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