The Innovation Mosaic: Building Bridges Between the Many Perspectives on Innovation
A Network of Bridges
We've been students of innovation for more years now than we care to count. One of the things that has always made innovation so enjoyable to us is the fact that every business discipline seems to believe that they ‘own’ and/or ‘invented’ innovation — a premise from which they have devised their own particular flavor of innovation — one that in each case mirrors their unique perspective on business.
And so we would like to take you on a tour of these different perspectives to see if perhaps we can build a bridge — or really… a network of bridges — between them all so that ultimately we can have a more comprehensive mosaic of innovation practice that helps us to maximize our appreciation of the space.
So here we go… buckle up!
Business Management
We begin with Business Management. The lens through which this profession – the MBA crowd if you will – sees the world is generally one of how to build a sustainable competitive advantage — something that ideally should come from every corner of the organization.
This view is often focused on achieving excellence in operational execution — finding the particular business model that works and then milking for it for everything it's worth. As such, the mantra is typically along the lines of… understand your strengths and your weaknesses (your internal realities), understand your opportunities and your threats (your external realities); understand the balance of five forces impacting your industry at a given time; and then from these, stake your competitive strategy and go after your part of the pie.
There are pros and cons that arise from this perspective. The cons largely stem from holding onto an old–school version of this perspective, which is firmly entrenched in the “how we've always done things” camp. This view sees the external world as something out of our control and thus seeks stasis. That model no longer works, because our world is changing so fast. The pros thus stem from adopting a new–school version of this perspective, which understands the need to constantly renew and reinvent our organization into something different from what it is today and from what it has been in the past. This new–school view accepts the idea that we can be a part of creating the future, and so endeavors to do so through various forms of market leadership.
This new–school world of Business Management has made great contributions to the innovation thought pool — including such powerful frameworks as strategic innovation (innovation–driven growth), business model innovation, the business model canvas, creative go–to–market strategies, and more. It has also given birth to outstanding innovation methods like Outcome–Driven Innovation (jobs–to–be–done) and Discovery–Driven Innovation. Certainly, innovation practice would not be where it is today without these new–school contributions.
Thank you Business Management!
Entrepreneurship
The lens through which the entrepreneurial mind sees the world is generally one of how to create something totally new and cool — sometimes something that will ‘unbundle’, or disrupt, an existing industry — something that will allow them to make history and potentially change the world.
This is an ambitious and very often audacious world view. Arising from this lens, the mantra is often one of trying to figure out a ‘problem worth solving’ (one with the potential for lots of traction and scale); making a product that ‘people want to buy’; building / selling / learning very quickly; and scaling up the business to be as large as possible as fast as possible (during which time it may or may not be profitable).
This world, too, has made its contributions to the innovation community — including the startup enterprise, the Lean Startup model, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and – very importantly – a massive ecosystem of startup communities around the world, all supporting and rooting for each other. This has reached such a fever pitch in some places that having status as a ‘Startup Founder’ is on par with other forms of celebrity status, or as we like to say… “Today's Startup Founder is yesterday's Rock Star.”
Certainly there's no doubt that much of our understanding — both in startups and in large organizations — has been, and continues to be, greatly influenced and colored by these contributions from the entrepreneurial world. Since most of these have arisen over the past 25 years, we eagerly look forward to seeing what contributions come from this part of the innovation universe over the next 25 years.
Thank you, Entrepreneurship.
Finance & Accounting
The lens through which Finance sees the world is generally one of how to invest capital in the most efficient manner possible, so as to generate maximum business growth, and thereby maximize one's return on that capital.
As a newer school of thought has taken hold here too, particularly through the influence of Silicon Valley and the Tech Sector, a model has emerged that recognizes the need to invest organically for today, and to potentially invest inorganically to capture the next wave of growth for tomorrow. This is particularly true when there is acceptance of the fact that tomorrow's value propositions may very well not come from within the four walls of our own enterprise, mired as it may be in current ways of doing things.
We owe much of this awakening to the late Professor Clayton Christensen — who opened the eyes of the business world to the growing threat of disruption — even if the means by which disruption is happening today does not always follow the particular route that Christensen originally set forth.
Thus, this new school of Finance has made key contributions to the innovation world too — including such vehicles as Venture Capital (without which the entrepreneurial world would not be where it is today), Corporate Venturing (the outreach of large organizations to invest in bold new business models from the outside as a way of remaining relevant to a future that is yet to unfold), Business Incubators, and Startup Accelerator Programs.
Thank you, Finance.
Similarly, the world of Accounting — usually a rearward–looking profession, and a sibling of the Finance profession — has given us the practice of Management Accounting — the forward–looking forecasting of revenues, costs, and profits associated with new business ventures and their unique value propositions and go–to–market strategies. Indeed, new business ventures would be unable to have a reliable starting point — nor large organizations a means for comparing competing opportunities — were it not for this practice of Management Accounting.
So a big “thank you” also to the profession of Accounting.
Design
The lens through which the Design profession sees the world is generally one of how to deconstruct challenges and opportunities into deeper levels of human need and then attack those at that level in order to deliver substantially better value and experiences — an approach that largely evolved from the groundbreaking work of early pioneers in the field of Creative Problem Solving.
Thus the mantra here – more so than anywhere else – is “know thy customer!” As such, Design is the one discipline that really knows how to effectively drill down and get to customers' real outcome needs and, even more importantly, their true motivations — so that business challenges can be reframed into new opportunities that stem from a far more deeply–understood conceptualization of the problem — one that sets us up to deliver new value at a much deeper level of human need.
The discipline's contributions are very well known… Human Centered Design and Design Thinking, together with many powerful Design Methods like Personas, Empathy Maps, Customer Experience Journey Maps, and hundreds of other research & creativity hacks — all used to study and better understand needs and solutions. Furthermore, Human Centered Design has shed a strong light on the anthropological aspects of innovation, with User Research methods like Ethnography and Contextual Inquiry — all of which hang on one central theme, namely that of empathy for the customer and their needs. Without these contributions, innovation would never have achieved some of the world's most important products and services that we have today. Certainly, the contribution of Design has made a world of difference in the caliber of the innovations we have today.
Thank you, Design!
Marketing
The lens through which Marketing sees the world is generally one of how best to understand our customers and markets, with their current and evolving needs, and the deficiencies of current offerings toward resolving those needs — a practice generally known as Strategic Marketing.
The mantra here tends to be one of: “Let's go figure out (at times in great detail) what's going on in certain markets and what those markets' strongest unmet wants and needs are.” There is also a clear focus on testing out new Value Propositions with would–be customers (test subjects) to see if the data suggests there might be adequate demand for those new Value Propositions. And, of course, there is the practice of testing out new branding concepts in the search for those that will work best for a particular goal.
Furthermore, in the never–ending pursuit of mastering its game, Strategic Marketing continues to explore new ways of trying to debunk customers, as customers fundamentally lie to us whenever we ask them to tell us about their behaviors — their claimed behaviors rarely, if ever, matching their actual, real behaviors. Thus new forms of market research are constantly being trialed — including many new forms of technology–enabled research like virtual focus groups and so on.
Marketing's contributions to the practice of innovation thus include such gifts as Insights Development (a generic, broad–reaching concept that encompasses such things as voice–of–the–customer), qualitative market research, quantitative market research, brand research, branding, brand innovation (leveraging existing brands for new offerings in new–to–business markets), and more. Quite often these represent an important part of validating new innovation concepts and of de–risking our innovation efforts — at least in those situations where reliable insights can be generated, with is often enough to matter. And it's often enough to make for a $40B+ global research industry.
So, a very warm “thank you” to Marketing.
Engineering / Science / Technology
The lens through which the Engineering, Science, and Technology professions see the world is generally one of how to bring new value to markets through new technological capabilities — whether that results from inventing new technologies or inventing new ways of combining existing technologies — both powerful sources of innovation and competitive advantage.
The mantra here is generally one of chasing the next level of bleeding–edge new technology, and to invent cool new things with that technology. And along the way, to amass as many patents as possible, so as to protect oneself from being copied.
Admittedly, technology — real, serious, game–changing technology — is foundationally what has fueled all transformational innovations throughout the history of mankind (those that have changed how society operates), while more applied technological developments have been at the root of many breakthrough and disruptive innovations.
At the same time, it is equally true that there have been many, many inventions created throughout history which have had no practical usefulness — then or now. Or, as we like to say, engineers sometimes like to “solve problems that don't exist” (something we can say being engineers ourselves). This is why Engineering, Science, and Technology are incredibly powerful disciplines when properly guided by market needs — both existing and emerging.
So the contributions here include technology itself (the core of many new foundations of value), the practice of invention (creating useful things from technology), product development (the practical development of new products and services for consumption), and the world of intellectual property, an activity that some try to use alone as a measure of ‘innovativeness’ (some of the world's greatest innovators – organizations like IBM and Samsung for example – rack up 5 – 8 thousand new utility patents each year). Certainly innovation would not be innovation were it not for the role that Engineering, Science, and Technology play in it.
For this, we say, “thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Human Resources
The lens through which Human Resources sees the world is generally one of how do we create the right organizational environments to promote and nurture innovation, and how do we effectively engage our people to actually produce new innovation. This is very important in any organization who hopes to have a productive innovation agenda. The right environments send the message that innovation is important, while the right reinforcements keep people engaged toward our corporate innovation goals.
The contributions of this profession include the practices of Management Innovation (how we organize and lead to maximize innovativeness), Workplace Innovation (how we engage and treat our people to maximize their productivity and their propensity for innovation), a Culture of Innovation (creating the right cultures and environments to nurture and support innovation), and the so–called Human Workplace (an attempt to humanize the language and practices of business so that they respect and celebrate human dignity — something increasingly important to Millennials and Gen Zers). All of these contributions have played a significant role in initiating and sustaining organized innovation inside business organizations.
For these contributions, we say, “thank you HR!”
Strategic Foresight
The lens through which Strategic Foresight sees the world is generally one of defining the range of possible and plausible future scenarios that could potentially play out — thus defining the overall scope of what the future could and might become.
The mantra here tends to be one of: “Let's understand the possible and plausible future scenarios that could play out (on account of the interactions occurring between the various different trends and events happening in the world), and then let's devise proactive strategies and plans by which our organization can intentionally shape and own the future — so that the future becomes, to the extent possible, what we want it to be, and not some alternative future This includes trying to shape and influence both emerging market needs and emerging technologies & solutions for those needs.
This profession's contributions to the practice of innovation have included such powerful gifts as Foresights Development (a generic, broad–reaching concept that encompasses activities like Trend Scouting, Trend Watching, and basic Trends Analysis), Trend Impact Analysis, Quantitative Simulation, Scenario Planning, Stress Testing, Backcasting, and many more. These are all extremely crucial practices for being able to define proactive strategies for tomorrow's innovations.
And so we say an especially deep “thank you” to Strategic Foresight.
Corporate Innovation
Finally, there is the formal profession of Corporate Innovation itself inside business organizations. The lens through which this profession sees the world is one of how we might drive both a top–down and bottom–up agenda of short–, medium–, and long–term innovation efforts in a sustained fashion across the business. As such, it requires formal structures, roles, processes, funding, enablers, reinforcements, and other elements to be able to achieve its aim over the long run.
Some of the key contributions of this profession include: the Innovation Lab (focused places & environments where teams can pursue experimentation together to define & develop new innovations — to the world of business innovation what the R&D Lab is to the world of technology), X-Works Teams (special teams tasked with developing breakthrough & disruptive innovation), the Innovation Pipeline (an ongoing pipeline of new innovation projects & initiatives), Innovation Management (the practice of managing this pipeline and its outputs), and Innovation Engagement (the set of practices used to engage the organization in the pursuit of new ideas and turn people into Intrapreneurs). Were it not for these key contributions, organized innovation inside business organizations simply would not exist, and many of the world's most innovative organizations would not be where they are today, as it is these formal Innovation Programs that have empowered them to achieve what they have in the short period of time they have (think of organizations like Nike, Cisco, and P&G for example).
Thus we offer a final “thank you” to the formal profession of Corporate Innovation and its associated Corporate Innovation Programs.
Walking The Bridges Together
And so now that we have taken this tour together, one can easily see how that every single one of these disciplines have contributed to the world of innovation and its practices in its own unique way.
Moreover, we can see how important it is to understand the bridges that must exist between each set of disciplines — so that we ourselves can begin to bridge them together in our own minds and understand how that successful innovation at the organizational level requires every single one of these to be working together in harmony with all the others. We simply cannot do it successfully with only one or two – or even three – of them. We need all of them if we are to succeed.
And so, we invite you… walk these bridges with us, and succeed at innovation!
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