Innovation

Innovation

Where Good Ideas Come From – Review

by

“The premise that innovation prospers when ideas can serendipitously connect and recombine with other ideas, when hunches can stumble across other hunches that successfully fill in their blanks, may seem like an obvious truth, but the strange fact is that a great deal of the past two centuries of legal and folk wisdom about innovation has pursued the exact opposite argument, building walls between ideas, keeping them from the kind of random, serendipitous connections that exist in dreams and in the organic compounds of life.”

This one sentence sums up the core ideas in Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The natural history of innovation. Johnson goes on to explain what organizations can do to foster innovation:

“The secret to organizational inspiration is to build information networks that allow hunches to persist and disperse and recombine. Instead of cloistering your hunches in brainstorm sessions or R&D labs, create an environment where brainstorming is something that is constantly running in the background, throughout the organization, a collective version of the 20-percent-time concept that proved so successful for Google and 3M. One way to do this is to create an open database of hunches, the Web 2.0 version of the traditional suggestion box.”

This is what organizational social learning using social media can do – enable a free flow of hunches and ideas. The chapter on The Fourth Quadrant provides some specific advice for business innovation. The quadrant is the Non-market/Network which “corresponds to open-source or academic environments, where ideas can be built upon and reimagined in large, collaborative networks.” Innovations in this quadrant include: Braille, RNA splicing, Quantum Mechanics, Punch Cards, Germ Theory and many others developed at an increasing pace post-1850, as we became electrified [my observation here].

“Participants in the fourth quadrant don’t have these costs [protecting intellectual assets through barricades of artificial scarcity]: they can concentrate on coming up with new ideas, not building fortresses around the old ones. And because these ideas can freely circulate through the infosphere, they can be refined and expanded by other minds in the network.”

Steven Johnson presented this morning at the CSTD conference , reinforcing these points and making several others. He talked about the concept of getting more parts (or ideas) on the table in order to have more to work with and more potential connections. I liked his view of intellectual property protection as an ‘innovation tax’. He also talked about the emerging role of the organizational translator who can help break down silos and enable better communication and collaboration, similar to the ideas in the post, adapting to a networked world.

Overall it’s a great book with some solid advice for any organization.

Update: Video of SBJ discussing Maple Syrup, Airplane Crashes & the Power of non-Market Innovation (the fourth quadrant).

Social networks drive Innovation

by

I’m always looking for simple ways to explain how networks change business and how social media help to increase openness, driving transparency and increasing innovation.

Does this graphic stand on its own, or is there more explanation required?

Updated:

With significant feedback via Google+, here is the next, but not last, version.

Version 3 (thanks to Dan Pontefract & Simon Fowler and many others on Google Plus)

The adaptive organisation

by

Continuing from the post: Adapting …

The adaptive organisation is the second-last chapter of Adapt: Why success always starts with failure, followed by Adapting and you. In the final chapters, Tim Harford examines how groups and individuals can strive to adapt, and here are some highlights.

“So let’s first acknowledge a crucial difference: individuals, unlike populations, can succeed without adapting.” This statement explains a lot about what happens in organizations ;)

Case study of Timpson:

The first thing Timpson does when it buys another business is to rip out the electronic point-of-sale machines (there are always EPOS machines) and replace them with old-fashioned cash registers. ‘EPOS lets people at head office run the business’, explains John Timpson. ‘I don’t want them to run the business.’ EPOS machines empower head offices but they make it harder to be flexible and give customers what they need.

… how senior executives must feel when their cutting-edge, market-leading business finds itself being disrupted by a foolish-looking new technology:

A sufficiently disruptive innovation bypasses almost everybody who matters at a company: the Rolodex full of key customers becomes useless; the old skills are no longer called for; decades of industry experience count for nothing. In short, everyone who counts in a company will lose status if the disruptive innovation catches on inside that company — and whether consciously or unconsciously, they will often make sure that it doesn’t.

These, then, are the three obstacles to heeding that old advice, ‘learn from your mistakes’:

  1. denial, because we cannot separate our error from sense of self-worth;
  2. self-destructive behaviour, because … we compound our losses by trying to compensate for them;
  3. rose-tinted processes … whereby we remember past mistakes as though they were triumphs, or mash together our failures with our successes.

How to overcome these obstacles:

“Honest advice from others is better.”

Perhaps there is one reason why researchers find that self-employed people tend to be happier than the employed: they receive implicit approval of what they do every time somebody pays their invoice, whereas people with regular jobs tend to receive feedback that is both less frequent and less meaningful.

“So it’s worth remembering once again why it is worth experimenting, even though many experiments will, indeed, end in failure. It’s because the process of correcting the mistakes can be more liberating than the mistakes themselves are crushing, even though at the time we so often feel that the reverse is true.”

The book covers and cites several key points from The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Future of Management, which may make it a bit tedious for those who’ve read many management books, but overall I would recommend it as a fresh perspective on some key organizational and structural issues.

 

Innovation through network learning

by

Innovation

I’ve really appreciated the many posts where Tim Kastelle and I have connected by sharing ideas. Tim says that innovation is the process of idea management, which makes sense to me. Andrew Hargadon expands on this:

In short, innovation is about connecting, not inventing. No idea will make a difference without building around it the networks that will support it as it grows, and the network partners with which it will ultimately flourish. Here Thomas Edison’s real genius can be seen … Shifting the central activity of innovation from ‘having an idea’ to seeing and building the networks shifts the attention from thinking to the actions required to build the network that will realize the idea.

Innovation is not so much about having ideas as it is about connecting and nurturing ideas. As Steven Johnson says, “Chance favours the connected mind.” This requires a network mindset. It also requires an understanding of the greater environment.

In Innovating in the Great Disruption, Scott Anthony suggests three disciplines necessary to foster innovation in our challenging economic times – placing a premium on progress; mastering paradox; and learning to love the low end. He also discusses the importance of learning:

Innovators will need to continue to find creative, cheap ways to bring their ideas forward. Fortunately, they can tap into a plethora of powerful tools to facilitate rapid learning.

Tim Kastelle introduced me to the concept of Aggregate-Filter-Connect for innovation, which I used for personal knowledge management (network learning) and later changed it to Seek-Sense-Share. Innovation is inextricably linked to both networks and learning. That’s why the skills for learning in networks are essential for business today. We need to innovate to stay ahead in a rapidly changing world. The rules are constantly changing. Just as we get used to new business models like Amazon or Google, someone like Alvis Bigis knits together an excellent piece on how American business needs to get social. Discussing Groupon.com, he says; “Never before has a company reached $2 billion in annual revenue in just 2 years time.” Who knows what’s next?

Network Learning

Being an effective network learner is a basic skill for any knowledge worker today, and that’s pretty well anyone who wants to earn more than minimum wage. Network learning is also the foundation of collaboration. We know that collaboration is becoming critical for business, as Deb Lavoy notes:

Our wicked challenges [complex, entangled, multifaceted hairballs] require the diversity and experience of teams, as well as their ability to tap into and integrate new ideas and information. Our solutions will be tried and transient, keeping pace with the challenges they are meant to solve. A team with a bit of sense and technology can consistently outperform one corporate genius or the world’s most powerful computer in working through a wicked(ish) problem.

I now take for granted my network learning processes, using social bookmarking; blogging and tweeting, and these habits make collaboration much easier. However, these habits and practices have taken several years to develop and may not come easily to many workers. One difficult aspect of adopting network learning in an organization is that it’s personal. If not, it doesn’t work. Everybody has to develop their own methods, though there are frameworks and ideas that can help.

Here are some questions that network learning can address:

How do I keep track of all of this information?

How do I make sense of changing conditions and new knowledge?

How can I develop and improve critical thinking skills?

How can we cooperate?

How can I collaborate better?

How can I engage in problem-solving activities at the edge of my expertise?

—

My own personal learning journey took several years to transition to a network learner and my article on Network Learning: Working Smarter (2010) summarizes what I’ve learned, so far, on the subject.

Innovation & Learning

The connection between innovation and learning is evident. We can’t be innovative unless we integrate learning into our work. It sounds easy, but it’s a major cultural change. Why? Because it questions our basic, Taylorist, assumptions about work; assumptions like:

A JOB can be described as a series of competencies that can be “filled” by the best qualified person.

Somebody in a classroom, separate from the work environment, can “teach” you about a job requirement.

The higher you are on the “org chart”, the more you know.

Need I list more?

Enabling Innovation Facing Global Dilemmas

by

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

Quote of the Week:

bhsprincipal Patrick Larkin

“If I am an effective leader then I have set up a system that is not dependent on me.” via @gcouros #cpchat

—

I’m currently in Berlin attending a working meeting of the International Monitoring Organisation which is examining four dilemmas facing Germany, the EU and the global community. The group decided to use Twitter for the first time and a few of us jumped in to help get the conversation online. Here are some highlights, in chronological order:

@jaycross #paradoxolutions. Messages from our group going to office of Angela Merkel. Starting point: Innovate or die, Deutschland

@jaycross Squeezed between Dynamics & Complexity. No way back. Growing “Dynaxity” [interesting neologism]

Peter Pawlowsky on high performance teams: need to communicate across disciplines eg pilots & doctors in medical rescue

key message this morning was that innovation must be based on uniqueness at all levels

Jürgen Howaldt shift from an industrial to a knowledge age requires more openness for innovation; both social & technological

Frank Emspak German work-sharing agreement helped avoid recession & maintain skill base for innovation

@jaycross Kompetenz = not just knowing how but also doing it. English equivalent = “working smarter“

Francesco Garibaldo Innovation: we have to invest time with no obvious & immediate results in order to get some key results over the long term.

Fritz Böhle Accelerated change & uncertainty are obstacles to innovation: one solution to this is encouraging and supporting self-directed learning

Points from Stephen Downes, on Uniqueness & Conformity:

Fully realized, a state of total knowledge is indistinguishable from total complexity, or chaos …

In a chaotic environment, knowledge is nothing more than pattern recognition.

@downes the ‘pracademics’ – people who are working in academics and in practice

Open Innovation

by

The most interesting presentation at last week’s ACCTCanada Directors Forum was, in my opinion, on open innovation by Angus Livingstone, UILO at UBC. Much of the discussion by other presenters focused on patents and other control mechanisms, while Angus showed the shifting paradigms that we are experiencing in university knowledge transfer. He explained that the main shift over the next five years will be from closed to open innovation, in parallel with shifts from outputs to impacts and from transactions to relationships. Angus highlighted the old paradigm:

  • Patents
  • Licenses
  • Spin-offs
  • Proprietary industry research funding

and showed the new paradigm:

  • Industry engagement
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Knowledge mobilization

Since hearing that presentation and reflecting on the slides that Angus sent me, I came across Ed Morrison’s paper on how regional innovation clusters form. The initial step is to change the conversation.


The shifting conversation then encourages learning networks to develop, from which can emerge a concerted strategy for innovation. Ed calls the underlying activity, strategic doing:

Networks are complex adaptive systems. We can guide these networks, even manage them, if we follow simple rules. And that’s the point. We cannot guide complexity with complexity. Strategy in complex adaptive systems emerges from  following simple disciplines.

Both Angus Livingstone and Ed Morrison show that innovation is dependent on learning in networks. Social learning is about getting things done in networks. It is a constant flow of listening, observing, doing, and sharing. Effective working in networks requires cooperation, meaning there is no fixed plan, structure or direct feedback. Through social learning we can co-develop emergent practices. Social learning is how we move from transactions to relationships and foster knowledge mobilization.

Social learning is not some buzz word from the HR department but is a critical component in fostering innovation and hence prosperity. It’s the ‘how’ of business innovation and is important for decision-makers to not only understand but to embrace by doing. This is why I say that work is learning and learning is the work. Life in perpetual Beta is what every leader and manager needs to understand today.

Flipping the technology transfer funnel

by

In The Learning Layer , the concept of reversing the idea funnel is discussed in depth. Traditional innovation processes take many ideas, and through elimination, narrow these down to a few. Flipping the funnel reverses this by breaking ideas into capability components and building on them.

Most business ideas are a bundle of two or more of our capability components [tangible & intangible assets – technologies, processes, people, IP, relationships]. For example, even if a business idea is based on a technological breakthrough, the overall opportunity is likely to also include other differentiating components, such as processes (say, a specific marketing process). It is the uniqueness of the bundle of components that provides the economic value-creating potential of the idea, and the ability to defy the easy copying by other marketplace participants that leads to rapid value collapse.

This is what effective innovators do, says author Steve Flinn – “They break things down into their essential features, and then try to visualize the effect of different combinations, orientations, and application approaches.”

One of my current projects is working on knowledge transfer, such as the commercialization of research, at Mount Allison University. I’m still learning how this happens here and at other universities, but for the most part, it seems to be a traditional funnel. However, this type of funnel can also be flipped.

Embedding the flipping-the-funnel process within the learning layer is a powerful, contemporary approach to the management of innovation and R&D. But there are other related learning layer opportunities that should not be overlooked. For example, technology transfer processes. Here the idea is to enable third parties to leverage inventions and developments that are developed by other organizations, whether private or public. As mentioned previously, extending the learning layer across organizations is an ideal way to generate creative synergy. And the flipping-the-funnel approach can be adapted, and coupled with the cross-organizational learning layer, to enable more collaborative and valuable technology transfers.

One example of cross-pollination in technology transfer is Futurity.org, which aggregates research findings from all AAU universities.

The ability to even conceive of a learning layer is due to our advances in network communication technologies. This has caused the explosion in web social media and user-generated content. While looking for a picture to illustrate this post, I came across the image below on Flickr, an image sharing service. The image was linked to a blog post that asks if the prevalence of social media require us to re-think the lead generation funnel. It seems that network effects have flipped some of our older industrial models.

Bridging innovation and commercialization

by

Events during the past week have re-focused my attention on research, innovation and commercialization, especially as it pertains to learning technologies. I was engaged for my second time as the Scientific & Technical Evaluator for the SynergiC3 project, on behalf of the funding agency:

The main objective of the SynergiC3 project [a joint venture between l’Université de Moncton, the National Research Council of Canada and Desire2Learn] is to create a productivity enhancement framework that will allow a content development team to effectively manage its resources as well as provide tools that will significantly decrease production times and costs of developing learning resources while augmenting quality.

Meanwhile, David Campbell asked about the potential for a research campus in our region, “I’m always on the lookout for interesting economic development examples that may have relevance to us here in New Brunswick.” Several years ago I had completed a “diagnostic assessment” for the Miramichi region on the potential for “applied research, development and innovation options”, and recommended two economic development strategies – Community Wellness & Sustainable Living, with details on how the public and private sectors could work together. Each option included information, communication and learning technologies.

Here is some of the background material from that report on bridging research and commercialization.

In a series of three articles [not available online], Alan Cornford stated that increasing public R&D spending will not increase innovation capacity, as only 3% of public R&D spending results in measurable innovation. The only way to measure innovation is through the outputs of R&D – specifically local wealth generation. Cornford stated that there is plenty of venture capital money available, but not enough finance-worthy ventures. The key to driving innovation is having the right people.

Even more interesting is that Cornford showed that private sector investment has 15 times the return on investment as that of the public sector. His main recommendation was not to weaken public R&D spending, but to strengthen it through private partnerships, especially with small and medium sized businesses (SMB). Cornford favoured enhanced R&D tax credits and the channeling of government investment into “community innovation idea outreach” to communities and SMB’s.

Pertinent to any discussion on our region, Cornford believed that where local SMB R&D receptor capacity is limited (as in most of Canada), the universities, polytechnics and colleges can conduct applied R&D for local SMB’s and therefore benefit from these increased R&D investments, while community SMB innovative capacity grows. Closer to home, in 2002, Dr. Alan Cornford produced a report for ACOA – Innovation and Commercialization in Atlantic Canada [emphasis added]:

The four provinces of Canada’s Atlantic region face several challenges in achieving their competitive potential. Advancements in communications and information technologies can remove some of the region’s barriers associated with the small population base and geographic distance from major markets. Nevertheless, growth of a knowledge-based economy that either capitalizes on existing natural resources or supports new industry sectors will require significant changes in culture, attitudes and approaches to innovation and commercialization. With only a small foundation and infrastructure upon which to establish this new economy, Atlantic Canada must build partnerships and collaborate more than ever before.

Cornford went on to say:

Atlantic Canada requires an aggressive investment program, with funding increases focusing predominately on industry-driven applied R&D. An appropriate balance of relative capacity in each of the stages of the innovation process is also critical to accelerating competitiveness and creating a robust and innovative economy.

The table below is based on Cornford’s synthesis of innovation and commercialization development. It shows that both Innovation and Commercialization are supported by culture, awareness and understanding – key components of our educational systems. Cornford shows the stages of Innovation and Commercialization as separate but related.

I concluded that Stage 4, where Innovation and Commercialization meet, may be the “sweet spot” for any regional initiative on research development & innovation, helping to bridge university and college research (Innovation) with the needs of SMB’s (Commercialization). What is most interesting is that this is a core component of the SynergiC3 project – proofs of concept, prototypes and pilots.

Stage Innovation

Using know-how to develop a new product or process

 Commercialization

Applying the results of R&D in a commercial setting
1 Basic Research —
2 Dissemination —
3 Applied Research —
4 Proof of Concept Prototype, Pilot, Pre-seed Investment
5 — Pre-commercial Seed Investment
6 — 1st Venture Investment
7 — 2nd Venture Investment

I suggested that the community college, on whose behalf I was developing options, should focus on Stages 3 & 4. Areas of overlap occur in these stages and this is where a college can create the most value. In order to work at these stages, the college needs “upstream” and “downstream” partners. These include research universities and NRC upstream with industry and investors downstream. Staking out a niche that enhances the work of universities, NRC and NRC-IRAP would be easier than going into a perceived competitive role.

Innovation and Learning

by

In Innovating in the Great Disruption, Scott Anthony suggests three disciplines necessary to foster innovation in difficult economic times – placing a premium on progress; mastering paradox; and learning to love the low end. He also discusses the importance of learning;

Innovators will need to continue to find creative, cheap ways to bring their ideas forward. Fortunately, they can tap into a plethora of powerful tools to facilitate rapid learning.

Rapid learning is not PowerPoint slides turned into online courses but rather increasing the ways to connect ideas and people. This is the future of training and e-learning, or what I call ABC (anything but courses). Anthony’s third point, love the low end, also speaks to the use of inexpensive tools such as web services or open source software. If learning professionals can be seen as catalysts for innovation, then even in difficult times will their future look bright.

Spiders and Starfish

by

Reading The Starfish and the Spider only took one day [resting with a cold] and it’s an illuminating book. Spider organizations are those with centralized control and if you cut off the head, the rest will die. In starfish organizations, cutting off one leg will not kill it, because intelligence is distributed throughout the organism. The authors start by examining the two hundred year struggle between the Apache (starfish) and the Spanish Army (spiders), showing how a decentralized Apache nation was almost impossible to conquer because there was no head. A modern day equivalent is Al Quaeda.

What I found most interesting is that the degree of centralization for an optimal organization depends on many factors, so there is no magic recipe [like informal versus formal learning]. Finding what the authors call the “sweet spot” requires constant monitoring of the environment. Today’s sweet spot may be tomorrow’s lost cause.

spider-and-starfish.jpg

One of the five requirements for a successful starfish organization is to have a catalyst. In many ways, I think that is the role I’ve played, or tried to, in various organizations over the years, and it explains why I quickly lost interest in climbing the corporate ladder.

Catalysts are bound to rock the boat. They are much better at being agents of change than guardians of tradition. Catalysts do well in situations that call for radical change or creative thinking. They bring innovation, but they’re also likely to create a certain amount of chaos and ambiguity. Put them into a structured environment and they might suffocate. But let them dream and they’ll thrive. (p. 131)

I would recommend this book, especially the chapters on “The Hybrid Organization” and “In Search of the Sweet Spot”. The book should provide a new lens to look at your organization and its environment, whether it be for-profit, non-profit or a government agency.

If you think that decentralization is not an option for your organization, consider that your employees may strongly disagree, as reported by Ross Dawson:

In the first boom we [WPP Group] lost a lot of our staff to start-ups. When the companies failed, many came back to work for us. At the re-entry interviews, they didn’t say they were grateful to have a job. They said to a man and woman that if they could go back to work in a more unstructured and flexible work environment they’d go in a heartbeat.