Welcome to the latest in a series of brief interviews with guest experts from KnowledgeBrief’s Innovation Programme, providing a window into the experts’ latest ideas and new advice for executives.
Following the Innovation Day in August, Mark Neild (MN) from University of Bristol gave us an interview to discuss what socio-cultural theory can tell us about innovation and how it can be created through collaboration.
KB: What’s the key business challenge that organisations need to address, that your research tackles?
MN: Many organisations find innovation hard to understand and even harder to execute well. In part, this can be attributed to the surfeit of misleading sound bites (fail fast, think outside-the-box, etc.), but mostly the challenge is far simpler.
We are conditioned to see the world in the wrong way.
The dominant economic theories that underpin most business practice assume a homogeneous objectivity among staff, customers and stakeholders that is far too simplistic. As a result, we create products our customers don’t want and transformation programmes our staff don’t buy into.
Why? Because we see them as objects of our plan rather than sentient subjects capable of co-creating bigger and better outcomes than we can conceive on our own.
KB: What advice would you give to executives, based on your findings?
MN: Innovation success comes down to intersubjectivity - the ability to see the world through the eyes of its intended users and customers. Instead of competing with staff and customers to maximise investors’ share of the profit, we should be co-creating with them to maximise the value. Forget about maximising our share of the pie and focus instead on making bigger, tastier pies.
This is unfortunately counter-intuitive. Executives need to recognise that today’s complex organisations are made up of multiple communities of practice and theirs is but one. Great innovation transcends communities of practice by marrying (for example) the strategic imperative of the boardroom with the operational constraints experienced by frontline staff; or the technical capability of the supplier with the operational need of the customer. Deep expertise in one community of practice is a distinct disadvantage because it tends to defend the status quo rather than embracing new ways of working. This runs counter to traditional hierarchies.
KB: How does your latest research approach this? What do the results indicate?
MN: Research among fast growing SMEs (“scale-ups”) and larger organisations enjoying sustained growth shows that innovation is far more prevalent under “humble leadership”. The ability to listen to, empathise with and coach junior employees and customers is key to successful innovation. Humble leaders rally followers around a co-created vision rather than dictating detailed tasks. Taylorist efficiency does not fit a post-industrial era with accelerating pace of change.
Embracing ambiguity requires disciplined experimentation where insight into emerging opportunities is the new currency. Mistakes are forgivable if they yield fresh insight and the down-side is contained, but not if their cause is carelessness or sloppy thinking.
Humble leaders expect high performance and encourage their people to achieve it. It should not be mistaken for laxity or lack of focus.
What did you learn or take away from meeting with the executives at the KnowledgeBrief Innovation Day?
MN: We are all constrained by “legacy”, be it process, culture or technology, but that need not diminish our desire to do better with what we have.
With thanks to Mark Neild, Teaching Fellow in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Bristol.