I recently purchased Tom Kelley’s book The Ten Faces of Innovation. I have only skimmed it so far, but I like it. With a line of thinking somewhat similar to Debono with his six thinking hats (a variant of which I have taught my kids, but using masks) Kelley has attempted to delineate types of persona that are all essential to the innovation process.

Although we should always be careful to fall into the trap of turning archetypes into stereotypes (i.e. from believing the archetypes to be concrete) Kelley’s approach appears insightful and useful, at least to ponder, if not adopt. We should listen to the thoughts of someone coming from such a rich background and tradition of innovation.

I commented in earlier posts about the increasing trend in operators to include the word “innovation” in some job titles. Note that this is actually a subtle fudge, as no one dares to use the word “innovator” in their title, because that would actually mean they had to innovate, as opposed to “strategise” about it and all the other corporate nonsense that can so easily be confused with doing real work.

For me, the key about Kelley’s book is that he has understood - as he would - that innovation is an integral part of thinking and a process. It is not an activity, although there are activities that we tend to associate with innovation, like brainstorming. This is perhaps where some of these operators are going wrong by assuming there is a set of activities called innovation and therefore a department with a “Head of Innovation” makes sense. Innovation is a mindset and it should not be confused with wild ideas, futurology and flights of fancy at the company’s expense, distracting from the more “real” world of closing deals and so on. There isn’t an activity in a company that can’t benefit from reflective thinking, renewal, pondering the big-picture and all the other constituent parts of the innovation process. Innovation should be part of the culture.

There is another key lesson here, which is captured by the subtle title - ten faces, not persona or personalities. Whilst any one of us might consider our thinking patterns and attitudes to be habitually centered in one of the ten archetypes, it is perfectly possible - and advisable - to develop the skill of acting out any of them, or wearing the face!

It is right to think about innovation and to find ways of developing it within our attitudes, behaviours and thinking. In my view, there is a prior step, which is to think about thinking itself. We can all think and we all do, but few of us ever stop to think about our thinking. This is sometimes referred to as critical thinking, although the term has various meanings and definitions. Sadly, critical thinking is seldom taught in schools, although I was happy to find out about the AS and A level in Critical Thinking in the UK. It may well be an essential survival skill in the 21st century.