Helical Innovation — What can innovators learn from a Helical Spring?
The best way to innovate within organizations has often been a debated and enigmatic topic. We have all come across the saying “Necessity is the mother of Inventions”, but most innovation researchers also acknowledge that innovation is a collaborative process where collaboration is negatively affected by time pressure. This article aims at solving the dilemma by suggesting an organizational model for innovating through combination.
From the Birth of Artificial Intelligence, Penicillin and even to an extent, the Nuclear Energy Research to global vaccine collaboration, the global crisis has led to unusual co-created innovations within every sector. These innovations came at a time when organizations and consumers alike never anticipated them. On the other hand, much of the innovation research and procedures outline a structured and collaborative approach. Amabile and other researchers, in their HBR article [4] argue that creativity under the gun usually ends up getting killed.
However, while both arguments have their credence, a combination of both approaches can lead to faster innovation development and robust innovation implementation. To achieve the same, I suggest the Helical Innovation Approach — originating from a Helical Spring.
The Helical Spring
We all have come across a spring. In simplest terms, it consists of wire wrapped around in coils which can be subjected to tension or elongation and compression. I propose to look at the spring as a series of innovations with each coil representing innovation or innovative idea. Analogically, the wire starts as a trend or a weak signal winding upon its path, leading to a coil, representing an innovation which becomes a trend for another innovation.
Moreover, a spring stores energy and ideally, spring oscillates between both the states, compression and expansion. Similarly, the Helical Innovation concept should ideally be seen as storage of innovation oscillating between compressed and expanded states, which when compressed (under time pressure) leads to bursts of short-term innovation while on expansive phase (under relaxed environment) leads to elaborative long-term innovations.
However, to completely benefit from the above analogy and incorporate it within the organizational framework, it is important to understand the characteristics of both the states and test them across the existing innovation tools/process that the organization is using. I will elaborate on it using the Design Thinking Process, which I feel is one of the best for building customer-centric innovations. This iterative process consists of five key elements: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test.
Helical Innovation States
Helical Innovation consists of two states:
- Compressive Chaos: Just like the compressed spring, this state is for short bursts of innovation. For extracting maximum benefit, the state should be highly competitive with individuals within the state working towards solving a single defined problem (like a hackathon) with huge rewards or repercussions as the outcome. It is important to note that creating a sense of purpose for a solution is very important (just like a war or crisis where the goal is to come out victorious). As expected, the collaboration within this stage will be minimum. Research also shows that ad-hoc teams tasked with innovating under extreme time pressure will be more effective if they minimize upfront coordination and avoid compressing established work processes to fit an accelerated time frame.[5] This state will likely lead to a large number of short-term innovations even with several constraints, ideally providing a fast and crude prototype of implementable ideas which can be tested in the market. In short, this state potentially leads to Problem-Solution Fit. In the Design Thinking process, this state is valid during Ideating and Prototyping while a Defined Problem Statement will be the input parameter to the state.
- Expansive Engagement: The state that is focused on making long term customer-centric innovation. It starts with identifying and empathizing with the target audience to define the problem statement and ideally handover the brainstorming part to the Compressive Chaos state. The ideas emerging out of the Compressive Chaos state again needs to be validated via Prototyping and Testing. To sum it up, this state comprises of Defining the target customer persona, identifying their Problem, Framing the Problem Statement revolving around the Companies purpose to lead to a potential Solution-Market Fit.
I propose that an organization should have two sub-units within the innovation team individually covering both the states.
One might be wondering why both the states are necessary. Advocates of either are aware of the drawbacks of both of them individually. While we have moved towards a customer-centric innovation environment, the expansive engagement process slows down the innovation process with the proposed ideas subjected to organizational inertia. Moreover, individuals when subjected to high risk — high reward environments come up with and speak out ideas which they would not have done ideally. But the compressive chaos is not ideal too, for one, it is messy, and the ideas and prototypes need not be market fit. Organizations do not want to ignore a customer need only to have it served by a competitor.
However, the beauty of the states lies in their complementary nature. Both the states, when utilized rightly overcomes each other’s deficit, thereby allowing innovation process to be diverse, faster as well as remain core to the concept of customer-centricity. It is also important to note that the intensity of application of both the states finally depends on the type of industry and the product. For example, in devices where the margin for error is very minimal like medical safety equipment, expansive engagement can be more important that competitive chaos.
Sometimes, innovation might not come naturally. By combining academic research techniques with industry practices, we at The Pre-Mediators have come up with the Interactive Futures Simulator. Along with customer-centric innovation planning, our Simulator allows participants to empathize with the stakeholders across various future scenarios and plan a sustainable future together.
For more information, please contact Aditya Shashidhar at aditya.shashidhar@edhec.com.
To find out a simple brainstorming technique to enhance Associative thinking, click on this article.
References:
1. Donovan Alexander, 7 Technological Innovations That Came Out of World War II, Interesting Engineering, July 10 2020, http://interestingengineering.com/7-technological-innovations-that-came-out-of-world-war-ii
2. Maya Kumar, Innovation in the Time of COVID-19, IE Insights, May 13 2020, https://www.ie.edu/insights/articles/innovation-in-the-time-of-covid-19/
3. Nick De Mey, How companies prioritized innovation during the crisis, Board of Innovation Blog, https://www.boardofinnovation.com/blog/how-companies-have-prioritized-innovation-during-the-crisis/
4. Teresa M. Amabile, Constance Noonan Hadley, and Steven J. Kramer, Creativity Under the Gun, Harvard Business Review, Magazine (August 2002), https://hbr.org/2002/08/creativity-under-the-gun
5. Hila Lifshitz-Assaf and Sarah Lebovitz, Embrace a Little Chaos When Innovating Under Pressure, Harvard Business Review, September 2020, https://hbr.org/2020/09/embrace-a-little-chaos-when-innovating-under-pressure
