CATALYSING CHANGE THROUGH INNOVATION TEAMS

What makes Israel so innovative? And what has this got to do with teaming? One of the key discoveries, we made, almost ten years ago, when we relocated to Israel, was the power of its innovation eco-system – the result of a collaboration between the state, venture capital firms, successful entrepreneurs, educational system, business system, incubators, and accelerators. Reinforcing and validating the importance and role of collaboration, where a range of new, inspirational, and adaptive models that lean into complexity and catalyse and embed innovative workplace culture changes, have emerged. Where some organisations, like Disney, Google, Salesforce, and GE, courageously invested and benefited in applying these new models internally, in catalysing change through innovation teams.

Transform creative discoveries

Innovation teams transform creative discoveries and ideas into new platforms and business models in timely, agile, and disciplined ways that bring significant value to the market and organisation. Who, according to Nick Udall, CEO and co-founder of nowhere, effectively deliver the desired step-changes, breakthrough innovations, and organisational transformation, in ways that “move beyond what we know and step into the unknown, where the relationship between cause and effect is more ambiguous, hidden, subtle and multi-dimensional.”

New collaborative models

The range of new collaborative models, include teams and teaming, tribes, collectives, and eco-systems, are all designed to help organisations innovate in turbulent times.

Where they empower and enable everyone to be involved in innovating, and in responding to the diverse assortment of complex challenges emerging from the Covid-19 crises. They also empower and enable people to co-sense and co-create inventive solutions to the range of “complex” challenges, in ways that potentially engineer 21st-century adaptability, growth, success, and sustainability, in countries, communities, and organisations.

Capacity to change

Groups, teams, and teaming are now the “DNA of cultures of innovation”, who fuel organisations, with an “evolutionary advantage – the capacity to change as fast as change itself.” As we transition from our pre-Covid-19 conventional business-as-usual “normals”, organisations have the opportunity to adapt to the high levels of ambiguity by leveraging their peoples’ collective genius.

Utilising open-source innovation and innovation teams to multiply their value and co-create innovation cultures that catalyse growth, in the post-Covid-19 world through:

• Emerging and exploring possibilities
• Discovering creative opportunities
• Integrating diverse perspectives to shape solutions
• Making strategic decisions
• Incubating and accelerating new ideas.

Realm of the creative team

According to Dr. Nick Udall in “Riding the Creativity Roller-Coaster” – creative teams embrace and work with the unknown, intangible, invisible, the unconscious and the implicate, that their key challenges are “to wander with wonder into the unknown.”

Through cultivating a 21^st-century skill set, including – attending and observing, questioning, listening and differing, risk-taking and experimenting, and teaming and networking that enables them to be, think and act differently.

Catalysing change through innovation teams involves creating a culture of innovation, which according to the authors of “Eat, Sleep, Innovate” – is one in which (mindsets) and behaviours that drive innovation come naturally.

Where creative teams are formed around a Passionate Purpose, that propels them into the unknown, in an unpredictable world, where they connect and stretch with cognitive dissonance and creative tension, through developing discomfort resilience. To co-create collective breakthroughs that shift them beyond managing the probable, toward leading what’s possible.

Role of collective mindsets and behaviours

One of the key elements that we can intentionally cultivate is our ability to develop habits that build our mental toughness and emotional agility to cope with stress and adversity, at the same time, paradoxically, create, invent and innovate.

The one thing that we can all control, and is controllable, are our individual and collective mindsets – how we think, feel and choose to act, in solving complex problems, performing and innovating, to dance on the edges of our comfort zones, in the face of the kinds of uncertainties we confront today.

Challenges in creating a culture of innovation 

Our research at ImagineNation™ has found that many organisations are disappointed and disillusioned with many of the conventional approaches to effecting culture change, largely because of variables including:

• Confusion between the role of climate, culture, and engagement assessments and processes, knowing which one aligns to their purpose, strategy, and goals and delivers the greatest and most relevant value.
• The typically large financial investment that is required to fund them.
• The time it takes to design or customise, and implement them.
• The complexity of tools and processes available involved in contextualising and measuring desired changes.
• Designating responsibility and accountability for role modelling, leading, and implementing the desired changes.
• Building peoples’ readiness and receptivity to the desired change.
• Efforts required in removing the systemic blockers to change.
• Designing and delivering the most appropriate change and learning interventions.
• The false promises of “innovation theatre”.
• The time it takes to reap desired results, often years.

In response to our client’s need for speedy, cost-effective, and simple, internal and collaborative culture change initiatives, we developed an integrated, simple, yet profoundly effective approach that integrates three powerful streams for catalysing change through innovation teams:

1. Team development and teaming skills
2. Education and learning interventions
3. Coaching and mentoring initiatives

By taking these variables into account, focussing on building the internal capability, and offering a different and fresh perspective towards catalysing change through innovation teams. These are visually represented and described further in our blog Catalysing change through innovation teams | imaginenation