Exploring the contrived spaces

In the space for Exceptional Innovation, the enterprise is a place of turf battles, empire building and separated silos. The parable of the concept car plays out continually. A chain of pain gets perpetuated by the top-down chains of command. Encounters are either troubling or painful. Each breed of expertise works against the others in competition and isolation:

The Design Department formulates a creative possibility. The Marketing Department members tell the Design Department  that only 80% of the features will sell in the current market. The Product Engineering Department  members tell Marketing Department they can give it 80% of what it forecasts as the market demand. The Procurement Department members tell the Engineering Department they can purchase in sufficient quantities 80% of the engineering specs. The Manufacturing Department members tell Procurement that 80% of what they can buy can be machined and assembled fast enough to meet deadlines without compromising quality and cost objectives. The Finance Department members tell Manufacturing that only 80% of what they need to inventory for production will support the targeted profit margins. The cumulative effect of so many departments delivering 80% of the prior requests yields 32.8% of the Design Department's original creative possibility.

This cumulative negative effect gets alleviated by migrating to the Methodical Innovation space. Anti-social working against each other becomes Social working with others. Taking interest in others' interests fuels the changeover from scoreboards to dashboards. The Enterprise gets re-conceived as a collaborative community rather than turf battles between empires. The chains of pain and command get transformed into chains of value. Others appear to be resourceful and provide essential resources for common endeavors. Troubling collisions become beneficial encounters. Formal methods for collaborating become essential to overcome established patterns of contention or anti-social interests.

This migration to the Methodical space is supported by a flock of innovation gurus, authors and consultants. The denizens of the Exceptional Innovation space have fallen under the impression that they are not creative, innovative or resourceful to others. They cannot come up with inspirations in their current frames of mind. They've been framed as somewhat reliable components of machines, not unpredictable organisms continually growing, changing, learning or creating. They need what the flock of innovation gurus bring to the table.

Both the Exceptional and Methodical Innovation spaces are on the contrived side of the four quadrants in my taxonomy of innovation spaces. They makes things happen by coercion, organization or extrinsic motivators. What occurs naturally, spontaneously or serendipitously appears useless and unproductive. The captivity with contrivances seems inescapable. The contrived spaces spawn self confirming evidence which necessitates the perpetuation of exceptional and methodical innovations. Crossing over to the natural innovation side calls for different expectations, change models and support systems , which I'll explore in my next post.