Nesta is an innovation foundation. They state: “For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality. It also means changing lives for the better. This is what keeps us awake at night and gets us out of bed in the morning” They work in areas where there are big challenges facing society, from the frontiers of personalized healthcare to stretched public services and a fast-changing jobs market. They cover a lot of ground and provide some very sound advice along the way.

One of their team, Bas Leurs, who is their head of learning experience design, has been working on “A Landscape of Innovation Approaches“. I read version one in February 2018 and did not pick up on version 2, published as a blog in December 2018. Hence, why I kicked myself.

Although this was built with government and civil servants in mind asking which tools and techniques they should use, this growing list of approaches to innovation is getting highly impressive and a terrific stimulus to any one of us working across innovation, to explore it and then see how and what might also be added, hence why I thought this needed sharing.

In the version 2 blog 

They climb into the tools and offer some great guidance and clarity to the links they have found, as their reference and introductory information. Just go and explore these, they are such a storehouse of innovation approaches. It clearly has that bias to government and the UK civil service but all innovators, irrespective, in the private or public sectors will extract good value out of this, I know.

Here is the landscape map again (as shown above)

Just stop and think of this, please

They have broken the tools and techniques in a really thoughtful way. It is how we should be thinking about undertaking innovation. Forget the advice offered in the past, based on the more traditional ways of establishing an innovation process, or much of the sage advice and reflect on this structure. It is a powerful way to construct your innovation toolbox.

This becomes the enabler space for innovation for thinking innovation in that wider context. This approach brings innovation far more up to date in how we should group it and build it for delivering the real understanding of innovation and what actually does make innovation up.

The four spaces are intelligence, solution, technology, and talent. Let me quote their brief descriptors of these and the one additional one of Intelligence- Solution crossover space.

Intelligence Space- understanding reality

These approaches help you make sense of reality, understand the causes and effects of issues, and identify opportunities. Activities are driven by an inquisitive and analytical mindset.

Solutions Space- shaping reality

These approaches help you test and develop solutions. Activities are driven by a generative and entrepreneurial mindset, aiming to shape reality.

Technology space- enabling action

Approaches and technology that enable action and change, such as digital tools and data-related methods (at the intersection with the intelligence space).

Talent Space- empowering people

Approaches focused on mobilizing talent, developing technical and leadership skills and increasing organizational readiness to make change happen

The Intelligence- Solutions Crossover space- using both mindsets

The crossover between the intelligence and solution space includes methods built on both mindsets. They aim to understand, as well as shape reality.

In summary, this map is still a work-in-progress as it gets others feeding in their ideas and giving feedback. I really think this “Landscape of Innovation Approaches” is a terrific source of reference for practitioners as well as theorists to work through.

I do recommend you take a look. Link here again and I certainly want to thank Nesta and especially Bas Leurs for the work that has gone into this and being shared with a wider audience.

*** Download this diagram as a PDF.

The post Nesta’s Landscape of Innovation Approaches first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Far too many organizations still don’t provide the opportunity for everyone to contribute to innovation. I think as open innovation moves from the labs and research centres then OI will be one of the ways for a shift in thinking to take place, not just with the outside world but within the inside organization for a number of reasons.

Critical needs of open innovation are the trust, the behaviors and the relationships that need to be at the forefront of thinking when you engage in more opening up to fresh avenues of innovation thinking. I think this changing mindset of how to manage within will permeate throughout the organization more and more as these (often dormant but available) skills get put into practice more.

We struggle to get rid of the ‘command and control’ approach to encourage more distributed sharing and exchanges to reflect the need today of being more agile and fluid in how we meet rapidly changing market conditions and counter threats or seize breaking opportunities.

How can we influence leadership in everyday contexts?

As a starting point to distribute innovation we need to reset the innovation mindset. Formally appointed managers will never achieve without gaining the respect of the people around them, which is simply a common fact of life!

We still have incredible difficulty learning this in many organizations. It does seem a more distributed leadership structure built on individuals who have strength to influence others is more likely to succeed- the respect of your peers has greater power than impose and control.

We often recommend organizations seek out and appoint passionate champions (W L Gore) or ecosystem champions (P&G) to organize and influence innovation work. There is a lot of research work presently going on that is studying the type of behaviors, traits, characteristics needed for these pivotal innovation roles so they can be used for the appropriate need to encourage and ‘push’ existing initiatives or champion new ideas. It can flatten the organization structure.

The flat lattice organization is a start.

W.L Gore practice a distributed leadership model that has a ‘lattice’ structure where they discourage hierarchy, titles and trying to impose and look to encourage the ‘voice’ from within the organisation to self commit and identify in a culture that demands each to offer their unique contribution to delivering innovation.

They work on achieving respect throughout the organisation based on a fascinating set of disciplines NOT rules and hierarchy. They build into everyone’s job innovation.

Distributed innovation requires a flow of knowledge

Innovation has many definitions but one I might mention here is it is ‘doing new things or improving existing things that add greater value’ is a great place to start for everyone in your organization to actively seek out their potential contributions.

If we feel our contribution is valued this becomes a powerful motivator not just to turn up for work, but to engage in new productive work. It becomes a more dynamic environment, not static to work within and just attempt to identify with.

What is changing constantly around us in this distributed innovation need and we need to put a better system in place to capture distributed knowledge.

Networks are giving us all that incredible shift to ‘connecting for value’ not just ‘discovery’, we are constantly needing to re-arrange, recombine, react and explore to problem-solve and often improvise on a daily basis.

Recognizing  what helps knowledge to flow in a distributed innovation model
– Recombination and connections will help us within a more distributed innovation society to manage.
–          The geography of innovation knows no barriers. If we don’t operate in a more distributed way we are going to miss so many ‘breaking’ concepts that are occurring in innovation on a daily basis. We need to capture these. This requires front line effort and capital but by distributing the task, you have the chance of a greater knowledge flow.
–          How do we cultivate ‘global people’ power? In a world of changing knowledge, we need to recognise that educating and informing our people and our network of what we are doing will lead to the contribution, to the capture of knowledge and reveal the skills dormant in us all to identify productive knowledge.
–          How can we design for greater learning? How can we turn knowledge into innovation potential?
–          How can we build in greater levels of collaboration and adaptability? These are human dimensions we need to encourage by distributing the tools and clarity of purpose to those within our company to ramp up the innovation pay-offs increasingly expected.
–          Innovation is full of ambiguity, often little clarity so you need to give your organisation greater freedom and permission to investigate, capture and push back knowledge through this distributed innovation network.

Distributed innovation needs to cultivate Absorptive behavior and allow it to flow.

We need a system to capture and allow knowledge to flow. For me the adoption model seems to be one worth investigating. If we want to achieve the goal of distributed innovation we need to have in place this possible framework.

Nesta (www.nesta.org.uk) produced a report some time back called “innovation by Adoption” and I feel this has a good framework that support distributed innovation.

The report argues in a place with a strong absorptive capacity three main outputs subsequently result from the flow of external or distributed knowledge: (1) the creation of new innovation; (2) the creation of new knowledge; and (3) that it does lead to new economic and social value.
Innovation by adapting the adoption model within your distributed innovation needs.

If we agree that most innovations happen outside often self-imposed boundaries then we have to extend to all our boundaries and beyond. We have to open up.

We certainly understand that today innovation is not confined to the walls of one particular company. The world ‘absorbs’ more innovation than we can turn into greater value but we need to attempt to capture this and see if and where its value might lie.

This is going to be achieved more likely within a distributed approach asking everyone to contribute to innovation ideas and providing them on a consistent basis the likely content and context fit that they need to look for .

We need to continue to push innovation created often locally, back up through the organization so it can potentially turn these insights into innovation that will find a place in our world that improved on the existing that was something that we contributed too, that can be highly motivating.

For this to happen organization have to recognize the inter-dependency and reliance that a diversified, distributed engaged group of people can bring to accelerate innovation to share, explore and work on turning ideas into new solutions .

What we need to find is ways to absorb this flow of daily knowledge, quickly recognize where it might meet our needs and then fit these to the wider audiences available that search for innovative solutions.

There is an awful lot that can derive from a more distributed innovation network that allows a greater flow across a networked organization.

Approaching absorption in two ways
Absorptive capacity captures and enables this flow in each direction. Nesta through its research into this absorptive need also suggested a model called the AC/DC model where they argue you need to develop two broad sets of capacities: the absorptive capacity (AC) to identify, value, and assimilate and the development capacity (DC) of places to develop and exploit such knowledge.

AC/DC Model

We need to adopt a more distributed innovation model in our thinking

Applying these two models into your thinking to achieve a more distributed innovation model would help to capture, anchor and diffuse all the innovation that lies not just within the ‘walls’ of your organization but just beyond where your local people can see it, value it and bring it into the organisation as one of their contributions to innovation.

Permit people to ‘see’, to ‘engage’, to become ‘deeply involved’ then organizing around distributed innovation can lead to greater empowerment and sustaining your innovation engine and knowledge.

Fortune will favour the connected mind not just the brave lonely few.

Are you building your distribution innovation model yet?

The post Moving towards a more distributed innovation model first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.