I was at an event this week and where there was lots of talk about needing to be innovative. This phrase sometimes confuses and other times irritates me. People seem to use it as a nirvana for doing things better. It is as though what they have been doing previously was not doing things better or innovative.
To try and understand what others thought of innovation I did a couple of tweets on Twitter on this very subject. What came back was to me a very good definition of innovation
“Not business as usual that adds value”
Now call be old fashioned but isn't that what the human race has been doing since the dawn of time? It is what makes us what we are. The invention of the wheel was innovative, Newton's laws were innovative, the PC was innovative. In fact finding a better way to get to work maybe faster, more economical, less stressful is innovative.
To me innovation is what we all do everyday. Doing things better, smarter or in a more interesting way.
So when organizations say the need to be innovative or embrace innovation it really confuses me. Surely you must have been innovative to get to where you are today? Even if that was copying someone else's idea. That is also innovative.
From a technology perspective you see many organizations that have a function that covers strategy, architecture and innovation. My view is that the art of doing strategy and architecture is innovative so why do you actually need a function dedicated to it?
As I said innovation is part of being human. It is part of life. We are all innovative so why do we need to try and seek it?
Thought provoking post. My thoughts are as follows:
ReplyDelete1) You are absolutely right that innovation is something we all do to varying levels of success as a species.
2) People have differing abilities and strengths.
3) Organisations need to subdivide labour in order to function efficiently.
4) Recognition of innovation as a function within the business makes sense, in the same way as recognition of accounting, architecture, design, management, etc. make sense.
So, a more specific question might be: To perform a useful and contributory role within an organisation what part should an innovation function perform? I thing the following:
1) Harvesting the great ideas that people are coming up with every day across the organisation.
2) Applying a credibility filter to these ideas based on the potential value that they could provide.
3) Helping to champion these ideas and get them into the next step in the delivery change (through strategy and architecture).
4) Being given the remit and the luxury of time to conduct research and investigation activities into emerging ideas/approaches/solutions that might further fuel the generation of new ideas.
Should this function be separate? Certainly not - it needs to be tightly linked with strategy and architecture as part of an essential triad.
Regards
The Enterprising Architect
A more widespread definition of innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas..
ReplyDeleteSome people are ideas people, Belbin describes them as "plants", but not everyone is a plant. However, to be successfully exploited these ideas need to be implemented and this requires different sets of skills. In Belbin speak you need Shapers, Completer-finishers etc etc.
In general, people are resistant to change and prefer the status quo. Innovation must therefore overcome many barriers such as organisational inertia, culture and politics. In addition, people tend to have their noses to the grindstone, dealing with day to day operational issues and "don't have time to think" let alone expend the energy required to break down these barriers to implement new ideas.
It is therefore important that the innovation process is managed within an organisation alongside the more "normal" activities of operations management and operations improvement.
This could be via an "innovation funnel" where an organisation's projects and programmes all contribute to the innovation portfolio. The funnel includes projects in their early stages and those reaching completion. The early stage projects are at the wide end of the funnel, which narrows towards the mature project stages.
The progress of projects through the funnel is monitored and objective decisions on whether to proceed with projects are taken regularly. Ideally, effective projects will be supported and bad projects wound up to allow resources to be channelled to the implementation of the best ideas.
In short, I agree that some people are "innovative" in that they can generate ideas however for innovation to happen you need people who are capable of implementing them. It is therefore important that an innovation process is in place, this may be managed by a seperate function or may be embedded in all areas of the business.
Without it, there will be no innovation. Ideas don't implement themselves.