An i for an I for an i for an I for an i for an I for an i for an I for an i for an I for an i for an I for an i for an I for an i for an I...

(final version published on 2-Apr-2024🔔)

Dear Reader,

Excited to be able to share a blog after a long time. I had some in draft state but never got to completing them and then I got involved in an effort at my workplace on the topic of Innovation which triggered my interest in writing a blog on the same topic.

Innovation: Definition & Wikipedia entry

lowercase i: small innovations

uppercase I: big innovations

Innovation is a deep subject and innovating is cool. I'm certainly no expert on it. There is no inherent rule book on innovation that says, 'If you follow these steps, you are guaranteed to innovate'. It does not work that way and there are numerous examples; from some of the greatest innovators in history to support this. But what we can do is put together some thoughts, some structure, some processes, some checkpoints to facilitate innovation.

So, here is my attempt at facilitating innovation.

I went back and reviewed all my MBA courses to see if I could find something but could not gather enough to put something together. The topic of innovation was spreadout across multiple courses and touched upon a different aspect of it each time. There was not one course on Innovation. Then I chanced upon the HBR book "HBR's 10 MUST READS: On Innovation" and used it as a basis for this blog.

I first read the book in Dec 2023 and my thoughts were all over the place. Where do I start? where do I end? what happens in between, who can innovate? and when is it a good time to innovate? at what scale does innovation happen?

So, I read the book again, made notes of all kinds and then came up with a first draft (pic of the first attempt below)

It still didn't feel like I had concrete answers. I kept asking myself, if I were to build a culture of innovation, provide a means for innovation to flourish and facilitate its growth - what are some the key things I would do? And not necessary that I need to innovate in a way that works for me but allow anyone to innovate in a way that works for them.

I tried a top-down approach, where in, I categorized the content into how relevant it is for a sr. leader, mid leader, and first line leaders; but this categorization automatically meant that certain people in an org do certain things and are responsible for it.

Naaa... you can't break innovation into silos. It is a whole in itself. A great idea can come from anywhere, from anyone (even from outside the org), and any time - so why silo it.

I then assigned some key words to each chapter in the book to capture the essence of the information the chapter was conveying. After a couple of iterations, I brought it down to 5 keywords: Sources, Catalysts, Planning, Sustaining, & Traps. In other words,

1. Sources of Innovation
2. Catalysts to Innovate
3. Planning Innovation
4. Sustaining Innovation
5. Traps in Innovation

I ended up with something like the pics below:

The keywords helped in putting things into concepts and I also did a wheel of innovation (as most commonly seen in management consulting presentations) and also a moat to signify traps, myths, pitfalls, and things to avoid. As a result, I lost all the important details that are essential to innovation.

This had no details. It is up levelled for someone who wants to get a gist of what to do to Innovate but it does not have sufficient details in it, such as, what traps to keep in mind to ensure an innovative idea is assessed correctly and is executed right?

So, I redid this and below is a picture of my second attempt to get this right. More as a means for me to understand everything myself and to convince myself.

I finally fell back to doing a mind map to capture the keywords and the details in them with sufficient references to where I can find the third level details by going back to the book whenever I wanted to.

Below is the mind map. I'm not going to explain the mind map in this blog. It is meant to be self-explanatory (as far as possible).

Links to PDF versions of the files: Page-1, Page-2, Mind Map

There is a chapter in the book with an example of Innovation at GE (now GE Healthcare). I tend to think of it as bonus material. I couldn't pick one specific takeaway from it. Instead, I came across a 'disruptive' way of thinking about innovation that Edison implemented during his formative years as a great innovator and in all his experiments. The disruption was, in how he brought together the scientists, designers, makers, and testers together in one place. A scientist theorizes an idea; goes to the next room and gives it to the designer, who designs it; who goes to the next room and gives it to the maker, who makes a prototype; who goes to the next room and gives it to the tester, who tests the prototype. What is happening here is the time from idea inception to idea validation with a real prototype is reduced significantly, which allows one to try many things quickly and continuously improve on the previous. Fail fast and iterate to succeed . 

The key here is not 'in one place' but reducing the time from idea inception to idea validation. At that time getting all the key people in the same place was important, it reduced the distance and time of collaboration. These days distance is not an issue so it is not required that everyone is in one room, per se. But time to collaboration is still important to be able to go from idea inception to idea validation as quickly as possible.

I'm going to go one step further and say idea validation in 2024 is not just customer validation and/or positive feedback from customers BUT a tangible, quantifiable and positive impact on income statement in some form or the other.

Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Until next time... possibly a blog on 'Pricing'.

Regards

Jyothin