Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Nonlinear Innovation

The business nonlinearity to enforce innovation comes through different characteristics such as mixed structure, diversity, volatility, ambiguity, unpredictability, and increased flux.

Human society gets more and more complex, there are both existing problems and emerging challenges. The very natural attempt of humans to take the powerful techniques of mathematics, such as linear mathematics or logic and apply it to the world very quickly come up against insurmountable difficulties.

Innovation as a nonlinear management process needs to be a disciplined approach to transforming novel ideas, discovering and building opportunities for creating new meaningful sources of value to targeted users and bringing sustainable business benefits. Here are three aspects of nonlinear innovation.


Nonlinear thinking: In the physical or business world, most relationships are nonlinear, nonlinear thinking is a type of “out of the box” thinking to generate fresh ideas and solve problems creatively. Linear thinking as a thought process of thinking in a straight line rather than circularly is viewed by many as being simply the opposite of closed-loop thinking. In many cases, it’s not so effective for solving the complex problem because there is always a temptation to use simple linear models to understand highly complex, nonlinear innovation scenarios.

Innovation is a sustainable and scalable way that can be learned and practiced to develop business competency. Shape a bigger box by making nonlinear connections between different boxes; rather than thinking outside of one particular box, to spark innovation. There are axioms within system assurance engineering that support innovation as the result of many forms of engineering or nonlinear thinking required such as thinking as temporal, abstract, induction and deduction, holistic and inclusive mindsets.

Nonlinear process: Innovation is a nonlinear process involving non-stable processes. There are incremental innovation and radical innovation. A very small improvement leveraging a new way of doing things, bringing an outside method, or view, shifting the paradigm, is incremental innovation. Radical innovation often brings something that was not existing before by creating or gathering technologies or nonlinear processes. If you take knowledge from one context and bring it over into a new context in a nonlinear way, you have knowledge or technology transfer innovation. Without innovation, without collective human progress.

Innovations are not something everyone can accomplish. The degree of business responsiveness and innovativeness depends on how business subsystems interact with each other, and those interactions can be nonlinear, technical, informational, or human. Logically, break down silos and be intentional about developing nonlinear business processes that encourage cross-functional communication and collaboration, and amplify creativity.

One of the effects of the nonlinear innovation structure or process is that it reduces the bureaucracy the hierarchy has created, people are freed up by the structure, and creativity can flow seamlessly and innovation can be managed effortlessly. You have to apply nonlinear processes, develop the resource-rich innovation hubs and hyperconnected digital clusters across enterprise ecosystems for enabling idea flow and creating synergy for innovation management.

Nonlinear systems dynamic: The digital world is dynamic, nonlinear, uncertain, and volatile. Emergence becomes apparent, the concept of nonlinear behavior as a concept is representative of what we term emergent properties. Unlike the closed mechanic system, digital organizations spontaneously self-organizes, generates patterns, structures, business activities, and above all, creates novelty over time. Highly creative people in the team or across the teams are almost accidentally collaborating, clarifying, building on each other's ideas, discovering nuances and nonlinear relationships, etc. Achieving the desired impact can sometimes be the result of a very small innovation initiative. This is the magic of non-linear systematic dynamics.

Further, dynamism consists in being able to break away from being static, and becoming proactive to changes. Exploring the business innovation should fully cover wide enough directions and ultimately discover the nonlinear path to demystify innovation and walk through the innovation labyrinth smoothly. In practice, there are many ways in an organization to catalyze innovation, the point is how to create a nonlinear dynamic business environment for inspiring creativity, flexibility, and risk intelligence.

The business nonlinearity to enforce innovation comes through different characteristics such as mixed structure, diversity, volatility, ambiguity, unpredictability, and increased flux. Organizations need to awaken the ecosystem consciousness, start thinking about better ways to innovate, influence, and cultivate a dynamic innovation ecosystem.

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