The Anatomy of an Idea in Collaborative Innovation

By: Doug Collins

Innovators and enterprises invest hugely in the production of ideas. But did you ever stop to think…. precisely what is an idea and what counts as a contribution?

My clients and I cover miles of ground as we get to the heart of what it means for the people in their organization to achieve leadership in innovation. Over time we visit and revisit, cast and recast, and frame and reframe the matters of…

• What is the critical question which, if we explored it fully with the community, would lead to breakthroughs relative to the challenge at hand?
• Who do we invite to engage with us on the question? What possibilities open when we convene the members in virtual and physical community?
• What commitment do we each choose to make in exploring the question?
• What level of ownership do we each choose to take in the practice of innovation?

Interestingly, in our zeal to form the context of the enquiry, we devote less time on a more technical and, yet, more fundamental question: What is an idea, exactly? What parts comprise the whole? Do we require a raw insight, or notion, to meet certain criteria before we recognize it as an idea?

I use the term “interestingly” because, at the end of the day and by the end of the play, the sponsor of the innovation initiative assesses the success of the collective efforts of the community by taking stock of the nature and number of ideas the members contribute. As important, the people who play the many, various roles in the community cannot fully grasp the nature of their commitment without first coming to a shared understanding of the nature of what they plan to create together by way of ideas. You commit to building a car with me? Excellent. I have in mind an Alpha Romeo rag top. You have sketched the curves of a Mercedes S-Class sedan. Perhaps we should talk before we order the sheet metal.

This article begins to explore the anatomy of an idea. Please refer to figure 1 as we go.

Figure 1: the anatomy of an idea

Before we proceed, however: caveat emptor. If some august body of learned people, all gurus of the fuzzy front end, has agreed upon a formal definition of an idea outside patent law I have yet to learn of it. And, even if allowed this wisdom, I would approach their pronouncement with a healthy dose of skepticism. Why? Context and personal preference influence the answer. To this end, please consider the following discourse as food for thought: a place to start your own enquiry. I would in turn value your perspective on this subject.

To start, then, and with reference to figure 1, a fully formed idea consists of three elements: Definition, Elaboration, and Rationalization.

Definition

In the first element Definition we find the core, descriptive aspects of the idea, including of course the name or other identifier so we can distinguish and find it amongst its peers. We also have the name of its originator or subsequent owner. Every idea must have an owner. An idea, absent an owner as the person who commits to advocating for its realization, stands no chance of reaching its potential. The practice of ideation, at its core, embodies the practice of leadership.

The practice of ideation, at its core, embodies the practice of leadership.

Under Definition we have the explanatory elements of the idea: observation, implication, and application. Here, I borrow from, and remain indebted to, Christopher Miller and his group at Innovation Focus, who informed my thinking on this front as they taught me their guided approach to gathering insights, which they call Hunting for Hunting Grounds. I have found that this form of guided enquiry helps innovators more fully capture their insights in a way that effectively enables the community to further elaborate on and ultimately act upon the ideas.

The observation provides insight on what the innovator experienced in the world at large that caused them to have this idea. What did they see? Hear? Smell? Touch? Providing this form of neutral commentary becomes crucial in the later stages of idea development, when members of the innovation community may choose to reframe and rationalize a set of related ideas based on their core, underlying observations, or drivers.

Next, we have implications. Meaning. What connections does the innovator make between what they observe and what their observations mean relative to the community? Do the observations, for example, imply a larger opportunity that the organization can realize in pursuing the idea in question? Do the observations imply a threat to the organization’s charter that the community must resolve? Implications help the community understand the larger effect, influence, opportunity, or threat the idea represents.

And, we have applications. Directive. What steps does the innovator propose to take—or proposes the organization take—in order to experiment with or apply the idea in question? Some ideas can, at first pass, seem daunting to implement. Perhaps they would require a substantial capital investment to fully realize. What I have often found, however, is that the innovator, already thinking ahead, has identified lower cost or lower risk ways to try the idea (e.g., prototyping) before they themselves would feel comfortable taking it to the next level. The applications component gives the community an opportunity to benefit from this thinking.

The innovation team at times wants to go right to the applications, bypassing the opportunity to solicit valuable, additional context from the contributors. The fear is always, if I make it too difficult for community members to contribute, nobody will participate. In reality, the innovation team should embrace having this discussion with their community. That is, what price does the originator and any team that forms around the idea pay to participate?

One price, or minimum price of entry, is the commitment to share fully formed ideas. Otherwise, the team who committed to leading the innovation initiative risks finding themselves supporting the virtual equivalent of a suggestion box (e.g., “Let’s implement an employee of the month program.” Why? We’ll have to ask the contributor for perspective, assuming they remember.)

Elaboration

From here we move to the next major element, Elaboration. That is, an idea contributed to a collaborative innovation environment becomes community property in both the virtual and physical sense. Fellow members provide commentary that extends (e.g., “What if… ?”), clarifies (e.g., “What do you mean by the implication that… ?”), and challenges (e.g., “What obstacles exist to trying this idea with left-handed tuba players residing in Chattanooga?”). The idea that the originator first submits often looks nothing like the idea in later stages in the hands of a vibrant, capably facilitated community.

The idea that the originator first submits often looks nothing like the idea in later stages in the hands of a vibrant, capably facilitated community.

Many types of, and opportunities for practicing, elaboration exist. Elaboration tends to fall into three categories: commentary, assessment, and documentation. Commentary enriches the idea. Commentary comes in the form of dialogue when practiced in the physical community and perspectives when contributed in the virtual community. Assessment, by comparison, offers the owner and sponsor perspective on the extent to which the reviewer believes the idea will achieve general benchmarks (e.g., likelihood of adoption) and perhaps also benchmarks specific to the challenge in question (e.g., Does an idea contributed to a challenge on sustainability promise to preserve resources?). People looking for potential criteria by which the community can assess ideas will find Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations a source of inspiration.

The originator can of course provide documentation (e.g., studies, plans, schematics) when they first contribute an idea. Community members, too, often create their own trail of documentation as an extension of commentary and assessment (e.g., documentation generated in the form of a mapping exercise with the community or offered as a way to more deeply explain the idea to the community).

Rationalization

We then come to the last, primary element that defines the idea, Rationalization. Most organizations that sponsor or otherwise support innovation in an overt, formal manner find that some number of their contributors will offer ideas that, upon reflection, appear as variations on a theme. This outcome makes perfect sense when the population shares similar characteristics such as working with the same set of customers (and, thus, receives similar feedback) or having received similar educations (e.g., a community of PhD chemists).

Innovation teams will often take pains to achieve diversity in order to increase the number of Greenfield ideas by randomizing the population of their innovation community in a significant way. Here, the sponsor of the innovation initiative may choose to juxtapose and, ultimately, meld similar ideas and their respective owners around common themes. They may invite the community to participate in, and take ownership of, the process by convening the members in enquiry-driven approaches such as The World Café.

Observations and implications serve as the points of reference for combining and reframing ideas into clusters that the team recognizes as sharing conceptual similarities.

On a practical note, innovation teams realize at this juncture the value in having had community members contribute their observations and implications as part of the Definition element. Observations and implications serve as the points of reference for combining and reframing ideas into clusters that the team recognizes as sharing conceptual similarities. Applications, by extension, can help the innovation team rationalize and coordinate the action plan (i.e., next steps).

I find in my work with clients that the resulting clusters tend to fall into three categories: Greenfield ideas, new approaches or perspectives on ideas someone in the organization has already chosen to pursue, and ideas that reinforce current practice. I see that latter two in larger organizations, in particular, when the opportunity for the left hand to remain unaware of the right hand’s activities remains large. The act of combining and reframing a set of essentially similar ideas—ideas that share materially the same observations and implications—can lead to the happy result of the originators agreeing to join forces in order to more efficiently pursue further exploration.

What Next?

What comes after rationalization? It’s at this point when we begin to leave the beginning of the fuzzy front end and enter the concept phase, which can involve various forms of prototyping and trialing. What do we have to do or build to bring the tangible, fully formed realization of the idea to the people we anticipate will benefit from it?

Of course, the originator or sponsoring organization may find they can implement some ideas immediately, without having to devote further resources to discovery (e.g., “let’s answer the phone on the first ring to improve customer service”).

Later progressions and the further evolution of an idea into a more fully formed concept may take the form of ethnographic studies, experiments, business plan drafts, and exploratory meetings with potential partners. Ideas on the path to becoming tangible products or services may enter the organization’s stage gate, or commercialization process. The financial commitment in the form of money, people, and time tends to grow. The list of potential outcomes and approaches to arrive at the desired outcome becomes endless. Yet, the ties back to the essence of the original idea and its originator remain strong.

Figure 2 depicts the journey, highlighting the various people involved in the various stages.

Figure 2: forming and reforming the idea within the community

By Doug Collins