At InspireChilli, we have one simple but powerful belief:
that innovation really works when it works for people - by people - with people. It’s a vision for innovation that resists the
cults of personality guru and process fad for a democracy of talent in which
everyone has their place together.
Imagine the best dance party in the world, and note how the space and sound enables the people within it to create the unique rhythm and colour and connection of the moment. The identity of the party, how the experience is designed, how its energy is influenced, represents a different type of innovation. The DJs, the bar tenders, the party host, the personalities, the mix of styles and passions integrating in the moment, all represent how innovation should be carefully shaped through and around the architecture of the people. An innovation in which everyone seems to play an active role.
Imagine the best dance party in the world, and note how the space and sound enables the people within it to create the unique rhythm and colour and connection of the moment. The identity of the party, how the experience is designed, how its energy is influenced, represents a different type of innovation. The DJs, the bar tenders, the party host, the personalities, the mix of styles and passions integrating in the moment, all represent how innovation should be carefully shaped through and around the architecture of the people. An innovation in which everyone seems to play an active role.
The future is shaped into positive energy when we build machines
that people can not only drive but learn how to re-engineer into possibilities from which they and society can benefit. This is not the innovation of monolithic, one
dimensional products for mass consumption.
This is not the creation of shiny goods built by people who can’t afford
to own them. The future we want is a talent machine for all that
creates a sustainable world.
How do we craft this grand design? Innovation.2 – ‘humanvation’. Put the lab within a lab and turn the disruptive,
hot, amazing building power of innovation onto its own identity. The dream
team for the talent machine should not be an array of modern business terms
from ideation to process management. The
specialist competencies and tools within these areas are critical to learn from,
but their current positioning as roles and types is part of an organisational logic-scape
that has reduced the art of human innovation into the cogs of an engine driving
us down roads that run people over. The
language needs breaking and remoulding into something closer to our hearts - the
innovation we are all born with: our self.
How ‘humanvation’ works and does not work holds within it the secrets of
the talent machine code. The processes
of how we learn to identify, develop and express who we are, with each other, through
the complexities of the human ecosphere, holds within it the magic code for
innovation to copy. Life, as well as
work, are the joint mirrors to harness and hone the development process until
we become the Picasso of projects and programmes.
I’ve spent the last 20 years thinking through how to do ‘humanvation’
in various forms, trialing out approaches to build the talent machine, working
with different skills types and resources to degrees of success and failure. The secret I have discovered is not the next
Prince2, but the new PeopleToo: how individuals can find within themselves and between
themselves the ingredients to make innovation work for both people and the
social/organisational structures they are part of. The success equation is that the way we innovate
must be held in equal relationship of purpose to what we innovate. Nothing is in isolation. The challenge that social good needs to embrace is taking greater responsibility over the quality of space and music that entrepreneurs can create for people to dance their magic through. Innovation is the opportunity to heat up our
lives to 'humanvate'.
At Inspirechilli, the dream is a future where everyone can
control the talent machine.
