Innovation across Space and Time
How does innovation look like in our typical workplace?
This is the third in a series of posts around innovation at our typical workplace. The previous posts covered the idea of Innovation and learning innovation from a master chef.
Walk in to a few of your favorite software companies and ask around about their innovation program, and you will very likely end up with a full house on the following Bingo card.
The core theme among these programs is that Innovation deserves a dedicated time and attention to be carved out, not to mention incentives, to really foster. Never mind the fact that this reinforces the idea that the job of an average engineer today is mundane and as far from innovative as it could be.
It is true that novel ideas require a dedicated, creative space and the luxury of time. But then, we are smarter now and won’t lead ourselves down the trap of confusing innovation with invention, will we?
And so we end up with this sporadic distribution of innovation in the organization that looks somewhat dispersed in space and time.
This reinforces a couple of additional concepts - both perhaps unintended consequences.
We must eagerly look forward to the excitement of the small window(s) that allow us to unleash our creative selves. In the meantime, we drag our sorry selves to work to help accomplish whatever it is our customers appear to be needing from our software.
Some individuals or teams are deemed special because they get to work on more of the cool stuff regularly as part of their day job.
This is not to say that these innovation programs do not have a place in an engineering organization. Their outcomes are however often disconnected from what was actually intended.
Temporally constrained innovation
Now, most engineers are going to participate in the Hackathons, the Innovation Days and other temporal programs their company organizes, so why don’t we look closer at them first.
Intended outcomes:
Spark innovation and creativity
Signal that we are an innovative organization
Bring new ideas to market that otherwise may not materialize
Actual outcomes:
A burst of creativity gets people excited and energized.
Prizes are given away but few of the winning ideas actually see the light of day
Competing business priorities supersede the promising innovations that do emerge
The primary outcome is the undeniable energy that is injected into the engineering function as a whole. This, unfortunately, tapers off soon after.
Eventually, the next hackathon or innovation event comes by, and while the pragmatic bunch realizes their previous attempts are still sitting on localhost, we collectively get excited by the chance of winning the iPad or the all expenses paid trip to the Fall conference in Vegas and start all over again.
Spatially constrained innovation
Few organizations have the strategic or financial luxury of being deliberate about what comes out of the “X Team” or the OSS projects they invest in. Like with the hackathon, the actual reasons these programs exist are different from what it says on the label. The main side-effect is to help retain talent that is otherwise fast growing disillusioned with their day-to-day work. And this isn’t something to sneer at, of course. Any other outcomes the programs achieve are often however considered a bonus.
If you were selected to be a part of the “X Team” or the “Labs” initiative in your organization, or offered dedicated time to work on an OSS project, consider this a major perk. Your Engineering Managers have gone head over heels to get you this opportunity, navigating the red-tape around these privileges. Congratulations and welcome to this elite club!
You can now take an extended break away from the mundane job of keeping the lights on for your SaaS business. Once this hiatus is over, you bring your briefly pampered self back to the grind with tales of the promised land, leaving more of your colleagues yearning to get there someday.
Innovation across Space and Time
Hackathons and Labs initiatives certainly have their place in engineering culture. The idea here is not to denounce them, but to only call out their limitations. Can organizations go beyond these constraints to bring innovation toward the core of their culture? The good news is that the keen observer may have already noted the hints in the previous posts in this series.
Innovation is something that can become a trait of how an engineer approaches their work, and with the right framework and leadership support, can become a visible part of how things are done in engineering overall.
The next posts in this series will look at this possibility from two sets of lenses - an individual contributor, and an engineering leader. Until then, I would like you to believe that there is a way to break free from the artificial constraints around innovation in the space-time continuum of our typical organization.