When Innovation Becomes Personal

Innovation is often talked about as something that happens to organisations: a new product, a new service, a new strategy, a new way of working.

But sometimes, the real innovation is personal. What if the innovation project is ourselves?

At Perspectiv, we believe the best learning does more than transfer knowledge. It changes how people see themselves, their work and the challenges in front of them. That is why we are delighted to share this reflective piece from an alumni of the Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership, (The MICL at Bayes Business School), which Perspectiv contributed to through its teaching on Learning to Learn, 21c Leadership, Creative Problem Solving, and Delivering Innovation.

Written as a detective story, it follows one student as she uses the frameworks and ideas from the programme to investigate a surprising question: could she herself be an innovation project?

It is thoughtful, playful and deeply relevant to anyone navigating change, uncertainty or reinvention.

Emina Mameledzija - MICL Alumni

A day in the life of a masters in innovation, creativity and leadership detective and how this helped me innovate myself

Author Emina Mameledzija

You are about to read a detective story, but don’t expect the solving of a mysterious crime.

Instead, a Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership student uncovers the world of innovation and it is as exciting as it sounds. Just like Sherlock Holmes, I used a magnifying glass to understand what innovation is and what it takes to obtain value from it.

The Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership at Bayes Business School, pronounced ‘Michael’ but spelled MICL, has enriched my life in many ways. One of them is a magnifying glass, that I’m now carrying with me wherever I go. I use it to zoom into different events, ideas, everything, really. Then I zoom out and see innovation frameworks that were not visible to me before the MICL. This helps me make the most unusual connections.

Like the other day, when I returned home from a long day and realized that I was an innovation project!

First things first

Before I share with you what I discovered with my MICL magnifying glass, let’s get you on the same page by establishing what we in the MICL mean when we talk about innovation.

Sure, innovation and creativity are “buzz words” and whilst there is plenty of muddle surrounding what creativity and innovation mean, as you’d expect from a Business School, Bayes provides some rigour and science to the terms. One useful way I found to look at them is to connect them. Creativity can be seen very broadly, as anything that is new and useful. And in this context, innovation is the commercialisation or implementation of something new and useful.

Another perspective I liked, and use is innovation is ‘any project that is new [to your organisation] and has an uncertain outcome’. Finally, by merging the two definitions, we could say that innovation is any project that is new, is intended to be useful, and has an uncertain outcome. Remember this because this is how I will assess innovation in this detective story.

And one more thing before we move on. There are many different ways to categorise innovation. For the purpose of my story we will focus on one aspect: What do we want to achieve by implementing our innovation project? Do we want an incremental change? Or do we aim at doing something that we have never done before?

By looking at it from this angle, we can distinguish between what’s been called a Step, a Stretch, or a Leap flavour of innovation. And in addition, depending on which flavour we require, the execution of each type requires a completely different approach. In summary, Steps and Stretches can be done inside the organisation and Leaps need to be done outside the organisation.

Back to my discovery

At the end of a long day of MICL lectures, I was ready to go to bed. But as I reflected on what we learned that day, the question I suddenly asked myself surprised me: ‘Could it be that I am an innovation project?’

I started to analyse myself: I questioned my previous career choices because I felt something was missing. In my pursuit of meaning and self-discovery, I enrolled in the MICL. I triggered a journey without a clear ending in sight. Hm, didn’t we say that innovation was any project that was new, intended to be useful and uncertain? Ok, this definitely meant that I could pass as an innovation project?! And on top of that, wasn’t I embarking on a Leap?! After all, I completely left my comfort zone, right?

After the initial breakdown, I calmed myself and, like a real MICL detective, used a framework to analyse myself. After all, if I was an innovation project, I wanted to find out how well I was performing.

I remembered the MICL framework that we used in class to assess innovation, the Path to Innovation Valorisation:

Whilst in real life, innovation does not follow this linear path, it’s useful to see it like this to understand and plan – a bit like the Underground Tube Map of London. Ok, let’s start. What was my need? To rediscover myself and find meaning in my work. This I learned is Drucker’s 6th source of innovation: change in perception and meaning.

And the idea? To reassess and diversify my skillset and discover what I truly enjoy doing, in an environment that will challenge me.

My solution? Take the MICL and evaluate my options before I commit to a specific transition. For this, prototype by using the MVP (‘Minimal Viable Product’) approach: (1) take different modules, (2) talk to lectures and students, and (3) network with professionals. Then reflect on my learnings, decide what I have to unlearn from my past, and with every new learning, decide if I had to preserve or pivot my strategy.

Next, how did I diffuse my solution and to whom? Interestingly, I started the MICL journey with an urge to diffuse it to my environment. I felt I needed to rationalise this strange pivot in my career to others. And that was easy. I convinced them by pointing to the booming interest in innovation in the legal profession.

But, was I targeting the right audience? No! I had completely detached my diffusion strategy from my need. I had to rethink who my target audience was. Let’s see, the need for innovation was purely personal and therefore I had to focus on internal diffusion: myself. I was my own beachhead and I had to be honest with myself. This realisation made me run back to my room, bring out post-its, and start a Task Appraisal exercise that we learned in the MICL, at 1 am!

An hour later I had reassessed my diffusion approach and I found my pain point: I was afraid of the uncertainty of my innovation strategy. The fear blocked me from completely accepting my innovation. I realized what I had to do: change the way I communicate to myself. I had to use more affirmative language and make myself embrace the uncertainty as an opportunity.

The Task Appraisal also helped me change the way I looked at the final stage, valorisation. Innovation efforts cannot be evaluated the same way we evaluate repetitive, low-risk tasks. Therefore, I looked back at my need and asked myself: ‘Would you prefer you never stepped out of your routine?’ The answer was easy. Irrespective of the uncertainty of my new journey, since I enrolled in the MICL, I had grown more than I ever thought was possible. And all my new learnings, however small, were step innovations that would eventually lead me to the big leap. With the newly gained confidence I was finally ready to go to sleep. What a day!

Bibliography

Drucker, P.F. (1996) Innovation and entrepreneurship: practice and principles, Rev edn. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.

Wilkins, A. (2019). The Innovation Types Step, Stretch, and Leap; Exploratory and Developmental Innovation. [PowerPoint presentation]. INM405: Delivering Innovation – Delivering Innovation - Turning Ideas into Value. 4-6 February.

Huthwaite, B. (2007) The Lean Design Solution: A Practical Guide to Streamlining Product Design and Development, Inst. for Lean Innovation

Govindarajan, V. and C. Trimble. (2013) Beyond the Idea. How to Execute Innovation in Any Organization, Pan Macmillan

Wilkins, A. (2019) The Path to Innovation Valorisation Framework. [PowerPoint presentation]. INM405 Delivering Innovation - Turning Ideas into Value. 4-6 February.