Did someone forward this to you?
Click here to join 33,189 receiving weekly tips via email and social.
The 3 Essential Mindsets of Innovation
Read time: 3.75 minutes
Welcome to Future-state Thinking, my weekly newsletter where I give actionable content, insights and tools for business and personal growth from my experience as an innovator and entrepreneur.
If you’re looking for my Cheat Sheets and Infographic PDFs, the vault is at the bottom of this email!
Hi Reader,
It’s been 14 years since Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur wrote Business Model Generation and Steve Blank kicked off the Lean Startup revolution with The Four Steps to the Epiphany
I’ve been heavily involved in innovation ecosystem for the the past 6 years working in sectors like agriculture, social service, health and supporting founders in numerous startups.
Yet, 53% of CEOs believe their business model will not survive the next decade. – PWC
But one thing is sure – innovation via a startup is hard.
Maybe, innovating within an existing business is harder.
To effect change in an existing organisation, the individual behaviours that collectively form an organisation’s culture need to change.
That begs the question, How might we enable people within organisations to become innovative?
And that’s precisely what I’ll try to help you do today.
Let’s dive in!
Nurturing The 3 Essential Mindsets of Innovation
Three essential mindsets of innovation must be nurtured: Curiosity, Creativity and Clarity.
Mindset 1: Curiosity
“Around here, we don’t look backwards for very long… We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we’re curious… and
curiosity keeps leading us down new paths” – Walt Disney
Amongst the business-as-usual mindset, nurturing curiosity is a vital first step. Without curiosity, at best, people become blind to problems and may only respond at a surface level to remedy a situation rather than taking the time and effort needed to start exploring the problem.
At worst, it becomes ‘not my problem’ to fix.
Creating a culture of curiosity is the starting point for greater creativity and innovation.
Here are some tips you can apply today:
Cultivate Empathy: At the core of innovation lies empathy –understanding the end user’s needs and desires.
Start with your team. For example, we recently had a team-building activity using Lego Serious Play to learn more about each team member and build a metaphor of our team all from Lego: result – a deeper understanding of how each person views the world.
Encourage Problems: “Don’t bring me problems; bring me solutions!” We’ve all heard that before, where people are rewarded for problem-solving rather than identifying (and exploring) problems. To get beyond surface-level reactive problem-solving often takes time to sit with the problem and explore the whole connected space. Hear what Adam Grant has to say:
Mindset 2: Creativity
Like crafting successful business strategies, cultivating creativity requires a blend of analytical thinking and imaginative exploration.
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity” – Charles Mingus
This is where dual process theory and the role of the subconscious comes in to play.
When we are busy rushing around ‘getting things done’ we don’t give time to think deeply about a problem.
Often the best thing to do is gather all the information, and then let it stew, don’t rush to making judgements, particularly if you don’t need to.
Ask when a decision needs to be made, and make it then, but not well before.
Here are some ways to build more creativity in your team:
Question storming: Generate ideas by starting with descriptive questions or challenging the assumptions about the problem: What is…? What caused…? Then move to the future-state thinking, Why or Why not…? What if…?
Get to the bottom of the stack: Give every person a stack of Post-it notes. Everyone has to write one idea on each Post-it note and get to the bottom of the pile.
Go for a walk: Let your analytical mind rest and have the subconscious do some lifting. Trust me (and Nietzsche); it’s been waiting for you to relax.
Mindset 3: Clarity
Clarity is where the rubber meets the road. Clarity is about taking and implementing everything you’ve learned including helping people make better choices (behaviour change).
And as we identified before, change is hard. It’s hard because:
- Habits
- Fear
- The environment
- Group dynamics
Here are some tips to help with implementation:
Prototype, test, and iterate: Make a practice of transforming ideas into rough prototypes, exposing them to feedback and iterate them.
This will help people let go of ego and get ideas out faster without the need for them to be polished.
It will also help build collaboration enabling teams to embrace diverse ideas and build a state of learning rather than seeking to prove ideas right.
Use the switch method: Chip and Dan Health’s model of behaviour change is still one of the best out there.
They use the metaphor of ‘direct the rider (analytical mind), motivate the elephant (finding the emotion or see/feel/change) and shape the path (the environment)’ to help make change easier.
Here is a video to give you an inside look.
4 Tips to Integrate Innovation and Design Thinking in Your Organisation
The journey toward infusing innovation begins with top-down leadership. Here’s 4 tips to incorporate Design Thinking into your organisation:
- Leadership Buy-In: Just as you’ve gained buy-in for strategic initiatives, champion the cause of Design Thinking. Communicate its potential to transform challenges into opportunities.
- Cultivate Cross-Functional Collaboration: Design Thinking thrives on diverse perspectives. Encourage collaboration between departments, applying your knack for enabling others to excel.
- Training and Workshops: Develop informative workshops that highlight Design Thinking’s principles. Your structured approach ensures that employees comprehend its value and application.
- Measure and Adapt: Utilise your data-informed mindset to measure the impact of Design Thinking initiatives. Adapt strategies based on insights, mirroring your ability to adjust business strategies to achieve optimal outcomes.
⚡️ Call to Action
Innovation relies on three pillars: Curiosity, Creativity and Clarity.
Innovation is hard and requires culture change.
You can start today using the tips and techniques outlined in this newsletter.
What did you think of this weeks newsletter? If you liked it, why not share it with a friend.
P.S. I’m co-authoring an Innovation by design Playbook. If you’d like to join the early-birds, check out the waitlist page here.
Vaughan’s Vault:
As promised, click the image below for exclusive access to 40+ high-resolution cheatsheets and infographics to unlock your genius.
CLICK THE IMAGE
Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
