One of the things that most infuriates organizational executives about current innovators is the innovator's insistence that you can't plan and measure progress for their work.  The rather cheeky message to leadership is that 'what we're doing is so agile and unpredictable, that you just have to trust us to end up in a good spot'.   

How do you assess the health of an innovation program and its ability to generate impactful and successful innovations?  If you're a commercial investor, over time the financial return of the selected investments may be a satisfactory proxy for the investments you've made.  

(This is an updated version of an article written several years before the COVID pandemic.  Given the level of disruption that came with widespread adoption of remote work, you might think that the big battles of work design have largely been fought.  I don't see it that way.  As this article points out, there is much more that could / should be done to reimagine work as organizations seek to capture the best creative work from their most unique team members.) 

A lot of people, even those trained in the field, think that innovation is just one set of practices.  That's not the case.  How you do innovation depends on the kind of challenge you face.  And as a result, over the last 70 years, three very different methodologies have been widely adopted.  Today a fourth approach, Ecosystem Innovation, is emerging in response to the need to tackle complex and fast moving challenges in business and the world around us.