Innovation Behavior and the External Environment

As organizations continue their quest for developing the skills of innovation, one of the areas they need to focus on is how to pay attention to the external environment.  However, in these days of data overload and accessibility I wonder what strategies people use to keep in touch with what is going on within their chosen areas of interest.

As Level Seven is involved with developing innovation behavior for leaders, we try to keep up to date with what’s happening in our specific field.  One simple, daily habit I am trying to cultivate into a routine is to look through Google alerts for ‘innovation’ and to systematically scan through these each day to look for interesting bits of information.  But what is it that makes me look at some stories and not others?  Clearly, if something in the headline jumps out then I look into that story further but sometimes I just ignore other headlines.

However, it is not always the story item in the alert that is of most interest but what that piece of information links through to.  For example this morning I clicked on a story in the blog section that was entitled: QS Intelligence unit, the global innovation index: a guide for students.  I might well have passed up the opportunity to look into this further but when reading the blog entry the idea of the global innovation index seemed like an interesting concept, so I searched this out and found an interesting resource, link below.  Sometimes the items that are tucked away turn out to be most fruitful.

http://www.globalinnovationindex.org/content.aspx?page=gii-full-report-2013

Reflecting on my actions this morning has caused me to think about the notion of “associations” and how the act of making associations can help not only with the creative process but also with the innovation process, particularly when trying to associate concepts, components or ideas that do not have any obvious relationship or compatibility. 

A leader of innovation has many pathways to follow within their specific external environment.  Some pathways may be known, others will be less known and some even unknown.  We may never know what we have missed by keeping to the known pathways and we may be unsure of which of the unknown pathways will yield better results.  However, developing an ‘intuitive nose’ and developing the discipline of maintaining habitual routines could help to open up more useful and insightful opportunities.

Manila Diaries

3 August, 2013:  33 degrees C, Cloudy, Humidity 84%