![]() Great ideas, and real change, almost always occur at intersections, at juxtapositions that are often serendipitous but can be tweaked to advantage if you know where to find them. Innovation usually happens at the intersection of three spaces: What’s happening, What’s possible, and What’s needed.
I’ve written before about this discovery process — a process suited both to solving critical problems in complicated situations and enabling a collective understanding to emerge in complex situations. There’s no rocket science to this: You can see children use essentially this process to solve problems, alternating between individual thinking and asking questions and the collaborative and discovery steps. I’ve seen every step followed, in almost precisely this order, by squirrels working together to defeat my successively more sophisticated squirrel baffles on our bird feeders. It works. The steps in the discovery process Learn, Listen, Explore, Understand are designed to surface What’s happening and What’s needed knowledge. The steps in the discovery process Imagine, Reach Out, Brainstorm are designed to surface What’s possible knowledge. It is the Imagine step that is usually most difficult, at least for us adult humans. For that reason most organizational innovation programs include some kind of Future State Visioning process — a powerful application of story-telling technique. But many of the Future State Visions I’ve seen are pretty timid, and reflect the myopia of the preparer’s perspective: Whether they work in the manufacturing division or the service area or the R&D department, their creative vision is pretty clear (but often not terribly bold) for the area of the organization they know well, and pretty fuzzy and naive as that vision gets further and further away from their area of expertise. This is why it is so important to start off with the Learn step, and to have a preliminary session that allows the innovation team to
Once you’ve done that (and only once you’ve done that) you are ready to effectively explore What’s Possible. At this point you can jump-start the Imagine step by giving the team examples of stories of Future State Visions that differ dramatically from the Current State in different ways. Here are some possible ways to do this (my examples are just illustrations, your Future State stories should be grounded in knowledge of What’s happening and What’s needed):
These stories are not intended to be ‘answers’ on how to innovate your business. They are simply provokers, to get your innovation team to think outside the box, to stretch their ideas of what the company does, and could do, what the market is, who the customer is, and What’s possible. If you’ve got the three ingredients right, you should start to sense an inevitable, and healthy, creative tension in the group that results from a growing awareness of:
It is in the discovery of what is, and what is not, at the intersection of What’s needed, What’s happening, and What’s possible that true innovation occurs. If you look at the great innovations of the past century, you’ll find they hit this sweet spot — often by luck, sometimes with brilliant foresight, always with great knowledge and greater imagination. |
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it is intriguing and refreshing to read about the positive, proactive thinking and suggestions you have in your blog. Imagination, and actively participating in the movement and vision of one’s organization and thus culture,is effective, adn static thinking will only lead to alienation, or at least, inneffection. Media communication technology has made it easier for everyone, no matter where their interests lay to have a voice in a changing social environment. Film, television, internet has empowered the individual and group to take a hand in what is being projected, and it is exciting to see what is happening in our world today with this power. I appreciate your insightful writing, and proactive tips, and look forward to checking out your blog again. I would also really appreciate it if you check out CitizenSHIFT http://citizen.nfb.ca there is a Forum for comments, and an RSS/XML feed for independent access.thanks.A.Chin-Yee@nfb.caAisling
Aisling: Great site! Thanks for pointing it out. (I’ve always been a fan of NFB)
Very impressive – waow! Congratulations for this deep contribution.
Dave,A brilliant aggregate of content but especially the flow chart. I hope youre ok if I share that with the Linked In Lot, accredited of course.Tia
Dave, it’s great to learn of your work from Kerry Santo http://www.modofaccentral.com For future reference, I’ve posted your letter to her at our wiki, please delete if it’s not in the Public Domain. http://www.openleader.com/index.php/Profiles/DavePollard I look forward to discovering ways to work together. Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas laboratory