Structuring resilient innovativeness

Following yesterday's post on the potential erosion of innovativeness, today I'm exploring the ways to prevent that erosion. Each are approaches which require new business models and commercial mechanisms. The current delivery systems for increasing innovativeness will be disrupted by these strategies. A Federal Department of Innovation would need to create a separate space from conventional governmental agencies, programs and oversight.

1. Preventing judgmental perfectionism: We can avoid "making a thing" of innovation when we support the processes involved in coming up with innovations. We bring sophistication to issues of processes that get stuck, derailed, sabotaged and over-zealous. We introduce sensitivities to questions of balance, timing, context and community contributors. We provide maps and models to orient the people struggling with the complexity, setbacks, and confusing options.
2. Preventing self-fulfilling prophesies of deficiency: We can frame each person as already an innovator. We amplify the exceptions to their apparent lack of innovativeness. We see them as fully equipped to be innovative by having a right half to their cerebral cortex. We remind them of how much innovation it took to get over the obstacles in their personal history. We show them how much they have in common with people who are obviously innovative.
3. Preventing pushy delivery models: We can create communities of innovators who respond to each other's current needs. We can safeguard a micro market of exchanges between contributors of assistance, encouragement, and advice. We can ensure that altruism gets rewarded by a complex reputation system which recognizes a variety of valuable contributions. We can limit our interference by providing an light-handed oversight to welcome newcomers, to cancel accounts of unwelcome members and to inform the community of upgrades under consideration.
4. Preventing complacent involvement: We can continue to nurture other's innovativeness by keeping the challenges. We can function as entrepreneurs maintaining a portfolio of possible next ventures. We can bask in a bounty of inspired ideas that keeps us from getting too attached to any particular one. We can challenge ourselves to get innovative about our immediate challenge. We can remind ourselves to provide an example of continual innovation to others like perennial performing artists and film studios who constantly reinvent themselves.

These strategies use the new motive power for enterprises. They avoid conventional business models which create obstacles to crowdsourcing. They accumulate social capital in lieu of the usual overemphasis on financial capital.