Getting the most out of your Innovation Investments - "Tell me what you want, what you really, really want"

Despite what they might claim, Innovators and entrepreneurs love having a good structured problem to solve.   They just do.  Give them a well defined, specific business problem, public challenge or domestic conundrum and they are in heaven.  They’ll instantly spring into action to figure out how to creatively build or combine multiple bits of tech and process that can work together to provide a suitable solution.

However, if you ask the entrepreneurial show ponies to “invent” new solutions to a very loose, broad brief they can often struggle to come up with a useful, marketable solution.   Now this strange, slightly counter-intuitve reality can often be a source of frustration for those business moguls and public leaders who invest heavily to build up and employ groups of innovators with the intention of enjoying a stream of wonderful and exotic innovations that add value to their endeavours.    They know they can’t micro-manage the innovators so they leave them alone.  They give them time, space, resources and bags and bags of freedom – the proverbial blank sheet of paper.   Unfortunately this type of relationship all too often fails as the solutions that get delivered just don’t scratch the itch.

So as a leader it appears as though the recipe for having a productive relationship wth your innovation team is to provide them with a series of clearly defined problems or challenges that they can deploy their talents against.   This of course is easier said than done.   Why?  Because by and large most of us are just not trained or practiced in the reflective, analytical and articulatory skills required.  When asked the classic Spice Girls question,  “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want?”  most of us respond with a bland “I don’t really know.”

In short the art of being able to identify and articulate real business or organisational issues in a concise and effective manner is a rare one.   As a result many of the less transparent aspects of business and public life are lagging behind when it comes to experiencing the latest wave of innovative digital transformation.   This is not because these areas are particularly impervious to innovation, its actually because the problems and challenges associated with them are ill defined and opaque.   Compare and contrast the number of apps that have been designed to help you find and book a restaurant (a clearly defined and well known challenge) compared with the number of technology solutions devised to help your local council collect and manage household waste (an ill defined and opaque challenge).   N.B. You will be in the majority if you have just read the last sentence and asked yourself the question, “So what is the problem with collecting and managing household waste?”  Honestly, I don’t know either, but I’m pretty sure there are some they’re just not known to me.

Ok, so before I tie us all up in logical loops the point is this.   We need to understand that a key (and much undervalued) aspect of the Innovation process is the ability to spot, analyse and articulate a challenge so that the creative types can do their thing.   The recent advent of “themed” tech accelerators suggests that finally we are waking up to the fact that working with industry segments to clearly articulate problems and challenges is generating a better return on investment when it comes to Innovation.   In my work with innovators and businesses I am now very committed to putting the work in to spot and articulate the real challenges of an industry rather than to merely assemble a group of the bright and the brilliant and instruct them to “do their innovative thing”.   So, when it comes to Innovation, creating a counter intuitive sense of focus and structure is definitely a good thing.