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Innovation & Creativity
By Mohamed F. Ahmed, PhDProgram Manager @ Microsoft
CREATIVITY
INNOVATION
INVENTION/CREATIVITY IS NOT ENOUGH
Rethinking How We Define Innovation
• The typical definition of innovation– Inventing something novel, introducing
new ideas, making changes, or bucking traditions.
• What’s Innovation?– Innovation is the adoption of new practice
in a community• What’s invention?
– The creation of new ideas, artifacts, processes, or methods, aka Creativity.
Inventions become innovations only when they are adopted into
practices
Innovation = Adoption
Innovation & Creativity are Related But Different
Practice of invention
Practice of innovation
PossibilityAn opportunityIn a breakdown
Offerfor adoption
Adoptionby community
Proposalfor consideration
Community
• The community is the set of people who adopt the new practice
• Aspects of adoption relative to the community– Fit
• The value of the new practice must exceed the cost of the sacrifice they must make to have it.
– Size• Vast majority of innovations happen in small groups
– Degree of change• Sustaining innovation is usually a winning strategy
if have to start small.
Practices, Performance, and Skills
• Practice has four senses:– A customary way or pattern of behavior– Exercise of a profession or discipline– Development of a skill by repetition– Name of a space of human interactions
• To achieve a change of practice in a community means:– Change individual practices– Integrate new practices into existing ones– Change must be consistent with historical
concerns
Practices, Performance, and Skills
• Three levels of performance at innovating:– Novice: act in accordance with one’s understanding
of the rules and steps of innnovation processes
– Skillful: act from embodied skills in the key areas coverd by the eight practices
– Masterful: act from an embodiment so deep that their actions seem intuitive and unique as them mobilize entire communities to think believe, and value differently.
Practices, Performance, and Skills
• A skill is an individual ability to capability to perform a practice acquire or trained by repetition. – It often carries the connotation of
capabilities that are relatively easily transferred from one domain to another.
Adoption
• Adoption comes at three stages:– Considering it– Adopting it for the first time– Sustaining it over a period of time
Success of Innovators
Domain expertise ADOPTION Social
interaction
Opportunities
EIGHT PRACTICES OF INNOVATION
Structure of the Innovation Practices
The main work of invention
• Sensing• Envisioning
The main work of adoption
• Offering• Adopting• Sustaining
The environment for the other practices
• Executing• Leading• Embodying
Every innovation begins with a new possibility. Who cannot find possibilities can not innovate. Finding worthy possibilities turns out to be a challenge for many people
1. SENSING
Sensing
• The sensing practice aims to generate new possibilities for innovation.
• Four Strategies– Source Checking– Learning with Inquiry– Speculating– Sensing
Sensing
• Something is bothering you. Or you feel that there is an opportunity to improve and radically change.
THINKING
FEELING
Sense
Notice
Attend-hold
Articulate
Possibility
2. ENVISIONING
All things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation--Stephen Covey
If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.--Rober McKey
Envisioning• Vision is not enough and your audience can be easily get
disconnected from it.• You need an envisioning story, which provokes three reactions
in listeners:– They understand the future outcome clearly.– They care about this outcome– They see its value
• It should inspire your audience– To believe that there is a better future, well worth sacrificing
what they do to gain it.– To see that a blind spot has kept them from seeing this future
sooner– To trust in your ability and commitment to make it happen– To ask for more conversation about this future
Envisioning :: Story Architecture
• Where will you take us?• Why are we going?• How do we get there?• What’s in it for us?• What’s in it for me?• What do you want from me?• Why should I trust you?
3. OFFERING
Offering• An offer is not an event.• It is a process.• Offers evolve over time in conversations with many
people• Anatomy of an Offer
– Readiness, the innovator’s preparation and willingness to make an offer
– The offer act, the actual steps and interactions of the offer
– Listener response, the assessments made by listeners that affect their willingness to commit
– Anticipating yes, the steps needed to achieve the outcome and manage the risks.
4. ADOPTING
The resistance to change exhibited by social systems is much more nearly a form of “dynamic conservatism” – a tendency to fight to remain the same.-- Donald Schon
Adoption
• Adoption occurs three times in every innovation: in the mind, in the hand, and in the body
• Anatomy of Adoption– Understand the network– Listen to and interact with the network– Blend around resistance– Recruit supporters and allies– Learn what the network values.
5. SUSTAINING
Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.-- Warren BennisTo live for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that susstain life, not the top.--Robert Pirsig
Sustaining• It is about keeping the innovation relevant and useful after
adoption.• You have to setup and provide and environment of your
innovation.• Elements of Environment of an Innovation
– Structure– Conceptual framework– Technology– Incentives– Standard Practices– Possibilities– Breakdowns– Moods
6. EXECUTING
Management is not about making decisions; it is about initiating and guiding conversations. -Fernando Flores
Executing
• execution refers to the actions that convert the possibility offered into a promise delivered.
• No innovation can succeed unless members of the target community trust the innovator's ability to execute and deliver the promise.
Anatomy of Execution
1. Setting context and generating possibilities
2. Managing conversations for action 3. Managing the network of
conversations to coordinate fulfillment and deal with changes and breakdowns
4. Managing breakdowns, changes, and dissatisfaction
7. LEADING
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. -Dwight Eisenhower
Leading
• Leading is the skill of initiating possibility and action with others through conversations that evoke their commitment to a new future.
Anatomy of Leading
Innovation leadership relies on these seven principles: 1. Leaders look for opportunities to take care and produce value. 2. Leaders engage others with new narratives for the future. 3. Leaders make offers, take stands for their offers, and engage
with disagreement and resistance to their offers. 4. Leaders inspire followers to make and sustain commitments;
in so doing they build power for themselves and others. 5. Leaders initiate actions and conversations, accept the risks,
and learn from the consequences. 6. Leaders build a presence, a voice, and identity to have their
offers heard and accepted. 7. Leaders are continually learning and sharpening their own
skills.
8. EMBODYING
Embodying
• When the community embody your innovation, they will speak differently, act differently, feel differently, and even see the world differently.
• The innovator has to manage and maintain coherence among the three dimensions of every practice: language, body, and moods-emotions.
Sensing
Envisioning
Offering
Adopting
Sustaining
Executing
Leading
Embodying
DISCUSSION
By Mohamed F. Ahmed, PhDProgram Manager @ MicrosoftCloud.Azure.Service Bus
Innovation & Creativity