Last week I blogged about core innovation—that level of innovation that draws upon what anthropologists call cultural ratcheting. Core innovation requires, first and foremost, the ability to pass on knowledge from one individual to another, or from one generation to the next, until someone comes along with an idea for an improvement. We take ideas of others and put our own twist on them, adding one modification after another, until we end up with something new. I don’t view core innovations as high-risk ventures, but rather, the sort of re-inventing and freshening-up process that is needed regularly as we do our work.
A more aggressive area of innovation lies in the area of adjacent innovation. Adjacent innovation takes place when organizations move outside of themselves, and work with those who overlap some part of their core mission. These collaborations have a bit more risk than core innovations, but have larger payoffs by combining the intellectual efforts, human efforts, and financial resources of more than one entity in the pursuit of an opportunity, goal, or challenge.
The risks of adjacent innovation are 1) the increased effort required by collaboration between two individuals or two entities, and 2) the inevitable tension that comes as a result of two entities trying to work together. Moving outside of the home base and the home comfort zone brings these characteristics of adjacent innovation: 1) Complementarity, 2) Tension, and 3) Emergence:
Complementarity—Collaborators are not homogeneous, but rather, are entities with different perspectives, expertise, conceptualizations, working methods, temperaments, resources, needs, and talents. The interaction of these differences forms the complementary foundation for the dynamics of collaboration to unfold.
Tension—The goal of collaboration is not to reach consensus, since agreement does not lead to learning or challenge. Collaboration takes advantage of the tension that comes with differences. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, said, “Politeness…is the poison of all good collaboration”. Collaboration is the fruitful cultivation of tension. As our song culture teaches us, we have to “Wade in the water children,” or in other words, face the challenges and tension. We go into the storm. Our differences, and our ability to work through our differences, are where the latent opportunities for growth and innovation reside.
Emergence—Collaboration can lead to innovative outcomes that could not be predicted solely from the additive power of people working as a group. There will be the initial “conceptual” collaboration that will help frame a problem, but down the line there will be technical collaboration that will represent problems and their solution. It will be an organic process moving from idea conceptualization, through new idea, to the final working innovation or plan of action.
I moved to Oklahoma eight years ago, and in that time I have learned about three new things unique to the region: 1) dramatic Oklahoma weather, 2) The Difference between a cow and a buffalo, and 3) numerous native American tribes that were relocated to the state. Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee nation, tells the story of how the cow runs away from the threatening storm, while the buffalo charges directly toward it, thereby getting through it quicker. The lesson, according to Chief Mankiller: “whenever confronted with a tough challenge, I do not prolong the torment. I become the buffalo.”
Adjacent innovation calls us to “be the buffalo” as we look for innovative solutions through collaboration.
Jack Senzig says