Building Innovation Capability

[Braden Kelley]

What secrets have you found to building innovation capability in your organization?

Share and discuss them here.

[Dan Robles]

Factors of production for innovation are threefold; intellectual capital, creative capital, and social capital. Many academicians argue that intellectual capital - the ivy league education, solving a rubic cube, calculating pi to 1000 digits in your head - is the only factor and they recommend segregating communities by GPA, GMAT, SAT's and % rejected from a caste, etc. Others say that Social Capital - the democratic system, teamwork, communities of practice and social networks - are responsible for the most value creation. Still other academics say that creative capital - Hollywood, the 60's, out-of-the-boxers, dreamers, and visionaries - are responsible for all wealth creation. The problem with academia is that in order for one to be right about their theory, they need to prove all the others to be wrong, hence stagnation.

The factors of production, in fact, are all three - intellecual, social, and creative capital + entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, by the way, are people who elevate an asset from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity - very simple, we all do it every day when we wake up for work. Anyway, only the 99.999 percentile human has all of these three components so that's who the VC are looking for - not the rest of us; many geeks are scared spitless speaking in front of a crowded room. Professional speakers hate doing the research to verify facts. Social butterflies can't sit still long enough to calculate anything and just want to bring people together in a big party. This is the real world. The best theory will accommodate what happens in the real world.

One of the problems with our society is that we are all about sports analogies - there can only be one winner and everyone else is a loser. Win or lose and nothing in between. Not right stuff = wrong stuff. So we all compete ineffectively when in fact we need each other and our diversity to innovate. If you put 6 Mechanical Engineers in a room and tell them to build a better mousetrap, you'll get a splendid new shingle with a better spring loaded whacker. If you put an ethicist, a mechanical engineer, a mother of 4 rowdy children, a school teacher, a sales woman, and an physician in a room and tell them to build a better mouse trap - I can't tell you what they will come up with but I know it will be innovative!

In markets, there are no winners an losers, only different markets. There is a market for a Kia and there is a market for a Lexus - they don't really compete with each other and neither should we. It's about having a knowledge inventory of the people in front of you today, then mixing and matching all the old ideas in new ways until you get a good idea. There is no such thing as new ideas, only old ideas mixed in new ways - we have the luxury to come up with our so-called "new" ideas because someone before us invented the wheel.

Today we have an inventory of every nut, bolt, rivet and panel - traceable to the ingot from which it was smelted - to build a commercial airplane. But we do not have a knowledge inventory of the knowledge that exists in society. This is a HUGE omission. You can't build it unless you can find the pieces. We need to put the pieces together.