Change Papers: A shared effort to change North Carolina's climate for innovation.

If we can unleash our open source, creative thinking resources across North Carolina, we should be able to build and nurture a statewide culture of innovation while creating more competitive regions for our citizens and organizations. But how do we turn theory into practice? And how do we do it with speed, flexibility and confidence?

Here’s a recipe from Gary Hamel’s book The Future of Management, along with some ideas about how we’re applying it to these papers and how you might apply it to your business:

1. Commit to a bold goal

We at ChangePapers.org have taken a first stab at what a bold goal for the state might be: North Carolina can become the most innovative place in the world.

We believe a short-term, goal-framing Innovation Council is an important first step towards achieving this vision and outlining how we might measure success. But we can’t reach our ambitions with a traditionally mandated governmental body with powerful appointees and agendas-on-parade; it will require something more like a wicked problems team – ongoing, multidisciplinary, multilevel, multiregional. More on that in later papers.

Finding your right business goal will involve engaging two often-underutilized resources — employees and customers.

Engaged employees and customers

Research shows that engaged, passionate employees are a prime asset in determining the success of innovative organizations. They take greater pride in their work. They show up earlier, stay later and produce at greater levels. They are more focused, more committed, and more interested in serving customers. Importantly, they are more creative — a necessary component for innovative organizations.

But there’s a challenge here. As Hamel notes, innovators are romantics. They are often the poets, artists and musicians in your midst. They ask questions. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “Some men see things the way they are and ask Why?; I dream things that never were and ask Why not?”

Certainly, innovators are more likely to be non-conformists. They may wear hair or dress differently than the generally accepted corporate standard. In fact, they are often considered misfits. Tom Peters warns us that “misfits need guardians.”

Creative work forces demand different types of environments. Both physically and culturally. North Carolina should create a business climate that helps innovative businesses and organizations prosper. And these entities must create the climate for romantics and misfits to be productive.

Talk about a hard pill for typical corporate executives to swallow. Machine-like organizations and cultures have been de rigueur for the past five decades. Aesop’s industrious ant, working away without ever wondering if things could be done better or differently, is the symbol of the work force we have typically felt more comfortable with. The ant doesn’t question. They don’t challenge our traditional business model. They just plug away.

Grasshoppers are ants unplugged, and an innovation-driven world requires the fable’s re-evaluation. Traditionally, Aesop’s moral centers on the grasshopper’s reluctance to prepare for the necessities of the future. Today’s business leaders should note that the grasshopper was willing to die before becoming a machine-driven ant. The new moral: Help the grasshopper be a happy, healthy contributor if you need to be innovative to compete.

The key measurement for innovative companies will be the engagement of their work force. Engaged work forces will help show executives and managers the way.

How? Primarily by helping these businesses and their leaders figure out what the business is really good at. Innovative organizations need to listen – really listen – to their customers. More than listen, even. As Henry Ford once noted,

If I’d asked my customers what they wanted they would have told me a faster horse.

Successful companies today must empathize with their customers. Listen to them; learn from them; involve them in decisions. Doing this demands passionate, creative, engaged workers who can build customer communities while co-creating products and services with cult-like followings and conversation worthiness.

2. Deconstruct orthodoxies

Core to a statewide innovation effort is the need to deconstruct those known beliefs we — as a society and state — blindly accept. In much the same way the Watauga Club founders challenged the beliefs of North Carolina post-Civil War era leaders more than a century ago, this effort will involve the same courageous, independent, open and transparent thinking. Sacred cows and personal agendas must be fair game.

The task for businesses is the same —  and they must be willing to ask hard questions. Is it still working? Will it work for much longer? Might other choices work better? Worship the sacred cow or turn it into a hamburger? Plenty of people will passionately dislike this exercise. You might hate it most.

3. Embrace powerful new principles

North Carolina is no new comer to design and innovation. From the creation of the first public university to the formation of the first post-war Freedman’s Colony, the good roads projects from a century ago, our commitment to innovation in agriculture and manufacturing; the Wright Brothers; the formation of our University and Community College systems; the creation of the Research Triangle Park; our support of a state Museum of Art; from Black Mountain to Red Hat— we share a rich tradition.

As noted in Paper 06, many of today’s leading thinkers on design thinking and open source — both academically and as practitioners — make their homes and careers in North Carolina.

We believe a dynamic Innovation Council is the right approach for driving this movement. The first place to start is embracing these new approaches, bringing these entities together, sharing and nurturing the principles of design thinking and open source.

Implementing design thinking and open source principles for most businesses will probably fall short of the Google model of allowing every employee 20% of their time to work on their stuff. This policy hinges on the belief that the employees will be happier and the company will discover new innovations. You’ll have more employees spending more time thinking in new ways about ways of transforming your company.

Enabling and encouraging your work force to be more innovative — and to constantly think of how your company can work smarter and better — will inspire more breakthroughs. Additionally, if everyone listens to and learns from the communities using your stuff or buying your ideas — your group can make and think better and faster.

4. Learn from positive deviants

A widely accepted idiom permeates the open source development community:

Fail fast; fail often.

In creative cultures, mistakes happen. And history is full of stories where great advancement rose from failure. In part, because the search for new ideas must step outside of best practices and traditional thinking. Many new approaches will not work. But some will.

These positive approaches are the key to innovation. Without a willingness to fail, and without a willingness to learn something new about that which you many already be an expert, you can not benefit from the creation of positive deviants.

Our leaders can help people accept a more open attitude to failure. Instead of covering up or punishing failures, an Innovation Council and any business seeking to become innovation-driven must identify ways we can celebrate and share our mistakes in order to spur new thinking and new innovation.

New business models, new leaders, new citizens required

A redefinition of leadership is necessary, as John Paul Kotter outlines in What Leaders Really Do:

Leaders don’t make plans; they don’t solve problems; they don’t even organize people. What leaders really do is prepare organizations for change and help them cope as they struggle through it.”

Using Hamel’s model to retool our businesses and our state requires our leaders to adopt more catalyst models of leadership and depend far less upon the more traditional top-down models of control and power. Getting our cultures ready for this level of openness to change will challenge every one of our leaders in every kind of organization. But pulling it off will build the critical mass central to making North Carolina the most innovative place in the world.

Tags: commitment, design thinking, engaged employees, Gary Hamel, John Paul Kotter, open source, wicked problems