Everything you are exposed to makes a connection. It is how you stitch them together that makes things interesting. Interesting stitching can result in radical innovation.
While the main focus of our agency is marketing and customer service, we also focus on creativity and innovation. Why? Because everything in marketing and customer service depends on creative and innovative change. From time to time we’ll post interesting tidbits on creative thinking and innovation. Many on how to generate creative ideas on collaborative innovation.
As background, our perspective on creativity is that it is not about invention. Rather it is about collecting and connecting dots — bringing together two (or more) ideas to create an altogether new idea. We often think of innovation as inventing new things, but we may be smarter to think of it as recombining old ones. The truth is that important breakthroughs usually come from combining ideas from different domains. Often combining very different, sometimes weird ideas.
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What works best for social media innovation in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? It would be greatly appreciated by us and our readers.
The ultimate goal of all the points I list below is this: eliminate the fluff from your marketing strategy and focus only on the things that work.
Innovation is the process through which value is created and delivered to a community in the form of a new solution. We have purposely chosen to frame the definition as a process. It can also be used to describe a new product or service … the output of the process. That is why we are always on the lookout for great ideas on innovation processes.
We recently ran across a company whose mission is to provide know-how on innovation thinking and processes, Values Centered Innovation™ (VCI). VCI is a global innovation enablement enterprise. They are on a mission with a business.
VCI says that the core of its vision is based on the fact that each one of us has different habits, talents, knowledge, values, interests, and ways of expressing ourselves. And, while we all have the capacity to be innovative, we approach innovation and change in different ways. You may like to build on your past experience, or maybe you prefer a vision to guide you. You might enjoy putting together unusual combinations of things. Or perhaps you like to throw caution to the wind and explore the unknown.
They believe that recognizing the different ways to innovate is key to working together successfully – in a group or in an organization. Very key in our minds. We all have our own unique approach to meeting a creative challenge, for sure. Let’s examine VCI’s mixture of four Innovation Styles as they describe them on their website:
Visioning
People who have the visioning style like to imagine an ideal solution and let long-term goals be their driving force. They trust their instincts, like to make decisions, and seek solutions that focus on future potential. They envision and idealize, and we believe, do not fear risk-taking.
Modifying and visioning styles are more focused, planning, and results-oriented.
Modifying.
Modifying
People who have the modifying style like to refine and improve what has already been done. We believe their style is incrementalism and it tends to be risk-averse. They tend to be precise and disciplined to ensure the full potential of an idea gets developed. Their style is to refine and optimize.
Visioning and exploring styles primarily use intuition, insights, and images.
Exploring
Individuals who have the exploring style like to question assumptions and discover novel, very different, possibilities and approaches. People with this style tend to add a sense of adventure to a project and open up the potential for dramatic breakthroughs. They challenge and discover.
Exploring and experimenting styles are more broad, perceptive, and learning-oriented.
Those who have the experimentation style like to test out various combinations of new ideas as well as prototype and use them to test new ideas and learn from the results. Individuals with this style are good collaborators who love to build models and are effective consensus builders. They combine and test.
Experimenting and modifying styles primarily use facts, details, and analysis.
Each of us has the capacity to be innovative and creative. The question is ‘how am I innovative’ and not ‘am I innovative’. Each of these 4 styles represents a different strategy for innovating and a different way of thinking. They do not represent a type of person. All of us use a mixture of the 4 styles, not one single approach. While we all use all 4 styles we mostly are dominant in one. Remember also that the knowledge of all four and the ability to use all four styles makes us better at innovation.
VCI states by developing your awareness, knowledge, and skillful practice of the innovation styles, you benefit in many ways…
Strengthen your versatility and confidence
Each Innovation Style gives you a different way to meet new challenges. By learning to use all four styles, you will be more open, flexible, and self-confident when taking on a work challenge – and when designing your own career!
Build harmonious teams
Each member of your team has a different blend of Innovation Styles. Once you understand how these styles influence their innovativeness, you’ll understand your teammates better. You’ll be able to select an innovative mix of people, gain higher participation, reduce relationship tension, and build more synergy in your teams. You’ll be easier to work with, and so will they.
Radical innovation examples … find innovative solutions to your everyday work challenges
By recognizing and accepting differences, you can take advantage of them. As you invite a wider variety of ideas into your life, your work will be more productive and stimulating… as you find creative solutions to challenges
Sell your ideas
Building innovative relationships or having creative ideas is only the starting point – action is the key to making a real difference. Learn to speak other people’s “language of innovation,” and you’ll be more effective in getting them to buy into your innovative ideas.
Organizations have a blend of innovation styles too. Understanding your organization’s style pattern helps you to successfully plan and implement organizational change and find ways to better contribute to its overall success
VCI, their mission is to elicit the highest capacity of people at all levels to identify opportunities to make a meaningful difference, generate creative ideas, and produce beneficial, sustainable results in everyday work. The goal is simple: to empower people in any kind of job to do their work innovatively. A great vision and goal isn’t it?
We believe that creativity and innovation depend a great deal on collaboration. And collaboration depends on good diversity. That is the reason we like this work on innovation styles so much. By knowing, understanding, and applying this diversity of styles, your creativity and innovation results can’t help but improve.
Innovation isn’t about talking, it’s about the doing. The action. So get moving and begin your journey from accidental innovator to a high-performance innovation business leader.
What is your thinking about these styles? Can you spot the one that most closely resembles your style?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks
Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision
