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TOOLS AND IDEAS FOR SYSTEMIC INNOVATION Erika Gregory Arnold Wasserman Collective Invention

Tools and Ideas for Systemic Innovation

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If we are to make good use of opportunities for innovation in the healthcare, energy, and education sectors we will need to equip a whole generation with shared language and methodology for social innovation. We will need to teach the habits of mind that fuel collaborative innovation across domains and sectors. And we will need to stop thinking that innovation centers will solve the problem: we need to build reliable, replicable human-centered innovation systems.

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Page 1: Tools and Ideas for Systemic Innovation

TOOLS AND IDEAS FOR SYSTEMIC INNOVATION

Erika Gregory Arnold Wasserman

Collective Invention

Page 2: Tools and Ideas for Systemic Innovation
Page 3: Tools and Ideas for Systemic Innovation

“The United States of America did not become the most prosperous na-tion on Earth by sheer luck or happenstance.  We got here because

each time a generation of Americans has faced a changing world, we have changed with it.”

President Barack ObamaCarnegie Mellon University

June - 2010

Page 4: Tools and Ideas for Systemic Innovation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Fiona Hovenden, PhD and David Karshmer for their contributions to this work.

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• Charterforahighly-effectiveinnovationteam• Detailedpictureofthecurrentstate• Frameworkforguidingsystemicadoptionofinnovationpracticesand

protocols• Alternativescenariosintheshort,mediumandlong-term• TheInternalInnovationStudy

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• Refinedimplementationplananddashboardforassessingprogress• Learn-by-Doinginnovationtrainingprogramforinnovationfacilitators/

staff• PrototypeInnovationCentertoolkitandcurricula• InnovationTraining• ToolkitDevelopment

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• RefinedInnovationCentertoolkitandcurricula• Mentorshipandcoachingasnewprocessesandprogramsareimple-

mented• Diffusionofinnovationcenterpracticesinthegreatersystemandcom-

munity• Evaluation• FeedforwardLearning&Iteration• InnovationDiffusion&Adoption

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TABLE OFCONTENTS

Quotes

Overview: Building an Innovation Ecosystem

What We Have Learned

Phase One: Discovery

• Charterforahighly-effectiveinnovationteam• Detailedpictureofthecurrentstate• Frameworkforguidingsystemicadoptionofinnovationpracticesand

protocols• Alternativescenariosintheshort,mediumandlong-term• TheInternalInnovationStudy

Phase Two: Design And Development

• Refinedimplementationplananddashboardforassessingprogress• Learn-by-Doinginnovationtrainingprogramforinnovationfacilitators/

staff• PrototypeInnovationCentertoolkitandcurricula• InnovationTraining• ToolkitDevelopment

Phase Three: Delivery

• RefinedInnovationCentertoolkitandcurricula• Mentorshipandcoachingasnewprocessesandprogramsareimple-

mented• Diffusionofinnovationcenterpracticesinthegreatersystemandcom-

munity• Evaluation• FeedforwardLearning&Iteration• InnovationDiffusion&Adoption

About Design Thinking and Lean Sigma

About Collective Invention And Contact

Recent and Current Clients

Bibliography

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OVERVIEW: BUILDING ANINNOVATIONECOSYSTEM

In the past two decades, we’ve seen seen explosive growth in bio, info, and nanotechnologies. But in many respects our social structures—education, health, and government itself—have not kept pace. In spite of (some might argue because of) the increasing fragility of existing systems, a global ecology of social innovation seems to be emerging. After all, our future depends on reinventing and re-energizing social institutions and bonds, and progress relies on both new technologies and new social arrangements to liberate and direct human creativity, knowledge, and energy.

Evidence of the new innovation ecosystem in the United States includes healthcare innovation zones, energy innovation hubs, and advanced re-search projects. From energy (Energy Frontier Research Centers, or “ARPA-E”) to education (Advanced Research Project Agency, or “ARPA-ED”), such initiatives mirroring the entrepreneurial spirit of the Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA). A combination of federal tax credits and pro-grams (Startup America, Regional Innovation Clusters) incent or support entrepreneurism and collaborative experimentation; the patent process is being revamped to quicken the process of bringing good new ideas to mar-ket. Meanwhile domain-specific innovation centers like Kaiser Permanente’s Sydney R. Garfield Healthcare Innovation Center have emerged as “safe spaces” for technologists, medical practitioners and facilities designers to cooperate in the development of new solutions.

"Entrepreneurs, researchers and innovators want to be around each other. They want to feed off the shared creative energy. They want access to a shared talent pool. They want to build relationships. So if a local community is able to plant that seed— if it's able to create the climate for innovation and build a critical mass— then private investment will follow. Innovation will follow. Jobs will follow."

John FernandezAssistant Secretary

US Economic Development Agency

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Collective Invention

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Through experiences across a variety of institutions and disciplines, we have uncovered key elements that foster the growth of collective invention. Organizations can and do learn to use all the information at their disposal to engage the individual and collective “whole mind” through visual tools, experiential learning, and intensive, focused workshops or “charrettes.” Successful leaders of innovation develop an awareness of when to form collaborative groups and when to unleash resources for the solo visionary. Meanwhile we now understand the critical importance of cognitive diversity in collaborative creativity.

If we are to make good use of oppor-tunities earmarked for innovation in the healthcare, energy and education sectors we will need to equip a whole generation with shared language and methodology for social innovation. We will need to teach the habits of mind that fuel collaborative innovation across domains and sectors. And we will need to stop thinking that innovation centers will solve the problem: we need to build reliable, replicable human-centered in-novation systems.

Innovation for the Common Good™

What we currently lack, however, is shared language and a disciplined, transparent process methodology. While we can point to excellent ex-amples of innovation process being brought to bear on social problems around the world, we are still missing key elements of a coherent, sys-temic approach to social innovation:

• A concrete, shared vision of life in a transformed world

• Mechanisms for innovating at the intersection of domains like health, education, environment and new capital markets

• A practical curriculum for collaborative innovation and co-design targeted to this effort

Leadership

ProcessOrganization

Modeling Behavior

Vision

Building Culture

Design Thinking

Principles

Protocols

Methods

Techniques

Tools

VirtualFacilities

Physical

Program

Structure

Operations

Management

Strategy

Policy

Embracing Experimentation

Changing the Conditions

Space

Innovationsystem

Building an Innovation System

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In the late 1990’s in San Francisco we built The Idea Factory (www.ideafac-tory.com), a space and process for organizational innovation. We replicated that model in Amsterdam, Paris, London and eventually Singapore, where The Idea Factory is headquartered today. What we learned from our work with government ministries to industry consortia, from multinational corpo-rations to small schools and non-profits, is that innovation centers create helpful but insufficient conditions for successful innovation. In the absence of leadership and organizational structures that both incent and enable new ways of working, the innovation center is never absorbed into the organiza-tional or sectoral bloodstream.

This understanding, combined with our awareness of an emerging zeitgeist of social innovation, led original members of the Idea Factory team to come back together in 2005 to form Collective Invention (www.collectiveinvention.com). Our focus: building innovation systems that encompass four key do-mains: leadership, organizational structure, process, and space. Address-ing those four domains requires several phases of attentive, disciplined work.

WHAT WE HAVELEARNED

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Collective Invention

Innovation resides at the intersection of invention and insight leading to the creation of social and economic value adopted at scale.

US National Innovation Initiative

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Charter for a highly effective in-novation team including

Detailed picture of the current state and scenarios for the future

Framework for guiding systemic adoption of innovation practices and protocols

Leadership collaboration and coaching

Refined implementation plan and dashboard for assessing progress

Learn-by-doing innovation training programs

Prototype toolkit and curricula

Refined toolkit and curricula

Mentorship and coaching as new processes and programs are im-plemented

Integration of innovation with other embedded processes, e.g. Six Sigma

Diffusion of innovation practices in the greater system and community

PHASE ONE: DISCOVERY

PHASE TWO: DESIGN ANDDEVELOPMENT

PHASE THREE: DELIVERY

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Leading Against the Norm

“Especiallyinthescientificcommunity,peoplearestuckinhowtheyap-proachproblems.Thedaybeforesomethingisabreakthroughitwasacrazyidea.Ifitwasn’tcrazyyesterday,itisn’tabreakthroughtoday.Andbreak-throughideascansometimesbeembarrassingiftheydon’timmediatelyleadtoresults.”

Dr. Peter Diamandis, Founder of the X-Prize

PHASE ONE: DISCOVERY

• Charter for a highly-effective innovation team

• Detailed picture of the current state and scenarios for the future

• Framework for guiding systemic adoption of innovation practices and protocols

Collective Invention

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The Core TeamA best-of-class core team, comprising of staff committed to the innovation process and deeply familiar with the context, drives the work of systemic innovation. High-functioning teams understand the diverse cognitive styles, behaviors and attitudes of each individual, capitalizing on strengths and miti-gating weaknesses. An early step in formation of a core team is facilitation of behavioral profiles designed to enable us all to see how best to structure and collaborate as a group.

Armed with a Charter that describes in detail the commitments of all in-volved, rules of engagement, decision-making protocols and measures of success to be used throughout the process, the core team maintains align-ment with larger strategic goals and organizational capacities and estab-lishes operating norms.

Internal DiscoveryThe purpose of an internal ethnographic study is to understand the culture of the organization and the tacit or latent knowledge contained in the minds, experience and sensibilities of the people who work there. Ethnography can help to surface ways of operating and behaving that people would never otherwise think to articulate, but which represent valuable knowledge of several kinds(drawn from the MId-Continent Research for Education and Learning’s (McREL) Balanced Leadership Framework”)

• Experiential knowledge Knowing why something is important

• Declarative knowledge Knowing what to do

• Procedural knowledge Knowing how to do it

• Contextual knowledge Knowing when to do it

An outcome of the Internal Discovery phase is often a set of models that represent our analysis of how an organization currently works so that partici-pants can create a shared language that allows them to consciously learn from and adapt current ways of operating to the construction of new ways of working. Another outcome is that an organization’s articulated “DNA”—its own unique and successful methodology and practice—can provide the foundation for collaborative development of new programs, services and markets.

Innovation for the Common Good™

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Internal Innovation StudyIn the Innovation Study we seek to understand five main things:

• Leadership capacity:Innovationleadersmustmodeltolerancefordeviationandrisk.Thisconstitutesamajorcultureshiftinfieldslikeeducationandhealthcare,wherewegenerallyseektocontrolriskandallbuteliminatedeviationfromthenorm.

• Internal logic of the culture of the organization,system or region:Howandwhythingscurrentlyfunctionthewaytheydo,andhowdifferent‘subcultures’withintheorganizationworktogether

• Critical dynamic functions of finance, HR, and strategic planning: Howtheyinteracttocreateaninnovationecosystem

• Established innovation practice: Howandwhereithastakenrootandisbeingused

• Adoption patterns: Whatcanwelearnthatwillhelpusdesignanef-fectiveplanfordiffusinginnovationpracticethroughoutthesystem

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With this information we map barriers and enablers relevant to the creation of a sustainable, and culturally congruent Innovation System. We identify the resources already available in the system—whether being used currently or not—and identify opportunity areas. Using personas and scenarios we explore near, mid, and long-term futures.

We use ethnography as the main methodology for the study. This approach encourages a focus on the ways in which an organization actually operates day-to-day, an appreciation of multiple perspectives, and an attention to the tacit, unarticulated dynamics of any system.

We complete in-depth, one-on-one interviews, and spend time shadowing a variety of stakeholders. We also conduct group interviews, where appropri-ate. We observe and document a series of typical activities, such as meet-ings, collaborative work sessions, and other interactions. And we analyze a variety of artifacts produced by the organization.

During this intensive period of study, we establish a charrette space that functions as the home for the project. This space becomes a critical feature of the training program, as we demonstrate the human-centered innovation process in real time.

Innovation for the Common Good™

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PHASE TWO: DESIGN ANDDEVELOPMENT

• Refined implementation plan and dashboard for assessing progress

• Learn-by-Doing innovation training program for innovation facilitators/staff

• Prototype Innovation toolkit and curricula

Innovation TrainingWe believe that innovation is too important to leave to experts and that everybody can be an innovator. We build our engagements by transferring innovation practices to the client through an iterative process of capacity development.

The training programs we develop are grounded in adult learning theory. We teach by working side-by-side with our clients on real work, providing just-in-time tutorials to illuminate and explain how we’re working. We help our clients understand how they will benefit from what they’re learning, relating the training to the real-world challenges they face. And we work in a highly collaborative partnership, soliciting inputs and feedback from clients both during and after the training.

Our training programs emphasize the following principles.

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Public Cognition & Persistence of InformationThe CI innovation training is a series of generative learning/prototyping workshops that take place in what we call the “charrette.” The charrette is both what happens and where it happens. It is a process and a dedi-cated project space – both physical and virtual. Charrette participants learn through doing real world work: developing an implementation plan and dashboard, prototyping and piloting new business models and programs core to the innovation center, etc. In this “learning-by-doing” process, staff will become effective practitioners of iterative ideation, visualization, concept generation, rapid prototyping, all key components of the Collective Invention process. The charrette is where the “whole mind” potential of widely diverse participants with differing knowledge, perspectives, skills and processing styles can engage effectively in the experience of collective invention.

Concept GenerationWith all the research data collected in Discovery available in the char-rette, the core team--often extended at this phase to include thought partners from outside the organi-zation--identifies a broad variety of possible opportunities for contin-ued exploration. After an intensive period of ideation (in which brain-storming is but one tool) the team clusters potential initiatives into a representative set of concepts, fleshing them out in scenarios and images that describe their benefits and value from the “user’s” or “cus-tomer’s” point of view.

PRINCIPLES OF COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION

*“Charrette” is a French term used by architects and designers to mean an intensive, round-the-clock collab-orative teamwork session (In French, a charrette is a horse-drawn cart. The term originated in the eighteenth century when teams of architects worked many days without sleep to prepare design submissions for state-sponsored building projects. On the morning of the judging, they tossed their rolls of drawings down into the cart as it trundled by in the street below, collecting the submissions. Sometimes the architects would leap into the cart and continue to work on their drawings. This was called being en charrette which is the term we use today when we are closeted in a deadline-driven team work session.). A central characteristic of the char-rette is visual idea generation. All thinking is done in rapid visual itera-tions, proceeding from the rough-est early concepts to successively more refined versions. All working materials, including all reference material, data, and creative stimuli, as well as work products are put on the walls. This gives everybody the same shared view of the content as it emerges and the same shared history trail of the collaborative body of thought as it grows. Everybody feels free to annotate, rearrange, cluster and reorganize the material constantly. The effect is like viewing a visual, neural-network map of the collective mind of the project team. This stimulates the spontaneous cross-linking of previously unrelated ideas and the pattern-recognition of larger gestalts – the “Aha!” imagina-tive leaps uniquely characteristic of the higher mental functions we call “creativity.”

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Concept ValidationAt this point, the core team will have aggregated a broad and diverse set of inputs into a large field of new data, insights and ideas all “con-tained” in a set of provisional con-cepts about how to move forward successfully. In the Concept Valida-tion phase, we often use electronic media to put those concepts in front of a wide range of thinkers, exploit-ing the wisdom of diverse experts and stakeholders about the chal-lenges or opportunities they see. The data generated in the validation process generates solid support for the decision process that follows, during which leaders and core team members determine which con-cepts to invest in as programmatic prototypes.

Prototype Development and TestingDesigners, engineers and product developers all know the impor-tance of rigorous cycles of inquiry and learning, building and testing rudimentary prototypes to ferret out flaws before implementing a concept at scale. A rule of thumb is “The Rule of Tens,’ which says that at every successive stage of development, the cost of the project -- in time, materials, and potential problems—increases tenfold. So you want to find problems as early as possible when failure is cheap, a process some practitioners call “Fail Early, Fail Often.”

By the time you introduce a solution into the world of users, you want to have engineered out every error you can possibly anticipate. It is much more cost effective to do multiple, low-fidelity prototypes very early in the process, testing them at specific phase gates. We call this “progres-sive approximation,” where you go through rapid trail and error itera-tions in order to move successively closer to a field-ready pilot product or program that is as close as pos-sible to the final implementation.

In some cases, like a software Beta release, a solution is released into a limited marketplace to learn from a few sophisticated users, with the as-sumption that few (if any) changes will be made before releasing it more widely. Japanese and Ko-rean consumer product makers have built a system of instant feed-back and response, flexible manu-facturing and speed-to-market that allows them to do “market probes.” They release a product into the market, track sales and customer response and if it is unfavorable,

they immediately kill the product. If the market is positive, they can overnight accelerate production.

Prototyping can be applied to vir-tually any purpose*, from devel-opment of new organizations to generation of new business models, programs, systems and tools.

*Collective Invention has taught and applied prototyping in a wide range of settings, from small social services agencies to national in-novation development. For example, in the Republic of Singapore, this approach has been at the heart of work we began 10 years ago with our partner, The Idea Factory Singapore Ltd., at the Ministries of Education, Environment, and Community Development. At the Ministry of Education, prototyping training has been scaled  through the entire system and continues, inside the ministry and at school-sites around the country, a decade later. In another example, at the request of the Danish Government, our team facilitated INDEX:Views, an international assemblage of crea-tive thinkers dedicated to improving life around the world in the areas of work, home, body, play and com-munity. We set up charrette environ-ments and ran charrette workshops at the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen, to rapidly develop conceptual prototypes addressing complex healthcare, communica-tions, educational and trade issues affecting millions of people globally. More recently we have designed and facilitated prototyping programs for foundations, healthcare or-ganizations, and industry consortia focused on cross-sector innovation.

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Based on what we learned during the Innovation Study, and in conjunction with the traning program, we develop a customized toolkit drawing on al-ready adopted methods and processes wherever possible. With our train-ees we will take the toolkit through the full innovation cycle from discovery through concept generation and validation, prototyping and evaluation.

TOOLKITDEVELOPMENT

WE TEACH THE USE OF TOOLS SUCH AS THESE:

The Ethnographic Field Expedition: How to develop a highly effective primary research team able to conduct con-textual inquiry into the needs and wants of all stakeholders–and structure and internalize that body of knowledge as the basis for defining “value to the customer” across the value chain.

Persona Development: How to develop iconic human profiles representing relevant segments of customers and other stakeholders across the value chain.

The Charrette Process: How to construct a collaborative platform for visualizing, developing and sharing data, infor-mation, knowledge and emerging innovation concepts

Digital Media Environments: how to use digital media environments for collective learning and collaboration across geographies

Future Maps and Scenarios: How to depict, analyze and exploit future trends relevant to our context

Prototyping: How to move rapidly from early concept development through a rigorous process of iterative trial and error before introducing a new program at scale

Communication by Design: How to frame, message and communicate effectively to achieve outcomes

Innovation for the Common Good™

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PHASE THREE: DELIVERY

• Refined Innovation toolkit and curricula

• Mentorship and coaching as new processes and programs are imple-mented

• Diffusion of innovation practices in the greater system and community

Innovation is not what innovators do, it is what customers adopt.This means that successful implementation is not the release of a solution, but acceptance and adoption by users at scale—plus the learning we gain by “following the solution home.” Our work is not complete until we have worked with the client through one full cycle of implementation (using whatev-er unit of time is relevant, from budget cycles to school years, etc.) to ensure sustainability—and to continue the process of continuous improvement.

EvaluationBecause we have co-designed the evaluation process with our client as one of the first steps of work (see Process Design, Leadership and the Core Team above) we will be well prepared for the evaluation of (a) our engage-ment and (b) the outcomes of the program. In most projects, we do dipstick evaluations periodically throughout the process to look for “leading indica-tors” that we are on the right track according to the objectives established at the outset.

Collective Invention

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Feed forward Learning & IterationOnly within the past 10 to 15 years have organizations in public and so-cial services, like health care and education, begun to catch up to private industry in applying state-of-the-art innovation processes. Because solutions in these sectors affect people directly in areas of high personal and social sensitivity, there is understandable resistance to “trying stuff out.” One con-sequence of risk aversion is that teams striving to innovate tend to default to a linear input-output model. They try to write the perfect specification, then develop the perfect solution and then put it out as a pilot in the real world, by which time a lot of investment in time, money and status are at stake. If the idea fails or underperforms, everybody rushes to dissociate him or herself from it. And if the idea ever comes up again, the killer phrase is: “we tried that and it didn’t work.”

What happens is that invaluable learning from failure never gets captured and fed forward to a better version. This is why it is important prior to real world piloting to approach every project as a learning vehicle that cycles rapidly back and forth between specification and prototyping in a safe-to-fail environment.

Once the solution is out in the real world, even if it is successful, it often still becomes an orphan as development teams break up and staff moves on to other projects. By contrast, high performance innovation organizations follow solutions into the world and continue to observe and learn from them. An example is Intuit’s “Follow Me Home” program where Intuit engineers and marketers follow a customer home or to work to observe their experience with a newly purchased product.

Innovation for the Common Good™

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Innovation Diffusion & AdoptionAs daunting as it seems, doing innovation is only the first step. Getting inno-vation diffused and adopted at scale is the real measure of success.

A crucial step for any Innovation Center in taking innovation to organizational scale: gaining acceptance, adoption and diffusion not only of innovation solutions but also of innovation practices and culture. Collective Invention finds a useful framework for diffusion and adoption strategy in the work of Geoffrey Moore. in his books Crossing the Chasm and Dealing with Darwin, Moore says that innovation-push has to be linked to user-pull in order to “cross the chasm” from early adopters to the majority.

Moore argues that there is a chasm between the early adopters of a product or service (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early major-ity (the pragmatists). Moore believes visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations, and he attempts to explore those differences and suggest techniques to successfully cross “the chasm," including choos-ing a target market, understanding the whole product concept, positioning the product, building a marketing strategy, choosing the most appropriate distribution channel and pricing. Ideally, a successful innovator can create a bandwagon effect in which the momentum builds and the product becomes a de facto standard.

Crossing the Chasm is closely related to the Technology adoption lifecy-cle where five main segments are recognized; innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. According to Moore, the marketer should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early major-ity); i.e.: the chasm.

Moore's theories are mainly applicable for disruptive or discontinuous in-novations. Adoption of continuous innovations (that do not force a significant change of behavior by the customer) are still best described by the original Technology adoption lifecycle. Confusion between continuous and dis-continuous innovation is a leading cause of failure, especially for high tech products.

Following is Collective Invention’s own adaptation of Moore’s model that we find useful for organizations developing innovations in the service, social and public sectors:

Collective Invention

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22 34%Early Majority

34%LateMajority

16%Laggards

13.5%Early Adopters

Geoffrey Moore’s Adaptation of Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations Model

2.5%Innovators

THE CHASM

Area under the curve representsnumber ofcustomers

Underlying Drivers in Growth Markets

TechnologyAdoptionStrategies

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION LIFECYLE

THE CHASM

Acceptance Understanding AwarenessCrossing the Chasm

Collective Invention Adaptation of Moore’s Model

Adoption

Pragmatic Enabler

ConservativeAnalyst

SkepticalObserver

CulturalCreative

Techie Seeker

Pragmatists:“Stick withthe herd”

Conservatives:“Stick withwhat’s proven”

Skeptics:“Just say no”

Exemplars/Brokers:“Get aheadof the herd”

Seekers:“Just try it”

ADOPTION PHASES

Frameworks

Innovation for the Common Good™

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DESIGN THINKING AND LEAN SIGMA

The term “design thinking” has become ubiquitous to denote a methodol-ogy for collaborative creativity used mainly by industrial designers to develop innovative new products, services and systems. Increasingly, governments, corporations and organizations in the public and civic sectors are adopting the methods, techniques and tools of design thinking to build their own high performance innovation cultures.

The typical model of design thinking principles will look familiar to anybody with a background in systems engineering, artificial intelligence, the computer

software spiral development model or customer-driven process, qual-ity and productivity improvement methods like total quality manage-ment, quality function deployment, six sigma and lean sigma DMAIC.

The first person to codify design thinking was Nobelist Herbert A. Simon, who, in 1969 described it as a seven-stage process.

Simon’s seven-stage process was first adopted for computer science, software programming and artificial intelligence during the 1970s. In the 1980s, design thinking was adapted to create innovation strategies for Xerox and Unisys Corporations by two industrial designers, Arnold Wasserman, a founder of The Idea Factory and Collective Invention, and Bill Moggridge, a founder of IDEO. Today, design thinking is widely taught and applied through-out industrial design and innovation consulting.

10. Learn9. Implement

8. Iterate

7. Test

6. Choose

5. Prototype

4. Visualize

3. Ideate

2. Research

1. Define

Discover

Design

Develop

Deliver

Human-Centered Innovation Process

Collective Invention

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The design thinking process has seven stages:

Design Thinking: The DNA of Innovation

Within these seven steps, problems can be framed, the right questions can be asked, more ideas can be created, and the best answers can be chosen.

The steps aren’t linear; they can occur simultaneously and can be repeated.

7. Learn

6. Implement

5. Choose

4. Prototype 3. Ideate

2. Research

1. Define

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Whereas Six Sigma focuses on reducing quality variation and Lean focuses on productivity of existing processes and practices, design thinking focuses on identifying unmet opportunities for innovation in industry “white spaces” and social and economic “blue oceans.” We call our approach to design thinking Human Centered Innovation:

Best Practice Next Practice

Current Focus Future Focus

Academic / PolicyGenerated

Practitioner / UserGenerated

Adoptive Adaptive

Fidelity Emphasis Context Sensitive

R & D D & R

Pilots Trials / Prototypes

New Capacities

10. Learn9. Implement

8. Iterate

7. Test

6. Choose

5. Prototype

4. Visualize

3. Ideate

2. Research

1. Define

Discover

Design

Develop

Deliver

Human-Centered Innovation Process

Human Centered Innovation shares with Lean Sigma process improve-ment a rigorous focus on value as perceived by the customer.

The opportunity at hand is to com-bine the improvement and control power of Lean Sigma with the vision power of Human Centered Innova-tion to address what C.K. Prahalad calls the shift from Best Practices to Next Practices:

Innovation for the Common Good™

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Collective Invention is a social innovation firm. We build tools and de-velop programs that enable innovation for the common good: transformative approaches to education, health, sustainability and ethical enterprise. We work at the systems level, designing ways for policymakers, philanthro-pists, entrepreneurs, NGO’s and non-profits to collaborate meaningfully; we also facilitate innovation processes for individual organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, and UCLA Medical School’s Center for Healthier Chil-dren, Families and Communities where we facilitated early development of a sector-wide innovation network. Collective Invention’s practice draws

on expertise in scenario planning, design, ethnography, organiza-tional development, psychology and web-based collaboration. We have worked extensively in the US, Europe and Asia.

Collective Invention represents “Act Two” of a partnership that began in San Francisco in 1996 with the innovation consultancy called The Idea Factory. When The Idea Fac-tory was sold to entrepreneurs in Singapore in 2000, our team spent several years--for some of us this is ongoing--traveling between the US and Asia to help grow the business, which continues successfully today as a Singapore corporation serving the rapidly growing Asian market for innovation services.

In 2005, we established our sister company, Collective Invention (CI), in San Francisco, in response to increasing requests for – and our special inter-est in – innovation development in the public and civic sectors in the U.S., Europe and Latin America.

Our background in cross-sector innovation has meant that we have worked with clients in virtually every area imaginable, from small social services agencies to Fortune 50 corporations. A partial client list can be found on the following page.

ABOUTCOLLECTIVE INVENTION

CONTACT

Erika Gregory, President/CEO

[email protected]+1 (415) 963-4060

Arnold Wasserman, Co-Founder

[email protected]

www.Collectiveinvention.com

www.Innovationforthecommongood.com

twitter: collectinven

Collective Invention

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NovoNordisk (current)

Design and facilitation of cross-sector con-

sortia in two areas:

The early origins of health

Trendspotting to identify innovation opportu-

nities (in collaboration with NOKIA, Philips,

Maersk, Novozymes, and Shell)

Genentech (current)

Conducting ethnographic study to under-

stand and transform collaboration culture

Sydney H. Garfield Innovation Center,

Kaiser Permanente (2010)

Consultation on development of market-

facing programs and tools

Co-design and co-facilitation of prototype

public training programs

US Environmental Protection Agency (2010)

Delivered web-based and live simulations of

life in the year 2020 to identify opportunities

for cooperation and innovation in the lifecycle

of materials derived from the earth.

Developed toolkit for facilitators of regional

programs across the United States

World Business Council on Sustainable

Development (2009-2010)

Led cross-sector programs in Europe and the

United States focused on consumer lifestyles

in the future, leading to sustainable produc-

tion opportunities in the present.

Developed and facilitated web-based simula-

tion of life in the year 2020

Procter & Gamble (2009)

Developed toolkit for exploring future

consumer lifestyles to identify disruptive,

environmentally and socially sustainable new

business models, services and products

Grantmakers for Education (2009-present)

Leading national philanthropic innovation

program for a group of 200+ funders includ-

ing Gates, Macarthur, Hewlett and Lumina

foundation among others

Case Western Reserve University (2009-2010)

Developed strategy for building a new Center

for Culture, Creativity and Design at CWRU

SOCAP10 (2010)

Designed and facilitated program for venture

capitalists and social entrepreneurs to collab-

oratively innovate the practice of international

development

New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts

(2005-present)

Consultant and coach to the Boards and sen-

ior leadership of NOCCA and its foundation

Conducted ethnographic study to articulate

the “creative DNA” of successful 35-year-old

program

Led learning journeys to 17 locations in three

States

Developed a strategy and curricula based on

that creative DNA

Developed international advisory council

The Stupski Foundation (2002-present)

Taught innovation practice to 50+ program

officers and staff

Designed and led program that resulted in

nationally-recognized innovation in program-

matic policy and strategy

Consulted to senior leadership and architects

on design of space to encourage innovation

and collaboration

Led parallel prototyping teams

Consulted to the Board of Trustees on innova-

tion efforts

Conducting ethnographic study of learning

innovations in six US States

UC Berkeley Haas School of Business

(2010)

Trained incoming business school students in

the innovation cycle

The KnowledgeWorks Foundation (2009-pre-

sent)

Developed tools for walking in the shoes of

the learner today and in the future

Singapore Government Ministries of

Education; Community Development; The

Environment; Information, Communica-

tion & The Arts; The Economic Develop-

ment Board; Singapore Design Council

(2000-present)

Multiple consulting engagements, Board

seats, convenings and training programs in

innovation, design and future scenarios (all in

collaboration with The Idea Factory Singa-

pore Ltd)

Danish INDEX Design Council (2003-present)

Lead international jury of acclaimed award

program to encourage innovation that im-

proves life

Innovation Center Denmark (2009-present)

Consult on social innovation with visiting

groups of senior Danish leaders

CLASE, Coalition for Innovation of Educa-

tion in Mexico (2010)

Participation in groundbreaking congress,

organized by civil society and devoted to

educational innovation in Mexico

Government of Colombia National Innovation

Program (current)

Consulting on the development of a national

innovation vision and strategy for the Repub-

lic of Colombia

RECENT AND CURRENT CLIENTS

Page 26: Tools and Ideas for Systemic Innovation

Bolman, Lee G. & Deal, Terrence E. (2003) Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Little, Caroline. (2009) Beyond Process: Innovation Center Culture & ValueChicago: IIT Institute of Design.

Menninger, Bonar. (2010). Reinventing Health Care Delivery: Innovation and Improvement Behind the Scenes. California HealthCare Foundation.

Moore, Geoffrey A. (2002) Crossing the Chasm. New York: HarperCol-lins.

Obama Administration (2011). A Strategy for American Innovation: Securing Our Economic Growth and Prosperity. Washington, DC: http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovation/strategy

Obama, President Barack. (2010). Remarks on the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-economy-carnegie-mellon-university

Ostrom, Elinor. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Pink, Daniel H. (2006). A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Penguin Books.

Schrage, Michael. (2000). Serious Play: How the World’s Best Compa-nies Simulate to Innovate. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Surowiecki, James. (2005). The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Anchor Books.

US Department of Education. (2011) Winning the Education Future: The Role of ARPA-ED. http://www.ed.gov/technology/arpa-ed

US Economic Development Administration Regional Innovation Clus-ters website. (2011). http://www.eda.gov/RIC.xml

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collective Invention

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Page 27: Tools and Ideas for Systemic Innovation

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COLLECTIVE INVENTIONInnovation for the Common Good™