I promissed you the presentation from Susanne - here it is 
Please comment on the different posts below.
Archive for the ‘Innovating with Diversity’ Category
Paul Bennett - IDEO, London
Companies doesn’t innovate – people do!
Companies aren’t diverse – people are!
Companies aren’t creative – people are!
It’s not about talking about diversity, design and innovation - it’s about actually doing it!!
Susanne had a brilliant presentation taking about here research. The main purpose of her study is -
- THE PURPOSE IS RATHER - TO UNDERSTAND THE MECHANISMS OF DIVERSITY
- AND HOW THEY AFFECT INNOVATIVE PRACTICE
She pointed especially to the differerent relationships between Innovation and Diversity -
5 drivers:
- Absorptive capacity
- Requisite variety
- Network variety
- Creative destruction
- Problemsolving / decision making
3 destructive drivers:
- GOAL INCONGRUENCE
- INTERGROUP ANXIETY
- MISCOMMUNICATION
Susanne, please unfold these verey interesting headlines for us……please
NB. In a day or two I’ll make a extended post about some of the drivers.
I’ll try to collect as much as I can and send it to you directly - interested? Please mail me at hans dot henrik at hoejberg dot dk
Karsten Zakarias (Nokia) & Ouafa Rian - B&O
Interesting experiences - they experienced that Innovatis is a non-linar process.
Management team faces problems in managing the process - it’s more about leadership. It’s a complete other aspect.
- Diversity is THE leverage point to deliver complexity.
- Innovation is non-linear: Chaotic, unpredictable but NOT coincidental.
- Experience + value = meaning
- Innovation leadership is creating perspective asking questions and formulating language
- Organisations need channeling NOT management
- Innovation is everybody’s task
- Utilizing boundary objects
- Team structure.
Btw - Karsten and Ouafa pointed to a very interesting article covering the field. Read more.
Mark Turrell - Imaginatik
It’s not about managing a spreadsheet with lot of ideas – its more about early stage concept management. Idea mangement.
The Innovative Imperative
- Global competition
- Avoid commoditization
- Deliver organic growth
- Expand markets
- Leverage Interlectual property
- Changing regulation…
- …and next year only gets challenging
The growth gab – you need to have a plan for where the future revenue is coming from.
Describe the growth/innovation – gab.
The idea Management Process
- Events
- Generate
- Capture
- Build
- Evaluate
- Select
I’ll come back to the slides presented.
Between the presentations the participants have the opportunity for discussing their perspectives on the subjects… The following is a few of the subjects discussed at one table - and rethought once more before written here…
- How do you define diversity? All though according to Jack Cohen we are biologically very similar, actually all human beings are very different. Human beings will naturally tend to interact on their similarities and create bonding and relations that way. Could we make a social experiment where we would only highlight the differences in each other in stead of the similarities?
- From participants - and practitioners - perspectives a lot of the functioning of groups is actually about "chemistry" - whether you can function together as persons. But what is this "chemistry" about?
- Constrains will often foster the innovation process - and so will thinking from the ideal situation. When can you use constrains and when can you use ideal thinking in creative and innovative processes?
- According to practitioners it is important to make teams according to different personality types and disciplinary skills - but in reality what often happens is that the people available will be the people in the group….
- It is good to work with different systems for personality types for several reasons: It gives a better insight in one self and it gives a better understanding of the others. And it is a tool for understanding differences in preferences, thinking styles and working modes and not least a tool for talking about these differences and moving on with the work.
What are your experiences of and reflections on diversity of people in groups or other settings?
When does a difference make a difference?
PhD Niall Connolly, HP Manufacturing, Ireland
Social Innovation – Highly interesting – one of his points is that you seek knowledge where you are used to look for information. It restricts the solution.
He differs between heterogene and homogene groups. The more heterogene you are as a group the less you communicate.
Diversity, leads to less communication, leads to conflict.
What does that mean to innovation.
I NEED, NEED , NEED his presentation….;-)
Barry Katz’s presentation of the ApproTec project of making a pump for the bottom classes in Kenya and Tanzania concluded that although this project was non profit there was a lot to be gained from it:
- Because of the project group being very fluid with people joining before and after working hours it had to involve a very high degree of knowledge management to ensure that the right competencies were used and that learning was passed on.
- Because of the challenges of the project regarding usability, mobility, costs and more there was a high level of technical learning.
- The project lead to a high degree of community building because it involved people from different areas and created a high level of trust and community in the organisation.
- This project has given a lot of "bragging rights" because of its nonprofit character and actually given an amount of positive publicity that could never have been paid for.
Finally worth mentioning is that this very simple and yet advanced product created by committed people before and after working hours has improved life significantly for more than 30.000 people and created a basis for further development of the rural sectors of Kenya and Tanzania.
The point of not only thinking in diversity in innovation regarding the input in the process but also the output gives food for thought. It opens up for rethinking the possibilities of creating concepts that will be a win win situation to the people both in the top and the bottom of the pyramid.
At what levels and in what areas can we apply our abilities for creative and innovative thinking?
Nel Mostert, Unilever R&D in the Netherlands.
How can you motivate to creativity?
Nel presented several tools to motivate creativity: When you encounter a problem, you immediately try to find a solution.
She stats that companies can’t be Innovative without creativity.
The Creativity is a process, Innovation is a result.She ran through the obvious fields of what diversity is – ge, gender, culture, language, nationality, Cultural difference, work level, background…..Everybody is creative, she states.
She mentioned Einstein:
The mindset who created the problem can’t be the one solving it – Albert Einstein
He usually worked by him self, he’s ideas incubated over time and during his private sessions. She mentioned another one as well. One of here conclusions was that you need to be alone to produces creativity. Afterwards sharing the thoughts results groundbreaking idea’s.
What does that mean in terms of working with creativity?
Introvert and extrovert people corporate in different ways = pair them in the creative process.
Creativity is destruction – to create something new means that you have to destroy something else.
To be really creative you have to be in a very secure environment.
You don’t need big groups to be creative – you need to be creative in your own mind.
Please share – what do you think?