Reluctance to change appears in a number of interactions I can find online and offline. There is a digital disruption going on, and this is happening whether we agree or not. Investments, jobs, physical and virtual assets deployed around the globe can only confirm this trend. One of the missions of this blog is to help change agents drive this transformation in the most intelligent way. How can you read the dynamics of the digital change in a constructive way so you can anticipate actions rather than react, at times unknowingly making yourself reluctant to opportunities?

To change or not to change, that is the question

Along with new sources of intelligence and questions, unprecedented levels of doubts and uncertainty are leading business experts and leaders to constantly assess the accuracy of information they receive and share to manage projects within blurring limits and opportunities. Models are being challenged: thinking frameworks, regulations, business and economic equations to stability and growth. Yet impactful change makers find their way around, targeting those sectors and initiatives that have systemic reach and human drive, applying technologies that add authentic and distinctive value. It’s about going beyond business focus and solving issues that engage customers. As a knowledge platform, this blog consolidates strategic and marketing tools to help you do the same.

Diversity has long been identified as a critical management practice to drive change. In our first report, we have identified how to apply such practice on individual and team level to generate virtuous circles of innovation based on diversity. The tools built through this report have been applied to this blog, generating a more dynamic story and attracting a wider variety of readers and followers. Our second report focuses on outlining how market and business environment analysis can generate systemic innovation from human centricity, based on the diversity of teams and individuals. We have defined four levels of diversity to do this: horizontal, vertical, systemic and technical.

Understanding the dynamics of change through diversity

By enabling a richness of ideas and a dynamic communication of information from customers to knowledge communities, different levels of diversity and human centric scales can help understand the dynamic of change. Organizing diversity and managing its different levels around a human centric scale provides a better understanding of core roots and potential evolutions of technological, economic, business and management change. Applied to weareinnovation.org, this methodology would read as follows:

• Horizontal diversity to understand individual change: by scouting for new innovation thoughts from renowned experts as well as inspired individuals, this blog intends to open a rich conversation among people who wouldn’t have a chance to discuss elsewhere. I ask questions and look for existing answers to create new ideas and thoughts. Doing so, I give a careful listening to academic, professional, personal emotions and ideas that contribute to innovation and appetite for change.

• Vertical diversity to understand change as communities: the stories I build around specific topics from this variety of individual views deepen current thinking and analysis by combining findings, at times highlighting debates, disagreements, even contradictions that miss a place for a common ground. I outline common denominators and explain differences. This helps bringing debates further and understand shared concerns and priorities for change.

• Systemic diversity to understand change from an ecosystem viewpoint: the PESTLE analyses I issue are meant to include experts and individuals looking to express their concerns from a political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental viewpoint. For this blog, it is a critical tool to outline the objectives sought by innovation practitioners, and assess the global impact their initiatives lead to. It is a fascinating picture to paint regularly, looking at how decisions and trials attain objectives or not, analyzing whether innovation generates the benefits it is always keen to promise.

• Technical diversity to understand change from a variety of expertise: users, product managers, marketing trainees, experts and leaders all hold a different degree of technical expertise in innovation, and they share through social networks what they believe reflect or define change. The point is to combine those views to understand specific expectations, and recognize the expertise anyone has on their own real life experience of innovation. It provides the blog with a rich dynamic of views, and helps readers identify those specific viewpoints they can also share and apply in their own reality. 

By consistently scanning those different levels of diversity, I am able to articulate and analyse differing views that miss a common place, some sort of intellectual democracy, to be analyzed, and actioned upon. This consolidated knowledge can therefore give birth to new methodologies and ideas to drive change. For instance, it can lead to define human values for innovation, or setting actions to partner with the digital crowd.

In all cases, it is the diversity of viewpoints, personalities, projects and ideas that brings life to innovation, and I’m proud that through this blog we managed to write a whole story out of it.

weareinnovation.org writes the innovation story that thousands of innovation experts around the world constantly develop and share on WAI social networks. Browse our knowledge library and read our management reports to learn more.

Photograph: Nirina Photography