Over the past few weeks I've visited the four quadrants of the innovation landscape (the short series of posts started here) to get a better idea of the boundaries between the quadrants and how they are pushed. Now it's time to zoom out again to take a look at the landscape as a whole, with two questions to consider: Is the landscape as symmetric as it seems? And how fast do the boundaries move?
Tag: business
The bounds of the wicked quadrant …
The wicked quadrant of the innovation landscape is characterised by deep uncertainty: nothing is known, nothing is established, neither rules nor tools are defined or available. That makes this fourth quadrant the antithesis of the certainty that shapes business as usual; but what does that mean for innovation in the fourth quadrant? Let's step a little closer.
Why business as usual stays within the boundaries …
The boundaries in the innovation landscape separate the known from the unknown, they divide the landscape into quadrants of different levels of certainty. Unlike the research quadrant and the disruptive quadrant, the first quadrant (business as usual) is framed by known problems and known ideas. With rules and tools defined and available, this is the realm of comforting certainty, of predictable circumstances.
How disruption pushes the boundary …
The innovation landscape I have sketched previously suggests that there could be some kind of symmetry. The third quadrant (disruptive) should have some similarity with the second quadrant (research), shouldn't it?
How research pushes the boundary …
Research is often characterised as the act of intense and structured search. Though this view is not wrong, it doesn't get to the core of what research is and what it is about. Let's explore.
understanding innovation 