Monday, September 12, 2011

There is No Recipe for Innovation

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Or so seems the conclusion of this fascinating blog post from Tim Leberecht of the the frog design and innovation firm, in which he reviews and connects several established and not-so-established kinds of innovation.

Jugaad seems the latest in a long list of innovation fads, "a colloquial Hindi word that describes a creative ad hoc solution to a vexing issue, making existing things work and/or creating new things with scarce resources." But that's just a launching pad for Leberecht, who gives his reader a stream-of-consciousness tour of different approaches to innovation floating around the business landscape. Design Thinking, Disruptive Innovation, Hybrid Thinking, Hacking, Shanzai--they're all given a quick but cogent treatment, the differences and distinctions between them blurring under Leberecht's scrutiny.

His larger point seems to be that there is no magic pill for innovation.

Most of these consultants are trying to sell innovation as a toolbox, but as former BusinessWeek writer Helen Walters aptly points out: Innovation cannot be reduced to a process. “A codified, repeatable, reusable practice contradicts the nature of innovation, which requires difficult, uncomfortable work to challenge the status quo of an industry or, at the very least, an organization,” she writes, and suggests that: “Executives are understandably looking for tidy ways to guarantee their innovation efforts – but they'd be better off coming to terms with the fact that there aren’t any.”

Which is an interesting backdrop for this week, because this is the week of WSAE's National Summit on Association Innovation, where association executives, professionals and industry partners will work together to create new capacities for innovation in the association community and to help individual association professionals develop practical innovation roadmaps for their own organizations. In the words of our summit facilitator, Jeffrey Cufaude:

By associating with each other in the collaborative learning environment of the National Summit on Innovation for Associations, we have the chance to not only gain fresh insights and develop tactical plans for our own organizations, but identify shared paths for moving together as a community.

I'm up for it. I'll be there and tweeting throughout the conference (following along and join in at #innovationhub).

It'll be another major step on the innovation journey I embarked upon when I joined the WSAE Board of Directors and became the chair of its Innovation Task Force. I went into that role with the impression that there was a way of "doing" innovation in the association world. Based on the innovation principles and processes I had been exposed to in the for-profit world, there surely was an adaptation to those models that could made for associations. It would be difficult to find, I believed, and it would take association professionals willing to experiment with different strategies in their real world, but it was there, and we could find it if we worked hard enough.

Now, almost two years later, I'm more confident than ever that associations can be innovative and can find ways to make innovation work for them. I've seen it in my own association and in many other associations in my network.

But I have increasing skepticism for the idea that there is a single innovation model that will work for everyone in the association community. Today, Helen Waters' words ring really true for me. We want innovation to be an established, predictable process, because established, predictable processes are easy for us to manage and master. But your innovation solution is going to be messy, and different from mine. There is a common body of innovation knowledge we can all draw from--things that have been shown to help and things that have been shown to hurt--but it is up to each one of us to study that body of knowledge and figure out how to apply it in our own situations.

I'm going to rededicate myself to that this week in Madison. When will you?

7 comments:

Jeffrey Cufaude said...

The whole question of process is an interesting one Eric as IDEO and other design firms are on record as saying they have a common process for doing their work. I disagree with Waters that a process isn't in play for innovation, but concur that you can't guarantee results from it. Maybe that's the distinction here: it's not an assembly-line manufacturing process resulting in zero defects, but a messy collaborative journey that involves detours and distractions. There are common questions and processes that are required to produce innovations, but they can't always be used the same way, in the same combination, or to the same degree.

Eric Lanke said...

You make a good point, Jeffrey, and I think there is obviously a distinction to be made between a bulletproof process that guarantees results and a flexible process that outlines some milestones that should be achieved but which requires individual adaptability to get from one to the other.

WSAE itself is experimenting with just such a flexible process. In broad brushstrokes we see

1. Know your community
2. Identify your challenge
3. Solicit ideas
4. Select ideas
5. Develop programs
6. Evaluate programs
7. Repeat

as the major spokes on a cycle of innovation we're beginning to experiment with. None of us are clear how we're going to get from one spoke to the next, but we're using knowledge we've gleaned from our community to inform our decisions.

Trevor McAlpine said...

Wonderful post, but I must disagree with the main thesis: that there is no process for innovation. But first I will make a distinction.

I agree that there is no one way to ideate, i.e. come up with an new idea. But innovation is MORE THAN IDEATION! In fact, ideation is at best a third of the entire innovative process. And it is this entire process that can be systematized. Take a look at this page on the <a href="http://www.synergeticmanagement.com/creative-process/> creative process</a> for more information.

Trevor McAlpine said...

(Oops: previous post had a broken link ... reposting for your convenience)

Wonderful post, but I must disagree with the main thesis: that there is no process for innovation. But first I will make a distinction.

I agree that there is no one way to ideate, i.e. come up with an new idea. But innovation is MORE THAN IDEATION! In fact, ideation is at best a third of the entire innovative process. And it is this entire process that can be systematized. Take a look at this page on the creative process for more information.

Eric Lanke said...

Trevor, if you disagree with the main thesis, in what regard is it a "wonderful post"?

Innovation is more than just ideation. As I've blogged before (http://thehourglassblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/innovation-creativity-x-execution.html) innovation requires both ideation and execution to be successful.

There are processes that can be followed that can help an organization ideate and execute, but the main thesis of this blog post is to state that there is not one single "recipe" for innovation that will work for all organizations at all times.

Trevor McAlpine said...

Eric,

it was a wonderful post for a number of reasons - for example, you did a great job dispelling any notions of ideation "recipes". (Note: I just found your site and did not search your past posts.) But I can disagree with something fundamental you said because it really depends on where you want to draw boundaries on "repeatable, definable process."

You are correct when you say that innovation requires ideation and execution. In fact, I would add in a third step before those two called clarification - determining the key question to be answered and gaps that need to be addressed by the solution. (See this page describes the 3 stages in the creative process )

The three steps (or stages) are not always easy to do - in fact, when they are hard to do, they may signal the presence of a breakthrough. Yet these three stages define an easily codefiable process - the execution of which defies codification. THIS simple fact dispels the quote you quoted. “A codified, repeatable, reusable practice contradicts the nature of innovation, which requires difficult, uncomfortable work to challenge the status quo of an industry or, at the very least, an organization...” and essentially invalidates the interpretation of your thesis I mentioned above.

It does not mean that innovation is simple or reducable to a toolbox approach....

Eric Lanke said...

Thanks for clarifying, Trevor. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that there IS a process for innovation, a process that is composed of three key steps (clarification, ideation and execution), but that the fact that there is a process does not mean it is easily repeatable, or even a guarantee for success if followed.

This strikes me a similar to saying that every great English novel is written with the same 26 letters, or that every great symphony is written with the same eight notes. There's a "process" behind each, but it's not easily repeatable or any guarantee for success.

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