Does innovation fit one size? I think not. Does innovation need to be aligned and in sync with expectations? I think so. Can this alignment be quantified and leveraged?
Here are some thoughts that my colleague, Dr. Corey Wick, and I have been sharing about this topic.
We've all heard the saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Saying that "innovation" is in the eye of the beholder certainly doesn't sound as romantic, but it's no less truthful. Innovation follows many paths, addresses different needs, and takes many forms, and because of this, innovation means different things to different people. Fortunately, there are quantifiable patterns in how individuals innovate and perceive innovation. The knowledge of these patterns can help us create more effective, innovative solutions.
A number of psychometric tools are available to help us measure how innovation is perceived. One proven approach is the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI), which quantifies how people go about creativity and problem solving. KAI makes the critical distinction that all individuals innovate, but do so in significantly different ways. KAI measures individuals' cognitive preferences for creativity and problem solving, placing them on a continuum ranging from highly adaptive (32) to highly innovative (160). While innovation takes place throughout the KAI range, in KAI lingo, ‘adaptive' indicates creativity inside-the-box, and ‘innovative' refers to creativity outside the box. Statistically, most people fit in the 64-112 range.
Another way to think of this is that people with adaptive tendencies instinctively try to optimize by looking for a better way of implementing existing solutions, whereas people with innovative tendencies instinctively tend to transform by looking for a different way of solving the same problem. For example, where an ‘adaptive' person might address a pest-control problem by improving an existing mousetrap, an ‘innovative' person might address the same problem by finding a way to make the area unattractive to mice, hence avoiding the infestation. In this example, both persons may be equally creative, but they direct their creativity differently.
‘Adaptive' people are more likely to seek in-the-box solutions, apply established rules, generate incremental changes, reduce costs, and focus on execution (we call this optimization). ‘Innovative' people are more likely to set aside the rules, think out-of-the-box, seek new types of solutions, find new revenue sources, define a future vision, and embrace disruptive solutions (we call this transformation). An organization needs both types of people, as each provides a different type of value.
By extension, we suspect that what people perceive as innovation is highly contingent upon their cognitive preferences as measured by KAI. So, ‘adaptive' people are more likely to be impressed by optimizing solutions, and transformative solutions may better resonate with ‘innovative' people.
‘Adaptive' people are likely to view transformative innovation as experimental, risky, or impractical: "this isn't innovation . . . this is a total departure from the way we've always done things." In contrast, "innovative" people are likely to view optimizing innovation as mundane, routine, and having marginal impact: "this isn't innovation . . . this is just an incremental improvement in the way things have always been done."
All ideas fit somewhere along this spectrum, but an individual's perception of where an idea would be placed may differ, so would their perceptions on the value and feasibility of those ideas.
Understanding these differences in perspectives can help with having an idea accepted, a product purchased, or a service contract signed.
