One of the most difficult critical skills to describe, and to develop skill in, is ‘Unlearning.’ In order to do something new we often need to unlearn what we think we already know. Unlearning is not only hard to describe, it is hard to do. We suggest a few techniques for unlearning that may be helpful.

Deep knowledge and specialization are an important part of expertise. But sometimes the expert knowledge acts like blinders. One of the best ways to overcome this is by combining ideas from different disciplines to come up with a new solution. This is the critical skill of ‘concept blending.’

Design thinking is a compelling way to bring more creativity to business problem solving. Ibbaka is offering a pilot program that will support you with testing design thinking in your own culture and environment. Get access to the Ibbaka Talent platform, shape a design thinking competency model to your business, get coaching on a project team.

Jessica Day from IdeaScale has helped many companies, governments and nonprofits introduce open innovation programs. We asked her about the skills needed for these programs and what organizations need to do to be successful with them.

It takes a community to drive innovation. Angie Schick and New Ventures BC are at the heart of the BC innovation community. We interviewed her to get insights into what makes that community tick and the skills needed for community building.

Designing a competency model can be daunting. There is so much information to locate and integrate, so many things to validate and get approved. Is there a better way forward? Ibbaka is using its skill AI to generate competency models. This reduces development costs and timelines while keeping the model dynamic and relevant.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has issued a new (January 2021) report on Building a Common Language for Skills at Work. They give the reasons as to why a global skill taxonomy is needed, propose and architecture and begin to define skills. Ibbaka will support this architecture on the Ibbaka Talent Platform.

Metaphors are central to how we understand the world and think about complex problems. Three metaphors that we apply to skill and competency models are the chemical, the evolutionary and the neural. Each of these provides its own insights and when combined can fuel innovation.

In this post we give a practical example of how we developed a small competency model. The model is for Innovation Coaching. It will be of interest to everyone responsible for designing and managing competency models, and for people with a specific interest in innovation and coaching. We begin with some context on the Innovation Mentor Network that Ibbaka is supporting.