Innovation Success Requires Both Individual Skills and Organizational Processes

Innovation is one of the hottest, yet most elusive, topics in business.  Nearly everyone is interested in it.  Business leaders want more of it.  But it remains one of the most frustratingly difficult outcomes to achieve in any business. 

Innovation shares many common characteristics with two other hot topics; Leadership and Lean Manufacturing.  Leadership is commonly recognized as an individual skill that can be taught, learned, and exercised.  Lean Manufacturing is commonly recognized as an organizational practice grounded in processes. 

The distinguishing characteristic of Innovation is that innovating, the work of creating innovations, is based upon both individual skills and organizational processes.  To reliably achieve Innovation outcomes, a business must have both the individual skills and the organizational processes that make it possible.

It’s a common occurrence that a business will have either the individual skills or the organizational processes associated with successful innovating.  Businesses with strengths in both areas are rare.

Start-ups and entrepreneurial ventures are driven by the individual innovating skills that uncover and seek to take advantage of new opportunities.  These firms often fail because they don’t have the organizational processes to scale an innovative new solution into a sustainable business.  Established firms often have the organizational processes to bring new solutions to market, but lack the individual skills to uncover customer problems worth solving and invent novel solutions.  In both cases, Innovation success can be elusive.

Innovation success is dependent upon an organizational capability that integrates the individual skills needed for Invention with the organizational processes needed for Introduction.  Similar to Leadership, individual innovating skills can be taught, learned, and exercised.  Similar to Lean Manufacturing, necessary organizational processes can be identified and implemented. 

Agile Innovating ™ has created an innovating practice that integrates the individual skill capabilities of Invention with the organizational capabilities of new solution Introduction.  The eight steps of the A-I Practice are modeled by the Invention Loop and the Introduction Loop of the D8 Infinity Process. 

The four steps of the Invention Loop (Discover, Diagnose, Define, Design), and the three steps of the Introduction Loop (Develop, Deploy, Diffuse), are connected by the Decide step.  The Decide step, which tests new solution Desirability, Feasibility, Viability, and Suitability, is the transition step where the key organizational capability transitions from individual skill to organizational process.

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To innovate well

Skills and processes are key

A balanced practice

– haiku, Kevin A Fee, Nov 27, 2023