Organizations are constantly asking about how to innovate. The popularity of the question reflects its importance, but it also reflects efforts that did not succeed. A big part of that problem is confusing language that obscures what the organization already brings to the party and how to use it. Here's a shot at it.

1. Innovating:
A Practical Glossary
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

2. What are you doing?
You’ve spent a ton of money bringing your organization to life, with its
myriad skills, processes and goals.
But today, instead of just having “better than now” as a goal, being
“different from now” is a mandatory future state.
Innovation is the dominating mantra supplied as the answer to “How
do we get there from here?”
Yet with the enormous installed base of resources and managed action,
organizations largely bemoan the problem: “How to Innovate?”
Surprisingly, the most important question to answer is not how to
innovate, but “Are we Innovating?”

3. Innovation is a Result
• The idea of innovation is important because it represents a certain view of
value and worth. There are only two basic issues distinguishing innovation:
“New” (the value); and “So What?” (the worth)…
• When organizations don’t know if they are innovating, the reason why is
simple: they don’t consistently identify what they are doing in a way that
makes sense relevant to innovation’s point.
• Disciplined description allows the organization to identify when it is doing
things that should add up to the result called innovation. Description can
call out what is already getting done or can be done, and position those
things in terms of why it should be done.
• Undisciplined description is the biggest inhibitor to recognizing emerging
innovation. Undisciplined description does a pretty good job of stunting
the growth and maturation of the capability to innovate.

4. Operational capability to innovate
• Providing the “innovation perspective” on current and potential activity
means providing regular contextual references.
• The characteristics of a result called “an innovation” are the objectives of
the activity of making the innovation.
• Practical values: making an innovation references basic concepts of where
the “newness” is a difference having significance. There is a creation, an
affect of the creation, and an effect of the affect.
• Managed worth: making that progression of values “useful” justifies its
effort. The efforts towards usefulness are referenced by how the future
state evolves. There is imagination of concepts, inventions formed from the
concepts, and implementations of the inventions – another progressive
association.

5. Creative versus Innovative
In effect, for innovating, creativity is
required to cause a change that will
allow some other goal to be met.
That is, the host of the creativity is
not trying to change to become
creative; instead, the host is trying
to use creativity to enable the
ability to productively change.
management
IMAGINE
practice
The most well-known notions about
innovation emphasize creativity as
the necessary origin of “the New”,
and change as the importance of
the creativity. But aside from
ambiguity in how creativity is
engendered, lots of pressure is put
on it by the host organization’s
requirement for productivity.
Creativity is a resource.
INVENT
IMPLEMENT
Conceive
Research
Specify
Strategize
Design
Theorize
Build
Experiment
Creativity is often “loaded” with notions of intuition, originality, uniqueness, and proprietary authority. Most
of the sense of organizational worth attached to those notions usually amounts to exclusivity and
repeatability – the advantage of having a captive special resource. Otherwise, most of the concern is with
managing the implications and utility of creativity’s results. But creativity is not just a phase; it is a
characteristic that can be included as the mode of production by any area of effort in innovating. We use it
where prior fixed formulas won’t suffice to achieve the aims of management or practice. For example, the
influence of research extends through both management and practice. Research itself may be creative, and its
influence may be creatively extended. As a result, change occurs; and change impacts are managed.
Change
Challenge
Replace
Reform
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

6. The framework of description
How it can actually happen
New!
IMAGINE
Innovation
INVENT
In management, innovating requires
focus on ideas, opportunity, and
performance. Management is about
how it can happen.
AFFECT
and possibly
In practice, innovating emphasizes the
discovery (what), vision (how) and
purpose (why) of “The New”. Practice
is about what can happen.
CREATE
and possibly
So What?
What can actually happen
and possibly
EFFECT
IMPLEMENT
and possibly
DESCRIPTIONS… an ordered
vocabulary that gets the attention of
people who can, or already, do
relevant things. Identify the relevance
of the activities in terms of how their
results progressively add up to a
change that allows a future state that
offers value of a new kind and/or
worth in a new way.
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

7. Path to an Innovation
An innovation arises from decisions
that are driven by the intent to
realize a defined unprecedented way
of achieving a goal. What the
organization needs is a realization
roadmap to the goal. The roadmap
recognizes (or prescribes) and tracks
the necessary constituent efforts
producing the innovation.
The operation for Innovation is goal-oriented. The goal is a future state that offers value of
a new kind and/or worth in a new way. Contributors to the innovation can be found and
cultivated in a wide variety (e.g. see table below) of efforts. Efforts driving “delivery” of an
innovation are used intentionally to progressively advance its emergence. The efforts are
characterized and associated in these consistent terms.
Innovation Operations
Recognized efforts are activated and
leveraged, as needed to imagine,
invent and implement the new way.
An effort itself might be an
innovation; or, some combination of
efforts might produce it.
Meaningful efforts on the path move
collectively on the path from an
imagined creation towards an
implemented effect having a
recognized purposeful performance.
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

8. Excerpts
• Innovate -> produce a future state that offers value of a new kind and/or worth in a new way
• Innovating -> creativity causing a change that will allow some other goal to be met
• Item -> concept, condition, or construct
• Unprecedented -> the state of not having previously been a characteristic, such as regarding a property of a type, a type of
an item, or an item in a context
• Value -> the significance of a distinction
A wide variety of efforts contribute to the result called “an innovation”.
• Worth -> the impact of the value in a given context
Organizations need a roadmap of necessary efforts.
• Practice -> what can actually happen
• Management -> how it can actually happen
An orderly description of efforts positions them in consistent terms of
why they should be used. Innovating is goal-oriented.

9. © 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research
mryder@malcolmryder.com