Innovation Immersion Day Two

Just finished an early morning keynote with David Kuehler from the Clay Street Project, an organization aligned with Proctor & Gamble to help create innovative teams. One of the things that David said that really resonated with me was that a team needs to go through three stages of development to become truly innovative. Those phases are:

- Inclusion - organizing and getting ready to innovate
- Chaos - because without chaos the result will be predictable and safe
- Synergy - where the team is in such harmony that the individuals can finish each other's sentences


This reminded me a lot of the presentation Ivy Ross gave recently at the BIF in Rhode Island about the work that is necessary to help a team succeed before it meets. She called this "No output within input". She stressed the importance of getting the team to work together effectively as well.

David and the other morning keynote both stressed the importance of "story" and context for the innovation teams. Story is a recurring theme across many of the presenters.

Another concept that seems to be very important is "definition". The second keynote speaker was Carol Pletcher from Cargill. One of the things that Cargill did was to create a corporate definition of innovation, since it was felt that an agricultural processor might not be innovative. Their definition: "Converting knowledge and insights into solutions that create distinctive value". They felt innovation was NOT "cleverness" and did not have to be an iPod.

This definition is important because Cargill's business is in converting farm products into food products, so the innovation ties closely to Cargill's business model.