Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
- Henry Ford

Creating A Structure To Support Things Not Yet Seen
The crucial variable in the process of turning knowledge into value is creativity.
- John Kao

To talk about innovation and processes in the same breath seems oxymoronic. While most organizations are designed to take inputs and convert them through a series of conversion efforts into products or services for sale, they are singularly ill-prepared to bring new things to market. Why?

Existing organizations apply functional expertise in the form of departments like; Design, Product Development, Sourcing, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Customer Support, HR, IT, and Finance, etc. They take known inputs, apply existing business processes for conversion into value, and produce recognizable outputs. Where’s the point of inflection? Where is are the processes that foster innovation? The whole enterprise is an inherently stable system designed to retain that stability.

To create innovation there must be a structure that can support the exploration, the risk-taking, the resource expenditure without direct monetary return. A structure that supports innovation must capture and support an organization’s ability to reach beyond what it produces in the present to what it might produce for the future. It demands a structure that can seek and use unknown resources, to build the unknown for unknown customers (or at least meet current customers’ unknown needs!)

The challenge is to reach into that unknown and pull some sense of meaning into the present. To use questioning and learning to first understand, then conceive, then sketch, then model, then prototype an innovation into existence. Part and parcel of that process is to be resilient enough to survive the inevitable hazards of the associated failure.

A Framework For Failure
Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping.
- August Hare

When planning for innovation how we create space for and manage risk (and the possibility of failure) is a primary factor in long-term success. Creating an organizational framework that not only can accept that risk is a primary ingredient in development of the truly new, but one that also has the operational flexibility and resilience to survive the unanticipated failure, is crucial. Yes, the desire to create more first-time successes is strong and should be recognized and valued. But nothing in innovation is ever perfect. Chaos and failure must be expected regardless of whether or not their extent might be anticipated.

A basic process model for innovation might be the following:

At each step there are a series of actions that happen, some sequential and some parallel, but all requiring a vigilance in terms of risk. The paramount question used throughout this process is not framed by “What” or “How” or “How much” but by “Why?” The inquiry contained within “Why?” demands that we constantly test our thinking through every step in the process of innovation. It helps us look beyond the expected and the commonly understood data embodied in the embedded business rules, behavioral norms and measures of our success. This inquiry generates awareness of the wider system of interdependent elements around a design challenge. It also gives us comfort in that it helps us frame possible responses to potential failures. It inoculates us against the pain of failure, keeping us strong for the next attempt.

Beyond High Reliability Organizations
One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity…
- Edward de Bono

One of the off-shoots of social psychology and organization theory explores the concept of “sense-making”. One of pioneers in this area is Karl Weick. He noted that people try to make sense of organizations, and organizations themselves try to make sense of their environment. They are both navigating an ever-changing situation. What does this mean for innovation processes? Weick asks us to focus our attention on questions of ambiguity and uncertainty in this sense-making. Sense-making is the process of creating situational awareness and understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty in order to make decisions. This is a process of inquiry and seeking understanding in a dynamically changing environment. In terms of innovation the environment is the formed by the process of creating something new.

Moving from situational awareness in individuals, to shared awareness and understanding, to collaborative decision-making is a socio-cognitive activity. This approach considers that the individual’s cognitive activities are directly impacted by the social nature of the exchange and vice versa. This is, in a form, a process of co-creation. And the culmination of that sense-making process is one that Weick was also one of the co-developers of, the concept of the “high reliability organizations”. (Others involved in this development were, Karlene H. Roberts, Herbert Simon, and James March.) As noted in Wikipedia.org, “A High Reliability Organization (HRO) is an organization that has succeeded in avoiding catastrophes in an environment where normal accidents can be expected due to risk factors and complexity.” In short is an organization that can be best described as resilient in the extreme.

Organizations that must be successful all of the time continually reinvent themselves. For example, an aircraft carrier uses its functional units slightly differently depending on whether they are on a humanitarian mission, a search and rescue mission, or are engaged in night flight operations training. The same can said for an organization that delivers robust innovations time and time again. They may in fact be termed “highly reliable innovation organization”. They continually reinvent themselves. They build flexible systems that marshal their resources, via their innovation processes, to capitalize on opportunities as they arise. They take great risks, fail often, and yet they endure.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
- Anaïs Nin