Practical Innovation in a Digital World - Building the Ideation Ecosystem

Reader Warning:  If you are looking for the kind of levity, light-hearted banter and insightful amusement I usually conjure up after a couple of stiff sherrys then this is probably not the blog for you. This one is a bit serious and is the first in a series of similarly serious blogs that will take an in depth look at the sub-processes that underpin the process of Corporate Innovation.  That doesn’t mean the blogs will be dull (hopefully far from it) rather they will be quite technical and suitable for those that consider themselves practitioners in the field of Innovation.  Warning over, read on at your peril!

This blog is about Ideation* – the elemental and almost magical sub-process at the very genesis of the Corporate Innovation process.   It is a much misunderstood process and a little explored one.  The generation of ideas is often seen to be the exclusive, secret domain of the visionary entrepreneur, the maverick R&D guy or the corporate alchemist, certainly not the result of a process that can be quantified, systematised and regularly replicated.   Now whilst these rare corporate beasts can undoubtedly catalyse and accelerate the process they are most definitely not the process itself and quite often they can actually slow or derail the process in a fit of pique.  Now I have written about the detrimental propensity of CEOs to seek out these Wizard of Oz types in a previous blog and so won’t replay that rant here.  Suffice to say, in practice, the process of Ideation itself is a bit more mundane than the magicians and snake oil salesmen would have us believe.  The generation of useful ideas is a lot more about the outcome of the hard, disciplined work, carried out by dedicated professionals than the result of a favoured kiss from the ideas muse.  Those that have been tasked with delivering Ideation will nod sagely on hearing award winning novelist Philip Pullman’s quote “Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals.  Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs.”

So how does an Innovation professional set about generating a set of quality ideas that can potentially be formed into concepts that can be prototyped and tested?  There are three key elements for the Innovation professionals to assemble.  The first essential element is having access to a rich source of ideation inputs – the thoughts, suggestions, ideas, tech and stimuli required to generate innovative concepts.  The second is having a reliable, generative ideation process through which to sort, play with, combine and recombine the inputs in a way that generates innovative concepts.  The third is having access to a creative team of stimulated professionals whose brains this ideation process will be carried out in.

The rest of the blog will look at each of these elements in detail.   Without these elements Ideation is a random, haphazard and rare occurrence, pretty much what it actually is for many corporates.

A quick but related digression, I still smile to myself when I remember working with a UK high tech manufacturer that was short on ideas.  I asked them to arrange a meeting with the senior managers to discuss the Innovation process.  “Ooh,” said the coordinator, “we can use the Innovation room.”  I replied that sounded great.  On the day of the meeting I was ushered into the Innovation room – which turned out to be an oblong, grey walled, windowless room with plastic seats arranged in rows.  Strangely I didn’t have to work too hard that day to convince the client that they needed to make changes – especially of they wanted to think outside the very grey box in which they literally and metaphorically found themselves.  So let’s get to it.

1)      Creating a rich source of Ideation Inputs

Generating rich inputs requires high quality networking and an ability to expand and leverage the relationships and ecosystems of the corporation.   Below is a table of a tiny fraction of the different ways Corporates can and do plug into a flow of ideas from the easy to access to the more hard core link ups. 

Hard Core	Serious	Traditional	Easy
Tech Partnerships	Academic Links	Industrial Tourism	Conferences
Tech Start Up Links	Commissioned Research	Staff Suggestions	Social Media Feeds
Specialist Idea Brokers	Supplier Ideas Forums/Fairs	Customer Feedback/Complaints	Guest speakers
Patent Tracking	Big Data Analytics	Internal Data Analytics	Literature reviews

The key here is to generate a manageable flow of ideas that those charged with generating Innovation concepts can handle.  Too few ideas and the Innovation hopper will be barren, too many ideas and the Innovation hopper will be overflowing and unmanageable, creating waste and disillusionment.   N.B. There is no single “secret source”(sorry),  the successful Corporate Innovators will have a whole raft of sources from which they draw ideas.  The key skills required for delivering a rich source of ideas are network building and curiosity.

2)      Developing a reliable, generative Ideation Process

Now this element is a little more complex and a source of heated debate between Innovation professionals.  Again there is probably no right answer here but there are probably better ones.   The minimum requirement is the ability to structure the time spent playing with, combining, refining and assessing the ideas.  This is serious play.   There are numerous techniques available ranging from the basic brainstorming processes, through analytical and scoring techniques to the more developed Triz process and its modifications and abstractions.   The key factor here is that the Innovation professionals actively manage themselves through a process or a series of processes.   The complexity here is that the processes have to encourage room for play, spontaneity, what if debates, flights of fancy and slack time whilst maintaining their rigour as a process.  As a result facilitation is key.  The key skills required to be able to develop and operate a reliable, generative ideation process are playfulness, curiosity and facilitation skills.

3)      Building a creative team of Dedicated Professionals

Finally it is important to remember that innovation is not some abstract event.  Humans are not just catalysts in the process they are a living Innovation substrate.   Ensuring that your Innovation team is in the best possible shape to innovate is therefore important.   This, of course, means that recruiting or renting the right people, with the right aptitudes to work effectively as part of an Innovation team is crucial, as is providing them with the right physical locations, stimuli and props.  However, it does not mean keeping them overly comfortable.  Necessity is the mother of invention and diversity and conflict (in small doses) can be excellent catalysts.   I’m aware I’m making this sound a little like alchemy and of all the elements I’ve looked at in this blog this is the one that is the most esoteric.   However, having an effective team leader that can manage the state of their team to enhance Innovation is a real find.   Whether that means exposing the team to third world experiences or cosseting them in comfy cushions, the ability to keep changing it up is essential.  The key skills required to build a team of creative, dedicated Innovation professionals are therefore team management and creativity.

Hopefully that has provided a bit of an insight into Ideation, the primary sub-process of Innovation and its base elements.  There’s much more that can be said and written about these elements but that is not the stuff of a blog.  Do get in touch if you wish to discuss.  Further blogs on the other sub-processes will follow.

N.B. I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that in today’s digital environment it is also possible to “outsource” the ideation process by setting up hackathons, hosting social media discussion groups, sponsoring prizes for innovative solutions and all manner of other mechanisms.  These are all relatively new mechanisms but are proving popular and well worth trying.  Have fun Innovating.

*The process of ideation in a corporate setting is the process for the generation of ideas that, if applied to the corporation, could have a relevance to one or more of the stakeholders of the corporation.