Monday, March 15, 2010

Inno-cation and Quality Part V - Emotion, Rational and Moral

Angst, provocation, passion are elements of emotion ... without these, what will life be? Want and desire are essential to change. Emotion serves as the stimulus in uncovering your unmet needs ... and change comes about when your unmet needs are been fulfilled.

Unique idea that appeals to your emotion is a powerful connector. Art, as a media, helps to manifest that emotion. Yet emotion, left unchecked, can have bad consequences. It may degenerate and lead to an obsession or worse to an addiction.

Innovation which has been defined as something new and fulfilling the unmet needs, possesses an element of provocation to trigger and or entice a response. Hence coining the term "innocation".

Artists seek inspiration by understanding humanity through painting of nude or near-nude portraits which evoke unfiltered emotion. Go to any art gallery and you are likely to sample such works. Fire up your imagination, these works sure do!
After triggering the response, your brain very quickly internalise these signals, bringing you to reality by matching up to your set of value system.

This process of rationalisation allows you to judge whether the experience is of quality in accordance to your beliefs. As your values evolve, you may be more concerned with the dynamic aspect of quality that these experiences evoke.

Finally, society plays an important role in imparting moral values and hence regulating behaviour and setting norms. Society can only progress if it is willing to allow emancipation of the collective thoughts of its citizens. Presently emerging economies e.g. China, India, Brazil etc are at the cross-road of change. They seek to reinvent in order to attain the next level of economic development.

The question is whether society can learn lessons from history, avoid repeating past mistakes and make progress for the good of its people?

Similarly, organisations face similar challenges. They need to balance control and empowerment. Having shared values and common ideology help to solve a myriad of challenges faced by these entities.

Critical Success Factors

It essentially boils down to sharing reward. Here, we take a leaf from the proponents of Game Theory. First, one must work for the common good of the group so that the outcome is optimal to that group. Next, there must be an equitable way to distribute the profit. The goal is to encourage the heavers, while at the same time do not give slackers any chance to demoralise the group.

It will be interesting to see how many groups are perfecting the art of Game Theory that benefits the collaborators.

Selfish behaviour is the root cause for the break-down of the group!

In summary, to be successful in innovation,
you need:
a) the right core ideology i.e. values like courage, confidence and conviction,
b) the right people onboard,
c) coaching tool that would objectively measures value drivers, helping manage the resources more productively,and
d) provide proper rewards and incentives.


Strong leadership anchored with the right value system and driven by a simple easy-to-follow common ideology is the way forward ...

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