Innovation

Innovation is a process that substantially changes the way a system works. Innovative changes follow a trajectory, which is influenced by the process a team uses. Changes that arise from a typical team’s default innovation process follow a trajectory with slow, uneven progress. Can we do better?

We can start to answer this question by asking to two more basic questions:

  • What actually changes during an innovation process, and what trajectories do they follow?
  1. What should we consider when we design a process that results in better trajectories compared to the default ‘just do it and hope magic happens’? 

If you would like to learn about how Teamovate answers these questions, read on and reach out to info@teamovate.biz 

Innovation Trajectories

Innovation typically starts with a theme, which is a reason for a team to assemble and provides a general area for the team to address. Such a theme is ambiguous and points in a general direction, such as, ‘there has to be a better way to accomplish what we are doing now’.  As the team explores the theme, a big picture emerges that pins down what a ‘better way’ could look like in practice, along with options to achieve the ‘better way’. If the team is successful, the team is able to package the ‘better way’ for others to adopt, and the innovation takes hold.

There are three principal things that change during an innovation effort, each of which follows its own trajectory: 

  • The team that assembles around a theme follows a trajectory where the members gel while developing an understanding of the problem, along with a range of options that may address the problem. 
  • The concepts that the team generates follow a trajectory from their introduction into a packaged solution.   
  • The capabilities that the team builds follow a trajectory from prototypes to a production system.

A trajectory is a path followed by an object moving under the action of given forces.  Some of the forces are internal, which can be channeled and controlled; other forces are external, such as disturbances, and must be absorbed. It is possible to look back along the path a trajectory has followed, but it is a challenge to discern the upcoming path that the trajectory may follow in the future, because control choices and unforeseen disturbances may alter the trajectory at any time.

What trajectory could a team, concept, or capability follow?

A team’s trajectory might begin with individual participants, working independently.  Over time, the team might gel into a cohesive group. Alternatively, the team might stall or even dissolve. How the team identifies and addresses divergent viewpoints plays a role not only in the team cohesiveness, but also in the quality of the concepts the team generates. 

A concept’s trajectory might start as something imported wholesale. It might also start as a wisp of an idea that could disappear if the team looks the other way. It might emerge from some combination of concepts that the team is considering. How the team considers concepts becomes critical to whether concepts evolve into something that successfully addresses the theme, marks time, or even regresses. 

A capability’s trajectory might start from an existing capability, or start from scratch with a set of desired capabilities. A capability trajectory might end up improving, having no effect on, or even regressing some performance characteristics. How teams go about expanding capabilities influences the rate at which those capabilities become effective. 

Innovation process design

There are many ways to choose how to address these questions of team, concept and capability changes.  A process defines how the forces acting on a team, concept or capability get channeled and guided in the presence of disturbances, which in turn influences the resulting trajectory. 

If we were to design a process for innovation, what would that look like?

For a typical team, the default approach leaves the team to work out the innovation process on its own. The team’s innovation success is dependent on the members’ backgrounds, organizational structure and group dynamics, and initial instructions. In some cases, if an innovation happens, it is almost an accidental outcome. Other times, innovation happens when an individual or small group works in the background and creates something new outside of the usual channels, bucking the prevailing sentiment with a great struggle. Sometimes the team dissolves and fades back into the existing organization without achieving the hoped-for innovation. 

A process designed for innovation accepts a wide range of information in a ‘come as you are manner’, clarifies that information for mutual understanding within the team, defines desired outcomes relative to the theme, assembles a range of options that make the outcomes real, and packages some combination of options to achieve expanded capabilities.  The process builds on itself by allowing concepts to mingle, creating even more concepts that are fed back into the process. The process also defines candidates for inventions, such that if those inventions were to materialize, the outcomes become readily attainable. The process is able to respond to changing circumstances, be they insights or disturbances.

The designed process operates on multiple time scales and across multiple teams. A team can quickly adapt to pressing issues on short time scales and also choreograph activities on medium and longer time scales. The process is able to create ‘batons’ that can be passed to other teams, where those other teams can run with the baton, much like in a relay race, and develop mutually compatible innovations.

The Teamovate approach is a designed process that addresses these characteristics, establishing conditions conducive for innovation. Teamovate incorporates a set of catalytic practices that foster innovation. A catalytic practice is a team activity that has a small effort with a big effect, accomplishing the big effect by honing in on some essential aspect of a question facing the team.

With such an approach and associated catalytic practices, the resulting outcomes make team members’ lives easier, which increases enthusiasm for participation. This enthusiasm in turn makes the innovation effort fun, prompting team members to willingly go the extra mile, setting up a virtuous cycle that enhances value for the customer.

Here is a sample of some catalytic practices that Teamovate uses:

  • The team eliminates ambiguity by learning how to calibrate statements, honing in on essential shared facts. 
  • The team maintains tension in opposing viewpoints by collecting brush strokes into a big picture, and options in an assembly area, allowing those opposing viewpoints to mingle into flashes of inspiration.
  • The team propagates concepts by establishing consistent usage-centered terminology. 
  • The team legitimizes divergent viewpoints by seeking ‘good faith’ reasons for holding an opposing viewpoint.
  • The team heads off disruptive recovery efforts by paying attention to, isolating, and then eliminating latent errors, perhaps even in upstream systems. 
  • The team frees up hours by creating tools that remove repetitive work. 
  • The team identifies specific enhancements by looking at where users spend time and then fine tuning the user experience, increasing usage and reducing support costs.
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