“Jugaad is a remote sibling of the Western-style hacking, the manipulation of existing products and services, and with the Chinese Shanzhai phenomenon (innovation through fast imitation) it has in common the utter disrespect for any kind of brand or management ideology. Adaptation, improvisation, rapid experimentation, fast failing, a high tolerance for ambiguity, super-flexibility… together these principles are perhaps marking the beginning of a new era of doing business, a new economy.”

It’s enough to make you think that innovation is a case of emergent behavior in a complex system (which to some extent it is), beyond influence. But I would also argue that there is room for adding structure, context, and what I’ll call method (as opposed to a process) to accelerate and diffuse innovation. As one example, SFIP’s method, based on its overall problem-solving approach, features five main themes:

1. Pick the right problem
2. Engage the implementors
3. Invite multiple perspectives
4. Provide the best environment
5. Experiment radically and recursively

In practice, these work roughly as follows:

Wrong Problem/Bad Solution: Altogether too often, organizations or stakeholders fail to identify the actual or underlying systemic problem at hand, and instead wind up addressing symptomatic or proximate issues. The SFIP method begins with a deep and robust re-examination of the nature of the problem, featuring a whole systems approach.

Stakeholders as Participants: The “client,” or the entity experiencing a given problem, becomes an active participant, working with SFIP and the collaborative team. This should include end-users in a user-centered design process. Implementation is part of the deliverable, and implementors are part of the team.

Diversity Trumps Ability: Scott Page, Ph.D. (External Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute) has formally proven that in the type of problems SFIP will address, there is greater value to having a diverse set of problem solving perspectives and heuristics, than homogenous depth of expertise. This is also known as “two heads are better than one.”

Skunkworks Work: There is abundant evidence to support the idea that when truly new thinking is needed, a new environment, context, and organizational values are required. SFIP offers a conceptual “safe haven” for participants to abandon legacy assumptions and organizational cultures, and to truly “think different” about the problem at hand.

Obvious Connections/Unexpected Combinations: Given the nature of our problems in such areas as energy, climate, education, health, water resources, sustainable development, and biodiversity, it’s obvious that industry, policy, and science must be brought into closer collaboration; the role of art, design, and creative processes may be somewhat less obvious, but in the words of Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” SFIP promotes unexpected interactions across all these sectors, thus favoring serendipity.

Fail Early and Often: SFIP uses rapid virtual and physical prototyping, and advanced simulation, visualization, and modeling (a Santa Fe-area specialty). This allows collaborators to experiment broadly, wildly, and frequently, permitting the generation of many more potentially interesting ideas, their full evaluation, and reiterative and recursive feedback loops for improvement.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see many of these concepts “emerging” out of Jugaad, and other spontaneous approaches. Let’s all do our part to make the world safe – and even supportive — for wrong-headed innovators, everywhere. We have nothing to lose but our silos.

Or: How Incremental Tweaks Can Frustrate True Transformation

While assimilating the remarkable insights from the BIF-6 Collaborative Innovation Summit last month, produced by our valued alliance partner the Business Innovation Factory, I had the opportunity to sit with Alan Webber, a conference presenter, at his favorite café in Santa Fe. It may be the altitude, but we seem to have interesting conversations there.

This one led to a discussion of the potentially catastrophic course society seems to be following, in areas like energy, climate, and unsustainable development; industries that know they must disrupt or be disrupted, but still can’t; and the problem of why we seem to be incapable of true transformative innovation, even when we know what we need to do, and why. This led us to Jared Diamond’s essential work “Collapse.” Those who have read it will remember the question he poses, which I paraphrase: “What could have been going through the mind of the guy who cut down the last tree on Easter Island?”

It’s time we collectively asked ourselves the same question, as we proceed to cut down the trees, both figuratively and literally, on which we depend. How can we be so acutely aware of the need for disruptive, transformative innovation at the level of organizations, industries, and systems, and yet be so unable to do the right thing? SFIP’s recent experience preparing an application to the Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge Grant (see our two-minute video here) made us think long and hard about some answers:

Because it’s hard. It’s scary. It’s risky. It takes vision, guts, and determination, plus a good amount of imagination. And that makes us susceptible to voices that tell us they have the answers. Could it be that these are the Stone Gods of our time, commanding our loyalty, energy, resources, and attention, watching impassively as we cut down trees?

In that spirit, here’s a “Top Ten Stone Gods of Innovation” list, to help us remember to whom we should (and should not) be listening:

1. Management consultants, especially change practice consultants (ask any Big Five veteran how many of his or her clients ever changed anything meaningfully)
2. Internal innovation departments (what happens when you cross a mandate to innovate with a need to know what the impact of any initiative would be in costs and revenues, in advance?)
3. The buzz on crowdsource platforms (do we honestly think www.challenge.gov is going to help Washington get its mojo back, or is this meant to make the rest of us feel better?)
4. Policy institutes (what’s the wildest idea you’ve seen come out of Brookings?)
5. Retreat and workshop centers (what happens after everyone gets home and catches up on email?)
6. Business schools that talk about innovation as an extension of their past performance (including one that used to be known as the “West Point of Capitalism“)
7. Business books (it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that time spent reading about innovation is time spent not innovating; and there’s a whole lot of books you can read)
8. Technology (or, whatever got us into this mess will surely get us out of it… right?)
9. Self-styled “Innovation and Creativity Experts” who promise to make it painless and fun (e.g., I kid you not, one who juggles)
10. STEM education (see note above on Technology)

OK, if that’s what doesn’t work, what does? Here’s a proposition: Just as organizations and industries often need the shock of external systemic disruption to change,  individuals may need a jolt of “cognitive disruption” to move outside their customary way of thinking.

Crises serve this purpose, albeit inefficiently. Philosoher Roberto Unger observed that “The task of imagination is to do the work of crisis without crisis.” Albert Einstein pointed out that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And as Bucky himself said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

That’s a god I can spend time with.

Several recent and unusual pairings bring this idea, and the general necessity of cross-sector collaboration, into sharp relief. Especially within the context of the massive and urgent changes that must be accomplished on a global scale, we may all have to learn to work with the unexpected (and even “unsuitable”) partner in order to get the job done.

For example, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate recently published Renergizing America’s Defense, which “…details steps the armed forces are taking to address their energy use and carbon emissions. Energy, the environment, the economy and security are inextricably linked. That is why the Department of Defense and the military services are stepping forward not only to understand these challenges, but also to demonstrate leadership in responding to them.  As the largest government user of energy, the department has a keen appreciation of the ways energy innovation can enhance operational effectiveness, bolster national competitiveness and increase energy security, all while saving lives and money and reducing the U.S. carbon boot print.”

The military has also been engaged by The Nature Conservancy via their land conservation partnership with the Department of Defense, stating that “…more threatened and endangered species live on military bases across the United States than on land managed by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service or the Park Service…. the development that is creeping up on  military installations around the country threatens both military training activities and species. That’s why The Nature Conservancy is creating partnerships with the U.S. Department of Defense to conserve hundreds of thousands of acres of these important habitats while also ensuring military preparedness. The Conservancy is working with the DOD at more than two dozen bases across the country to create protected buffer zones.”

Management Consulting stalwart Booz Allen Hamilton published a book some time ago that has only gained in relevance since. In Megacommunities: How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits Can Tackle Today’s Global Challenges Together, “Experts show how leaders in business, government, and civil society can reach across national and sector divisions, forming collaborative “megacommunities” that are directed toward a common goal.

“A hurricane strikes a city; global warming threatens the environment; and a disease resists a cure—such problems are too large for any one authority to solve alone. Our increasingly globalized and interconnected world calls for a new type of tri-sector leadership in which business, government and nonprofits work together in a state of permanent negotiation. To be effective, tomorrow’s leaders will need to reach across national and sector divisions to form a collaborative ‘megacommunity.’ “

Finally, it’s cool to read that insurance giant Swiss Re and leading NGO Oxfam America have launched a joint risk micro-finance management initiative for farmers in Ethiopia: “The collaboration is aimed at helping communities most vulnerable to climate variability and change. The project focuses on an innovative pilot project to introduce weather insurance for a staple cereal crop in the village of Adi Ha, Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia. Drought-related risks are a primary concern throughout Ethiopia where 85% of the population is dependent on smallholder, rain-fed agriculture. The pilot will adopt a holistic approach to risk management, examining the suitability of weather insurance and risk reduction measures such as seasonal forecasting and improved agricultural practices. The efforts will be funded by Swiss Re and Oxfam America, with primary technical support being provided by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.”

We’ll be seeing more of these unlikely partnerships, and we’ll need even more. Find the least likely collaborator you can think of, and take them out to lunch.  You never know when you’ll find yourself in bed with a stranger…

Santa Fe Complex is among the more interesting and promising elements in this “innovation ecosystem,” and one with great complementary resonance for SFIP. According to its newly revamped website, “The mission of sfComplex is to create a collaborative workspace that fosters applied complexity science through interdisciplinary education, outreach, and development of innovative technologies to address real-world problems, enable social cooperation, and create economic opportunities.”  Like SFIP, sfX  follows a trans-disciplinary paradigm, and is particularly interested in the intersections of technology and art.

After nearly two years of steady growth and development in its projects and community events and programs, several recent accomplishments have advanced sfX and local the ecosytem substantially.  New Board President Ed Angel is the former chairman of the Computer Science Dept. at UNM, and the Founding Director of ARTS Lab there; and new Executive Director Fred Seibel led the consulting division at BIOS Group, a for-profit complexity science spinout from the Santa Fe Institute. With a new contract from the U.S. Army Logistics Innovation Agency, and renewed funding from the City of Santa Fe’s Economic Development Dept., the Complex seems to be on its way to great things.

SFIP congratulates all concerned, and looks forward to close and fruitful collaborations with sfX to advance the innovation ecosystem, and produce some excellent solutions to pressing and complex problems.

As the entire “design for social change” movement gathers momentum and matures, we hope to see more organizational infrastructure emerge (and this is an area of keen interest to SFIP). One of the outcomes of the Aspen event was a proposal for New Design, a soft structure linking interested design firms to philanthropic funders and  social challenges, which may be a step in the right direction. As one summit participant oberserved: “…there’s only so much you can accomplish in three days….” What if this was one part of an “Appropriate Solutions Laboratory” @ SFIP?

“Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs.”

“Among the ideas that I do not believe will get serious attention in Copenhagen is one I see as critical to addressing the climate challenge: creating a new institutional structure to coordinate assistance from advanced industrialized countries to developing countries with the objective of transforming the way that people in the developing world produce and utilize energy.”

“Where complex technology sectors like energy are involved, we need to have Congress legislate standard packages of incentives and support across common technology launch areas, so that some technology neutrality is preserved and the optimal emerging technology has a chance to prevail.”

From the ASC Conference website:

The main goal of the Applied Solutions Coalition is to develop a mechanism for design and funding of large, integrated renewable energy infrastructure projects. Projects should incorporate most, if not all, of the four main legs of sustainable infrastructure – transportation, renewable energy, energy and water conservation and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Incorporating multiple aspects of sustainable infrastructure allows the technologies to build upon each other’s strengths and leverage each effect for maximum impact.

Traditional methods of infrastructure funding do not take into account the additive resource reduction benefits of such integrated projects nor do they take into account the size of funding necessary to implement such large and relatively new ideas. Capital markets and Capital Hill are not familiar with this way of thinking yet so it is the goal of Applied Solutions Coalition to forge a path to bring these new project ideas to fruition.

Read more HERE

Scroll through participating projects HERE

SFIP emphasizes new problem-solving processes and creative collaboration, and brings together individual and institutional leaders from industry and commerce; public planning and policy; science and technology; and the design, art, and creative fields.

You can read more about this new approach here, and sample our blog posts and items of current interest below.