Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.
This month, let’s take a look at where innovation comes from at an individual level. It’s something that has been a rich and charged topic in my ongoing innovation leadership research at INSEAD. ~BM
Where does innovation come from?
Innovation itself isn’t so much a thing as it is a phenomenon. It’s something that humans do and a label that captures the experience of doing or creating something new for the first time.
Innovation as a phenomenon is only something we can label in hindsight after it’s happened. Once something has been made real and is put out into the world.
Innovation isn’t really a thing itself because it isn’t a law of nature. We don’t actually have to do it. Yet many are compelled to do it. For moral reasons, selfish reasons, existential reasons or seemingly just reasons of unexplained compulsion.
This deeper drive is a source of a lot of emotional energy when people talk about, or try to do, innovation in large companies. While strategy advisors, textbooks and HBR like to treat innovation as clean and logically engineered processes in reality it is deeply emotional and messy.
People who lead innovation will universally agree it’s hard. Intellectually, politically, socially and economically it’s hard for an organization to do something new for the first time. As individuals, as teams and as an organization it’s not just hard but a bit of a mystery why they would put themselves in harm’s way to do it in the first place.
So why bother leading innovation?
I’ve found that innovation leaders often aren’t aware of what drives them. Why, compared to easier alternatives to career and life advancement, do they feel compelled to generate new ways of doing things.
We know from emotional quotient (EQ) profiling and documentation that there is a metaphorical fire within that compels some people to take risks, strive for a vision, thrive in ambiguity or seek outcomes greater than themselves. Though I’ve found that few innovation leaders have looked within to speculate what is the source of their drive that fuels their EQ factors.
Within an innovation leader’s team, this lack of self-awareness is rarely an issue as they are skilled team builders. They also attract or choose to fit into teams that mirror their own world view.
The difficulty, or conflict, for the innovation leader emerges at the executive authority layer. For here the motivation to do new, seems to often deviate from the innovation leader. Whatever the reason, the climate for innovation is different at the authorizing, or executive altitude, than at the innovation leader and their team’s.
What Motivates Innovation Leaders?
In my research, I have been using three motivating anxieties to help leaders identify what moves them:
Death Anxiety: We want to make a difference
Validation Anxiety - We want to know we’re good
Control Anxiety - We want to create a safe environment
For each leader, one motivating anxiety is dominant, based on their unique individual life experience. The motivating anxiety can also change over life stages and levels of seniority.
By better understanding, their own motivations the innovation leader is better able to understand the motivations of others. This helps them see motivation differences when interacting with executives with different motivating anxieties.
A company with an innovation objective may be rationally aligned but emotionally misaligned. The former is visible and the latter hidden under the surface. When things don’t work many blame “the politics” or “risk aversion” as a way to explain phenomena they can’t see or grasp.
Understanding one’s own motivation is the foundation for seeing or sensing where motivation conflicts can emerge. The motivations themselves aren’t what create conflict but are the source of tension that emerges from misaligned or misunderstood motivates at a personal level.
I encourage you to reflect on what moves you. If you are driven to innovate, why? For many, seeing the answer to this question helps them understand the motivation of what they are trying to achieve for which innovation is a beneficial byproduct. 🔥
“One person’s innovation can cause another person to feel incompetent, betrayed, or irrelevant.”
Brett’s R&D Update
I’m fresh back from a jaunt high up in the Swiss Alps and feeling refreshed, revived and reinvigorated. I’m now diving into the data synthesis phase of my INSEAD research. While progressing with the third cohort of research interviews featuring CEO’s and board members.
I returned to London to learn the lock-down experimental digital product innovation micro-masterclass I did for the D&AD quietly went live. Over 500 folks have completed it and 2,000 more are in progress in just the first weeks, we haven’t even promoted it yet. This is 100x the number of participants we could have hosted at the live event planned last May at the D&AD Festival. It was just a rough experiment but what a fascinating early result.
I hope you’re doing well as the weather changes and we enter the 2021 strategic planning cycle. Your feedback on these newsletters is always appreciated. As well, please share it with peers or your social networks. You are a very smart and impressive group of readers, thanks for being part of Connecting Dots.
Stay safe out there and keep pushing boundaries.
-Brett
Hits and Misses
Some new things that caught my eye this past month.
Government of Canada Track & Trace - HIT 🤩
Many countries have released track and trace applications. Canada’s does the best job I’ve seen of understanding and alleviating data privacy concerns during the onboarding experience while anchoring the social and societal benefit of doing your part for the greater good.
Britain’s AI Grading - MISS 🤔
Whatever the technical or political issues of this fiasco the failure is setting a precedent of distrust for software automation. Hopefully, it’s a lesson to increase digital literacy in government and education.
SBB - HIT 🤩
For years travel companies and infrastructure operators have aspired to real-time multi-modal end-to-end travel booking platforms (a mouthful and a tough task.) They often get one part right like checkouts, UX, maps or partners but rarely synch them up well. Trust the Swiss to do just that.
Vipps & Visa - HIT 🤩
A decade ago I was one of many people trying to hep Visa develop new payments products and infrastructure. Finally, they are getting their long pursued mobile wallet thanks to Vipps. The Hit goes to DNB, Norway’s largest financial services group that demonstrated a bundle of inspired large scale innovation from technology to the business model to marketing when launching Vipps
Image Credit: The top image is from our alpine hut last month in a remote Swiss alpine farming village where wood is the primary energy source for heating and cooking. The experience brought back many fond memories growing up of time at our cabin in the woods of British Columbia, Canada.