The Next Paradigm: Innovation Labs

Ironically, there is nothing new about innovation. It has been with us for a long time - ever since the wheel was invented. Within scientific and organization circles, the methodologies of innovation have also been in use for a while. What is new is that the approaches of innovation have been pulled together and packaged by groups like IDEO into a defined approach that can be used in businesses, offices of government and NGO's. Institutions like MIT have developed venues particularly focused on this defined practice of innovation.These approaches are called Innovation Labs or Social Innovation Labs.

Specifically, many of the components of the current approach to innovation are common sense. Though the term brainstorming may be new, the common sense approach of the joining of ideas is not. The open exploration of multiple alternatives before massaging them into a given new approach is not new. What is arguably new is the idea of "agile" development. This is the idea that rather than embarking upon a long-term and capital-intensive process of analysis, development, planning and implementation, new concepts are moved to a tangible form (a prototype) and then piloted as an experiment. Immediate feedback from this experiment as to its advantages and disadvantages leads to further iterations of the idea and subsequent piloting.

What is also new is the role that this practice of innovation, e.g. Innovation Labs is seen as playing in the advancement of society. Innovation is both a part and parcel of day-to-day local society and a quantum leap to a higher mega order of global society. The local and global are interconnected. The advancement of one involves the advancement of the other

One core idea embodied in all of this is something set out by Steven Johnson as "the adjacent possible." The adjacent possible is what is separate from us but associated in proximity to us. On a personal, organizational and societal level, the adjacent possible represents that new potential that if engaged through the human process of analysis, insight and discovery and integrated into our individual or collective lives can represent a step forward.

Thinkers like Roberto Mangabeira Unger ask what will it take to do this and why aren't we doing this. The answer to the later question is that many in our global society, our local communities or even in our households do not feel empowered to do so. They (we) have become resigned to the assumptions implicit in what Unger calls the "dictatorship of no alternatives." According to Unger, for so much of life, we have bought into the idea that there are no alternatives. Life is as it is. According to Otto Scharmer things like the market economy cannot be questioned. Our current extravagant use of environmental resources cannot be questioned. Our individual lack of a path forward constrained by lack of opportunities cannot be questioned. The role of government in providing low quality services through a corrupt bureaucracy cannot be questioned - because there is no alternative.

With the aid of internet technologies, people have been discovering on a larger scale that things can be questioned, e.g. The Arab Spring, the Occupy movements. Innovation Labs represent on a smaller, more local basis a foray into the Adjacent Possible with the potential for ultimately questioning the larger assumptions of "no alternatives" that have been baked into our lives.

Unger says that little epiphanies of innovation existing all around the world represent down payments on larger transformative possibilities. They are a prefigurement of larger possibilities gained from grass roots innovation.

All of this is not more than an abstract conversation unless the practices of innovation manifested in vehicles such as Innovation Labs can become part of our individual and organizational lives. This is where the adjacent possible runs head on into the dictatorship of no alternatives. What do we do? How do we do it? How can we be doing this in a way that meets people where they are, that enables them to act with a new attitude within available resources. How can the enhancement of agency occur in all aspects of our social life? Part of the solution to this is to act collectively. Innovation happens when many people with different areas of expertise, different perspectives, different strengths and different access to resources join together. Sometimes the innovation is the act of joining together collaboratively or in harvesting the learnings of how people have worked together.

What is clearly new in this paradigm of innovation is the idea that each of us has in our daily lives access to the adjacent possible. We need to be willing and confident in our ability to reach out to explore these possibilities through a "radical experimentalism" along with others with whom we join. In time, as local needs drive innovation they will according to Unger constitute a prefigurement of transformative changes which will supplant the status quo.

Comments

[Zev]

Barry, your words are lucid, insightful, and innovative, as always, pushing the limits on our own adjacent possible. Thank you for another great post!