Open Innovation - Design Thinking - Agile. IdeaScale’s Jessica Day shares her insights into innovation.

Steven Forth is co-founder and managing partner at Ibbaka. See his skill profile here.

Innovation is central to modern society. It is not just companies that innovate. Governments, non-profits, informal groups and individuals are constantly looking at how to change things for the better.

One company that supports innovation across a broad spectrum of organizations is IdeaScale. Specifically, IdeaScale supports an open approach to innovation that draws in people across the organization and even beyond it.

(Disclosure, IdeaScale is an Ibbaka client).

We asked Jessica Day, Co-Founder at IdeaScale, to share her experience as part of the leadership of an innovative company in the innovation software space.

See the Open Competency Model for Design Thinking

Ibbaka – It would be great to hear a bit about your background and what accounts for the passion that you bring to this?

Jessica – In terms of why I am so passionate about innovation and how my history brings me to it, I studied creative writing and English. I was in love with stories and one of those kids who read a lot of stories. This got me interested in the creative process and I pursued that passion in my masters degree. I have an MFA from the University of Washington. 

After I graduated, I met some of my co-founders in IdeaScale. At the time I was writing anything anybody would pay me to write - case studies, press releases, website copy. I was doing that for a lot of different companies and my co-founders and I all ended up working at bigger organizations from time to time. I would contract with Microsoft, my co-founder Rob worked at a bank, Josh worked at the White House as an intern.

We all had this experience of seeing that the people who were new in an organization, or younger, had a difficult time getting their ideas to move upward. It was something we talked and thought about, it also came to us as an idea when Rob was doing some work for a survey software company and started to see how you could use this as a database of ideas. The ideas were to be considered on their own merits and their desirability or feasibility, rather than on who the ideas came from.

That is what brought me into the IdeaScale and innovation space.

Ibbaka – Thinking about innovation and the innovation space, what are some of the different approaches people take to innovation?

Jessica – I feel at this point everybody has their own take on innovation. Even if they are into six sigma or agile, they are finding ways to make it their own. Anytime I have presented an innovation process to a customer, they’ve said they need to make sure it aligns with their other processes, with what their leadership believes, and with how they will validate ideas with customers or stakeholders.

In addition to crowdsourced innovation programs, the two methodologies that occur most frequently are agile and design thinking. I think this makes sense, because both of these depend on getting a lot of feedback and iterative processing. If you are doing crowdsourced innovation, you can engage with customers and stakeholders in real-time. You have way more collaborators than you might have if you are limited to the people that you can get in a room. 

Design thinking and agile processes are iterative. You can go through the initial empathizing phase and get all the way to prototyping. But then maybe it's time to empathize again. Innovation always requires a  movement between the divergent thinking that is necessary to create new ideas, and then the convergent thinking that is used to make decisions and act.

Ibbaka – There are many different opinions on agile and design-thinking – there is one group of people that believes that they can and should be integrated and are a natural fit. There is another group who believes, just as strongly, that the two contradict each other and cannot be put together. Do you have any thoughts on those two different stances and on how they can be reconciled?

Jessica – At the risk of being controversial, I do think they go together. Mostly because I have seen different organizations combining them successfully. 

Any innovation process depends on the buy-in of the practitioners. If you have team members who do not think they go together, it's probably going to make it difficult for them to work together. But if you have people who are experienced in both approaches who are willing to bring them together, that can be made to work.

Ibbaka – Are there tricks or techniques that you have seen that allow agile and design thinking to be better integrated?

Jessica – I think that both rely on the strength of the feedback. Making sure that feedback is part of the process is critical to both agile and design thinking. Both are built around iterative cycles. You can take an agile approach to the steps in design thinking. Design thinking was never really intended to be a waterfall process.

Ibbaka – Thinking again about innovation and the IdeaScale approach, what are some of the different roles you see?

Jessica – We have a whole infographic on the innovation teams’ structure and there is a lot of research out there about this. 

One of the things that any successful innovation program needs is a leader. Someone who helps set the ambition, the goals, who is going to help remove obstacles, and assign new resources. 

Then you have the people who are the managers and administrators of the process. I think of them as traffic-controllers for ideas, they are the connectors in the system.

There are all these ideas about the different hats that people wear on innovation teams.  

Another important role is the ‘this is where the rubber meets the road type of person’ who can really help with the project planning and management aspect. I once heard that all CEOs should be project managers, because it is so important to not just have a vision or to be creative, but to make sure things happen. That is an important innovation role.

Part of innovation is finding allies, tastemakers, and influencers in an organization and bringing them in. Sometimes they will disagree with you, sometimes they will be advocates for you. It is important to get feedback from both on a small and large scale.

Ibbaka – What are some of the skills that people need for these roles and what are the skills you associate generally with innovation?

 Jessica – One of the skills you need is to have some appetite for risk and acceptance of failure.

The ability to teach and communicate are particularly important to the innovation process. 

People who are positive are an important aspect of innovation and I think people overlook that one. You are going to have a lot of failure and having that resilience to keep on going makes a huge difference.

I was in a conversation with a director of innovation for Clorox. He was saying how humility is an important skill set to nurture, and with that a beginner’s mindset. 

There are activities that people can do to cultivate these attributes. One of them is from Adam Grant’s book Originals. He says one of the best ways to make people better judges of ideas is to first have them go through an exercise where they must come up with ideas. Having them go through that empathy exercise of being in a creative space makes them better judges of whether an idea is good or not.

Ibbaka – The skills strongly associated with innovation tend to be skills that we do not train on. What are some ways people develop their innovation skills?

Jessica – IdeaScale has plenty of workshops that we introduce to our clients. One of the creativity workshops is the Adam Grant exercise I mentioned. There are also ‘connective tissue’ type workshops where you track different trends or themes and group them. Traditionally post-it notes were used to make those connections.

Most people are so creative but do not know how to express their creative ideas in a way that will be viable in an organization. Workshops can help with this.

Teaching people how to understand the resources that we are going to need in making the ideas a reality can also be important.

Ibbaka – Are there ways to tell whether an organization will be successful with innovation?

Jessica – There has to be an openness to change. It is best if this permeates all levels of the organization and there needs to be some level of leadership buy-in. You can make innovation happen from that middle level with will and creativity, but if you have supportive leadership it is going to be more successful.

You need a methodology. It can be your own. It can be quite simple and change over time, but you need a place to start.

Most people who arrive with a plan, that plan gets disrupted, and then they have to re-plan. This is a natural part of innovation.

Aligning innovation with a business need makes a big difference. You can just innovate for innovation’s sake sometimes, but that blue sky approach can make it hard for people to focus and deliver on the backend. Find the parts of the company that are really succeeding, pour some gasoline on that and make it even more exciting, that is a great way to inspire the parts of your organization that are struggling to find ways to solve their problems.

Another thing we found is that innovation processes need a way to measure value. Whether it is revenue generated or patents filed, having some method of measuring success makes a huge difference.

Ibbaka – What are the warning signs that an organization is not going to be successful with innovation?

Jessica – Disengaged leadership. When we hear people say they cannot get their boss to look at things, or ‘there is too much on my plate and my boss will not let me focus on this,’ that is going to be an impediment to innovation. 

The other sign that things will not go well is when people say they just want ideas and do not think about what is on the other side of those ideas. In that case innovation inevitably falls flat. If you have ideas but do not do anything with them, everything deflates quickly.

The other thing is people who are not willing to be inclusive. Programs led by such people are going to be malnourished because they will not have diversity of opinions, thinking, and will become an echo chamber.

Ibbaka – That is an important thought. One of the key attributes of being able to be successful with innovation, is then to be able to accept, celebrate, and apply diversity. Is that a fair statement?

Jessica – Absolutely. It is one of IdeaScale’s core values and should be a core value of all businesses. It has been proven in the literature what a difference diversity makes. Companies that have higher levels of diversity have around 45% higher returns than those with low levels of diversity and are 70% more likely to capture a new market. 

In a monoculture, then there are far fewer places for ideas to grow. If you can have disagreements, that makes that idea better. Seeing two different concepts and bringing them together can lead to a far more disruptive idea than either would be on its own.

One of the reasons why we love the crowdsourcing aspect of innovation is because you are far more likely to get a diversity of voices, and all those voices are all equalized.

Ibbaka – Where do we need to be applying innovation in society today? What are some of the large-scale places that we should be bringing more innovation into the mix?

Jessica – Entering into this era of climate change where we have some of the biggest brands and governments trying to adapt in a short amount of time, that is going to take a lot of different ideas from unusual places instead of places where ideas usually come from. There will also be some exciting and lucrative opportunities as the sustainable economy and regenerative future take hold. Realizing this will require a lot of change.

Inequality is a renewed focus. There are tons of places where there is inequality in our businesses, governments, globally, whether this is race, religion or income inequality. I think there is a lot we can do to re-envision society. We have had a lot of ideas working for us for such a long time, but I think there is no better time to change than when we have access to a global wealth of knowledge.

Technology will continue to drive innovation. It is such a driving force and can create huge opportunities, but it’s also something that we need to think about with an ethical and creative mindset. Making sure we do not destroy ourselves in the path to progress is pretty important. Innovation needs to address what technology means to us as a species and to the planet, and not just to features.

Ibbaka – You mentioned earlier one of the keys to innovation is to hear voices that we do not normally hear from. Can you unfold that a bit more and suggest ways that that can be made to happen?

Jessica – One of the great ways this is unfolding is in the climate movement where young people are playing a big role. Traditionally, they have not been the decision makers or the power players in any decisions about what happens in the world. When it comes to this movement, you see them rising up and having new ideas. One of my favorite stories is of Boyan Slat, who created The Ocean Cleanup machine to collect garbage and plastics from the oceans. These young business leaders are coming-of-age earlier than in the past.

For a long-time, innovation was an R&D responsibility. Today, you should be looking for ideas from your finance people and from your facilities team, or even the IT department, or outside your company all together.

Ibbaka – Can you tell us a bit more about the vision for IdeaScale?

Jessica – IdeaScale is an innovation management software platform that allows organizations to gather ideas and feedback from anyone no matter where they are in the world. Acting on the ideas is transparent so that anybody can see what is happening, what people are saying, and eventually see what those ideas become. It is software that uses the principles and processes of crowdsourcing around the data of ideas.

Ibbaka – Imagine IdeaScale five years from now. How has IdeaScale changed and how has it changed the world?

Jessica – Right now, control is very much with the administrators who buy our software and launch it within their company. That is necessary as they are the ones who can drive change. I see a future where that power to create change is more distributed. There might not be as many barriers between one Ideascale community and another. People and communities may be more networked and a bigger marketplace for ideas. Whether they work for an organization or not, they can be a part of the solution.

One of the things we want to be is more sustainable, equitable, and have more fun. I would like to believe IdeaScale will be all these things. I hope we will be able to combat the worst effects of climate change. I would like to think we are building workplaces that are not as stratified and that we will be contributing to products that consumers love and that are also good for the planet and society.