Innovation is a continuous practice. The document describes leadership principles and an architecture for creating a practice.

1. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
innovation
praxis
towards perpetual recurring
emergence – making innovation
second nature
h:p://web.natur.cuni.cz/~herben/rhizome/rhizome.html

2. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
innovation praxis
principles
Organizations must balance
exploration and exploitation as
they evolve. There is often more
focus on operational excellence
while innovation competence remains
underdeveloped.
Organizations develop innovation
excellence through practice, but
must simultaneously create a
supportive ecosystem to develop,
nourish and sustain it.
Innovation is a continuous way of being and not an
event. It must become a pervasive practice in all
aspects of the organization, but requires time and
support to evolve.
Neither top-down or bottom-up approaches alone are
effective in driving innovation excellence. Hybrid
approaches that systematically drive innovation
initiatives while also encouraging spontaneous
emergent approaches provide the right balance.
Active learning, knowledge frameworks and
integration mechanisms are crucial to ensure
innovation contributes to strategic objectives.
Organizations must invest in and formally manage
innovation capability till it becomes second
nature and pervasive.

3. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
innovation praxis
leadership (HOME)
Expand Expand the dimensions of space-time within which agents can operate.
Mobilize
Empower Change agents – Educate, Skill. Increase degrees of freedom - Broaden participation. Break Norms
and Rules. Open boundaries – internal and external..
Enable Sociality – Connecting, Grouping, Exchange of Social Capital
Provide Access to Resources – Fluidize tangible and intangible resources and provide tools for access to
them.
Orchestrate
Diffusion and Transmission of Innovation within and across enterprise boundaries
Create Reflexive and Learning practices – build on previous experience
Leverage assets
Enable planned and serendipitous collisions
Harness
Provide Beacons - purpose and an architecture of meaning
Protect Rights
Move to a higher order
Recognize positive deviants early, Amplify

4. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
praxis
architecture program
platform practice
portfolio
Innovation should be second nature and
part of an organization’s living culture.
It is in that sense a praxis, that grows
in maturity over time.
The four pillars, practice, platform,
program and portfolio together provide an
architecture for the ecosystem and enable
the praxis. They provide a framework for
an innovation center-of-excellence (CoE).
The Praxis creates a lexicon and grammar for innovation in the
enterprise
Each of these pillars calls for distinct capabilities, practices
and resources. Together they create an enabling environment that
fosters innovation competence and is leveraged in various ways.
While a less mature praxis might have all of these pillars
manifested in informal ways, enterprises that recognize the
critical importance of innovation, must have deliberate
initiatives on all these fronts.
Each of these domains evolve over time and must respond to
changing demands on the enterprise.

5. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
practice
Innovation is a social process.
In an ideal situation innovation
becomes a pervasive practice that
l i v e s a l o n g s i d e o p e r a t i o n a l
practices and does not have
designated practitioners.
There are however distinct bodies of
knowledge, practices, capabilities
and systems that need organizational
focus and attention.
Formal and informal arrangements
among practitioners together form
the corpus of innovation practice.
Excellence requires making innovation
practice a strategic concern. It also
requires resources and investments in
order to develop and mature.
Innovation practice, in addition to
contributing to various capabilities,
provides important inputs to an
enterprise’s innovation strategy.
Practitioners form formal and information
communities of practice (CoP). These CoP’s
provide a critical foundation to the Innovation
Praxis.
One of their primary roles is to capture
learning from real innovation project experience
and share knowledge among practitioners.
They define innovation capabilities and
contribute to their development.
Practitioners contribute to the design of
innovation modes and their associated methods,
tools and techniques.
They together form the organization’s
institutional memory and host the innovation
culture.
S u c c e s s f u l a n d m a t u r e p r a c t i c e s c a n
significantly contribute to accelerating
innovation outcomes.

6. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
platform
Innovation takes different forms
across the enterprise. Practitioners
need enablers such as resources,
assets, and capabilities they can
rely and draw upon.
Practitioners also need tools and
systems to support and augment the
effectiveness of innovation modes.
Together such enablers create a
supportive open environment that is
accessible to all.
Among important enablers are
culture, conducive facilities, and
opportunities that encourage
individual and collective behaviors
such as serendipitous interaction,
c o l l a b o r a t i o n , r i s k - t a k i n g ,
entrepreneurship, and creativity.
An innovation practice in a healthy
ecosystem cannot flourish without a
supportive platform.
Platforms support the diverse range of
innovation activities across the
enterprise and are designed to diffuse
practice.
They are an open and accessible
resource that actively develops
capabilities.
Leveraging intellectual assets and the fluid flow of
knowledge across the enterprise are critical to driving
innovation in the current economy. Among the components
that inform an innovation platform are systems and
practices that support knowledge management.
Value creating systems rely on co-creating value both
externally and internally. An innovation platform
encourages and supports collaborative co-creation
across enterprise boundaries.
Various innovation activities are effectively supported
by automation software. Tools and systems should be an
integral part of an innovation platform.
Physical and virtual spaces and facilities such as
labs, design studios are important to an innovation
platform.
In general innovation platforms should drive excellence
in sense-making, foresight and anticipation,
creativity, decision-making, design, collaborative
action and learning.

7. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
program
Innovation is increasingly strategic
to the success of an enterprise.
It is also a praxis that needs
development and nurturing in order
to become pervasive and deliver on
strategic aspirations.
Organizations need to systematically
organize initiatives to ensure
development of an innovation
ecosystem and praxis. This would
include the cultivation of an
innovation practice, development and
provision of platforms and the
creation and management of a
portfolio of projects that become
the basis for experiential learning.
This multi-dimensional challenge
needs the organizational and
management discipline of a program
effort.
Innovation Programs coordinate and
manage the multi-dimensional challenge
of building innovation excellence and
praxis.
Programs evolve over time to account
for the changing needs of the
organization. The objective of a
Program is to drive an organization
towards a stage where innovation
becomes ingrained and pervasive.
An Innovation strategy must derive from the strategic
aspirations and architecture of the enterprise. It
develops an approach to choosing innovation methods
from the wide range of available ones that are
appropriate to the kinds of challenges the organization
faces.
The Innovation Program establishes a governance
structure that guides the innovation efforts in the
enterprise, establishes performance metrics, policies
and assesses progress.
The Program regularly creates, sponsors, and manages a
portfolio of projects and ensures that the portfolio is
balanced to address short and long-term needs.
One of the important tasks of the Program is to
establish incentives and recognize excellence.
The Program provides visible leadership, communicates
and models the culture that fosters innovation.

8. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
portfolio
Innovation efforts are often
d i r e c t e d t o w a r d s s h o r t - t e r m
o p e r a t i o n a l a n d i n c r e m e n t a l
objectives.
S u p p o s e d l y f o r w a r d - l o o k i n g
initiatives are often extensions of
existing paradigms and not oriented
towards probing, exploring an
uncertain future or providing inputs
that would lead to disruptive
impact.
Innovation portfolios lack the
balance between operational and
e x p l o r a t o r y i n t e r e s t s , a n d
insufficiently oriented towards the
future.
Formal innovation programs manage a
portfolio of innovation projects.
The project portfolio is designed to
serve the short-term operational and
incremental needs of the organization
as well as the future-oriented
strategic needs.
The portfolio of innovation projects changes over time
and is designed to meet the strategic needs of the
organization.
Ideas and motivations for project candidates can
originate across the organization. It is the role of
program governance to create a portfolio that is
appropriately balanced, but does not eliminate
promising ones.
Projects within a formal innovation program should
leverage platform capabilities and practices so that
they contribute to and become a part of the overall
learning endeavor, and enhance the capabilities and
maturity of the platform over time.

9. ©Living
Enterprise,
Inc.
2014.
All
rights
reserved
thank you!
Sudhir Desai, Principal
www.livingenterprise.net