Thoughts on the nature of innovation

There were two things that really struck me over the last two wonderful days of BiF.

The first was that innovation is more often than not intensely personal. Most of the stories were about individuals, and individuals who had got to the stage where they were so hacked off with the status quo that they were prepared to have a go at changing their world. To do so they invariably had to face considerable forces of resistance or at least disapproval.

This leads to the second thing that struck me. Innovation is disruptive by its very nature as it means doing things differently. For many in organizations doing things differently means at the very last accepting change and often having to accommodate an entirely new world view. They don't tend to do this without a fight.

This leads to the instinct in organizations to sanitize innovation - to set up committees or dedicated innovation departments. The trouble is that in doing so they risk removing the personal nature of the desire to innovate and disperse the passion that gives it the energy to happen.

Comments

[Gord]

Have you had a look at Scott Berkun's book on innovation, Euan? He takes a bit of a run at the lone innovator / inventor myth, stating that all innovation is a fundamentally collaborative process.

Your second point about how organizations tend to structure their collaborative processes is well taken. Forced innovation is a bit like forced spontaneity. By asking you to be spontaneous, I've just taken away the very conditions for which you can be spontaneous. Arguably the same applies to those who are asked to be innovative on demand: the double bind of innovation.

[Andrew Trickett]

Dear Euan,

An interesting article and can I highlight to you that the Economist today has an excellent 16 page report on Innovation that you might like to consider as an adjunct to your piece on innovation.

On my blog on the 18th July, I posted a piece on law firms innovation and knowledge management which was a copy of an article I had written for KM Legal.

I had hoped to see you at the SCL event in Oxford in June this year to hear some of your views on Web 2.0 - but it clashed with a very important family event - Golden Weddings don't happen to often so that took priority.

I don't know if links always work but as a short cut here is a link to the 18th July blog.

http://andrewtrickett.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-can-knowledge-management-drive.html#links

[Euan Semple]

Thanks Gord and I take the point about the lone innovator. I agree that people talking together can spark innovation and getting beyond the initial idea takes the support of others but I still reckon it takes one person to care before things move.

Thanks for the link Andrew and sorry to have missed you. Next time!

[John Barben]

Euan,
I've pondered on and investigated by inquiry the difference between the intensely private act of innovation (the "Eureka" moment) and the application of social software which tends to count more towards the sanitisation / groupthink end of the innovation continuum.
In the end, innovation is rarely a completely radical new position but is a development of a previous idea / approach and for this kind of innovation a social software platform allows these innovations to be socialised and implemented.
Where entirely new disruptive approaches are promulgated through social software and communities of practice I've found that the organisation can see the community as well as the idea to be challenging and therefore the commmunity tends to self-regulate and quash the idea.
True disruptive innovation is required rarely and very few organisations can handle more than one major disruption at a time and as such is opposed to needing a structure to support itself.

[Ant]

One possitive impact of social software in innovation is that it can provide a very very flexible and rapidly deployed network of exactly appropriate information sharing tools. Every novel situation is new and a novel approach to solving problems is likely to need new tools, or be new tools. 'The normal channels are borked' is both a call for innovation, and often the reason why it doesn't have the impact it could. An immaginatively cludged wiki, with feeds punted to the right people, gets around the normal channels and kickstarts new ways of working.

Sometimes.

If you're lucky.

And then, sometimes, it gets decided that the wiki is great, so must become the 'normal channels'. Which tends to Bork it all over again.

[Richard Dennison]

The great thing about social networking tools in particular is that you can quickly build a community to support you after your 'eureka' moment (... and to also refine your idea) ... you can be assured that, if something is bugging you, it's bugging the hell out of others too.

The other thing that companies tend to do when someone has an innovative idea is pay them off with a few M&S vouchers and give the idea to someone else to implement ... few companies are flexible enough to offer the originator of an idea the opportunity to take their idea forward to fruition.

[Adriana]

"Most of the stories were about individuals, and individuals who had got to the stage where they were so hacked off with the status quo that they were prepared to have a go at changing their world."

Yes, that's what I call OFM! :)

http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2007/05/ofm-or-the-oh-fuck-it-moment/

[Miko Coffey]

Hi Euan - it seems we're on the same page with this one :-)

Top 5 things innovation doesn't need:
http://blogs.nesta.org.uk/innovation/2007/05/top_5_things_in.html

[Euan Semple]

Excellent!

[Rex Lee]

Hi Euan, Thanks for the post.

Although a "dedicated" department just for innovation may go counter to the environment needed for innovation, having dedicated time for innovation is definately helpful.

Too often, we hear senior executives make meaningless statements to their employees such as "be innovative". The reality is, those employees are under the gun to deliver on objectives and penalized on spending time being creative the pre-requisite to innovation. Yes, after we understand the value of the innovation everyone is happy but that time spent getting to Eureka is often systemically eliminated. How many companies would have the courage to implement "20% time" concepts that 3M, and later Google, have done?

Andrew McAfee has a good post right now that illustrates how not all E2.0 technoligies have the same purpose.

Predictive market type apps that look at consensus may indeed lead to better general decisions but may be bad for truly disruptive innovation since the 'crowd' can't comprehend the idea yet.

Providing opportunity to capture individual concepts however may be all you need without going to mass consensus.

In my work environment, our idea management system looks at both 'crowd' consensus of innovation and pockets of innovative concepts that don't have large support but appear to have merit. We explore both sides.

[Euan Semple]

Good points Rex and I think they reinforce the idea that management is becoming about noticing and enabling rather than driving and controlling.