What is Innovation?

There is much debate and theorising on models of innovation. It is a fertile area of academic study, and of course one hopes of active engagement in the real world. I would add that it would be nice if the academic world were to adopt some of the innovation practices they research, as my experience at universities, both teaching and as a student, suggests that society needs new innovative models for higher education. Anyway, I digress.

What does a short history of innovative organisations look like? The table below is a short list of personal favourites. You’ll note that none are supermarkets or airlines. This is a provocative list about where good ideas actually start, and the types of organisations that have broken ground with new thinking and approaches. At the time of their founding, they were essentially unique. Prior to Arthur D Little, organisational types change dramatically and we would be in innovative patterns, which produce mass production techniques, industrial revolution businesses of which virtually none survive today, for instance.

What is important about these organisations in the table is that they emerged in response to demands and needs of the day, and some have continued to deliver value and evolve further. I like Santa Fe partly because it isn’t a university yet does really compelling research. Indeed, apart from the Open University, these are non-university knowledge engines! That should offer at least one clue about a model of innovation, namely that there is not necessity that they be aligned with or have an association with, indeed be part of, a university.

In thinking about a model for innovation I deploy the 4-box old-faithful framework (yes, the dreaded matrix!), which distinguishes between the complexity or simplicity of the challenges, and whether the challenges are unique or recurring.  These two dimensions define for me the essential innovation challenges:

1. Complexity/simplicity attempt to capture the level of the innovation challenge: in terms of knowledge or skills or difficulty needed and inherent characteristics of the area in which we seek to pursue innovations. For instance, taken as a whole, climate change is a complex problem, and innovation here will require more thought than seeing a problem within the climate change area, such as inventing a low energy light bulb (even though it may use mercury!).
2. Unique/recurring attempt to capture the nature of the challenge itself: in terms of whether it is likely to be a single effort, or will involve a repeatable solution to a recurring requirement.

Putting all these together, defines four different types of organisations, any of which can be innovative but in differing ways. I think this is important so that we do not always associate innovation with something esoteric.

This model captures innovation on both the product and service side, as well as a range of contexts from fairly mundane situations, through to the challenges that the survival of humanity may depend on. Migration from one box to another is achieved, obviously, through new knowledge, which can tame complexity and reveal underlying simplicity or by finding common features which shift unique problems into spaces where experience and familiarity can take over. Any box can produce radical and disruptive innovation, any box can benefit from new knowledge, all are addressed through the ability to solve a problem by delivering a solution to the real world.