Creating Agency for Innovation
The perception of agency underpins all innovation. Agency is the belief that what you are doing will create a positive change for yourself and for the people around you.
Yet in today’s world of innovation, it’s hard to see how our actions will result in positive change. The number of actors before us, with us, and after us in the creation and delivery of innovations has multiplied. Inside our organizations we work in a matrixed world of multiple bosses and customers, and it seems every department must be involved in moving a new thing from concept to market. Externally, end value to the customer has become dependent on a cloud of ecosystem partners, each with their own motivations, policies, and concerns.
Many people working in innovation cannot see a way through the thicket, and projects slow and performance suffers. People need to feel that they have agency again and that their work matters.
There are techniques to increase personal agency inside innovation networks:
Foresight: Agency starts with looking ahead and the premise that tomorrow can be better than today.
Values: Values help us determine where we want to take action to create positive change in the future.
Tools: Creating change within large organizations takes effort and a skillset.
Planning: Plans help us proactively create the future instead of reacting to events.
Execution: Innovation is a marathon not a sprint and needs ongoing support to make happen.
Increasing agency improves the engagement for leaders and teams, reinvigorates innovation professionals, and improves the quantity and speed of projects to market. Wavepoint is excited to announce a new Master Class leading participants through ways they can increase their power to move projects forward and their ability to make positive change.