Expanding Your Adjacent Possible Through Exploration

May 05, 2018 in Mechanics of Innovation

Conjuring ideas from thin air is a rare feat. Most of the mythologized eureka moments involve layers of information that lead up to connecting the dots. Before we can combine them into new insight, they must be available to us. Exploration is the fundamental practice of harvesting this information. Alex Pentland and his colleagues at the MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab have conducted extensive research in what makes teams consistently innovative and productive. Using data from mobile phones, credit card records, and sociometric badges they confirmed explorations role. They have observed the individuals who comprise these teams spend an inordinate amount of their time exploring outside of their offices and departments. As the pace of the business cycle accelerates, one must think on your feet and be able to assimilate and evaluate information faster than ever.

Too often we succumb to the availability heuristic where we the most recently available knowledge and experiences permeate our thinking. This phenomenon further reinforces the need to ensure diverse and new information frequently injected into our daily habits. Continuous exposure to new knowledge can ensure we have fuel for new ideas. We need the dots to connect and new insights to bear on the problems we are trying to solve.

Why proximity matters?

April 09, 2018 in Mechanics of Innovation

Distance, operation overlap, sensory cues, and frequency of positive interactions have an influence on the probability individuals will maintain social ties and collaborate together. People tend to collaborate with stronger ties in their networks. This is why cities matter for economic development. While individuals and organizations can work together over a large distance, the closer they are the greater the chance they will collaborate with one another and maintain ties. Research on the effects of distance on collaboration has concluded collaboration drops off significantly between one-quarter to a mile. Companies in the same industry located less than a mile of each other experience ten times greater information flow than those located two to five miles apart. After five miles, knowledge flow drops off continually at a lesser rate. Interestingly specific industries become more concentrated than others.

Face-to-Face Communication Still Matters

April 01, 2018 in Mechanics of Innovation

While technological advancements in video conferencing and other forms of electronic communication continually improve, they often fall short of communicating complex concepts and information. We have all experienced miscommunication because we missed subtle social cues, misinterpreted an email, or missed out on the context before or after a conference call. Meeting face-to-face is still the richest form of communication and has shown to be the most effective at social influence over other forms of communications.

In a 2009 survey of 2,300 subscribers of the Harvard Business Review, 95% of respondents said face-to-face meetings are “a key factor in successfully building and maintaining long-term relationships.” Being in the same place increases trust, a critical ingredient to the success of any innovation ecosystem. Other forms of communications such as phone calls, email, texting, and chat are regularly used to organize and amplify face-to-face communication. The more complex the information, the more important co-presence becomes.

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Expanding Your Adjacent Possible Through Exploration

Why proximity matters?

Face-to-Face Communication Still Matters

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