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Intelligent
Innovation™: Ideas to Action
Written by: Brett Richards, M.A.
President, Connective Intelligence Inc.
In the Spring 2003 issue of The Journal for Quality and Participation,
I explored the discipline of coaching and indicated that coaching
in fact plays a role in the execution of successful innovation by
way of helping to balance the tension that exists between the organization’s
need for speed and the way people need to learn and sustain high
performance. Learning is inextricably linked to the innovation process,
as is effective thinking. In this issue, I will explore more fully
the concept of innovation and position thinking as the process that
drives perhaps the defining competency for success in the 21st century
– the ability to innovate.
Innovation versus Creativity
Simply stated, innovation is ideas to action. Taking something that
seems to be a good or even exceptional idea and transforming it
into something that is tangible for others to use. Innovation is
an active process that has a clearly defined end or goal, and that
is to produce something that others can use and indeed want!
To often innovation is paired with creativity as if they were cast
from the same mold. Take a quick peek at your organization’s leadership
competencies; have they combined these two skills under one competency
heading: creativity and innovation? I have worked with numerous
organizations from aerospace to health care where this has been
the case. And yet, the goal of creativity is very different from
the goal of innovation, and, therefore, they require very different
skills sets.
Jerry Rhodes, a mentor of mine for the past ten years, and Founder
of Effective Intelligence™, elegantly shows in Figure 1 the dynamic
tension that exists between creativity and innovation. The goal,
if not drive, of creativity is to explore beyond current reality,
to realize something new; whereas, the goal of innovation is to
bring those novel ideas into a tangible form that in some way conforms
to what others need in the here and now.
Creativity is
essentially a divergent activity, expanding beyond current experience
while innovation is essentially a convergent activity bringing those
same ideas back into peoples’ experience.
No doubt creativity is an aspect of innovation, without an idea
you have nothing to innovate. However, on the flip side, the process
of creativity does not require innovation. We can explore new ideas
and concepts in and of themselves - ideas for ideas sake - without
any intention of using them or developing them into a form that
others would want or use. The goal of creativity is exploration
and invention. The goal of innovation is transformation and implementation.
The Mindset of Creativity and Innovation
Given the divergent goals of creativity and innovation, it follows
naturally that the two activities require different mindsets, as
well as different skills sets. In my experience working with hundreds
of teams, I have seen very clearly the differences in both the mindsets
and the natural abilities of creators and innovators. A number of
years ago I worked with what was coined as an “innovation team”
at a large multinational company. The task of the team was to develop
a new product and service for their clients. We were called in to
work with this team because they were having difficulty getting
their new product “out the door” and into the market. Interestingly
enough, nine out of the eleven members on the team had strongly
divergent or creative thinking styles. Their dominant group thinking
style or mindset was driven to explore new possibilities, opportunities
and nuances, however it was at the expense of not converging on
the best ideas to produce tangible market solutions that their customers
would want in a timely fashion. In short, they were spending too
much time inventing (creating) and too little time implementing
(innovating).
Figure 2 provides some explanation as to why this particular team’s
natural style of thinking and preferred approach to working through
tasks was strongly influencing their “group think” and subsequent
group behavior. Research has shown that thinking influences behavior.
Our thinking process - how we think - affects our decisions, our
actions and consequently the results we get. High performance results
are governed by high performance thinking.
3 Steps
To Better Innovation Results
In retrospect, what might have prevented the above mentioned “innovation”
team from failing to achieve their objectives and ultimately improve
bottom line results for their organization? Here are three simple,
yet critical, steps that project initiators need to consider in
order to achieve better results with their innovation projects.
Incidentally, each of theses steps should happen before the innovation
team initiates their work:
Step One: Identify the Task - What is the task, scope and type of
innovation that needs to be achieved? Is it primarily to invent
an entirely new product or service? Is the project meant to refine
an existing idea, or to actually implement an existing idea? Or
is it some combination of both?
Step Two: Identify the Thinking – What type of thinking is needed
to achieve effective results with this innovation task? And are
there different phases within the innovation project that will require
different types of thinking to drive success?
Step Three: Identify the Thinkers – Who are the right people to
achieve each task and is their preferred style of thinking a good
match with the tasks that need to be achieved for the innovation
project? Technical skill, know-how and experience are necessary
factors to consider when formulating the right innovation team,
but they are not the only factors to consider. Too often project
leaders or initiators pay too little attention or are unaware of
the power and influence that team member thinking styles play in
terms of achieving high performance results.
Thinking Style Diversity
In her book, The Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and sustaining
the sources of innovation, Dorothy Leonard, introduced two wonderful
concepts relevant to the topic of thinking style diversity: signature
skills and creative abrasion. Essentially, a signature skill speaks
to three interdependent preferences that each team member brings
to the innovation process – preferred tasks (what tasks we prefer
to do); preferred cognitive approach (how we set up a task/solution);
and, preferred technology (how we like to execute tasks). To extend
this model, I would add that beneath each of these signature skill
dimensions, are underlying thinking style preferences that drive
an individual’s overall style of approach to working through tasks
of every kind. Every task that we encounter demands of us certain
types of thinking. Unfortunately, often we are unaware of our thinking
biases and do not shift our approach soon enough, that is not until
we experience unsatisfactory results. The better we are able to
first recognize, and then flex, our thinking to meet the demands
of each situation we face, the more likely we will be able to respond
with effective action.
Creative abrasion refers to the positive results that can be realized
by conflicting styles of approach if they are properly channeled
into creation rather than destruction. In my experience, diversity
in and of itself will not ensure high performance results. In fact,
it can lead very quickly into divisiveness without a common thinking
language for sharing ideas, analyzing information and making decisions.
In addition, diversity is most effective when the innovation team
shares a common framework that develops a true valuing (which is
far different from merely being aware) of the fundamentally different
styles of approach to working through tasks and problems. In fact,
all team members must actively “live” the belief that true innovation
occurs at the crossroads between powerfully diverse frames of mind.
3-D Thinking
As organizations face continuous pressure to accelerate the speed
and efficiency of their services, and to produce better products
faster, while maintaining the same, if not better, levels of quality,
they are being challenged, no forced, to get more skilled with the
discipline of innovation. I believe innovation is indeed a discipline
that requires tremendous amounts of emotional energy and mental
acuity to enact. One of the reasons that innovation seams to be
so difficult for many organizations, is that their leaders and workers
both do not fully appreciate the magnitude of the emotional terrain
or the organizational mindset that is required to drive successful
innovation.
The mindset of an innovation culture is geared more to the future
and compels everyone to be fundamentally discontent with the status
quo. At an emotional level, this can be problematic if the preferred
style of the majority of workers is to maintain the status quo due
to strong emotional attachments to what currently is or was. Continuously
being driven to move beyond our comfort zone is emotionally draining
and requires a good amount of emotional power and skill to maintain
and sustain the resilience that is required to drive continuous
innovation.
Figure 3 demonstrates some fundamental tasks and activities that
individuals, teams and organizations must address in order to successfully
cope with the pressures of continuous change. Constant environmental
pressure creates an emotional charge within individuals and requires
heightened awareness and skill to successfully navigate feelings
of loss (“I liked the old way better”), incompetence (“I don’t know
if I can do it”), and overall emotional fatigue (“I’m not sure I
can keep up this pace”). Needless to say, it takes a lot of energy
to adapt and continuously learn and re-skill ourselves to stay competitive,
as well as to continuously innovate products, processes and systems.
We are all compelled to respond to the call of change, how well
we do it depends on our level of emotional resilience and our ability
think well at every step of the way.
Thinking is
a key resource and an essential competency for us to harness and
develop.
The ability to think clearly is critical to emotional self-management.
Our emotions, particularly negative ones, use up tremendous amounts
of energy, and frankly we need all the energy we can muster. Skillful
thinking helps us balance the tension between the external world,
which demands change, and our inner, emotional world, which powers
up (or limits) our energy to learn, innovate and adapt. Difficult
and complex times require focused attention and energy; they require
our best thinking to respond with effective action.
Intelligent Innovation™
Intelligent innovation™ harnesses the powerful
force of thinking to drive continuous improvement while navigating
the cognitively complex and emotionally demanding terrain of continuous
innovation. Those organizations that can create the necessary conditions
that enable individuals and teams to develop the appropriate skills
to manage both the cognitive and emotional dimensions of innovation
will experience reduced cycle times and sustained high performance.
They will also nurture the requisite seeds of future innovation
potential.
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About
Brett Richards:
Brett is the President of Connective Intelligence. He is a performance
coach and a certified North American Effective Intelligence™ Master Trainer.
He is dedicated to helping people, teams and organizations realize
their full potential, by helping them to transform their brainpower
and intelligence into more effective action.
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