NUR3561 Benefits and Risks to Innovation Paper

Nur3561 Practice Excellence delive 5 Material Benefits and Risks to Innovation In the past few years, companies have slowly moved away from closed, top-down innovation to a new trend of innovation design, cocreation. This new trend for innovation integrates multiple human voices and minds with a goal of breakout innovation. Cocreators leveled the playing field of decision making to not just challenge but, in many instances, remove the status quo of business and innovation as usual. Researchers studied the practices and proposals of breakout innovation groups and found five benefits to this type of open innovation. Unfortunately, these benefits also posed inherent risks when cocreating innovative practices (Auster and Hillenbrand, 2016; Levitt and Rimington, 2017). Benefits Shared Power Participants generating innovative practice ideas often share ideas. However the process of open innovation or cocreation offers a chance to share power. This means “distributing the functions of decision making, creation, implementation, and evaluation among the process participants, and dissolving once-rigid divides between designer and consumer, expert and beneficiary (Levitt and Rimington, 2017, p. 3).” Five strategies to share power in breakout innovation include: • • • • • Define the problem via consensus Provide full disclosure of all information to all participants to signal complete trust Allow participants to move seamlessly among roles within the process of open innovation Create a culture of decentralization of creative inputs and embrace open innovation with multiple inflows and outflows of ideas and information Share ownership of success and failure Prioritize Relationships Building innovative practices offers the opportunity to create strong relationships with individuals co-committed to a fair process, shared values, and long term resilience and cooperation. Five strategies to prioritize relationships include: • • • • • Care and remain empathetic to everyone involved in the process of innovation Establish best practice and guidelines to establish commitments to each other and the process Foster and embrace the idea of open innovation as a community process Be open to the cultivation of relationships that move beyond the innovative project Generate perspectives on relationships that move beyond the day to day tasks and relate to a world outside the proposed innovation Leverage Heterogeneity Blending independent thinking with collective reflection is a proven strategy for deep insight and remarkable ideation for innovation. Encouraging engagement of voices typically silenced provides a richness of conversation and thought necessary for breakout innovation. NUR3561 Benefits and Risks to Innovation Paper

Five ideas to leverage heterogeneity include: • • • • • Purposefully combine groups with different perspectives Open multiple pathways for communication to embrace multiple intelligences Provide assistance to foster connections and open exchange of ideas with the human element as the key to innovation Build heterogeneity throughout organizational levels of leaders, facilitators, and participants and encourage a balanced approach to communication Encourage participants to identify missing perspectives and continue to recruit throughout the process of innovation to maintain heterogeneity. Legitimize All Ways of Knowing For open innovation to be beneficial to an individual, group or organization bias valuing formal knowledge as always superior to informal knowledge must no exist. Cocreating innovative practice ideas provides an opportunity for many types of knowledge to intersect and integrate across preconceived differences. Five methods to legitimize different ways of knowing include: • • • • Create a safe space to debate knowledge biases and try new ways of knowing Include non-threatening ways to encourage mindfulness such as methods of relaxation Include physical activity in creative work sessions to awaken the right brain and connect arts and sciences Demonstrate the value of all types of knowledge within a group of innovators through the inclusion of experiential and cognitive ways of knowing • Don’t be afraid to open innovation to spirituality, providing innovators a safe place to connect to a higher power generates the benefit of mutual respect. Prototype Early and Often Prototyping is a balance between time and effort of participants to experience and provide feedback on innovative practices. Be realistic with prototype release and strategically identify points of contact to enhance feasibility and sustainability of a proposed innovative practice. Five strategies for successful prototyping include: • • • • • Plan carefully and include the specific problem, measurable goals at each step and process design Incorporate feedback at each stage of prototyping so team members can visualize consolidation of all ideas Openly innovate at all stages of prototyping encouraging consolidation of ideas Be transparent with feedback and design, discuss ideas included and not included Don’t be a perfectionist, all feedback and ideas are welcome, role model a collective innovation process Summary Lecture Source Material Auster, E. R., & Hillenbrand, L. (2016). Stragility : Excelling at Strategic Changes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. CEA, J. L., & RIMINGTON, J. (2017). Creating breakout innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 15(3), 32. Continuing the Examination Innovation Risks and Benefits The five benefits of cocreating innovation are elsewhere in this module. It is now time to consider the risks of cocreation. Risks Shared Power Unfortunately, shared power can lead to role confusion with participants battling for the chance to be heard. If participants attempt shared power for innovation without a framework for process status quo can return with many retreating to comfort zones of power leading to confusion, delays and a sense of inability to influence decisions. Prioritize Relationships If relationships lack value in open innovation, the process will move toward transactional and alienate participants who desire more than a prototype or task. These predetermined relationships tend to fade after the implementation of an innovative practice leading to diminished feasibility and sustainability. Participants who were excited about innovation will become disillusioned as lack of caring and empathetic relationships within an open process lead to the dynamics of an in-crowd and out-crowd biased with favoritism. Leverage Heterogeneity Lack of commitment to move beyond typical and expected stratified levels of decision makers leads to resentment among participants committed to innovation. If expected leaders assume common roles and ideas remain unchallenged, the failure to diversity perspectives leads back to status quo. Superficial attempts to diversify often do more damage to innovation and promote a closed culture with reluctance to attempt future innovative practices. Legitimize All Ways of Knowing Demonstrating bias toward one type of knowing stifles creative relationships and increases the risk of losing alternative, feasible, innovative ideas. For example, if an innovative practice proposal only included scientific knowledge but lacked informal knowledge such as experience by the end user chances for failure increase exponentially. Prototype Early and Often Amount of prototyping is a balance of exposure and feedback. If those engaged with implementation and evaluation of an innovative practice proposal have an opportunity to experience and comment only on a finished product or process, the lack of ownership and input increases the risk of failure. From the opposing perspective providing too many opportunities to test a prototype before launch can lead to innovation fatigue and stymie a balanced workflow of creative design. The lack of moderation with prototyping leads to increased risk of innovation failure and return to the status quo. To cocreate and openly innovate, a balanced, deliberate approach to risk and benefit is necessary for an optimal chance at feasibility and sustainability. Don’t be afraid of risks, plan often and embrace breakthroughs. Practice Stragility, “strategic, agile, people-powered change that enables our organizations to thrive amidst relentless turbulence and uncertainty (Auster and Hillenbrand, 2016, p.5).” Lecture Source Material Auster, E. R., & Hillenbrand, L. (2016). Stragility : Excelling at Strategic Changes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. CEA, J. L., & RIMINGTON, J. (2017). Creating breakout innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 15(3), 32. …