The Innovation Fallacy, another interlude
I’ve already talked about how we need our innovation to be enduring and widespread, and how existing measures of innovation might not be especially useful. I haven’t said anything about what I consider to be innovation – and that’s probably because innovation is a lot like hard-core pornography, as per the words of Justice Potter Stewart:
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
WIth that linkbait out of the way, and courtesy of JRA, I would present an example of what I would consider innovation. This BBC feature shows the guys that you find everywhere, not just in the ranks of Nigeria’s Repairmen – they’re the people who keep the buses running in Afghanistan, the tractors moving in Cambodia, and my car running in Montenegro.
Now, if you don’t think that what these guys do qualifies as innovation, might I suggest that you are thinking about innovation in entirely the wrong terms? Does innovation mean exciting new technology, or does it mean applying ingenuity to everyday problems? And as JRA asks, how do we harness that ingenuity more effectively? All thoughts welcome…
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OK Paul, I’ve got to call you on this. Most of what Nigeria’s repairmen et. al. do is not innovation, it is improvisation.
Innovate : make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.
Improvise : produce or make (something) from whatever is available.
Not that I want to take anything away from these people do. They certainly keep their countries running. However, repairing a bus or mobile phone with whatever is at hand is NOT innovative. It’s improvisation.
However turning that same mobile phone into a vehicle security situation is innovative.
Real innovation is rare. Developing truly new ideas, methods or products are just too difficult for most of us. Improvisation however is relatively common, especially amongst people who don’t have access to ready cash and big box hardware stores.
Kevin Toomer
3 Dec 08 at 3:01
ooops! Didn’t send the afrigadget link to the phone/car alarm system. http://tinyurl.com/5f3gr5
Kevin Toomer
3 Dec 08 at 3:07
Kevin – you’re partly right, and perhaps I should rephrase. My argument is that innovation emerges from this sort of improvisation – from fiddling around with products or processes, and discovering something new that works. The problem that these guys have is that, should they develop on a new technique or create a new piece of hardware, they don’t have the framework to turn innovation into successful innovation. This is what I was talking about before when I referred to the “chain of value” being created by our networks – building from that initial step to something widespread and enduring.
Does that make more sense? If yes, thanks for helping me to clarify my thinking! If no, I guess I need to go back to the drawing board…
Paul Currion
3 Dec 08 at 14:01
Paul, I’ll rephrase what I think you are saying but with a much more cynical voice (mine).
“A crowded, unhealthy, and unsafe work environment that is based on recycling the affluent world’s garbage and cast offs fosters an innovative attitude and ability amongst its workers. This ability needs to be harnessed.”
If that’s the case it is too cynical even for me.
At the core I believe true innovation requires two factors in conjunction; genetics and opportunity. Truly innovative people have a special spark, something buried deep in their genetics, that most of us lack. Second, these individuals need the opportunity to develop their latent ability. These potential innovators need to be exposed to new (to them) and challenging ideas. This can either be through education or more rarely through circumstance that brings them into contact with other innovators. An accidental incubator if you will.
Potential innovators also need time. Time to think. Time without the distractions of struggling for survival.
Finally, of course, as you’ve already pointed out they need the opportunity to transfer that innovative idea.
So if we go back to our techno-garbage slum most of its denizens will not have that genetic spark (just as most of us do not). Those few do will be unlikely to realize their potential. They will not be exposed to new and challenging ideas but they will be exposed to toxic chemicals. They won’t have time to think new and innovative thoughts. They’ll be too busy trying to find a transistor that will fit into someones cast off mobile so that they can make an extra buck to feed their family.
Now I know that there are people who have overcome these and even greater obstacles and gone on to be great innovators. But its a measure of the individual and not the environment they came from.
I guess what I’m saying is that our Nigerian techno-slums and Kabul bus repair yards are not incubators of innovation. They might force improvisation for the sake of survival but they stifle innovation. How much better could our hypothetical innovator do if rather than struggling to survive they were allowed to go to school, seek new ideas, and experiment at will?
Kevin Toomer
3 Dec 08 at 16:21
I’m about as cynical as they come, but that’s not really what I meant. What I meant is that these situations demonstrate that innovation (or at least the seeds of innovation) can be found anywhere, and it’s the lack of the supporting framework that kills it. I also think that you’re confusing invention with innovation. Few people are inventors, but most people are innovators – problem-solvers, to put it more basically. Perhaps I’m defining innovation too widely? I agree that prospective innovators would do better given the right framework – decent standard of living, educational opportunities, etc – but that’s true for everybody, innovator or not.
Paul Currion
4 Dec 08 at 15:56
Kevin, Paul, if I can leave your Nigeria example aside
I’ll come down on the side of “innovation is all around” we just don’t make more than temporary ad-hoc use of it.
People innovate at all levels, in all kinds of ways – by improvising jobs around TV repairs (damn, dragged back in), by brainstorming, by obsessing, by saying “crap, how the hell do I get 100,000 bednets to camps next week?” and finding a way, by saying “how do I feed my family next week?”. Even by saying “how did my grandfather plant these seeds?”.
But how the hell do we get from the particular and ad-hoc, the proof-of-concept, and reach the goal of wide adoption and use of appropriate innovations?
Identification, testing/development, refinement, training, adoption, review. It’s all our old challenges of institutional change management.
I remember Paul and Giorgio Sartori trying a new warehouse tool with WFP after the 2004 Tsunami – it worked just great, but disappeared pretty quickly, like so many other initiatives.
Like Paul I haven’t been in the field a huge amount lately, but I keep seeing great people finding interesting new ways to make things easier, better, more effective. But…
Nigel Snoad
4 Dec 08 at 19:17
Paul, I think we more or less agree then. Perhaps I just view innovation in a more restricted dictionary definition. We do seem to agree that it is beneficial to provide opportunity to potential innovators but I’m skeptical about the “framework”. Maybe I’m not clear on what exactly that means.
Coincidentally I saw a magazine (FastTh!nking) on the local bookstore shelf with an article on fostering innovation. It was too expensive to justify for the one article I wanted but the gist article was that innovation was;
1. more about imagination than reason
2. more about failure than success
3. more about chaos than order
4. more emergent than planned
5. more focused than scattered
6. more about mindset than market
7. more about people (finding the right ones) than process (designing a system)
8. more about the maverick than the team
9. more about the open than the closed
Nigel, I think that at least part of the problem for wider adoption relates to two factors. people have to know that the product, idea, or method exists. They have to have a need for it. Finally they have to believe they want it.
Maybe we need NGO innovation marketing teams?
Kevin Toomer
4 Dec 08 at 23:15
Kevin,
definitely agree with you on some of the adoption gates. I tend to think that adoption is a bigger problem than innovation generation – we can spend a lot of time/effort on new innovations that simply replicate ideas folks have already had/tried.
So, how do we know what we know and judge it, use it, teach it, reward it? Paul (and the comments/replies) wrote a whole lot about that, but some of this comes down to simple professionalism/best practice (which sometimes goes AWOL on an institutional level particularly) and some of it is that we do need a cultural change. A recognition of innovation as necessary, worth sharing, celebrating. Spectacularly hard when it’s really the grinding day-to-day of just getting stuff done or just surviving that’s most aid work, let alone the brick-wall-headbutting of preparedness in and by local communities.
One idea I’m continually drawn back to from my academic/industry background is the concept of “labs”. There are a couple of models of innovation in the tech/bio-tech world (as I think Janet and others pointed out) and while the VC/startup has analogies to Donor/agency/NGO, we’re definitely short of high-profile and successful labs. That said I’ve seen way too many government funded labs completely fail in terms of “technology transfer.” The innovation/commercialization model is worth digging into, particularly the “incubator/lab” version. Wouldn’t it be great to have a set of incubators linked to experimental “labs”? Or are you thinking I’m just channeling Sachs?
Or, as you suggested, NGO innovation marketing teams
Nigel Snoad
5 Dec 08 at 20:05
The next few posts are going to discuss exactly what we need in order to get to success with innovation. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but there are definitely some signposts to success.
@Kevin: Thanks for the reference to the article, food for thought. Is it online?
@Nigel: So I guess it’s about time I set up that lab, right? It’ll give me something to do in 2009…
Paul Currion
5 Dec 08 at 22:59
It seems like I am in full out gallop these days just to get to Square One, which never seems to get any closer, but this is simply too tasty a thread not to join in.
Quickly, Kevin — we haven’t met yet, but I am loving your posts and am head over heels for the lead to FastThinking. I take it you’re another Australian? What’s in the water down there?
FastThinking has a very cool website: http://www.fastthinking.com.au
They post pdf’s of archived magazine articles (h’mmmmm, that decision could have used a little faster thinking….) LOTS of book reviews.
And yes, as soon as a free moment shows up I’ll be adding a link to TrackerNews’ Resources section.
Re the “lost” warehouse tool idea: If a description and/or the app software for it existed online with a unique url, that is just the kind of thing I would link to on TrackerNews, slot into the TrackerDash and hope that someone would include it in a Custom Tracker on Warehousing & Distribution Logistics.
I am a big fan of distributed models (distributed power, sensor nodes, whatever). In the same vein, on a few websites on which I’ve worked, we made an effort to give visitors multiple routes to information. Navigation that makes sense to me might not make sense to you, so why not put in an extra door or two? (I know, irony from someone who dispensed with a nav bar altogether for Tracker…).
The point is that although I would love to see Tracker become a well-known enough node that it is seen as an good “let’s take a look here first” stop, for tech transfer to truly sing in this sector, the ideas need to be distributed as links all over the web. I don’t care how someone finds what they need to know – just that they find it.
That’s why I am so keen on seeing what those custom trackers turn out to be. I baked about 1/2 the idea, Ed Jezierski another 1/3, and it still needs some finishing time in the oven…
re tech transfer, marketing is a huge component and yet such a squirm-inducing word…
I think it was Mikel Maron who talked about the need for idea “champions.” Marketing provides the tools to champion more effectively.
A tangent: A couple of months ago, I was at a gathering at IDEO – http://www.ideo.com – which is very interesting design / engineering / branding company. They have a practice focused on design & marketing issues for developing countries. It might be really interesting to bring them into the conversation.
They showed some slides of recent work, that included a comparison of treadle-pump irrigation systems around the world. A woman from Cambodia was in the group and she was amazed to see what was going on in her own country. The take home: Tech transfer has a couple of different tiers. It’s not only a transfer of ideas to whomever can transform them into scalable product, but a very local outreach to whomever the idea might help. Amy Smith’s D-Lab makes a big point about the ability to locally manufacture and distribute the lab’s inventions. Whether it’s a corn-husker, a charcoal-maker or a piece of software, the same rules apply.
okay, really gotta run…
cheers,
Janet
J A Ginsburg
6 Dec 08 at 14:13
Interesting ping on the FastThinking magazine – I should have realized that it actually comes out of the Innovation Exchange (IXE) a non-profit business innovation catalyst started by some friends of mine. They’d definitely be up for some discussion, as they’re particularly focussed on how to share innovations for mutual (or even common) benefit, while maintaining IP and/or a business model.
I love IDEO and their work – they’re some of the best design facilitators I’ve seen, and they definitely do well getting down into the business model design space, which is what we need here.
And Paul – about that lab…
Nigel Snoad
8 Dec 08 at 15:33
Paul, I agree with Nigel… “about that lab…”.
Janet – I actually Canadian and just returned to Vancouver a day ago which is why I’m playing catch up on comments and e-mail.
All – It occurred to me last night that I’ve seen a model that might be applicable here. It was a “Lesson’s Learned Centre” that was comprised in part of a professional journal, a website, and most importantly a formalized “after action review” (AAR) process that sought to capture ideas from field staff while they were still fresh. The ideas were then fed back to community members through the journal and website.
I participated in a number of the after action reviews and despite my initial skepticism I found they were very useful. Having trained facilitators kept the process from becoming bogged down and ensured lessons were captured in an unbiased manner.
AAR’s were held at the field/team level and then at the headquarters level as well. This ensured headquarters staff could benefit from the insight of field staff.
I’ve deliberately avoided indicating where I saw this so everyone would keep an open mind. If you want to check out more on the idea go to http://armyapp.dnd.ca/allc/default_e.asp and http://armyapp.dnd.ca/ALLC/aar/default_e.asp . Unfortunately, as often happens in large organizations the process seems to have become mired in bureaucracy but for a while it did seem to be working well.
I love IDEO as well but it seems to me that part of our problem is that most field staff, and almost all beneficiaries lack internet access. Current open innovation systems rely heavily on the internet to quickly and very cheaply transfer niche ideas.
Kevin Toomer
9 Dec 08 at 19:17