Mayday: we have a draft vision
Today we had the pleasure of being hosted by Dave Wallace (of LifeKludger fame) on his Extraordinary Everyday Lives show.
Dave was kind enough to allow us to chat about our vision for the Process Of Innovation.
Various themes emerged, including:
-
‘Process’ being seen as a negative term
Thinking about what part of the lifecycle you are in - and dialling process up or down appropriately
Building a community around innovation
Every team develops its own methodology - you can help or hinder this development with “process”
Creating space for teams
Process rigour versus trowelling out innovation rhetoric - it’s important to keep to business realities of time and cost
We are firm believers that good things arise from having a shared vision, so here is our draft vision for POI:
A community valued for guiding people towards innovation
-=OR=-
Valued for building a community around innovation
As always, we welcome your comments: please do.
Andy Delin & Mike Seyfang.
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:59 am
Thanks Andy - was a useful discussion on extraordinary.thepodcastnetwork.com - episode 23 which should go live in a day or three. Hoping we get some external input, otherwise we should do round 2 via tellingbone.
Fang
May 9th, 2007 at 12:34 am
I’ve been lucky enough to complete one Innovation Proof of Concept (POC) lifecycle. A deliberate environment of trust was created, allowing the team the freedom to conceptualise a response to the loosely defined challenge really helped our process of innovation.
Your first vision statement strongly appeals to me much more than the second. The vision’s emphasis ‘guiding people towards innovation’ focuses on innovation as an outcome.
However what it does not say is people are inherently innovative - given the right environment.
Is there a way of saying people are naturally innovative leading to innovation?
Something along the lines of: “A community valued for unleashing people’s innovative spirit to innovate”
Just a thought…
May 12th, 2007 at 4:36 am
Tom - thanks for your thoughts. In our first post we asserted that “innovation comes naturally to groups of people when the barriers of controlling process have been removed to allow ideas to be explored and developed without prejudice”. Sounds like we’re on the same track as you.
I totally agree that people have an innate or natural ‘innovativity’ - and POI is about finding ways to reveal that brilliance by clearing away the burdens of uncreative process. If people got that creativity, why would we bind them fast with tape? It doesn’t make sense for business nor the human spirit.
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:14 am
[...] Tom Cotton posted some insightful thoughts about human beings’ innate ingenuity and creativeness. From our childhood we explore and then change our environment, create tools, solve problems and negotiate change. Being innovative is deeply human. Tom rightly reminded us that we needed to capture some element of this in our vision for POI. (Tom’s blog is worth a visit). [...]
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:31 am
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