Last week I attended (and was honored to make a presentation at) Unlocking Innovation, which was I believe the 11th annual Innovation Convergence conference. While I didn't post anything at the time, I now want to point you to the conference coverage posted by Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools (whom I got to meet him for the first time). Particularly worth reading is Chuck's summary of Joyce Wycoff's "State of Innovation" presentation. One of the things Joyce said, and what struck me after talking to some attendees, is that people truly do understand now that innovation is a process and not a thing. And it is a process of connection, not a process by which new products, services, etc., are all created out of nothing. They are created out of what already exists, out of customer needs. See with a fresh eye, make connections, create.

Also worth reading is Chuck's summary of the talk by Bob Henn, former global R&D director of W.L. Gore. Adding my own .02 here, I too thought Bob Henn's talk was terrific. It was the first time that I had heard of polarity management, a theory that holds that some problems are actually unsolvable because they are not truly "problems," but ongoing situations in which both conflicting points of view are true, or "right." Examples: Market pull vs. technology push, individual vs. team focus. Henn cited Barry Johnson's Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems as the book to read on this subject.

These polarities can never be solved in a traditional sense because whenever a solution is implemented it eventually tips the polarity back toward the opposite pole, creating a new set of problems. Solving those problems then tips the polarity back the other way and into the original set of problems (or a variation on those). The solution is to manage the natural tension between the poles and channel a solution.

How is this about innovation? Mapping the polarities offers another way to build the box in which to innovate. If you are on the negative side of a polarity, perhaps you want to come up with ideas to move into more positive territory. Mapping the polarities offers you valuable insight into where ideas are needed, even what kind of ideas and why. And the more information you have before you start to come up with ideas, the better and more relevant your ideas will be.

It never ceases to amaze me how, when I find a really good theory or tool, I immediately see the connections between that and another theory or tool. Polarity management dovetails nicely with TRIZ, in that the underlying problem-solving logic is to expose contradictions between the current reality and the "ideal final result" and then ideate around them.