What you know is only half of innovating. The other half is the new knowledge you can and must create.
After years of helping others generate ideas, I am now humbly aware that idea generation is less likely innovation’s critical path, despite what many assume. Ideas—particularly ones that deserve serious attention—are more likely outcomes, not the input, driving successful innovations. Peter Drucker alluded to this over 25 years ago when he declared in Innovation and Entrepreneurship that the bright idea is the least reliable source of innovation.
Innovation’s more likely critical path is knowledge-creation—what most of us call learning. Strong ideas come from knowledge-creation. Weak ones eventually reveal some form of knowledge omission or commission, especially about what is valuable to the customer. When R&D-based innovations break through an otherwise “me-too” crowd of look-alike products, it is not because someone made a lucky guess. It is because some new learning occurred, some new observation was made, some knowledge was created, and correspondingly, something new and valuable was conceived.
What most see in successful innovation are outcomes. However, the paths leading up to these outcomes are filled with:
• experience and experiments (physical, virtual, mathematical) that create data,
• interpretations of data that create information, and
• applications of the information, successful or not, that create understanding of what works and what doesn't, and why...and that, in turn, develops knowledge.
These knowledge-creation paths twist and turn and cycle back, far from the mythical straight line hindsight suggests—more like a “Slinky” than a taught string.
R&D organizations are filled with knowledgeable experts—those who understand not only what works, but why. However, it is not simply what experts know that creates value. It’s what experts do with what they know that leads to value creation—the critical path for innovating.
The irony of the expert’s knowledge is that it can be the very thing that blocks learning, especially about the customers’ value ecosystem. It has often been said, “all value is derived from context.” If true, then to create new knowledge the expert must interpret the context (the ecosystem) in which the customer lives. That is where new value emerges and where innovation is nourished.
Identifying where gaps are in our knowledge, especially of what’s meaningful and valuable to customers, may be where the critical path begins for the knowledge creators in R&D. Selecting and describing gaps in our knowledge may be one of the more reliable ways of targeting where we should focus our efforts. Successful innovations always seem to emerge from that kind of knowledge-creation.
What you know is only half of it.
This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in September 2011. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.
Showing posts with label knowledge-creation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label knowledge-creation. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Earning Follows Learning
Just recently I heard several conversations suggesting a potentially troubling misperception about innovating and learning. One senior executive at a major manufacturer said to a subordinate about an innovation effort underway, “We pay you for what you know, not for what you can learn.” Another executive said, “We don’t train people anymore. We hire those with the know-how and expect them to bring it to work everyday.” A third executive, a veteran software architect, was bemoaning several incidences of places on product development road maps where it says “acquire” the sub-system, ignoring the fact that acquisition does not eliminate integration, something for which learning is required.
In these three snapshots, each from a different context, the intent of the company’s senior leadership may have been to emphasize urgency and speed of execution. However, the way the messages were expressed reveals a troubling perception: that productive work derives more from what is already known than from the ability to learn. Just the opposite is closer to the truth.
In the late 1990s, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi’s observed that it’s not what a company knows that creates wealth, but its ability to create new knowledge, which was introduced in their book The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Shortly after, Al Ward—one of the more insightful commentators on Toyota’s Development System—defined innovation itself as “learning applied to creating value.” Then Arie de Geus, completing his 38 year career in Royal Dutch/Shell’s celebrated scenario planning group, coined the phrase “the learning organization,” where he said learning capability is the primary differentiating factor in a company’s longevity in his book, The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment (1997). One of the more serious “learning disabilities” companies suffer from is learning what learning itself is and how basic it is for effective innovating.
Having facilitated a variety of brainstorming sessions for more that 30 years, I am convinced of the direct correlation between the quality of the ideas flowing and the presence of learning going on, at the same time. When there is learning going on among the people generating the ideas, the ideas are more original, fresh and interesting to those generating them. When there is scant learning going on among those generating ideas, the ideas are more conventional. While the quantity and quality of ideas typically receive the most attention in brainstorming exercises, the flow of learning going on among and between the diverse and relevant experts may be as, if not more, important. This tends to be one of the dissatisfying aspects of internet-mediated idea generation exchanges: the ideas are flowing, but interactive learning is missing.
Not all learning is of the same type.
Learning by searching (enabled by Google, Wikipedia and networking) is likely a necessary first step not only to determine what has been thought of or tried already, but also to discover who the experts are and what they are saying. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by connecting.
Another type is called learning by expressing. When one expresses what has impressed, the learning that occurs is similar to what is learned when we are put in a position to teach. Writing as a form of expression is a healthy and rigorous discipline that forces learning. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by articulating.
There is also learning by doing–gaining first hand knowledge through direct experience, as in lab or field experiments. Learning by doing requires both time and a safe, insulated space to gain this kind of experience, given that learning is greater from mistakes made and corrected than successes enjoyed. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by embodying or reducing something to practice.
Then there is learning by collaborative problem solving. Learning in this manner with diverse and relevant experts is an effective and efficient way of reflecting on experience and exploring possibilities that would not otherwise be imagined. Thinking things through—in what Einstein referred to as thought experiments—is an especially productive form of learning by problem solving. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by empathizing.
Innovating requires the presence and mix of all four types of learning. The first lends itself to exchanges of information and knowledge and is enabled by a network social architecture for connecting to others. The other three types of learning happen where face-to-face dialogue occurs. Thinking out loud together breeds understanding. The Institute for Research on Learning taught us that learning occurs in community (not to be confused with networks). In these kinds of “learning spaces”—what Nonaka calls “ba” or a trusted, safe space between diverse experts—trust and collaboration can build sufficiently to carry the creative tension required for original and inventive thinking.
Learning to learn may be the secret so often missed by those who are quick to pursue a clever idea or too easily seduced by a seemingly bright idea—something that Peter Drucker referred to as the least reliable source of innovation. When the four types of learning are present and balanced, the quality of ideas flowing in and through our innovating efforts can improve significantly.
In these three snapshots, each from a different context, the intent of the company’s senior leadership may have been to emphasize urgency and speed of execution. However, the way the messages were expressed reveals a troubling perception: that productive work derives more from what is already known than from the ability to learn. Just the opposite is closer to the truth.
In the late 1990s, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi’s observed that it’s not what a company knows that creates wealth, but its ability to create new knowledge, which was introduced in their book The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Shortly after, Al Ward—one of the more insightful commentators on Toyota’s Development System—defined innovation itself as “learning applied to creating value.” Then Arie de Geus, completing his 38 year career in Royal Dutch/Shell’s celebrated scenario planning group, coined the phrase “the learning organization,” where he said learning capability is the primary differentiating factor in a company’s longevity in his book, The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment (1997). One of the more serious “learning disabilities” companies suffer from is learning what learning itself is and how basic it is for effective innovating.
Having facilitated a variety of brainstorming sessions for more that 30 years, I am convinced of the direct correlation between the quality of the ideas flowing and the presence of learning going on, at the same time. When there is learning going on among the people generating the ideas, the ideas are more original, fresh and interesting to those generating them. When there is scant learning going on among those generating ideas, the ideas are more conventional. While the quantity and quality of ideas typically receive the most attention in brainstorming exercises, the flow of learning going on among and between the diverse and relevant experts may be as, if not more, important. This tends to be one of the dissatisfying aspects of internet-mediated idea generation exchanges: the ideas are flowing, but interactive learning is missing.
Not all learning is of the same type.
Learning by searching (enabled by Google, Wikipedia and networking) is likely a necessary first step not only to determine what has been thought of or tried already, but also to discover who the experts are and what they are saying. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by connecting.
Another type is called learning by expressing. When one expresses what has impressed, the learning that occurs is similar to what is learned when we are put in a position to teach. Writing as a form of expression is a healthy and rigorous discipline that forces learning. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by articulating.
There is also learning by doing–gaining first hand knowledge through direct experience, as in lab or field experiments. Learning by doing requires both time and a safe, insulated space to gain this kind of experience, given that learning is greater from mistakes made and corrected than successes enjoyed. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by embodying or reducing something to practice.
Then there is learning by collaborative problem solving. Learning in this manner with diverse and relevant experts is an effective and efficient way of reflecting on experience and exploring possibilities that would not otherwise be imagined. Thinking things through—in what Einstein referred to as thought experiments—is an especially productive form of learning by problem solving. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by empathizing.
Innovating requires the presence and mix of all four types of learning. The first lends itself to exchanges of information and knowledge and is enabled by a network social architecture for connecting to others. The other three types of learning happen where face-to-face dialogue occurs. Thinking out loud together breeds understanding. The Institute for Research on Learning taught us that learning occurs in community (not to be confused with networks). In these kinds of “learning spaces”—what Nonaka calls “ba” or a trusted, safe space between diverse experts—trust and collaboration can build sufficiently to carry the creative tension required for original and inventive thinking.
Learning to learn may be the secret so often missed by those who are quick to pursue a clever idea or too easily seduced by a seemingly bright idea—something that Peter Drucker referred to as the least reliable source of innovation. When the four types of learning are present and balanced, the quality of ideas flowing in and through our innovating efforts can improve significantly.
This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in March 2011. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.
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