Innovation

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INNOVATION

Google’s Dictionary defines innovation as: “the action or process of innovating.” And includes the following example: "innovation is crucial to the continuing success of any organization."

Whereas Dictionary.com defines the verb, to innovate, as (bolded by me):

Innovation is indeed “crucial to the continuing success of any organization”; so much so that it deserves its own section.

TO CONFORM OR DIVERGE

Whilst Uniformity is an important enabler for large-scale development (scaling up), and alignment, it isn’t necessarily a desirable trait for innovation, which keeps your business strong and competitive.

Would Cezanne, Monet, or Van-Gogh have produced such feats of brilliance, had they been constrained by existing practices? Would we have Picasso, Harrison (longitude), Gillilao, Franklin, or Darwin, had they conformed to social expectations, or established practices? Of course not. And it would be disingenuous to suggest that these greats simply stumbled upon their innovation(s); rather, it was a series of long-drawn, hard-fought successes, and (many) failures, before they found their path. [1] Whilst most of us probably aren’t working on such dizzying innovations, the same principles, used by these greats, still hold true.

“I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” ― Benjamin Franklin

INNOVATION != CONFORMITY

Innovation doesn't conform to the usual principles. You can’t bind it to the same approaches that you might use on a “conformity” project. It's pioneering, and there’s rarely a recipe.

INNOVATION & TIME

It’s commonly held (at least in management lore) that settling on a completion date (even if it's arbitrary) can be a good way to focus effort, and avoid Gold-Plating. I’ve certainly seen it spur a team on to move at a much greater rate of knots than was typical (Sustainability is - of course - a different question). This approach, though, is better suited to problem solving with a Known Quantity, and less so to Innovation.

Innovation - by its very definition (“to introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time”) - is something new, untried, and generally fits poorly into a Known Quantity model. It is, by its nature, a leap into the unknown. You don’t know what you’ll discover, or how long it will take to find it. It’s probably something you’ve never done before, or encountered, so considerable time will be consumed with tentative steps and false starts. Rigid completion dates may be unfavourable to this model because, rather than learn at each step, we might take shortcuts, or revert to conformity, to satisfy the date; thus, we are only partially innovating.

THE INNOVATION SPACE

Innovation fits better into the Complex (or even the Chaotic) space of the Cynefin framework. As such, there’s no obvious relationship between cause and effect, and we should treat it differently than conventional solutions (like analysis). Innovation often uses fail-safe trials (Safety Net) to shape the next set of decisions.

TYING A BUSINESS OUTCOME TO INNOVATION

Tying an important business outcome - such as landing a big customer - to Innovation can be a dangerous game. Whilst the pay-offs could be huge, you’re coupling a business outcome to an unknown quantity (which may be nothing more than a high-stakes bet).

TOOLS & TECHNIQUES

If you’re in the technology space (which I assume you are if you’re reading this), then you probably want to run your trials, and learn as quickly as possible, in order to run more trials, and repeat. Successful innovation likely involves the employment of some of the tools and techniques mentioned below.

TOOLS TO SUPPORT INNOVATION

Let’s face it, there’s only ever a finite amount of time (and money) available to us. Teams (and businesses) that are slow to adapt, will typically miss more opportunities as they sacrifice “something” to the gods of time. The most successful innovators are usually the ones who employ aids to speed up learning.

Some of the aids at your disposal include:

All of these techniques offer up a platform for innovation, without (necessarily) making customers aware of it, or exposing the underlying business to considerable risk. It may also be the boundary where innovation meets conformity.

I discuss some of these techniques next.

THE CLOUD

Some teams can be hampered by the availability of other teams. For instance, it’s quite common for innovative technology projects to require new hardware and infrastructure, with immediate need, whilst limiting heavy spend (CapEx costs). This can be difficult to source, or prepare, if it requires the availability of others.

The Cloud offers such a solution, with an efficient and reliable way to provision infrastructure, or services, in a matter of hours, that regularly outcompetes a slow and arduous requisitioning exercise.

SWIFT-LEARNING OVER GOLD-PLATING

The approach to learning is another important consideration. I tend to look for risks, or unknowns, with the aim of swift resolution. This approach suggests that conventional ideas (ones that have already been solved) can be left until a bit later.

If necessary, we can “integrate” the pieces together manually at first. Remember, we’re here to prove the solution is workable, not to bring it all together (another problem for another day).

If you have a large project consisting of many pieces (or varying size, and complexity), that (eventually) need connected, I'd suggest:

You don’t need to polish and robustify every unit before moving on to the next. And whilst that may seem counterintuitive, it’s mainly about outlook and perspective. It may well be less efficient to stop working on a unit only to return to it again to improve it a bit later, but we’re focused on proving out an idea (a form of betting), and not robustifying or Gold-Plating - a poor investment of time and money if the idea was always doomed to failure.

THE (MISPLACED) QUALITY ARGUMENT

People may argue that you’re not treating quality as a first-class citizen. And they’d be right. But you’re not trying to. The fault lies in their outlook, not in your approach. And arguably, focusing on quality when direction is the thing of import aligns more closely to a Waterfall mindset than to an Agile one.

Building in quality takes (up-front) time and investment, and whilst it shouldn’t be neglected, it makes more sense to introduce it once we’ve proven the idea to be sound, desirable (to customers), and once we’ve progressed away from innovation (and complexity) and closer to conformity. Don’t polish something you’re not confident will survive first contact with the enemy.

Note, at no point have I suggested that you don't introduce quality, only that you consider the when of its introduction.

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

INNOVATION TRIAD

I sometimes hear industry experts talk about software being the driving force of change in our industry. Whilst I understand their sentiment, I don’t entirely agree.

There's an interesting, self-perpetuating, innovation triad between the three driving parties of people, platform, and technology. Software (a subset of technology) has limited value, and isn’t - in most cases - particularly habit-changing, unless it can be distributed and consumed by great numbers of people to drive behavioural and societal (i.e. sustained) change. Adding a platform can have extraordinary results.

See below.

As a sweeping generalisation, each force has a limited range, and therefore, effect upon the others. Combine them, however, and we begin to see more obvious and direct influences. Software needs a Platform to be discovered, distributed, and consumed by People. People use the software for a purpose - such as to improve (we hope) some aspect of their life, or work; but they need a Platform to access it. People’s behaviour, in turn, influences (and are influenced) and forces change and innovation back around the cycle, where it is later consumed, and evolved by all three parties.

HISTORY

Comparably speaking, software from the pre-internet days was constrained to pre-internet-level consumption, so could never achieve the potential success available to modern products (rightly or wrongly, I’m evaluating success in terms of global consumerism and social impact). Even the most innovative products had a finite reach. And whilst there was a nascent, but rudimentary, distribution platform (through Operating Systems, or as physical copies, like CDs), software was still standalone in nature (deployed individually on the host computer), rarely interacted with anything other than the host computer, and there was little in the way of an open and highly-accessible distribution or information-sharing platform. The backbone needed for information-sharing (our information platform) was missing.

The notion of people and businesses sharing information and services together in a (almost) seamless, on-demand manner with others (systems, businesses, devices, and people) was yet to be realised, and thus, there was little consumer appetite for it. Businesses didn’t yet have the capabilities to benefit from sharing vast amounts of data and services to (for instance):

Of course there were exceptions - for instance, some of the business-oriented software, distributed alongside operating systems has certainly changed people’s working habits and increased efficiency - but comparably speaking, they had little social impact.

None of what we now view as normal would have been possible without a resilient and highly-scalable information and distribution platform (the Internet). Its acceptance - followed up shortly after by web services - provided new opportunities to share information, not only between businesses, but between individuals, across the globe, and has driven demand for similar services. This, in turn, has spurred businesses on to build more software and platforms for the market.

THE TRIAD

The platform has shaped many innovations that were impractical only a decade or so earlier. New business opportunities in TV, film, and live sports events for streaming services have popped up, whilst the original market (e.g. physical rental) grew stale and died. Accounting software - once the domain of the desktop - has successfully transitioned onto the the Cloud, supporting both a more friendly self-service model, and a service-oriented, fully-managed subscription pricing model. Customers can now interact with banking services through the convenience of their arm-chair; something inconceivable twenty years ago. Software was influential, but the Platform was necessary to change people’s habits.

SOFTWARE’S ABILITY TO INFLUENCE

Heaping all this praise upon the platform is - of course - unfair. Software can also influence how people work, or behave socially; but it's the strength and wide availability of the (distribution and information) platform, in partnership with great software products, that influences the great majority. A great software product with poor distribution channels is a waste of considerable effort.

SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLETS

Social media outlets are a good example of something that has radically changed people’s behaviour (in good and bad ways), including: how they define relationships and interact with others, what type of information they publicly divulge, their political views and beliefs, their likes and dislikes, and even their retail habits. The catalyst here is not so much the software, but an information platform.

The idea of a self-perpetuating innovation triad is an important one. Software couldn’t really succeed independently, as a social influencer, prior to the internet. And people couldn’t receive the benefits until there was a distribution and information platform for them to consume the software services and information. People share information with software and it is distributed or stored on a platform. The information platform can be interrogated by businesses to see how people behave, and how to shape the software better.


Content is just information. Get the right software, delivered on the right platform, to the right (and sufficient quantities of) people, and you’ve a good chance to create some form of social change.

SUMMARY

Sorry for the innocuous ramble. I had two points:

You can call this platform anything you like. It’s probably a mixture of a distribution, execution, availability, and/or information platform. A platform could also be some form of hardware, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) platforms.

Sometimes innovation is thrust upon us by events outside of our control. The COVID-19 outbreak showed how market influencers can come from unexpected sources. It changed the way many of us communicated and interacted with one another, pushing traditional technophobes to use new and entirely unfamiliar video chat products. I guess you might say innovation influencers may come in a triad of four :)

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

RECALIBRATION WOBBLE

Innovation - at its most fundamental - is a leap into the unknown, followed by a subsequent discovery. A recalibration wobble occurs directly after each discovery - it is a necessary recalibration and realignment, as we adjust to new information. See below.


We may view the road to innovation as a series of steps - where each discovery represents a new step - until the goal is reached. Think of it as a series of smaller innovations, followed by a period of recalibration and incremental improvements, before the next spark, and therefore another recalibration. Naturally, a period of recalibration will also exhibit a slowdown, as we adjust existing technologies, tooling, culture, or team dynamics before we can use them to our advantage.

Rigidity is an interesting consideration here. During recalibration, the rigidity of existing tools, technologies, practices, or team dynamics may also affect the pace at which it occurs, and thus how quickly the next innovation step is reached.

So, what is this rigidity? Well, it's any obstacle that obstructs us at inopportune times, and is difficult to push aside. This could be a team structure (one that previously worked, but now doesn't since the new discovery), a lack of team capacity or skill set, or a dictat on a specific technology/platform selection. It could even be the overzealous application of automated testing in a location which hampers the newly discovered direction (this isn't a disparaging remark about test automation, only about the context of its application).