Innovative thinking manifests itself in the form of new and better products, services and processes, with increased value to various stakeholders. This is probably the reason why most of an organization’s innovation efforts are focused on the goals and end objectives of innovation. Every achieved goal brings another new goal, a new objective.
For innovative thinking to sustain itself, it has to embed itself in the journeys of innovation. Innovative journeys automatically lead to innovative end results.
What are these journeys and where do they take place?
- The most important journeys take place in individual minds in pursuit of positive change and excellence. When every individual mind is primed to embark relentlessly on innovative journeys, a very strong basis for organizational innovation is set.
- Individual journeys aggregate and are pursued by teams of people. The way a mind works alone is very different from the way multiple minds work together. Conflicts are common and they slow the innovation journeys down. Strengthening and speedening innovative thought processes in team contexts is the next key step towards creating sustainable innovation.
- The organizational innovation journey is a network of individual and team journeys directed by strategic vision and leadership. Orchestrating this macro journey is a complex process. The structure or form of an organization plays a key role in determining the paths that an organization will be capable of pursuing and the way in which this pursuit will happen.
Sustainable organization-wide innovation happens when all the above cogs rotate in unison. We call this The Innovation DNA of an organization.
What are the fundamental elements of innovation DNA? These are the innate ability to learn, revel in change, question status quo, experiment, reach out to the unknown rather than react out of fear, draw on creative abilities to solve problems in new ways, think of multiple new alternatives, remain motivated, understand the larger picture and relentlessly pursue value creation.
We believe that every organization can find its own unique innovation model or methodology – in other words, learn to build its own innovation DNA!
Unfortunately, there are no cookie cutter solutions. Each organization has its own history, culture and rhythms of growth and consolidation. It is important therefore, to figure the innovation ethos that the organization is most resonant with. For instance, an organization looking to model itself on Toyota’s learning organization model could look at the following approach:
Similarly, an organization may find resonance with a collaborative approach and model itself on an open innovation paradigm for embedding innovation DNA.
Our co-crafting approach to embedding innovation DNA consists of three key phases:
- Engagement and exploration (work with the teams for deeper understanding of needs, context, dependencies, perceptions and constraints and develop a customized approach to embed innovation DNA across multiple organizational levels)
- Emergence (introduce innovation frameworks for different contexts through talks, workshops and conferences; work with the teams to start first-level experiments, measure the movement and tweak the approach accordingly)
- Empowerment (hand-hold and facilitate early successes; equip the teams with capabilities to continue the learning and innovation process)
