Innovation challenge #2: Managing exponential complexity
The environment and elements required for launching a new venture described in the my previous “Innovation challenges” article, Creating the future fast are not only ever-expanding and constantly evolving, but often exponentially complex. New ideas are also exactly that — “New:” Unfamiliar, blurry, still malleable. Figments of imagination. In the previous article we established in broad strokes that there are many interwoven channels of communication that need to happen throughout the innovation, development and marketing process, but now we zoom in on the many complexities of it all (as if the complexity of even those broad strokes weren’t enough).
Technology, especially groundbreaking tech, is complex. Technology trends in software, cloud computing, telecommunications and infrastructure hurtle forward at their own pace but are in constant need to interconnect. Competitive forces and market shifts are complex. Fast-paced change complicates complexity. Regulatory and compliance requirements in every sector complicate complexity further. All of this tangle of wires needs to somehow be unwound and re-woven into a product built by people, that people will buy. And people — you guessed it — are complex.
This far-reaching complexity is a challenge to manage, even more difficult to structure, and can often be almost impossible to explain. But the most successful innovators don’t ignore or bulldoze through complexity — they embrace it and use their ability to simplify as a competitive advantage. The most effective elevator pitches, pitch decks, user interfaces, brands and marketing campaigns — the initial visible touchpoints for our product’s audience — have been experimented with, iterated on, researched, tested, revised, tested again, refined, and distilled through the grueling work of simplification. Simplification is not simple.
Communication and simplifying complexity
“The worst way to manage complexity is to throw out the hard parts.”
— Richard Saul Wurman
Those very early, lean and often rough-sketch exercises help secure important buy-in and understanding for all the key role players in the next phases of the innovation process. Everyone is mostly on the same page, and the vision is beginning to come into focus. To use a building metaphor, it was far too early to start pouring the foundation — let alone draft up detailed blueprints — but now everyone feels they’re on stable, common ground.
Next, the innovation communication process slows down — by necessity — and we dig deeper into defining the problem our innovation is solving, and the solution we’re building. One might be tempted to assume that we know what both of these are (that’s how the light-bulb-overhead moment happened in the first place, right?) and just start building. But arriving at a simple-to-use solution is not that, well, simple. As Richard Saul Wurman — the man who coined and pioneered information architecture and founded TED — is quoted above, we actually need to embrace the complexities of speed, technology and people that we identified as the “challenge.”
Put another way, by the terrific business consultant to creative firms and author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto Blair Enns in his latest blog post, innovation and efficiency are mutually opposable goals. Enns brilliantly only needs to swap out a couple letters of “inefficiency” to coin the term “Innoficiency.” I highly recommend checking out his article next.
Next, in part 2 of my article, we’ll take inspiration from Wurman and Enns and others to look at some important ways skilled communicators and communication skills can help innovators achieve greater clarity. We’ll focus initially on three areas:
- Identifying existing models — visually-driven methodologies for guiding the process of simplifying fuzzy, complex ideas into clear, focused vision — that are appropriate for your goals.
- Creating your own models that are more specific to clarifying and explaining your innovation and its ecosystem.
- Listening, visualizing, and testing activities for iterating, refining and defining the right approaches for moving the product into development.
Be sure to check out my previous articles in this series, as well, and thank you for taking this journey through Communicating Innovation with me!
