Innovation creates value for communities by generating and executing new ideas quickly and effectively. I think that novelty should be an outcome of innovation – what’s produced and the process for getting there – and what is created should break with conventional practices. Even if everything we use to innovatively solve a problem is not new, perhaps the way we use the tools is unique.
“Innovation” is also one of the most overused, misunderstood, and meaningless words that we apply in our work life. From making the concept a core value to empowering moonshot divisions like Google [x] to build the next awesome product, every industry and across all geographies have a relationship with it. Not everyone is great at innovating, even if the track record of human beings tells us that our species is exceptional at innovation. Organizations usually underestimate what it takes to make their innovation efforts successful.
If everyone is innovating at pace everywhere and all the time, how effective is innovation? How much value is being created for people and communities? How much knowledge, technical precision, and creative potential is being channelled to address what really matters for folks? What ingredients make it truly awesome?
Innovation happens when knowledge, networks, novelty, and value creation are brought together to solve big, stinking problems. For example, creating a digital application that spreads out the wages of precariously employed clients so they don’t miss rent payments and have enough for grocery bills is a fine solution, but represents more tinkering than actual value creation. Bringing together the people, technology, and economics to innovatively solve the complex problem of precarious employment and persistent wage gaps for folks juggling multiple low-paying jobs, though, is innovation at its best.
Collaboration drives innovation. A few years ago, I led a team that created the list of foundational skills required for our organization to build an adaptation advantage. “Innovation” was one of our five categories. When I asked the team in which category the skill “collaboration” should land, Samantha asked great questions: “how do we want people to collaborate and what purpose should collaboration serve?” Innovating as a community leverages diversity of knowledge, skills, and culture to solve big problems.
How might we innovate cooperatively, collaboratively, and as a community for our communities?