¿Existe un ADN del Innovador…?
Posiblemente esta es una pregunta que a muchos de nosotros nos han hecho o que nos hemos plateado varias veces: Existe un ADN del innovador…?. Cuando alguien nos dice ADN seguramente es facil que lo primero que nos nos venga a la cabeza sea la idea del código genético y la herencia genética. De hecho, es generalment conocido que en el desarrollo humano existen dos aspectos fundamentales: la evolución biológica, que es hereditaria y se transfiere por herencia, junto a la evolución cultural, que no es hereditaria y se adquiere por educación.
En base a esta realidad genética y cultural debo decir que, lamentandolo mucho, no existe un ADN de la innovación,… o al menos,… no es hereditario para las personas, ni para las organizaciones. La innovación es un aspecto 100% cultural. Para innovar hay que educar, ofrecer una educación específica a las personas para que sean innovadoras, desarrollando su inteligencia creativa, fomentando unas determinadas actitudes y comportamientos.
¿Cuáles son los principales comportamientos de los innovadores?
Es evidente que en muchos casos existan personas con una cierta actitud innovadora y que se explicita en sus comportamientos. Posiblemente si a cualquiera de nosotros nos preguntan que persona representa de mejor forma el comportamiento de un innovador, no creo equivocarme si a todos nos viene a la cabeza la persona de Steve Jobs. Sin duda, Jobs ha sido un gran ejemplo de que la innovación es algo cultural, que hay que cultivarla y educarse para innovar.
El ADN del innovador y de las organizaciones innovadoras se puede educar y pueden también aprenderse determinados comportamientos específicos de las personas, organizaciones y culturas innovadoras. Entonces, ¿cuáles son los principales comportamientos de los innovadores…?. En base a mi experiencia y conocimineto pienso que existen 5 comportamientos -conectar, cuestionar, colaborar, experimentar, y empatizar- que son clave en los innovadores:
§ Conectar: Los innovadores conectan y relacionan distintos campos e ideas que otros encuentran sin relación. Recuerdo cuando en uno delos proyectos que en E-Lab estábamos realizando para Ford pusimos en relacion 2 mundos nos conectados: el mundo del 4X4 “todoterreno” + el mundo del “lujo”. Esta conexión llevo a la creacion de la categoria del vehiculo SUV de lujo “Lincoln Navigator, un concepto luego ampliamente desarrollado por varias marcas como Porsche con el Cayenne, BMW, Volvo,…etc.
§ Cuestionar: Los innovadores siempre se están preguntando si las acosas podrían hacerse de otra manera, ¿Qué pasaría si…? , ¿Cómo podría…?. El famoso…”What if”. Un buen ejemplo de este comportamineto de cuestionarse lo encontramos en el producto del digital game Wii. Un producto donde se cuestionan la logica existente hasta aquel momento en los juegos digitales como algo individual y se plantean… ¿qué pasaría si pasáramos el mundo individual del videojuego al mundo de la familia, del grupo, de los amigos…?
§ Colaborar: Los innovadores buscan activamente personas diferentes a ellos, que puedan ofrecerles visiones radicalmente distintas de las cosas y su realidad. De hecho hoy ya es una realidad reconocida la importancia de la Open Innovation. Sin duda, LEGO ha sido una de las primeras compañías en desarrollar con éxito varias prácticas de Open Innovation como Lego Design By Me, la Lego factory.
§ Experimentar: Los innovadores observan el mundo que les rodea, investigan, prueban y construyen cosas distintas constantemente y de forma iterativa para aprender y volver a experimentar. Metodologías como la propuesta por Eric Ries con su Lean Startup explican de forma clara la importancia de experimentar, probar y testear constantemente las ideas.
§ Empatizar. Los innovadores observan el comportamiento de los clientes, de los stakeholders, sus experiencias y comportamientos para identificar oportunidades, necesidades latentes, más allá de la mirada tradicional cuantitativa. Saben que hacer un análisis profundo desde la visión del cliente, desde la comprensión de toda la experiencia (qué pasa y en que contexto, antes durante y después) puede ser transformador.
¿Cuáles son los principales virus de la innovación?
Toda organización tiene unos “virus” que limitan, condicionan y debilitan sus capacidades de innovación. En mi opinión, para innovar es importantísimo poder superar al menos tres de los más comunes virus: el de la visión limitada, el de la visión tecnológica y el de la visión egocéntrica
§ Visión limitada: Pensar que la innovación solo es tarea de unos pocos. La innovación no solo reside en los departamentos de I+D, esto limita las posibles fuentes de innovación. Innovar implica la responsabilidad de toda la organización. En Google lo tienen claro, por ello es parte de su cultura la libre disposición de tiempo para todos los empleados para innovar, cualquier empleado puede aportar ideas
§ Visión tecnológica: Pensar que la innovación es solo el desarrollo de nueva tecnología. La innovación no solo requiere de nueva tecnología, muchas veces se trata de dar una nueva forma a la tecnología existente. Es reconocido que el éxito de Appel no ha sido inventar una nueva tecnología sino su diseño, una nueva forma de “paquetizarla”, una nueva forma de que las personas usen y se relacione con la tecnología. Han innovado en diseñar una experiencia muy significativa para los usuarios.
§ Visión egocéntrica – Pensar que estamos innovando para nosotros. La innovación no consiste en pensar soluciones para nosotros, se trata de pensar en nuestros clientes. Ponernos en su piel y comprender sus experiencias de forma profunda, más allá de lo consciente y articulad; por eso es necesaria una visión antropológica que pueda obtener una comprensión más allá de lo articulado…… ¿sabemos lo que desean nuestros clientes…?
El diagnóstico de la innovación
Hemos visto los comportamientos y los virus de la innovación, pero lo más importante es saber como estamos nosotros, nuestra organización. Como sabéis, todo buen diagnóstico se basa en unas preguntas, propongo que reflexionemos sobres estas cinco cuestiones: ¿Cuáles son las principales convenciones en nuestro negocio que deberíamos repensar?; ¿Tenemos un enfoque centrado en el producto…o en el cliente?; ¿Conozco a todos los actores de la cadena de valor?; ¿Estamos abiertos a incorporar nuevas formas de trabajar, gestionar y liderar,… a la diversidad y a las nuevas ideas,… a ver las cosas desde otro punto de vista?; ¿Estamos dispuestos a reinventar nuestra propuesta de valor pensando en los clientes?
The power of co-creation
New technologies, web 2.o and the unprecedented access of information from consumers are encouraging and enabling a new approach of participation and collaboration. Co-creation is the new mode of innovation to create value, a form of collaborative creativity which enables innovation together with all the stakeholders. The aim is to help organizations to involve their key players (consumers, suppliers …) in the creation of value and meaning. In making the customer or stakeholder a co-creator aims to generate more value than would be possible through the traditional transactions (R&D, Marketing, etc.).
This approach allows more frequent and intense “conversations” between collaborators from diverse backgrounds. However, one of the biggest problems for co-creation is seeing it only as a tool for the creation of ideas rather than viewing it as an iterative process that involves customers and stakeholders through various cycles of value development. It’s a method that enables cross-fertilization and idea generation through shared knowledge and experiences. Unfortunately, the use of this collaborative approach is not particularly widespread in the new product development process and especially not in the stages of idea generation and selection, design, testing and refining, marketing and commercialization. In fact, there are currently very few forms of customer involvement that are covering all the ranges of stages beyond the collaborative ideation tools and platforms.
The challenge for a company is to decide who will be involved during the different stages of the innovation process -depending on the specific co-creation contexts and purposes- in order to build strong involvement for meaningful co-innovation. In my opinion the key answer is to build, develop and cultivate strategic Communities of Practice created ad-hoc.
The Communities of Practice revolution
Innovation capacity in businesses in today’s economy is not embedded in the organizations. Instead innovative ideas are generated in mindful, mind-opening and productive conversation across different communities of people. For this reason, these communities are a key asset to achieve a competitive advantage and a key resource of talent to support innovation. Specifically, Communities of Practice are key assets because they turn their tacit knowledge into knowledge necessary for radical innovation, beyond the explicit and articulated knowledge.
For Etienne Wenger, who coined the concept “Communities of Practice” these “Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a passion for something that they know how to do and to interact regularly to learn how to do it better.” The potential of Communities of Practice lies in their value creation and exchange to catalyst new creative and collective capabilities, and in their tacit knowledge for fostering unexpected ideas and innovation. These collaborative sources bring value to all phases of innovation from idea generation and evaluation to implementation and commercialization.
Because Communities of Practice are known for the value they create by nurturing innovation, I think the future is for the companies ready to foster the creativity of this type of communities and knowledge networks based on the strategic association of people, who are passionate in a specific domain or experience.
Ready for the new challenges of co-creation value…?
Nowadays business challenges and market complexities require partnerships and collaboration, instead of domination and competition. But collaboration implies a cultural change and mindset shift for companies, managers and employees. Roles and responsibilities in the collaboration space are not under the hierarchic logic (my apologies to senior executives…!) but rather often fluid and carrying a certain amount of ambiguity. Information is shared and combined because that’s the way to find unexpected ways to reframe the problems and, in addition, it’s normal to frequently deal with conflict because the friction of ideas and the new ways of working
Unfortunately, the power of co-creation is not right for all organizations because it means that a cultural and management change needs to take place also in the way of understanding and doing business. Leaders of organizations should continually reform the way their organization is managed, creating a climate that fosters innovation, and adjusting organizational structures to reward creativity and collaboration. The big question is, are they ready to make this commitment? Furthermore, are business schools doing something to help companies and managers to approach and manage the new challenges of co-creation value…?
You’ve probably heard of “Design Thinking” pitched as a marketing strategy by IDEO and popularized by some other major advocates (like David M. Kelley, Tim Brown or Bruce Nussbaum …). In recent years, many schools, professionals, institutions and businesses, anxious not to get left behind, started looking around to see what could help re-ignite creative thinking. Especially in business, Design Thinking became a major issue and a frequently heard question was… “Can business people learn from designers and their process?”
However, today it looks like this, the most widely used label of the applied nature of designers’ creative act, the “Design Thinking”, is quickly going out of fashion. Bruce Nussbaum -one of Design Thinking’s previous main advocates- is moving on to something new, the “Creative Intelligence”, as you can see in his new published book (http://creativeintelligencebook.com). For Bruce, the time of Design Thinking is ending, but I’m wondering if it’s no more to it…
One of the biggest problems may be that no one thought about the intrinsic nature and logic of design, the “divergent thinking”. Design, art and creativity all imply doing things in a “liquid” manner, and when you try to do it in a well structured way within the rigid structure of business, this type of thinking easily dies. This tension is created because the creative act is not primarily aimed at economic gain, and business is about economic gain and efficiency, as Vijay Govindarajan, professor at the Tuck School of Business pointed out: “Breakthroughs cannot happen inside the performance engine –it is built for efficiency, not for innovation”.(http://blogs.hbr.org/govindarajan/2011/07/innovations-9-critical-success.html)
The mindset of companies is set to avoid risk and uncertainty. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if we talk about “Design Thinking” or “Creative Intelligence” because in order to know where either of these thinking approaches are working/effective, there is another key challenge we first have to understand: How to move from a regimented logical-analytical industrial age mindset into a creative mindset.
Today more than ever, there is a common misunderstanding about creativity which links it to an exclusive “artistic” activity (like painting a picture, playing the violin, etc), a kind of “demiurge” experience. This stereotype is missing the real root of creativity as a source of intelligence for processing information and experiences, a powerful process through which we can frame problems in new ways and generate new ideas and innovations. Today -as we move into a more creative and knowledgeable economy and society- there is an emergence of the term “creativity” as related to another conceptual framework. This new framing of “Creative Intelligence” itself has become a key issue and will be a hot topic in the coming years. It is not only about information, neither about knowledge, but today’s challenge is about the creative “transformation” of information and knowledge. As some may say “It’s the Creative Intelligence, stupid”.
The dogma about creativity
Under the Industrial Revolution dogma, schools and workplaces have favored analytical intelligence as it trained us for “efficiency” and because the idea of efficiency is given the highest value in industrial and information economies. Since its inception alongside the Industrial Revolution, formal schooling has prioritized analytical thinking and abilities of the brain. Those abilities that are essential to sorting, ordering and figuring out information, which can be measured by an IQ test, fit perfectly the business mantra “what is not measurable doesn’t exist”.
At school we learn the skills required in the “world of facts”, and in the business world creativity is viewed as tactical rather than strategic within a process format approach. It is considered and managed as something of a necessity in much the same way as the introduction of a new technical skill –a three hour training session after which one you will be able to work creatively and if there are any further questions, read a manual. Creative Intelligence is more difficult to measure and facilitate, but as we move into a more creative and knowledgeable economy and society it is mandatory to change intelligence values. The problem is that most organizations employ people who are the product of an educational system focused on encouraging the accumulation of facts, rather than the development of creative intelligence. The challenge for all organizations then becomes the ability to switch from the conceptual age transition of regimented logical-analytical industrial age mindsets into a Creative Intelligence mindset.
The Creative Intelligence
Creativity and Creative Intelligence are concepts not well edged. Because they are so ubiquitous, they are easily related to all fields. Many view Creative Intelligence as something soft, often used simply as a marketing trick, a fuzzy concept that is not easily understood. The most widely accepted definition of creativity is “the production of novel ideas that are made useful” (Ford, 1995, Kaufman, 1998; Mackinon, 1978; Stein, 1974; Puccio et al, 206), and Creative Intelligence “the ability to go beyond the existing to create novel and interesting ideas” (Møller, 2005).
The challenge of Creative intelligence
Nowadays it is widely argued that employee’s creativity is critically important for innovation. What really matters is not how much information we have but how many ideas we can come up with and how creatively and efficiently we can turn these ideas into value. In fact, many experts and gurus such as Peter Drucker claim that the key to success for organizations and nations is innovation, the engine of growth. I always like to say that if innovation is the engine Creative Intelligence is the fuel, because there is not innovation without creativity, and creativity is the result of people using their Creative Intelligence combined with their analytical and practical intelligences, so organizations need to hire people with Creative Intelligence.
For companies and organizations Creative Intelligence is about fostering the ability to come up with smart and innovative solutions to the challenges they are facing, to find creative solutions to problems. It is not only about new products or services, but also the ability to confront situations that seem to have gotten stuck, especially in the current complex and turbulent times. People with trained Creative Intelligence have the ability to move in a direction that appears unconventional in order to come up with efficient solutions.
Companies and organizations should consider that without the appropriate support, the right challenges and motivation, people tend to make poor decisions and tend to rely on previous experience. But for organizations, employees relying on traditional past experiences may not only help to generate creative new solutions, it may also limit creativity, because it detracts from the ability to see new approaches to problems. Traditionally, people and organizations tend to stay within their comfort zone, avoiding risk and this is a big challenge because Creative Intelligence thrives on novelty and uncertainty. The normal behavior of the brain in creating a perception is to set up routine patterns; it is precisely this lack of constraints that can work to our detriment. One needs “creative tensions” to avoid the routine brain patterns, dogmas and comfort zones.
If people are encouraged, motivated and stimulated in the right way to innovate, the process will follow. But we can’t forget that fostering Creative Intelligence requires something more than a business process. We need to build an “environment” that supports and stimulates the Creative Intelligence.
¿Diseño en crisis?
En gran medida, las sociedades post-industriales se van construyendo sin alterar las bases simbólicas de los órdenes jerárquicos profesionales preestablecidos. Las sociedades cambian, emergen nuevas tendencias y comportamientos. Todos somos testimonios y -en gran medida- agentes de los cambios profundos y acelerados de nuestra sociedad. Compartimos una sensación creciente de que los cambios sociales y tecnológicos que vivimos nos sobrepasan constantemente, día a día. ¿Cuantas personas tenían teléfono móvil hace diez años?, ¿Quién podía pensar hace cinco o seis años que facebook tendría más de 1000 millones de usuarios?. Se trata de una aceleración y cambio sin precedentes, que se pone en evidencia al contrastarlo con nuestra propia evolución humana: des del establecimiento del homo sapiens han existido en el planeta Tierra más de mil generaciones, pero el ritmo y complejidad de los cambios de las últimas ocho generaciones supera con creces el de las 992 anteriores. Aunque es evidente el cambio en la sociedad, parece que las nuevas tendencias y comportamientos no suelen traducirse en el cuestionamiento de los profesionales, sus disciplinas y aplicaciones, evitando por ello su “metamorfosis”. Así, continuamos ejerciendo la abogacía, la arquitectura, la antropología, la pedagogía, la medicina, entre otras muchas disciplinas, sin cuestionarnos profundamente su sentido y alcance en una nueva sociedad que equidista profundamente del tipo de sociedad que originalmente vio nacerlas. Seguimos actuando sin cambiar nuestros modos de pensar y aplicar las disciplinas, ni su practica profesional, fieles a los dogmas que suele dictar el pensamiento hegemónico.
La metamorfosis del diseño
La metamorfosis de las disciplinas comporta una nueva orientación en relación a nuestros nuevos modos de pensar y de vivir, en una sociedad que ha cambiado profundamente. Volver a re-pensarlo todo, comenzar de nuevo. Una realidad a la que no es ajena la disciplina del diseño. La “metamorfosis” del diseño, implica el cuestionamiento del orden jerárquico profesional, del rol y legitimidad de la creatividad, de sus profesionales y del rol de la propia disciplina creativa. Y, aunque pueda parecernos difícil el cuestionamiento y el repensar la disciplina del diseño, cada día asistimos a una serie de iniciativas que nos muestran esta necesidad de cambio. De hecho, estamos en los comienzos del proceso, todo ha recomenzado, pero sin que nos hayamos dado cuenta. Nos encontramos en los inicios incipientes, marginales y dispersos de la verdadera metamorfosis del diseño. Pues ya existen, en distintos lugares del planeta, una serie de iniciativas orientadas a repensar y cambiar el diseño (rethinking design en google produce más de 11 millones de búsquedas; el Design Manageme Institue ha organizado en 2009 la conferencia Rethinking Design en 2009, y múltiples articulos se han publicado bajo el tópico de repensar el diseño, etc.). Por todo ello, parece una evidencia clara que cuando la acción social y el pensamiento se orientan a la reflexión sobe la legitimidad del diseño de los productos y espacios que les pre-“ocupan”, la sociedad y sus agentes se ven impulsados a constituir una serie de iniciativas y “agenda” incipiente de temáticas a las que quieren dar respuesta. Bajo esta realidad emergente se encuadrarían toda una serie de manifestaciones, como por ejemplo las comentadas anteriormente, en el sentido de las practicas de la participación, del protagonismo de las comunidades locales, de la co-creación, participación e inclusión de los stakeholdrs en el proceso de diseño, etc. Un buen ejemplo de estas iniciativas es el Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability liderado por Ezio Manzini.
Esta nueva relidad emergente nos muestra un conjunto de iniciativas que consisten en transformar el diseño hacia un rol de soporte al incremento de la participación de los consumidores y usuarios (bloggs, open innovation platforms, crowd sourcing, etc.) y hacia métodos que permitan aportar servicios a los distintos stakeholders (co-creation, participación, etc.). Todo ello, implica transferir y/o implicar a los usuarios y consumidores en algunas funciones tradicionales de la esfera productiva y del diseñador. El diseñador y el diseño están inmersos en una verdadera metamorfosis hacia un rol de mediador y facilitador que modifica su status quo tradicional. La pregunta clave es ¿el diseño está en crisis?; o quizás … ¿estamos en la emergencia de la metamorfosis de la disciplina del diseño…?.
With deficits soaring and continuous cuts of public budgets, it’s high time to catalyze social innovation by challenging old dogmas and assumptions. All government reforms or innovation will continue to fail if they are only focused on improving the same old activities. Adding new ideas on a stable base of inefficiency cannot enable social innovation. Transformative social progress is only possible if we take advantage of tacit knowledge, citizen networks, communities of practice, and civic entrepreneurship. What we need is to build relationships across the public, private and civic sectors - promoting civic engagement and community problem solving.
The complex problems we are facing today go well beyond the vertical silos of knowledge, expertise and management. Social problems in health, education, employment, etc., are increasingly complex and interlocking and are impossible to solve with a few experts, program officers or small “control” elites. The key question all governments must NOT avoid, is how innovation can emerge in social services in the current model that is dominated by top-down approaches and driven to avoid change?
The creative civic entrepreneurs
What are needed are fresh perspectives of a problem and creative solutions. We need to accelerate social innovation by understanding together with the key stakeholders how something really works, in order to determine what they need and to transform this tacit knowledge of the community, early adopters and users into innovation. The key question is how we foster all the civic entrepreneurs and creative social activists, and how we can provide them with innovative spaces to enable bold responses, catalyze change and generate the conditions for broad community solutions that cause systemic change.
The new role of governments
The challenge to engage civic entrepreneurs requires governments to embrace and develop a new role regarding the social services (health, education, etc.) beyond the means of production. They need to focus on how to leverage and facilitate the production of value, how to sett up systems to ensure quality outcomes, and to push the bounds of how to address public problems in an innovative way.
How everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance
Based on my professional experience and anthropological understanding, when companies are discussing about putting innovation processes in place the important word that is often missing from the discussion is people and their context. To face up to the critical problem of how organizations can eliminate barriers to innovation and make improvements to their innovative culture, I believes that it is a critical issue to understand how organizations can mobilize their most important asset – their people – to innovate more effectively
One interesting book to help leaders and managers to have the better teams and improve fostering innovation culture is the new book “The Progress Principle” from Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer where they explain how companies can overcome the “crisis of disengagement” occurring in the workplace.
http://www.progressprinciple.com/books/single/the_progress_principle
With pressures of economic and demographic change, governments are increasingly tempted to remade national pensions system. It looks like the promise of a secure future, previously issued by the state, is gone; responsability and risk are shifted and citizens are not pleased with this situation. Now is the time to go for anything new to improve the past, catalyzing social change.
“For fostering meaningful inovation you have to start with understanding the customer problem, and in order to do that you may have to do ethnographic research.”