“Don’t be afraid to fail, but stimulate people to try and to learn if they fail”
Prof. Dr. Paul Louis Iske, as a speaker of our last Golden-I’s Gala, talks about innovation in organisations. To be successful in a evolving world, people and organisations have to embrace change, look for new opportunities, innovate and create! He gives us the keys to become Next Generation Organisations.
December 8, 2015
Prof. Dr. Paul Louis Iske, as a speaker of our last Golden-I’s Gala, talks about innovation in organisations. To be successful in a evolving world, people and organisations have to embrace change, look for new opportunities, innovate and create! He gives us the keys to become Next Generation Organisations.
Par Sébastien Lambotte pour l’édition ITnation Mag Octobre 2015
“New Technology in an Old Organisation gives an Expensive Old Organisation”
1. Experiencing a ‘Perfect Storm’
When we talk about Next Generation Organisations, we talk about the successors of our current organisations, but also about organisations that are ready for the next generations (of client, employees, etc.). And shift is happening! We are experiencing a ‘Perfect Storm’, which means change everywhere, in technology, economy and society, with an ever increasing pace. To be successful in such a world, people and organisations have to embrace change, look for new opportunities, innovate and create! Because of the complexity of the world on the one hand and the depth of knowledge on the other hand, it becomes more and more important to join forces and innovate together, making use of each other’s strengths. This will only happen if the right environment is being created.
2. An environment to initiate change
According to the American Heritage© Science Dictionary, an environment is defined as all of the biotic and abiotic factors that act on an organism, population, or ecological community and influence its survival and development. Biotic factors include the organisms themselves, their food, and their interactions. Abiotic factors include such items as sunlight, soil, air, water, climate, and pollution. Organisms respond to changes in their environment by evolutionary adaptations in form and behavior.
In our context, we are looking for interactions with the environment that influence human and organisational behavior. These are found in four ‘spaces’:
A. The social space, describing infor- mal relationships, cultural aspects, networks, codes of conduct and so on; B. The process space, which contains the way the activities have been organized and formal relationships are defined;
C. The virtual space, consisting of ICT- based systems, such as communication tools, social networks, workflow tools, transaction systems, knowledge bases and mobile infrastructures;
D. The physical space, which directly in- teracts with our five senses: sight, smell, sound, taste and touch.
3. NT + OO = EOO
In particular, we are looking for properties of environments that support Combinatoric Innovation: The process of discovering new ways of value creation by combining and applying ideas and knowledge from various sources. Though technology is a very important driver of change and new business models, it is key to help people and organisations to make optimal use of all technical advancements. This is the area of social innovation, which is necessary to avoid situations in which the following formula is applicable: NT + OO = EOO. This stands for: New Technology in an Old Organisation gives an Expensive Old Organisation…
4. Asking questions & laugh
An important aspect of a Next Generation Organisation is the ability to rejuvenate the business model: to find new products, new markets, new revenue models, new customer relationships, new partnerships, etc. For this to happen, patterns in the organisation need to be changed and that’s where creativity comes in. Moving toward a Next Generation Organisation requires paradigm shifts: fundamental new ways of looking at current and future issues. The question is: How to increase creativity in organisations? Or, how to increase the Creativity Index? This concept works as follows: in order to create new patterns, two basics, human processes are related. The first one is about asking questions. By asking one opens up for new insights, hence new patterns. The second activity is making new combinations, ‘lateral thinking’. Use ideas and experiences from one place somewhere else. This is exactly the way humor works: at the clou, new. Sometimes illogical or even impossible connections are made and this is the moment one starts to laugh.
“The good news is that Luxembourg has the resources (money, knowledge, networks) to experiment, to fail, to learn and to succeed.”
5. Why so serious?
Multiply the number of times you ask a question during the day and multiply this with the number of times you laugh during the day. This will give you the creativity index. Research shows that this number gets smaller when you become older. If the index is 1 for 4-years old children, it is only 0.02 for 44-years old people and we call this the state of terminal seriousness. Here is our challenge: How to stop terminal seriousness from happening in the organisation ? Again, it requires an environment where new patterns are (co-) created, explored and exploited. In such an environment, people ask questions and are open for new combinations! This can be achieved by developing a space where different people can meet, processes that foster and support innovation and entrepreneurship. Diversity is an important property of innovation systems. People with different back-ground, different expertise and different beliefs together create new insights and chances. Successful companies foster and make use of diversity rather than see it as an obligation.
“Don’t be afraid to fail, but stimulate people to try and to learn if they fail.”
6. Celebrate failures
Innovation projects are fundamentally different compared to old-style projects. They are agile. It means that you move fast, decide about the direction and the next steps, not about the complete project because there are still uncertainties. A. Einstein already said: ‘If we knew what we are doing, we wouldn’t call it research!’ So, we must experiment and accept risk, hence failure. Don’t be afraid to fail, but stimulate people to try and to learn if they fail. Celebrate these attempts! The Institute of Brilliant Failures (www.brilliantfailures.com) has been created to share and learn from examples of people and organisations who did try and didn’t succeed in their original plan. Awards are even handed out to the most inspiring failures.
This is part of the culture change we need! Luxembourg is in a unique position: It is wealthy, but prosperity is not a law of nature. Many things are changing, also for Luxembourg. So, Next Generation Luxembourg should apply the principles described above. And the good news is that Luxembourg has the resources (mo- ney, knowledge, networks) to experiment, to fail, to learn and to succeed. The scale of Luxembourg is big enough to test new developments on the right scale, without being ‘to bog to fail’. It is this position that should be maximally exploited!