The Practice of Innovation

For most of human history the pace of change could be measured in millennia.  The velocity at which people and goods moved was much the same in the time of Julius Caesar as it was in Napoleon’s.  In terms of ways of working, mastery came from organizing and managing what existed more than imagining what could be.  Change in how humans communicate, build homes, produce food, and fight wars was incremental for thousands of years – until suddenly things changed overnight.  Today, the pace of innovation has accelerated to the point where not only can we observe it within the span of a lifetime – we experience something new nearly every day.  New capabilities, products, services, and business models – provide us with opportunities we could not have imagined a generation ago.  But the flipside is that yesterday’s products are no longer on the shelves.  The shelves are gone along with the stores – and along with the stores, jobs are going away.  True, new ones are being created – but those are different ones with new skills required.  All of this adds up to danger, as well as opportunity for our species.  In the 21^stcentury innovation is not an option; it is survival skill.

Organizations understand this and are taking steps to make innovation a key part of their strategy.  But strategy is something we do over months and years; innovation must be something we do every day.  If almost everyone, at all levels and across all roles in an organization, engages in the practice of innovation on a regular basis, it can be said that innovation is part of its culture.

In our work with organizations looking to build a culture of innovation we focus on four key levers:

1. Declaring that innovation is key to mission success
2. Being clear that it is part of everyone’s job
3. Making it fast and easy to try new things
4. Recognizing learning as value created

Our experience working with private sector companies, especially those with a digital product orientation, is that they understand this and are looking for ways to get much better at how and how fast they innovate.  In contrast what we have seen in public sector organizations is a struggle to break through the bureaucracy and get to a place where trying new things is permitted and piloting them quickly is possible.  Some governmental agencies understand it and are making innovation a priority.   Working with one large multi-state transportation agency we helped them launch an Innovation Hub that acts as an internal venture capital firm, seeking out new technologies and funding rapid pilots.  Ideas for pilots are solicited from all employees and vendor partners are encouraged to participate, offering their field of operations as a space to demonstrate new value.

In the nonprofit world innovation is something organizations know they must do – facing a perfect storm of reduced funding from traditional sources, severe challenges in competing with the private sector for staff, and the increasing complexity of requirements from those they serve.  As they entered the lockdown phase of the pandemic it was something nonprofits demonstrated they can do as ways of working transformed literally overnight.

As part of our engagement with the Arc NY, part of The Arc – a nationwide nonprofit that advocates for and serves people with intellectual disabilities and autism – we supported a team exploring new ways of working and new services.  Over time they identified several outstanding opportunities to leverage new processes and technologies – in some cases based on approaches already at work in a chapter.  These new approaches would generate new revenues or reduce costs, while maintaining or improving the quality of life for those they serve.  Out of this work evolved a program that launched statewide this year championing innovation that can come from any chapter, or from outside the Arc, to be leveraged on behalf of all chapters.  They call this their Innovation Engine.  Its focus is to accelerate innovation through a process of encouraging ideas from all chapters, having them reviewed by a panel of volunteers representing chapters, board of governors and the state office, and providing selected ideas with the resources needed to rapidly pilot them.  Learnings from these pilots can be leveraged across the state – and where it makes sense new ways of working can be implemented at scale.  This approach will also provide a focus for collaboration with the state government to obtain waivers as needed to permit new approaches.  We are excited to see where this process will take them as the Innovation Engine revs up in the year ahead.

There is no one right way to innovate, no organizational design or set of roles that ensure it happens.  But there are principles you can follow that guide you towards what works for you, what will help make the practice of innovation take hold in your culture.

Want to learn more?  Contact us at info@globenorth.com.