Book excerpts - Ch2(E15): Understanding the PRICE of innovation

Finding the real price of innovation requires calculating in lacunas.

One of the biggest challenges of innovation and a significant catalyst of innovation dramas is the difficulty of quantifying innovation efforts.

The cost of innovation is the sum of technical, emotional (self), and political (social) tasks that will be necessary to reach our transformative achievements. And it's easily affected by the level of awareness to transformative details.

Too many tasks make innovations intimidating. Too many unnecessary tasks make innovation exhausting. Not enough awareness makes innovation scary. And wrong or disorganized efforts make innovations inefficient.

But underneath all wicked problems, we will find challenging expressions and communications around planned change and acknowledged constraints.

Unfortunately, there is a catch-22 that stifles too many innovation efforts. To reduce risks, we need to plan, but to plan, we can lock ourselves in dogmatism or conflicts. And we want to avoid both, making innovation planning more transparent, less conflicting, and more directing.

To maintain creative flow in conditions of uncertainty and complexity, we need simple tools to help us assume constraints, identify situational lacunas, and direct attention to specific tactical tasks and transitions.

So without wasting too much time, let's clarify why our innovation efforts and desired impacts get stuck.

Why do innovations get stuck?