Innovation: Our Shared Responsibility

The world’s biggest untapped source of energy isn’t the wind, water or sun. It is the innovative energy lying dormant inside of organizations. And the time has come to harness it.

Victoria Maskell, based in UNIIT WAS EARLY SEPTEMBER 2017.

CEF’S Panama office, was sitting in an emergency meeting about Hurricane Irma, looking at a terrifying swirl of red, yellow and green with blue edges moving towards the Caribbean. The hurricane, which had strengthened into a Category Five storm, would do considerable damage once it hit landfall, and Maskell was looking for ways to support emergency preparedness for local populations that might be otherwise unreachable.

Her thoughts soon turned to U-report, a mobile empowerment platform created by UNICEF that provides children with access to health and education. UNICEF had created the platform to take advantage of its reach in close to 200 countries, using social messaging and SMS channels on mobile phones to gather opinions on topics of interest to its partners and stakeholders.

Maskell recalled how the organization had used U-report to answer questions and provide information about the Zika virus and a recent deployment to Peru after severe flooding. In both instances, U-report was used on a very small scale to understand the situation of young people and to send ‘stay safe’ messages.

Maskell thought U-report could be a great way to spread information about a predictable disaster like a hurricane. So she worked with representatives from seven other UNICEF offices, including Christopher Brooks, its senior digital and data specialist who was working in New York; James Powell, global U-report coordinator based in Bangkok; and seven online volunteers. The team provided around-the-clock coverage, receiving and processing questions from around the globe. UNICEF sent information to more than 25,000 U-report members and answered 8,000 individual questions on the platform. For 80 per cent of the youth reached, it was their only source of information regarding how to prepare for the hurricane, and 80 per cent of users said they had shared information with more than one person.

UNICEF received hundreds of messages of thanks. A 15-year-old in the East Caribbean wrote, “In my 15 years, this is the first hurricane I’ve ever been through, and it really scared

me. The information you sent me was some of the best information I got, and I shared it with my whole family. Thank you.”

After the storms passed, U-report allowed UNICEF to get a better grasp on where help was most necessary and to mobilize an appropriate response. “We sometimes forget the power of the global community, but a global team allows us to respond quickly. U-report aims to bring about social change and champions the very idea of a global community,” Maskell said. “One of the brilliant things about the U-report community is that we share best practices and we grow as a global set of colleagues with one clear aim in protecting children and young people when they need it most.”

Nobody had mandated Maskell to act. There was no senior leader painting a bold strategic vision. No one needed to invent a technological breakthrough. The effort came from normal people acting in a way that allowed them to come up with a creative solution to a difficult problem. That’s innovation in action.

In this article, we will take a deep dive into the actions that make Maskell and employees like her innovative — because there are Victoria Maskells in every organization. They are creative, curious and inventive, and they will thrive if their habits, instincts and behaviours are allowed to flow naturally. That, in essence, is what creating a culture of innovation is all about.

Creating a Culture of Innovation

A culture of innovation sounds appealing, doesn’t it? The phrase conjures up images of places that turn seemingly wild dreams into reality as a matter of course — places where new ideas flourish and where employees feel their voices are heard, their impact is felt, and their mark is left; and institutions that can nimbly adapt to and thrive within a world that is constantly zigzagging and increasingly slippery and unpredictable.

It isn’t hard to name iconic companies that seem to have cultures of innovation — places like Google, Amazon, Disney Pixar and Virgin. But what exactly constitutes these cultures?

People often answer that question by talking about what they see. Perhaps the cafeteria features a former Michelin star chef whipping up vegan protein balls that taste sublime. Or young employees might be zooming around on hoverboards. Maybe there’s even a slide — of the playground and not the Powerpoint variety — in the middle of the office. It looks and feels fun, freespirited and open.

These visual indicators are what longtime MIT professor Edgar Schein described as ‘artifacts’ — essentially, what you see when you look around an organization. While these might be manifestations of culture, artifacts are the tip of the proverbial iceberg — and not the defining attributes of a culture. For instance, in some contexts companies may ship in the foosball tables but see them gather dust, or they might hear snickers as senior leaders dutifully and awkwardly go down the slides; in other contexts the foosball tables and slides might become popular hotspots. There is more to the story than visible artifacts.

The word culture appears in popular aphorisms such as ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ (attributed to Peter Drucker) and ‘culture is what you do when the managers leave the room’, among others. But what exactly is an organization’s culture? Schein’s work looks beyond what you see in an organization to what people actually do on a day-to-day basis and, most critically, what they think and believe. As such, Schein defines company culture as “A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems [which have] worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.”

What exactly does that mean? Whenever an organization is still nascent or encounters a new problem, it has to figure out a way to solve it. Perhaps people draw on their collective history, or perhaps they just try things until something works. Over time, the organization repeatedly encounters particular types of challenges — in creating new products and services, for example. As the group finds a groove in addressing these challenges, their trial-and-error experimentation gives ways to standard processes, which eventually transform into routines or habits.

Powering those habits are the assumptions that were once explicit but soon disappear into the fabric of the organization. Here’s an example. Imagine you go to a meeting where senior leaders are debating whether to fund a project. You might see that the discussion focuses primarily on the financial forecasts presented by a team. What led to that moment? Likely it was a series of organizational routines in which small teams gathered data, created spreadsheets estimating a project’s financial impact and shared those spreadsheets with leaders to garner feedback. But why? Why was there this routine of developing spreadsheets? And why did this work take place in small teams?

Truly distinct ideas come at intersections where different mindsets and skills collide.

If you asked those involved, they would probably say, ‘That’s just what we do around here’. The real answer, however, is that at some point in the organization’s history, someone had learned that disciplined analysis was valuable; perhaps they had launched a project without it, and it ended up being catastrophic. At some point, they had also learned that teams outproduced work by individuals. Maybe they had a side-by-side comparison that justified that decision, or maybe it was a default setting that stuck. Whatever their path, over time, two assumptions coalesced: ‘The best results come from incorporating diverse perspectives’, and ‘Rigorous planning helps to avoid investment mistakes’.

This is what makes culture so challenging. We see visible artifacts — like who says what at a meeting, what materials people bring, how an office is laid out and so on — but below the surface of those artifacts are the ways people work, which are grounded in the assumptions, beliefs and values the group holds. Culture isn’t just what you see; it is what a group does and believes.

Schein’s definition makes clear one of the biggest fallacies organizations often fall prey to when seeking to boost their ability to innovate: They look at the hot innovative company of the day and seek to replicate the key practices of that company. ‘Oh, 3M has a “15 per cent rule” to allow engineers to explore side projects? Let’s copy that’; or, ‘ P&G has an “open innovation” program designed to connect with individual scientists? Sure, sounds good’.

Each of those companies, however, have very distinct cultures that maximize the impact of those programs. What you see may be what you get, but if what you see doesn’t result from what you’ve done or reinforce what you believe, then what you see is nothing more than a soulless artifact.

In summary, a culture of anything (call it ‘X’) is one in which people perceive X to be valuable; follow behaviours that enable them to achieve X on a routine, repeatable basis; and then reinforce those behaviours.

How Innovators Behave—and How to Support Them

While many people still believe that innovation is a mystical activity that requires God-given skill, it is in fact a discipline. And like all disciplines, it can be managed measured, mastered, and improved with careful practice.

There is ample literature around the behaviours that drive successful innovation, such as The Innovator’s DNA by Clayton

Christensen, Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen and publications by the Innosight team (most notably The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, Competing Against Luck, and Reinvent Your Business Model). Our synthesis of this body of work highlights that innovation success traces back to five behaviours: Great innovators are curious, customer-obsessed, collaborative, adept in ambiguity and empowered; and great cultures encourage and reinforce these behaviours. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Innovators are consistently searching for BEHAVIOUR 1: CURIOSITY. different and better ways to do things. They are explorers who are not content with resting on past success but believe they can always find a better way. That means they do the following:

• Keep an open mind, constantly asking, ‘What if…?’;

• Avoid shutting down ideas by saying, ‘This is how we do things here’;

• Adopt a problem-solver, versus a fault-finder, mindset; and

• Are perpetually paranoid about the future.

Many of the countries UNICEF operates in face a problem, which is at the same time an opportunity. There are 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world today, nearly 90 per cent of whom are in low- and middle-income countries. This is the largest cohort of young people in human history. Yet many lack opportunities. Only 30 per cent of the world’s poorest children attend secondary school, and more than 50 million young people are on the move, running from conflict, poverty and extreme weather. There is a vital window of opportunity to empower these youth by building skills and nurturing creativity, but such opportunity is at risk of being missed.

A proven way to empower youth and help them build skills is to have people from different backgrounds work together to solve problems. So a few years ago, a UNICEF leader in Kosovo wondered whether there was a way to bring youth communities together to solve social problems using human-centred design approaches. After all, young people have an intimate knowledge of local problems and, armed with the right tools, are well positioned to design and implement solutions. That leader’s fundamental curiosity, along with the desire to flip a problem into an opportunity, started the journey that resulted in a high-impact program called UPSHIFT, through which UNICEF convenes and supports local youth to become innovators.

Great innovators relentlessly BEHAVIOUR 2: CUSTOMER OBSESSION. seek to develop an ever-deeper understanding of the ‘jobs to be done’ by customers, employees and stakeholders. That means they do the following:

• Spend significant time with customers to understand their jobs to be done;

• Regularly create customer profiles and customer-journey maps;

• Ensure all solutions are rooted in real needs and problems; and

• Gain deep insight into how customers choose between solutions.

The genius of UPSHIFT is that it involves the ‘customer’ (local youth) directly in the creation of potential solutions. Consider the example of Sejnur Veshall, a young member of the Roma community of Prizren, a Kosovan municipality of about 100,000 people. “The Roma community definitely faces a lot of discrimination,” Veshall said, “and even though I always raised my voice against it, many others don’t. It is Roma girls, and women in particular, who are most marginalized, oftentimes uneducated and trapped into housekeeping.” The close connection to — indeed, the involvement of — the community creates instant empathy for areas that matter to would-be customers.

One of the most persistent findings BEHAVIOUR 3: COLLABORATION. in the innovation literature is that truly distinct ideas come at intersections where different mindsets and skills collide. Great innovators incorporate cross-functional expertise resourcefully, recognizing that the smartest person in the room is often the room itself. To be collaborative, innovators should do the following:

• Build cross-functional teams with diverse expertise and viewpoints;

• Emphasize collective versus individual goals;

• Be transparent and frank while remaining respectful; and

• Provide visibility and transparency in regard to initiatives.

UPSHIFT shows collaboration at two levels. First, the team-based nature of the program encourages collaboration at a local-community level. Veshall led a team called Golden Hands, designed to teach Roma women to create and sell traditional decorative plates. “We wanted to teach them an artisanal craft, build their professional skills, and help them turn this into a business,” he said. “What Golden Hands is trying to achieve is to make Roma women active in their community and change attitudes towards the Roma people through providing spaces for socialization between people of different backgrounds and communities.”

Veshall’s team organized workshops that included members of Roma and majority communities. “The involvement and integration of the Roma women in society through creating a decorative plates business is an important aspect of Golden Hands,” Veshall said.

Second, collaboration within UNICEF has amplified UPSHIFT’S impact by bringing it from one small country to many countries around the world, while continually improving it. A small, central innovation team has helped disseminate knowledge across the UNICEF network by convening in gatherings such as the UPSHIFT 2.0 conference. With 40 people working on youth innovation around the globe, this conference created modular content and user guides that allowed local officers to adopt and adapt UPSHIFT. It also created best-practice implementation guides to help form partnerships, develop workshops, drive engagement and raise money.

As of this writing, UPSHIFT is in 23 countries, with plans to bring it to another 15. The program in Jordan targets the large youth population in refugee camps; in Vietnam, UNICEF has partnered with local schools to develop social innovation clubs, drive social inclusion and develop solutions that address climate issues; and in North Macedonia, a local team won $20,000 to support its idea of a mobile app called Speak Out to build a community of support for victims of bullying.

Every early-stage innova-BEHAVIOUR 4: ADEPTNESS IN AMBIGUITY. tive idea is the same: It is partially right and partially wrong. The trick is to know which part is which. Great innovators act confidently despite incomplete information, expect iteration and change, excel at experimentation and celebrate judicious risktaking. They know that the path to creating value will have twists

Every early-stage innovative idea is the same: It is partially right and partially wrong.