The Cycles of Discovery & Innovation
Your guide to innovation and development in businesses.
I think the idiom of “it’s a case of swings and roundabouts” misses a trick. My mum said this idiom to me from a young age “What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabout”; and whilst the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as [1]: “said to mean that the positive and negative results of a situation or action balance each other:” – I believe there is an additional moral to be learned regarding time.
I think what this idiom can also teach you is that time is finite. When you only have half an hour at the park, the time you spend on the swings is time you don’t get on the roundabout.
The reason I bring this alternative interpretation of “it’s a case of swings and roundabouts” up, is because I think this fact is often forgotten in business settings; time is finite – doing one thing, will reduce time you can spend on another. Which is important when we discuss the concepts of discovery and innovation.
Why Innovate?
It’s a fair question, so lets explore it before we introduce the Cycles of Discovery and Innovation.
You might be working at a market leader whose product is the go to for your sector; your competitors are going to have to innovate to try and unseat you, and they are trying to unseat you from your position or at the very least syphon off some market share. Innovation helps maintain your position.
The reverse is also true, you could be working at a start up where there are behemoth incumbents; in order to survive and win clients you look at ways of innovating to deliver additional value and therefore win clients. Innovation helps you grow.
You could have a client base who is thrilled with your work, at the moment; but there are a finite number of clients, and your competitors may well use innovation to try and turn your clients heads. Innovation helps you remain competitive.
Your team could have too much work and not enough resources to handle it, and there may not be new resourcing budget to alleviate this; so you look to innovation to help refine or improve processes in order to handle this workload. Innovation helps you remain effective.
Finally, you could be going for investment, but the market has shifted and investors are looking for the next shiny thing; and your approach is looking a little dull in comparison. Innovation helps you remain attractive.
There are more examples of how innovation can be valuable, and the examples aren’t the only ways in which the benefits of innovation can be realised; but at its core, innovation a core way in which businesses: grow, thrive, and survive.
To paraphrase Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution; it isn’t survival of the fittest, its the survival of those most willing and able to adapt. Innovation helps you to adapt, and therefore survive; as what made you great, won’t always keep you great.
So now, let’s go through The Cycles of Discovery and Innovation so you can be able to adapt to the challenges along the business journey.
The Cycles of Discovery and Innovation
Let’s go through each of the cycles and outline what to expect at each step
The Cycle of Discovery
Standard Operating Practice: The business’ standard activities that deliver value and move the business towards its goals.
Identifying New Opportunities: First, a business must look at the market, their activities, and their current capabilities to identify potential opportunities that will enable the business to pursue its goals more effectively, or expand their goals based upon the available opportunities. Identifying potential both benefits and drawbacks of these new opportunities.
Testing New Opportunities: With potential opportunities identified, the business should look at ways of testing these through methods such as: the development of an MVP, working with existing clients, co-opting an existing process for testing purposes, or other such methods. Through this businesses get key information in helping confirm the potential benefits can be realised.
Validating New Opportunities: Given the business has been able to test these new opportunities, now it is important to validate and assess whether the test has been able to show that the benefits they expected to obtain are realistic. Also at this stage it is useful for businesses to validate whether the business will be able to adapt to this new opportunity and any potential roadblocks to doing so.
Return to Standard Operating Practice: Finally, the business should return to Standard Operating Practice whilst the next steps for these opportunities are identified.
The Cycle of Innovation
Standard Operating Practice: The business’ standard activities that deliver value and move the business towards its goals.
Identifying Valuable Opportunities & Solutions: Following the cycle of discovery, the business should look at which opportunities have the highest potential value to the business, and identify which they want to pursue at this time given external factors and available resources.
Building New & Valuable Solutions: With the solution they want to pursue identified, the business should develop a roadmap and development plan for this innovation; taking into account available resource and additional responsibilities. During the development of the solution, regular reviews should take place to ensure the development will enable the identified opportunities to be realised by the business, which can be done through testing throughout the cycle.
Deploying New Solutions: With the new solution developed and ready to be put into action as part of the business’ standard operating practice; the business should ensure that the benefits of this new approach are communicated to the business, that training is provided to ensure the new approach can be utilised effectively, and everyone understands how this new approach will impact the business’ activities.
Return to Standard Operating Practice: Finally the business uses its new solution as part of its, now improved, Standard Operating Practice.
The Cycles of Discovery and Innovation highlight the importance of Standard Operating Practice (SOP), and the trade-offs required when advancing your businesses capabilities by making it both the centre and the starting point for the cycles discovery and innovation.
It also highlights the unpopular, and often ignored fact, that by going on journeys of discovery or innovation, you are moving away from SOP which will have an impact on your delivery ability; time and resource are finite in businesses, there’s no avoiding this fact.
Moreover, we use the name “Cycles of Discovery and Innovation” to highlight the order in which businesses should do these activities; discovery then innovation to maximise potential benefits, while minimising potential risks. The last thing you want to do is sink time, effort, and resources into a project that won’t be adopted by the business for a reason you could have identified during the discovery process.
Whilst we have shown the cycles to be a one way system, in reality there may be times that we need to revisit previous steps; such as in the cycle of innovation when we deploy new solutions, we might identify a flaw that needs rectified prior to it being integrated into SOP. These cases are to be expected and are completely fine, it is better to ensure the maximum chance of success from innovation, even if it may take more time.
However, innovation is not a passive activity; and if it means we affect our ability to deliver, how do we start this process?
Innovation Inertia
Let’s quickly draw an analogy between a business and a car, it might seem weird but bear with me as it makes a degree of sense:
a car needs fuel to run – a business needs money to run.
a car has passengers and cargo – a business has employees and assets.
the driver is taking the car to a destination – the leaders are navigating the business towards its goals.
the passengers in a car might argue about taking different routes, but the driver is the one who determines the route taken – employees may argue about the direction and actions the business should take, leaders decide which ones to put into action.
a car has an idle speed which unless you accelerate, brake, or change direction it will continue in a straight line on a smooth road – a business has “standard operating practices” (SOPs) that when times are good will keep the business moving forward.
if a car hits a pothole, or a bump in the road, without intervention by the driver, the car will veer off its current path – if a business encounters unexpected issues, without intervention by leaders of the business, it will veer away from its goals.
if you change speed or direction in a car too quickly, the passengers and cargo will be affected – if a business changes speed or direction too quickly the employees and assets will be affected.
The last points highlights a point that is best described by Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion.
Newton’s First Law of Motion
A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.
Sir Isaac Newton - Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
In a business, if you don’t apply an external force, the teams in the business will continue using their SOPs unless something happens that requires action; which almost by its very definition, precludes innovation.
When it comes to innovation in businesses, it is not a passive action; you need to encourage it, and most importantly allow the time and usage of resources for it to happen.
When you do innovate, and it changes the direction of the business, some may not be happy with the change in direction; but it is your job as a leader to help them understand and adopt these changes – a topic we will discuss in a future post.
However, if businesses stay in SOP until something makes them shift; what are these sources of innovation?
The sources of innovation
Fundamentally the sources of innovation are either externally or internally driven:
Externally Driven
Responding to situations: There will be times during a business’ journey where a situation will require innovation in order to respond effectively. For example, a client wants you to help them on a new project because you are a trusted partner; this is inline with your goals so you need to innovate to be able to achieve this.
Forced by the market: At times market forces will demand innovation in order to either remain compliant or competitive in the market. For example, third party cookie deprecation requires innovation in the marketing sector to remain effective; or your competitors are investing in technologies and so for you to remain competitive you must too.
Internally Driven
Efficiency Improvements: In order to handle increased workload, or a reduction in available resources, innovation is required to improve or maintain efficiency levels.
New employees bringing new ideas: As company’s grow, they bring in new people onto the business journey. Part of the reason for doing so is because new people bring new ideas, and realising these requires innovation.
Existing employees wanting to grow: Employees don’t enter stasis when they join your business, they are also looking to grow and learn. When they do so they may want to explore new technologies, or apply what they have learned to the business; requiring innovation to make this a reality.
The sources of innovation are the instigators that move us out of SOP, and into the Cycles of Discovery and Innovation. As we know from Newton’s First Law, without an external force businesses will continue on the same path; and the sources of innovation are this external force.
Whatever the source of the innovation, that is merely the generation of an idea; so with an idea in mind, how can businesses go about realising the potential opportunities?
Delivering Innovation
If a business pursues every potential innovation, you end up changing the direction of the business too quickly and too often; which, if we go back to our car analogy, will give your passengers (employees) whiplash. Also, not every idea is worth pursuing; as drivers will tell you sometimes diversions, or sat-nav directions, take you on dirt paths that are actually less effective.
That is why the discovery process is so vital, because with this you can divert a small amount of resource and time to explore an idea before fully committing to it. For example, building a quick MVP with static sources and hardcoding before building a full product which is up to standards and specifications.
Through the discovery process you can learn whether: the idea is valuable, any potential issues in using the idea in your SOPs, and the level of support for the idea in the business; prior to any large scale investment in innovation.
This is why I suggest the use of the “Cycles of Discovery and Innovation” to help guide this process.
The Fear of Innovation
One critical thing to remember is that innovation is a disruptive process, and people may be wary or even afraid. This disruption can be handled through effective Change Management - a point we will discuss in another post.
It is important to know however that Change Management is a critical aspect of innovation; because whilst innovation has many benefits, some may be concerned about it negatively affecting their ability to do their jobs, their team, or their responsibilities. As such, as a business leader or a driver of innovation, part of ensuring the smooth adoption of new methodologies, technology, or strategies is handling this change effectively; not only the “Deploying New Solutions” stage, but throughout the Cycles of Discovery and Innovation.
Critical Business Activities
At the end of the day, discovery and innovation are critical activities for businesses if they want to stay at the forefront of their field or remain competitive; what made you great, won’t always keep you great.
With the “Cycles of Discovery and Innovation” we enable businesses to think about the impact of these activities on the business’ standard operating practice, whilst highlighting the order of operations is important to maximise benefits while minimise risk.
In the next post we are going to explore the core component breakdowns outlined in the Business Trinity Compass - the post is linked below in case you missed it - for each stage of the Cycles of Discovery.
Through this we will not only highlight potential resource allocations, but unlock additional areas of the Business Trinity Compass highlighting the types of activity associated with areas within the central zones.
To be notified when that post goes live - if it isn’t already - you can subscribe with the box below to ensure you never miss a post.
Grand. Thanks for your time.