Breaking down the barriers to Innovation

PART- II

Situating Innovation

In my Last article, Innovation, and the biggest impact of leadership on it have been analysed. Let’s analyse this further with “Situating Innovation”

“Innovation” by its definition faces toward the future. In doing so, it often assumes an ahistorical stance, erasing social contexts. In today’s world of applications, databases, gadgets, and artificial Intelligence driven impenetrable algorithms, “Innovation” should be balanced by considerations of the history, driven by values of technology, and accompanied by the question – “Innovation for Whom?”

Design theory, education and practice have placed too much emphasis on invention while viewing the “Design Problem” as the context in which innovation is judged, rather than the situation in which the innovation will be experienced. Thus, attention to a situation, purposeful representations regarding it, and relevant knowledge are fundamental to grasping the potentials for worthwhile innovation within any situation. Innovation should arise from close monitoring and mediation of a situation and be informed by knowledge related to it. Situating Technology Innovation in a disruptive way is where most businesses have witness success.

Technology Innovation has always depended on Organization Innovation. However, the complexity of many innovation systems now transforms the nature of this interdependence.

For most organizations and business - there is always a barrier and challenge – whether to insulate an innovation team or the whole organization needs to get involved. It becomes a critical barrier for situating innovation when later is the practice.

Let’s analyze, what are the barriers which have an impact on situating innovation.

STRUCTURAL BARRIERS - These are interconnected features of large services and System integration organizations which make it difficult to create an environment for Innovation:

• Coexistence of research and operations cultures

• Major differences in the dominant value systems of the Innovation (Traditionally known as R&D) and operations cultures, and

• Difficulty of resolving these differences in a hierarchical organization

CULTURAL BARRIERS - Innovation and culture have always been elusive social phenomena. Culture covers a complex array of dimensions that range from fundamental values and norms to motivations and perceptions. Culture is also related to the skills, practical knowledge and routines employed in everyday life, including productive behavior in workplaces.

To solve the cultural barrier – innovation must be understood as a socially embedded economic action that is shaped by cultural and structural forces. Also – its known fact that the values and skills of the people in the two cultures within an organization are significantly different.

ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIAL BARRIERS - Organizational social technologies in the late nineteenth century were designed to stabilize, scale up, and optimize technological knowledge into large working configurations. Complex innovation systems in the present century require social technologies that are designed to allow technologies to emerge rather than stabilize, to situate rather than scale up, and to integrate rather than optimize.

Organizations and Businesses must put a framework which encompasses the entire ecology of organization, its departments and its diversified workgroups who are coming with different cultural background and creating an environment which can grapple with a challenge even though they have diverse objectives using social technologies.

Another Important aspect of improving these barriers are innovation teams which is led by Design Thinking. Businesses, who have taken this approach of innovation which is designed to solve real, specific problems and address tangible opportunities have created great value for their clients & their businesses. Along with Design thinking, organizations, and businesses, who have also taken Open Innovation approach – which let them reach well beyond the potential of their own intellectual properties have generated enormous revenues.

In next article - I will put forward the analysis on another important factor of Innovation – “Celebrating Failure.”