Over the last few years, Innovation and Disruption seem to
be making the rounds along the conference circuit. Those speeches effects can be found in the
actions of CIOs around the country making innovation teams, and disruption
evaluation projects. Unfortunately, most
attempts to harness innovation and disruptive methodologies seem designed to
run afoul of the same processes that have killed innovation in the past.
Decades ago, when explaining how to productively brainstorm,
Alex Osborn made the case that quantity of ideas coming out of a brainstorming
session was more important than the quality of the ideas. The less restrictive the bounds on presenting
ideas, the more ideas presented during a brainstorming session. And, with more ideas, and less restrictions,
one might actually find that golden nugget of an idea that can change
everything.
Establishing a defined innovation group seems to fight that
freedom that actually leads to challenging ideas. By establishing a group dedicated to washing
a fleet of cars, no one else feels empowered or has the responsibility to
ensure that the cars get washed. Washing
cars is someone else’s job and I heard that Bob got in trouble for washing his
own fleet car. But, for any
organization, presenting a good image is everybody’s responsibility. The analogy holds, and generating ideas that
can improve an organization is everyone’s responsibility.
And, any innovation group has to be ready to present their
ideas to management. Those ideas have to
be actionable and there’s always a pressure to produce – on a timetable. Anyone that will produce a truly innovative
idea loves knocking around ideas for improvement. Hopefully, an innovation team enjoys doing
that even more. But when those ideas
have to be codified and reported up the management chain on a defined
timetable, an enjoyable exercise becomes one more task that has to be addressed
for the week. Given that most innovation
teams are composed of managers and subject matter experts tasked with a great
quantity of work, this makes “innovation” work even more onerous. Formalization of innovation can quickly make
an enjoyable and rewarding exercise into a painful and soul-killing experience.
Innovative ideas can be the lifeblood of an institution. But they don’t have to be big ideas to have
big effects.
Recent readings in the Harvard Business Review all point to
creating value for customers as being the criteria for which new ideas should
be judged. And creating value for
customers, whether they are students or consumers, comes from understanding
their needs. Understanding the needs of
our constituencies is not owned by upper level management, or even the most
technically astute among us. The needs
of our constituencies are best understood by our constituency itself. They may not be in a position to design
solutions, but they know what they need.
And, in the case of a public university, our constituency consists
of every student, staff, or faculty member that ever steps foot on campus. They can be the font of innovative ideas that
propel universities forward. Innovation
teams may be necessary, but not as the creators of innovative ideas, but as the
people that make those ideas a reality.
An environment that fosters creativity doesn’t need to be much more than
an environment that doesn’t crush it.
Innovation teams can serve a vital role in that environment –
but they don’t own innovation.
I was walking across UF campus some months ago with my
daughter and talking about her future.
We tossed around the normal topics: school, her future, career,
insecurities and son. But in the midst
of the discussion we crossed one of our many green spaces and I pointed out one
of our wireless access points that we have mounted in one of our campus blue
light phones.
I thought I had found a great teachable moment. I told her the story of how that installation
came to be. Folks from networking had a
problem, they reached out to folks in telecom, a member of UFPD chimed in with
a solution, and finally working with grounds we had delivered Wi-Fi to the
space. It wasn’t really any one group’s
job but an idea had taken hold and everyone made it happen. I avoided terms like “leveraging original
investment” and “maximizing return on deployment”. I didn’t want to turn her off the conversation with jargon. And then she asked a question.
“Where’s the camera?”
She had been paying attention and wanted to know with all
the infrastructure in place, why hadn’t we put a camera there as well. Wouldn’t we want prospective students to see
how much fun it was playing Frisbee in the field? Wouldn’t we want to have a live camera where
students came to protest? With all the
work we had already put into the location, putting up a camera seemed simple…
to her.
None of the highly paid technical professionals that worked
on the project had considered the possibility.
With that, I went to work getting a camera in place. It hasn’t gone online yet. There have been holdups and roadblocks. But
good ideas don’t die an easy death.
And good ideas can come from anywhere. Listen to everyone at your institution, that’s
where the next game changing idea will come from. The groundskeepers will know some of the
secrets of an institution that an executive will never understand. Whether that knowledge can be acted upon or
not, will be the province of administrative personnel but do not discount the
input of the rank and file.
Often, they understand “you” better than you do yourself.
