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By Chris Chittenden

Many people see "Knowledge Management" as the dominant paradigm for business today. This interest has been fuelled by a dramatic shift from physical capital (as in buildings and equipment) to what is termed "intellectual or knowledge capital". The value of "Knowledge Management" for business lies in maximising the sum total of knowledge inside an organisation and so improve competitiveness.

We believe there is a flaw in this scenario in that knowledge is insufficient for effective action. How many times have you known what needs to be done and not done it? We claim that what is missing is "Wisdom". "Wisdom" is not only knowing what needs to be done but using that knowledge to take effective action at the most opportune time. 

Furthermore, in times of rapid change and decreasing product life cycles, knowledge rapidly becomes obsolete. Managing knowledge needs to be complimented with generating new knowledge. When you generate new knowledge coupled with effective action, you produce new results through innovation. We believe that innovation is the key to increased competitiveness, not knowledge.

Traditionally, innovation begins at the top and works its way down to transform an organisation. The elite managers design the future and then seek to impose it upon their employees. In this scenario, management dictates change and the individual is left to respond. This change management model may well be appropriate for many major change situations but often struggles in the face of reactionary change - small changes that are constantly required to address an ever-changing business environment. We claim that to be competitive in the future, organisations will not be able to just rely on the occasional change program to re-align their structure and direction but will need to continuously generate innovation throughout their organisation through "Innovation Workers".

An "Innovation Worker" is someone who has the wisdom and the opportunity to apply new ways of doing things that fit with the organisational direction and which address the changes they see all the time. We will explain how this is done in the context of a model of competence originally defined by Laura Devine and James Flaherty and based on the ideas of American philosopher Ken Wilber. 

They have defined what we term the "I / We / It" model to identify three distinct domains of competence for any area of action. The "I" domain is the subjective world of the individual that focuses on purpose, self-knowledge, self-correction and attitude - we see this as the domain of the self. The "We" domain is the subjective collective view of the group that focuses on relationship, communication, community, leadership and inspiration - we see this as the domain of community. The "It" domain is the objective world that focuses on processes, technology, measurement and statistics - we see this as the domain of science. The "I / We / It" model offers that for any area of action, we must have some competence in the "I", the "We" and the "It". The application of competence in each depends on the area of action. For example, an organisational leader would need far more emphasis in the "I" and the "We" domains than in the "It", whereas an accountant within an organisation would most likely need more emphasis on the "It".  

Traditional innovation processes seem to focus very much on the "It". The "I" and the "We" are largely ignored. The idea seems to be that creating a new system for doing things is enough to generate effective change. We do not disagree that this can generate new ways of doing things but such ways are often slow and create a great deal of stress and mistrust in the workplace. We believe that when you focus on the "I" and the "We", a new space for innovation is created; one that can be continuously generated across an organisation.

So what does this look like? For the individual, the "I", it means being able to find a personal innovative space. One where he or she is able to see opportunity for innovation and where they have the emotional space and the wisdom to make use of those opportunities. For the community, the "We", it means an innovative and supportive culture, where people are given the space to be innovative. You will know that you have created an innovative space for your team when innovations show up as a natural part of their daily activity.

The original ideas for this article come from the work of Geoff McDonald ... the term "Innovation Worker" was originally coined by Talking About Coach, Jacqui Chaplin.

Copyright © 2002 Chris Chittenden