes one further step, he reminds each person of the three horizon framework they had all been introduced to fairly recently. (see below for links). “What we have to remind ourselves is that each Horizon needs different mindsets for innovation”.

The third horizon, the more futuristic one, is really different to how we are managing innovation in the current system and its management. That horizon (3) is motivated by vision, value and beliefs.

Whereas the one we call the intermediate one (H2), which straddles the present and the future is more an entrepreneurial mindset, attempting to anticipate changing values and detect the shifts in the market place and as these become clearer, they can lead to the H3 world.

Suddenly the discussion has significantly shifted. The focus has become one of applying different mindsets to approaching and linking innovation to strategic direction, depending on the challenge, complexity and time and by so doing they start sharing uncertainties that contribute even more positively to the debate that needs resolution.

Respected solutions and changing context.

Dogmas can also be extremely positive, they can reinforce solutions, and they can underpin approaches that can shape and influence very different attitudes and beliefs. In introducing a framing approach that moves the discussion beyond, the current drivers of innovation, then the trending aspects that can shape what an organization works upon, and finally, those emerging aspects that remain ‘sketchy’ but do have potential strategic implications, brings a galvanizing change. They keep looping back where they can, recognizing where they need further understanding or just placing a ‘watch’ on that aspect.

Innovation is suddenly linked to a process of change and strategic direction options, that lift the debate into a series of a plausible and coherent set of activities. This focuses the energy around the table on to the defining, yet opening debate, of linking the future work to the shape and the organization’s needs, making the debate as strategic as it can be.

Find out how you can change the tone of any board debate around innovation

Take a little time and view the series on the Three Horizon Framework either on this blog by entering into the search field under “three horizons” or through the series published on the Innovation Excellence site. If you start here under the opening one of five within the series of “

Have you considered the three horizon approach”  (http://tinyurl.com/c6fed9c ) and then further releases each day during the period that follows this first one dated 31st July 2012.

I can’t promise it can stop all the unhealthy debates around innovation in the boardroom by adopting the Three Horizon framework.

What it might change is the perspective of where to focus the expertise and energy to make innovation far more the strategic bedrock, that organizations are looking to achieve, the link towards a healthier future.

It’s not personal anymore, it’s considering options in a future-orientated way for their business, to find better ways to thrive not just survive.

The post Lingering dogma, fixed mindsets, tensions and conflicting needs first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.