The Innovation Competencies - What are they and how can they be developed

In the past, mastery of technology and invention were characteristics of successful corporations and nations.  In the future, the mastery of innovation and complexity will be necessary for companies and organizations to survive and thrive. The ability to partner, connect, and rapidly develop new solutions and processes will be necessary to create value, develop new industries, create sustainable companies, and result in prosperity and a higher quality of life.

Recognizing this imperative, a recent Boston Consulting Group survey (1) of 1500 executives indicates that innovation is a top-three priority for 76 percent of companies surveyed and that 74 percent of industrial companies plan to increase innovation investment.

With innovation established as a top corporate and organizational priority, the fundamental questions arise of what are the critical innovation competencies and how do we develop them in students or employees.  

Three competencies have been identified as essential for innovation in a technical environment – expertise in a discipline or domain, the discovery competencies, and understanding of a system (2).

The Innovator’s DNA (3) characterizes the necessary creative and team based problem solving skills as the ‘discovery skills’.  While the discovery skills are important, two additional competencies are necessary for innovation in a technical context.  First, expertise in a discipline is clearly a necessary competency.  For example, I may want to develop the next generation of innovative hybrid vehicle, but if I don’t have the technical foundation in the related disciplines, it is unlikely that I will make much progress.

Perhaps not as apparent, expertise in systems competencies is also a necessary competency for innovation.  The system engineering competencies are technical in nature but not aligned with a particular discipline such as mechanical or electrical engineering.  The systems competencies include considering the stakeholder view, viewing a complex system as a network of subsystems with inputs and outputs, and viewing a system in its functional and physical structure.  This ability to disassemble and reassemble the basic functions and elements of a system is a critical competency for innovation.   It is interesting to note that the quality visionary W. Edwards Deming recognized the importance of a systems perspective in his Theory of Profound knowledge some 30 years ago.  

Once an understanding of the innovation competencies has been identified, the next concern becomes how are they taught and developed in students and employees.  Results in this area are still being developed, but in general, they are taught and developed through a combination of content and experiences.  In addition, they must be taught simultaneously and purposefully to produce innovative results.  Engineering programs clearly teach and develop discipline competencies and sometimes provide some exposure to the systems competencies.  In The Innovator’s DNA (3), exercises are presented to develop each of the discovery skills individually.

The Business Model Canvas (4) and more recently the Innovation Canvas (5) have been introduced to develop innovative business models and product designs.  The figure presented is the IDEO shopping cart represented on the Innovation Canvas.  The canvas concept itself represents a framework and teaching tool for a team to simultaneously exercise the three innovation competencies.   First, use of the canvases requires expertise in engineering or business disciplines.  The structure and elements on the canvases are derived from a systems decomposition of models for the business plan or the design process.  Finally, using the canvases requires a team to exercise most of the discovery skills including networking, associating, questioning, and experimenting.
 

The discipline of innovation is rapidly advancing past tips, tricks, and best practices to identifying core competencies and tools and methods to develop them.   Results in these areas are continuing to be developed but innovation is clearly on a path to becoming better defined and supported through model based approaches with underlying tools and methods.

(1)     http://industrytoday.com/article_view.asp?ArticleID=we442

(2)     Schindel, William D., Samuel N. Peffers, James H. Hanson, Jameel Ahmed, and William A. Kline. “All Innovation is Innovation of Systems: An Integrated 3-D Model of Innovation Competencies.” Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Annual Conference, Vancouver, Canada, July 2011.

(3)     Dyer, Jeff, Hal Gregerson, and Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s DNA. Boston, Harvard Business Review Press, 2011.he Innovators DNA,

(4)     Osterwalder, Alexander, Yves Pigneur, and Tim Clark. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010.

(5)     Kline, William A., Cory Hixson, Thomas W. Mason, Patricia Brackin, Robert Bunch, KC Dee, Glen Livesay, 'The Innovation Canvas -A Tool to Develop Integrated Product Designs and Business Models,' submitted to: Proceedings of the 2013 ASEE Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, June 2013.