An innovation culture beyond methodologies

#119 - Aug.2024

I've worked with many organizations willing to transform their businesses through technology. You can clearly see in all a desire not only to design a solution but to create a strong innovation culture to tackle future problems.

They want to get an edge. They want to avoid becoming a commodity. They want to change their narrative from the “one more” to "the one."

Many of these companies trying to affect change assume that an innovation culture is just a result of adopting the coolest methodology or framework in the market. They see innovation just as an additional process they need to run.

They trust blindly in a framework and apply it as a magic recipe for success. They lack understanding of the basics.

It's not a surprise that, at the first sign of failure, these companies start questioning if the methodology is effective enough. They get frustrated. They search for a different framework or even go back to the status quo.

A methodology or a process is just one piece of a complex puzzle of driving innovation within an organization. It's not a silver bullet.

Don’t get me wrong: innovation and methodology frameworks are useful resources. They synthesize methods to solve similar problems. They serve as great communication tools to lead people toward a common objective. I’ve used and learned from many of them in my journey.

I’ve observed that, while these methodologies make processes more efficient, an innovation culture grows much more unstructured. Many of the great innovations I’ve seen came from pure serendipity. From interactions between people willing to effect change. Within teams driven by a common mindset for problem solving. This is the challenge: how to give structure to an unstructured dynamic by nature?

If you adopt any of these frameworks as a generic prescription it is likely to end up in frustration. Instead, you can learn from many of them, iterate, improve them, and adapt them into the reality of your business and customers.

In a world where everything changes we need businesses that are flexible enough to follow these changes. Innovation needs to become a mindset rather than a step-by-step flow-chart.

Innovation cultures

There are tons of innovation methodologies and more to come. As a leader of a team or an organization you might feel frustrated on which to choose. I hear you. I've been in the same situation as you, struggling to find the best fit.

Want to tap new markets? Go with Blue Ocean. Need to design the strategy of your business? Use the Business Model Canvas. Want to shorten your development cycles through iterative learning? Adopt Lean Startup Framework. Want to find the job customers are hiring you to do? Well, we have Job-To-Be-Done.

I tend to see these frameworks as tools to support decision making. To move forward we need decisions: decisions on filtering the best ideas; decisions on the tradeoffs you should consider; decisions on when to proceed or when to pivot.

Methodologies give structure and set the pace.

If you never had the experience of bringing an idea to reality or feel a lack of confidence in your creative force, a methodology is a great place to start. It forces you to experience the different phases, from conception to delivery.

Every organization wants a strong innovation culture. But they are hard to create and require time and patience to consolidate. A methodology is just one of the building blocks.

One of the reasons I think that is so hard to create and sustain is because of people and context. An innovation mindset is deeply wired through human interactions. It’s about people. Human beings. People with their concerns and desires. With their assumptions and biases. With their personal narratives and fears. David and Tom Kelley talk extensively about the challenges of growing a creative confidence in people who don’t see themselves as creatives and innovators.

Ignoring the context of your business and customers is also a common pitfall. I’ve worked with many teams in the past that struggle to understand that these frameworks are trails, not rails. They are helpful as guardrails but they are far from being a one-size-fits-all solution. You can (and should) adapt any of these tools to your reality. Customize them and create new ones. Mixing tools from a different methodology? Why not! Focus on the outcome, not just the tooling.

The core concepts

If we distill the most common innovation frameworks we find patterns across them:

• Problem and customer-centric. All methodologies try to ensure you start with the problem, and not a solution. By defining a challenge (or an opportunity) you set the stage for what to focus on. This avoids finding problems to solutions you already created.
• Research and exploration. They promote curiosity. You need to dive deep and understand the problem or opportunity. It's common to find phases where you focus on gathering insights that can lead you to potential solutions.
• Ideation and focus. Many of the frameworks offer tools for decision making on how to filter ideas. As ambiguity increases, you need to bring focus to the work you are doing. Making decisions on what to focus on is key to moving forward.
• Experimentation. Most frameworks promote experimentation. They promote the value of validating and using the learnings to evolve the solution. They frame failure as a way to discover new alternatives.

Have you noticed something? At the very core, we are talking about a standard design process. And it couldn’t be different! It's through common design practices that we navigate the ambiguity of finding and understanding a problem, exploring solutions, and finding ways to validate them. As I like to call it, it's iterative “yin-yang” problem and solutioning. On one side, curiosity & empathy and on the other invention & experimentation.

Understanding the core principles of how design works is a powerful skill for developing an innovation mindset. When you internalize these concepts, you start envisioning these methodologies as variations of these core principles. You remove the constraints of a set of steps, but you rather have access to a larger toolbox you can leverage. Become an expert in design, not an expert in any particular methodology.

Keeping the culture

If you have never been through an innovation process I can tell you something: it's chaotic. It's not a linear process. It's not as fun as it is commonly portrayed: people collaborating in brainstorming sessions with whiteboards and post-its.

I think this is due to the ambiguity of the journey of finding a creative solution to a problem. To use a fancy word, it's the “inexactness” of this journey that turns it chaotic at times.

Strong creative cultures endure the chaos. And while there is a tolerance for failure, there is also accountability. While they are highly collaborative, the ownership is clear. It's driven by experimentation but with clear goals of what you want to validate and how you will use the outcomes for improving.

Keeping an innovation culture is about bringing people together within a common mindset and managing the complex (yet powerful) combinations of human behaviors and perspectives. It's a culture where you have the freedom to create, but the structure to consistently generate value to customers.