E-book: 8 building blocks for effective interdisciplinary collaboration
08
Innovation
Collaboration is about collective entrepreneurship and innovation. It is about taking those risks together. This innovation is essential to staying relevant and competitive in this fast-changing environment. Embrace having your thinking challenged and being pulled out of your business-as-usual behavior.
Though innovation is often associated with technical development, it is just as important in any other discipline, for example, governance, finances, and stakeholder communication. Absorb the inspiration from your team members, peers, and competition. Exchanging these opposing views is an important part of creating real impact, so try to enjoy the tension that comes with it. Ideas tend to multiply when they interact with each other. When you embrace this approach as a collective, you will find new ways to move mountains.
8.1 The art of not knowing it all
Our environmental and societal challenges come with many unknowns and uncertainties. We need to deal with this productively, both towards ourselves and our stakeholders. This starts with admitting that we don’t have all the answers (yet).
However, not having the answer is often mistakenly associated with being incompetent, especially in competitive and hierarchical environments. This motivates people to err on the side of caution, remaining silent about their questions and knowledge gaps. Conversations are either too high-level to conceal any uncertainty about the details, or they get lost in the details, concealing the uncertainty about context and bigger issues. Either way, people hesitate to address what needs to be addressed.
You can break this cycle by building long-term relationships within the collaboration and with your stakeholders. In a network approach that is founded on trust, knowledge and gaps can be addressed with mutual respect and competence.
8.2 Protection, sharing and affordable loss
Innovation is key to gaining a competitive advantage in both the public and private spheres. It also requires the exchange of knowledge and resources with others, which may seem like a paradox. Try to find the balance between protecting and sharing your assets.
Innovation also requires some level of uncertainty and the freedom to experiment. A narrow focus on procedures, regulations, and return on investment will bring innovation to a halt before it even gets a chance. Watkinson and Konkoly (6) describe how experienced entrepreneurs work with the concept of ‘affordable loss’ to avoid catastrophic investments. Instead of focusing on the anticipated returns, which in most cases cannot be forecast accurately, focus on controlling the downside. How much can you afford to spend to find out if this idea might work? With this approach, the worst possible outcome is that you spend a reasonable amount of time and money learning about something.
8.3 Coming up with new ideas
We don’t like problems without solutions. We tend to deny them, procrastinate solving them, or accept them as unchangeable and try to work around them. All of which rarely results in the disappearance of that problem. Consider climate change, for example.
Creative thinking makes you flexible and solution-oriented. It encourages you to draw upon your ingenuity, humor, flexibility, and imagination to make problems less insurmountable. Which is essential when you are faced with challenges where the solution is yet to be invented.
There are many techniques to stretch your mind, like design thinking, storyboarding, and mind mapping. If this is too far out of your comfort zone, Tammes (7) describes three types of fuel that trigger a different way of thinking: wonder, desire, and frustration. Applying these perspectives to the issue at hand can open new doors towards original solutions.
Innovation: questions to answer
- How can you exchange different viewpoints in a way that it creates new value instead of conflict?
- What are important knowledge gaps or uncertainties in your field or between the partners?
- How can you discuss these unknowns in a way that keeps partners confident and comfortable?
- How much can the collaboration afford to invest in ideas with uncertain outcomes?
- How do partners differ in the way they deal with uncertainties?
- What kind of setting or exercise would help partners feel comfortable engaging in experimental thinking?
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