Innovation and organisational change
Dr. Edith Favoreu
WHAT DOES
CERAH STAND FOR?
Let’s start with a little
experiment…
Connect 9 points with 4 straight lines, without raising your pen!
THINK OUT OF THE BOX!
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
Innovation
….. in the business sector
• Process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that
creates value (…)
• To be called an innovation, an idea must be replicable at an
economical cost and must satisfy a specific need
… in humanitarian settings (Based on ALNAP)
• Dynamic processes which focus on the creation and
implementation of new or improved products and services,
processes, positions, concepts and paradigms.
• Successful innovations = improvements in efficiency,
effectiveness, quality or social outcomes/impacts.
• Innovation processes are … embedded in and shaped by the
capabilities of the actors in and around a given sector, the
relationships between them, and wider social, economic and
political contexts.
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
Varied scope of humanitarian innovation
(ALNAP)
• Transactional innovations: driven by needs and often ad hoc,
lowering transaction costs or enabling new forms of transactions
= highly context-specific nature
• Incremental innovations: distinct, scalable improvements made
to existing processes, improving efficiency or effectiveness = can
generate dramatic improvements in key performance indicators
such as time and timeliness.
• Transformational (or radical) innovations = long-term,
strategic innovations intended to create profound transformation
of organisational or industry processes, enabling and embodying
new ways of working.
Varied scope of humanitarian innovation
And organisational change
• Transactional innovations:
- How do organisations promote, capture and disseminate these
types of innovation?
- What is the impact of these innovations on the organisational
culture?
• Incremental innovations:
- How do organisations promote, capture and plan these types of
innovation?
- How do the organisations combine incremental innovation,
knowledge management, and organisational change?
•
-
Transformational (or radical) innovations:
How do organisations plan these types of innovation?
How do organisations integrate this plan in their strategic thinking?
How do organisations link this strategic thinking with change
management?
INNOVATION … FOR WHO- BY WHOM?
• For-by the people, affected communities and
individuals
“beneficiaries” + “creator”+ “involved”
• For-by the organisations
• For-by the people working in organisations
• For-by the sector
• For-by the others sectors
INNOVATION … WHY?
• To create new things, new ways …
• To improve old things, old ways… using new means
(technology)
• To influence ways in which we will work tomorrow:
new things, new ways with new means?
• To capture the
complexity of contexts,
crises, responses
INNOVATION FOR WHAT?
• To collect data and evidence
• To access populations
• To deliver assistance
• To protect people
• To prevent and prepare
• To manage organisations, programmes and projects
• To manage people
• … To improve the quality of our responses
INNOVATION HOW?
Not always
synonymous with
sophistication
Often related to
simplification
Challenge: to be innovative in order to allow ownership,
appropriation, and to contextualise sustainability.
ACCESS to Innovation + CONTROL over innovation
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IN TERMS
OF ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE?
INNOVATION IS EVERYWHERE
INNOVATION IS LEAD BY & IS LINKED TO
PEOPLE
INNOVATION IS PART OF ORGANISATIONAL
LIFE: THEORGANISATION AS A DYNAMIC
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
“Learning organisation”
INNOVATION IS EVERYWHERE
Organisation
Strategies
/policies
Procedures
Team
Programmes
/projects
Behaviour
Individual
Activities
Assist-Protect
- Support
Products
Services
Process
Concepts
Paradigms
INNOVATION LEAD BY PEOPLE
Organisation systems…PEOPLE !
Robert Presthus (1958) : “An organization is a system of structured interpersonal
relationships.”
Daniel Katz et Robert Kahn (1966) : “Organizations are open systems made of activities and
people together.”
Organisation
Edgar Schein (1970) : ”An organization is a rational coordination of activities of a number
Organic body- system
of people in order to aim for implicit goals and common objectives, through division of
work and functions, through hierarchy and responsibilities.”
Henry Mintzberg (1989) : “An organization is defined as a collective action aiming for the
implementation of a common mission.”
Task
Sub-system
People
Sub-system
INNOVATION CAN AFFECT EACH COMPONENT
OF AN ORGANISATION
SYSTEMIC APPROACH
Relationships
Behaviour
Processes
Culture
Policies
Organisation
Mandate
Knowledge
Changes
Statues
Strategies
Operations
-actions
Rules
Goods and
services
provided
INNOVATION PART OF ORGANISATIONAL LIFE
ORGANISATION AS A LABORATORY: Promoting innovation
The role of managers and leaders
Take the opportunities from external conditions
• Needs
• Challenges, problems
• Cultural and legal opportunities
• Open and friendly environment / acceptance
• Resources / investment
• Lessons learned by others outside & within the sector
• …etc
INNOVATION PART OF ORGANISATIONAL LIFE
ORGANISATION AS A LABORATORY: Promoting innovations
The role of managers and leaders
Develop and optimize internal conditions
• Open and safe working environment
• Freedom to explore, experiment: encourage new ideas & take risks
• Right to fail: allow mistakes to be made
• Willingness
• Incentives and recognition
• Facilitate assets
• Positive competition
• Collaborative team
• …etc
INNOVATION PART OF ORGANISATIONAL LIFE
ORGANISATION AS A LABORATORY
The role of managers and leaders
Capture innovations
• High-tech information systems
• Observation
• Workshops
• Ideas dashboard
• Team discussions
• Brainstorming
• Feedbacks mechanisms
• Trainings
• Sharing lessons learned
• …etc
INNOVATION PART OF ORGANISATIONAL LIFE
ORGANISATION AS A LABORATORY
The role of managers and leaders
Disseminate innovations
• Communication campaigns, internal and external
• Informal communications
• Workshops
• Training programmes
• Internal and external platforms
• Media
• …etc
INNOVATION PART OF ORGANISATIONAL LIFE
ORGANISATION AS A LABORATORY
The role of managers and leaders
Replicate innovations
• By documentation: making the process available & accessible
• By modeling
• By contextualisation
• By simplification
• By researching
• By assessing/monitoring/evaluating
• By demonstration of the added value
• By partnering with organisations
• Innovation by partners that “we” contextualize
• “Our” innovation contextualized by partners
• …etc
PLAN INNOVATION?
Innovation process
Where innovative processes are successful, they are often seen as
proactive rather than reactive.
•
•
•
•
Include several phases
Not always linear
Iterative progress
Action research
PLAN INNOVATION ?
Innovation process - Iterative process
Recognition of a problem,
challenge and related
opportunity
Invention of a solution or idea
Development of the innovation
Implementation of the
innovation
Dissemination of the
innovation
PLAN INNOVATION ?
The added value of models?
“A model is useful because it allows different
processes to be understood and compared,
and can therefore help organisations ‘repeat the
innovation trick’ – by providing an ideal
roadmap of how innovations should progress.”
INNOVATION...ORGANISATION … TAKING RISKS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Doing harm
Creating new issues, problems, risks
Increasing vulnerabilities, exclusion mechanisms
Waste of money, time… vs. “saving lives”
No durability (continuity), no sustainability (autonomy)
No accessibility
No acceptance
Reinventing the wheel
Pressurizing staff
Time limits
Partiality in the selection criteria
Cultural and legal barriers
Imposing
Innovations lacking flexibility
Take risks… assume risks….balance risks
ethical issues
Challenge: failures are often not communicated!
!
HARMS THAT MAY ARISE FROM
INNOVATION PROJECTS
(Doris Schopper)
• Privacy harms include inappropriate use, transfer, or storage of
personal data
• Failure to consider the impact of the innovation on the culture,
attitudes, or values of the target populations
• Failure to appropriately engage those likely to be affected by the
innovation - respect for dignity
• Wrongs if innovations produce commercial benefits that are not shared
with the community
• Failure to consider local solutions → jeopardizes acceptance and
sustainability of innovation.
• Harms to the organization responsible for the innovation
– Threats to trust and reputational harms
ETHICS FOR INNOVATION
(Doris Schopper)
Innovation = dynamic process
• identifying problems
• developing and selecting possible solutions
• preliminary implementation and testing
• if merited, widespread adoption
Betts A, Bloom L. Humanitarian Innovation: The State of the Art.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
2014.
 Ethics framework should promote and inform
ethical reflection throughout the innovation cycle
 Ethics Review Board
BALANCING HARMS AND BENEFITS
(Doris Schopper)
• Identify and balance benefits and harms
– If foreseeable harms outweigh the likely benefits → Don’t do it!
– Where innovation involves a favourable balance of benefits and
harms, minimise (mitigate) the harms as far as possible.
Unnecessary harms must be eliminated.
– Where harms are unavoidable, those affected should be informed
of the nature and severity of the risks involved.
– In case of doubt, Ethics Review Board oversight is recommended.
• Consider distribution of harms and benefits
– Do the risks or benefits fall unfavourably on certain groups?
– How can these inequalities of distribution be addressed or
mitigated?
– Give particular attention to those who are vulnerable or who may
not be able to protect their own interests
Medical Humanitarian Innovation – an Ethics Framework
Jobanputra K, Sheather J, Schopper D, Pringle J, Venis S, Wong S, Vincent-Smith R (submitted for publication)
LINK BETWEEN INNOVATION AND
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES
INPUT
Process
Outcome
Individual and collective
knowledge
Innovation generating
knowledge
Learning organisations
Assimilitated knowledge
Competences and lessons
learned
Assimilitated knowledge
Competences and lessons
learned
metacognition
Options for changes
Options for changes
Implementation…Effective
change
“I/ we know that I/we
know” “I/ we know that
I/we don’t know”
Innovation as a learning
process
Organisational
development /
improvement /mutations
Innovation outcome of
change management
Thank You!
www.cerahgeneve.ch