Diversify Your Network. Ignite Innovation. #cindertoflame

Diversity Your Network Ignite Innovation

The quest for major innovation is fueled by a diverse network of people to source, connect, and build upon multiple ideas and perspectives.

In large Corporations, the onus for major innovation may be restricted to senior executives huddled around a boardroom table. However, a healthy corporate culture repositions major innovation as a shared endeavor that extends horizontally across departments, is bidirectional vertically (top-down and bottom-up) and reaches beyond the corporate walls. Consider the example of public-private partnerships (PPPs) with municipal, provincial or federal government to render the most efficient and effective service or product design and delivery.

Creative thinking for innovative solutions entails a journey of co-design that begins with engaging the end users of a service (or product) - clients or customers. Crowd sequencing and crowdsourcing leverages the external community to obtain information. This is critical when addressing problem uncertainty to ensure the focus is on the right problem(s) and when identifying the right solution(s) that best match consumer needs or desires.

Networking frequently enlists usual partners, colleagues and teams within a given field of expertise. For example, municipalities or hospitals tend to collaborate with others of similar size, and employees focus on their specific professional network.

A narrow network promotes groupthink that erects barriers to complete and accurate information, and results in cognitive bias that blinds people in Corporations to novel opportunities and innovative solutions.

An excerpt from a quote by Donald Rumsfeld captures the issue of cognitive bias:

“… there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

A healthy corporate culture for major innovation overcomes cognitive bias by expanding the partnership net, ensuring exposure to many people in different fields and walks of life (to deplete the unknowns). Studies have shown that unusual partnerships - collaborating with people outside a given field of expertise - are better able to identify blind spots and untapped opportunities. One study reported that the most novel change ideas and solutions were generated by outsiders, who worked in a different field because they were not limited by shared viewpoints and conventional practices (Franke, Poetz and Schreier 2014).

Ponder these two quotations:

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up." (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.” (Margaret Heffernan)

Cinder to Flame helps Corporations solve complex challenges with strategic services that energize people, fuel a healthy corporate culture and ignite major innovation.

A healthy corporate culture for major innovation connects silos of expertise, invites divergent thinking, conflicting perspectives and polar opposite ideas. This fuels integrative thinking that leverages the tension between competing ideas or solutions, as the springboard to innovation.

Let's explore opportunities to diversify your network and ignite major innovation: https://www.cindertoflame.ca/contact

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