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The driving mindsets of innovation:
curiosity, creativity and clarity
Christian Walsh, Paul Knott and Jamie Collins
Innovation, highly desired but notoriously elusive
Innovation has been repeatedly identified as an important factor in the growth and
development of organisations and society as a whole, yet is a complex and difficult topic to
examine, understand and lead with appropriate strategy. But despite being globally
desired, successful innovation remains elusive in practice. In the recently released 2020
BCG Global Innovation Survey of 1,014 firms, even committed organisations where
innovation was identified as both a strategic priority and accounted for a high proportion of
spending only achieved a 60% success rate in their priority innovation projects (Ringel
et al.,2020
).
Innovation can be thought of in terms of outputs, processes and mindsets (Kahn, 2018).
Innovation outputs are the result of a process which in turn must be enabled by the
mindsets of the people involved. Therefore, to improve the success rate of innovation and
get the most out of related strategies, we need to do more to understand the mindsets of
innovation and in particular how these are applied in practice.
In this article, we describe the findings from our two-year study into innovation mindsets as
used in practice by strategists in the high-tech sector. This led us to a new framework
describing the mindsets that define and drive the innovation process with phases of
curiosity, creativity and clarity along with the action oriented sub-phases within them. We
conclude with recommendations and considerations for the use of this framework in the
field.
Innovation mindsets
Innovation consists of outcomes, processes and mindsets (Kahn, 2018). Its outcomes such
as new or improved products, processes, positioning and paradigms are the focus of most
research and are well covered in existing literature. These are the result of innovation
processes, such as funnels, open innovation or more iterative cyclic processes that are also
well researched and covered in existing literature. However despite mindsets, defined as “a
mental attitude or inclination” (Merriam-Webster, 2020) being an important driver of
innovation, they are relatively under-researched. In a recent review of enablers for
innovation teams, mindset is only mentioned in 10 of 302 possible articles (Johnsson, 2017).
In contrast, mindsets have been examined extensively in entrepreneurship. One example
with reference to innovation is the work of Dyer et al. (2008) who looked at behaviours and
cognitive practices that form a process in the origins of innovative ventures. Their process
of opportunity recognition starts with a cognitive bias against the status quo, with
questioning, observing, experimenting and networking behaviours coming from this
Christian Walsh is based at
Centre for
Entrepreneurship,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch,
New Zealand. Paul Knott
and Jamie Collins are both
based at the Department of
Management, Marketing
and Entrepreneurship,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch,
New Zealand.
DOI 10.1108/JBS-08-2020-0176 ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 0275-6668 jJOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j
coupled with associational thinking. These mindsets need to be supported in an
organisation for innovation to succeed (Kahn, 2018).
Innovation is an essential but highly complex process for organisational well-being and
growth (Ko and Butler, 2007). Given this we wished to examine further how innovators in
contemporary organisations act according to these mindsets to create new strategic
opportunities in turbulent environments. The goal of this work is to help others improve the
success rate of their innovation efforts.
Illustrative examples of innovation mindsets
We undertook a two-year longitudinal study of six innovators within the high-tech sector as
shown in Table 1. We selected the high-tech sector due to the high rate of change in the
environment which would give us the best opportunity to see dynamic mindsets at play.
We conducted a multi-participant study with semi-structured interviews based around
cognitive maps on a nominally quarterly basis over a two-year period with each participant.
We recruited participants from the high-tech sector in Christchurch, New Zealand. All were
experienced strategists and were dealing with dynamic innovation projects and were
selected in a very early stage of the project as our research began.
In analysing the mindsets each of our participants deployed through their project journey,
we used temporal bracketing to break down the phases of each participant case (Langley
et al., 2013). There were three major phases identified that were in common across each
case. The overall process phases discovered with the key distinct mindsets seen in each
phase are shown in Figure 1. Within the major phases which were largely followed
sequentially, there were action oriented sub-processes distinct to each major phase but
which ran in parallel.
Curiosity
In the first phase, we found curiosity is the dominant mindset. Curiosity has been defined as
“a drive for acquiring new knowledge and sensory experiences that can motivate
exploratory behaviour” (Celik et al., 2016, p.1185) and is a predictor of worker innovation.
Curiosity also has been linked to intuition (Kuusela et al.,2019). In this phase, the
participants had either recently come across a potential new opportunity, or a new issue
had arisen which required strategic response. They were trying to broadly learn as much as
possible about the changing field. The overarching question at this time was “How
significant is this, or could this be, for us?” During this curiosity phase the participants were
driven by initial intuition about the potential of the opportunity or implications of the issue.
Participant D, who at the time was looking at a new B2B software opportunity, described
this:
I think that’s where it starts an impression or a gut or a feeling that things need to change or they
are changing, and I’d better have a look at that. Is it a good idea, if so, rationalise it, justify it.
Table 1 Description of participants
Participant Role Experience in role Innovation focus Sessions
A CEO 20þyears Reconfiguring existing hardware to create new market opportunities 6
B Founder/ Director 20þyears Applying new technology to creating new proposition for existing market 7
C CEO 16 years Start-up creating new hardware offering with novel IP 7
D Founder/ Director 17 years Creating new software products for new markets 6
E Founder/ Director 17 years Investing in new technology acquisitions 6
F Founder/CEO 16 years Start-up with new software product creating new market opportunities 7
Total –– – 39
jJOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j
There were two action based sub-processes in this phase. First, the participants engaged
in discovering as much as possible about the opportunity or issue area. This involved a
great deal of divergent thinking and researching the issue or opportunity space, talking to
people about the issues at hand, seeing the issues from the customer perspective and
uncovering what other sectors had carried out in this space already. During this phase
participant B, who was exploring the potential use for a new sensor technology, said:
There’s a feeling that there’s a part, as there always is with customers, of wondering what the
pain point is. And if we can identify what the problem is then there’s opportunity for us to provide
a solution, so that’s part of the focus for me at the moment.
The discovery then couples with a period of understanding. This is a more convergent
mode where the participants made sense of the new information discovered and an
understanding of the relevance of the issues or opportunity to the organisation emerged.
Discovering and understanding often had some overlap and iteration to ultimately arrive at a
deeper understanding of the relevance of the opportunity or issue space. If the opportunity
or issue was deemed of sufficient significance then they entered the next phase.
Conversely, if it was not deemed to be significant, then the initiative ceased and the process
did not pass to the next phase or more discovering research was undertaken. In this
understanding sub-phase, the participants applied more analysis, using tools such as
constructing visual representations of the customer issues to aid in understanding. Journey
maps or job-to-be-done analyses were deployed, which led to reframing the core of the
issue. Participant A, who was looking at new niche segments for the firm’s industrial
electronics, described this as:
I think the intuition that there’s a space in there was correct as well as the intuition that we can sell
more of what we’ve got now. I’m feeling really empowered now by the level of visibility we’ve got
about what people are doing in the business. We can go back and take it here or we could take it
there.
The participants did not rush through the overall curiosity phase until they reached a deeper
understanding of the core issue.
Creativity
The second phase is where creativity is the dominant mindset. Creativity, generally defined
as the generation of novel and useful ideas (Hennessey and Amabile, 2010) clearly has a
close relationship to innovation. Sir Ken Robinson, noted for his work on creativity in
education, adds, “Innovation is applied creativity” (Robinson, 2011, p. 142). Given that
Figure 1 Driving mindsets of innovation
jJOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j
during the curiosity phase the opportunity or issue is deemed significant, then the creativity
phase focuses on the nature of the response. Within this, there were two overlapping
parallel processes. First, there is creating. In this divergent process, the participants and
their teams create multiple options, most often by synthesising disparate elements of
previous offerings, finding ways to re-configure or re-frame existing offerings, or creating
new versions of solutions to address the issue or capture the opportunity. Participant C, who
was commercialising a new technology spun out of a university, described this as, “There’s
one thing in generating information and analysis and then there’s the second part which is
to synthesise that into a plan to pull off”.
This creating process is closely linked to a convergent testing process where the teams test
prototypes with customers, try small pilots of new internal initiatives or soft launch beta
versions to test assumptions about what customers would find most valuable. This creativity
phase is driven by a balance of intuition and analysis of testing results. As subsequent
rounds of creating and testing are carried out, there is a tendency to increasingly rely on
hard data, as opposed to the early rounds where more intuition is applied. There are often
multiple iterations between these sub-phases, with the ultimate outcome being a validated
solution to the issue or opportunity. Participant D, when testing the potential for new
software, said, “The idea is we’ll fire some bullets. We’ll have a few test runs and pilot it.
And if it looks successful then we’ll launch the full attack”. Again there were overlaps and
interactions between creating and testing as described by participant F in this phase as he
was testing their chatbot-based solution, “The biggest thing is to be flexible. Understand
what’s happening and adjust as we go”.
Clarity
In the final phase of this process, clarity is the dominant mindset. By this stage, the organisation
has some confidence in its solution to the issue or opportunity, and this phase is about being clear
with scaling up and execution plans. Again, there are two parallel processes at play. The first is a
divergent resourcing phase. In this sub-process, the participants are looking at the range of
options for how to acquire the various resources required for scaling up. Business cases and
marketing narratives are being constructed. This often includes looking beyond the organisation
and relates to the capabilities of partners in the distribution or delivery channels. This is a more
analytic phase although intuition often applies to decisions relating to capabilities of potential
partners. As the commercialisation path for participant C became apparent, he describes this
emerging clarity:
We had so much uncertainty around the place and so in the realm of high uncertainty you can’t
logic your way out. You can be unpicked by any of these things, but as the uncertainty resolves
you are left with a pretty clear picture of what’s going on.
The second parallel process in this phase is implementing, a convergent phase relating to
the practical aspects of getting the solution to market or embedded in the organisation.
Gaining broader stakeholder commitment such as board buy in for the market launch is
important here along with risk and change management considerations. There are overlaps
between these processes where the ability to secure resources affects implementation
plans. When deploying their industrial electronics products into the newly identified niche,
participant A noted:
We are in market, we’ve got a product about to be in market which will then let us deploy it so all
of those bits and pieces are coming together and we know it’s a good product. We know we’re
credible and we’ve got a valuable idea. Should be quite exciting.
At this time, the participants had clear direction for their actions. In this phase participant E,
who had just completed a strategic acquisition, stated, “It’s the ability to execute and take it
to market that’s key”.
jJOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j
Table 2 summarises the overarching mindsets of each phase, the actions undertaken
during each phase, the tools/techniques used by the participants to arrive at the output of
each phase, and illustrative quotes from participants.
Implications for innovators
The driving mindsets of innovation framework emerged from our deep examination of a small
number of research cases in a single sector and is obviously not without its limitations. But it is
a helpful way to articulate some of the key mindsets in the innovation process, and it may
provide value for others beyond the originating sector. To test its value in a broader context it
has been trailed in Executive MBA innovation classes for the past three years, involving
managers from a diverse range of sectors. It has also been applied in the corporate
environment as a key framework for educating and encouraging innovation in several large
organisations. Several cohorts of post-graduate students and executives alike have expressed
satisfaction with using this as a practical framework for understanding, developing and
implementing the process. Based on this experience, we outline below three key
recommendations for practicing managers in applying this framework in organisations today.
Take time for discovering and getting to core understanding
In the early curiosity phase, too often organisations are in such a rush to jump to a solution or
fix the surface level problem that they actually miss the deeper causes or insights that are
required to create opportunities from complex problem spaces. In our research, this curiosity
stage took the longest of the three phases. You first need to prepare the groundwork and dig
deeply into the issues. You need to unleash curiosity and go broad as well as deep in
discovery work to come out with a rich understanding and intuitive insights (Kuusela et al.,
2019). But then you also need to allow the subconscious mind time to incubate and work over
the issues. This is particularly difficult for managers with years of training and cultures that
support rapid task-based problem solving. Guy Claxton has written of the struggle in our
minds between the task focussed “hare” and the slower intuitive “tortoise” mind (Claxton,
1997). We know from dual process theory these two systems work together, but the analytic
task-oriented hare brain is very good at interrupting the slower more intuitive tortoise mind, and
we can recognise this in organisational life where the distraction of short-term tasks is ever
present.
Take action by creating and actively testing a broad range of solution ideas
In the creativity phase, once the core issues have been understood, it is important to not just
theorise about solutions, but to take action and create many diverse options. Well-known
organisational social pressures such as group think, evaluation apprehension and motivation
all have direct bearing on limiting true divergent thinking and/or creative synthesis in this
phase. Yet diverse collaboration is also known to enhance creative problem-solving. To
engage in creative synthesis, the larger and more diverse fields of complementary knowledge
that can be brought to bear on a situation, the more likely the chance of combining them to
create novel solutions. The challenge of creating a true culture of collaboration is a major factor
in organisational leadership today. We encourage organisations to test ideas early in an effort
to promote learning and reduce the impact of emotional ownership of ideas. A healthy culture
of experimentation and learning allows wildly diverse ideas to all have an opportunity to be
tested and creative synthesis can result.
Creating and testing multiple potential solutions as opposed to a single solution allows for a
better understanding of the solution set, relationships and boundary conditions rather than a
single point solution (Sobek et al.,1999). This becomes invaluable in dynamic environments
where the solution may have to be adjusted as conditions change. If a point solution is
created, then a new solution needs to be re-created and tested every time the conditions
jJOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j
Table 2 Stages of innovation with mindset, actions and relevant tools/techniques leading to output of each stage, with quotes from participant B who was
exploring how they could take advantage of a new sensor technology
Innovation
mindsets Curiosity Creativity Clarity
Action Discovering Understanding Creating Testing Resourcing Implementing
Tools/
techniques
䊏User/
stakeholder
engagement,
and building
empathy
䊏Intuition
䊏Ethnography
䊏Data
visualisation
䊏Analysis
䊏Re-framing
䊏Synthesis
䊏Multiple
prototype
construction
䊏Technology
landscape
scanning
䊏User testing
䊏Internal
stress
testing
䊏Experimentation
䊏Business
model/case
options
䊏Building
partnerships
䊏Storytelling
䊏Stakeholder
commitment
䊏Behavioural
change
management
䊏Sales and
marketing
launch
Output Defined significant core issue Workable new solution Innovation being implemented
Illustrative
participant
B quotes
“There’s a bit of data but it pretty much still an experience
and gut feel, it’s very much based on our intuition and
understanding of the customers world. It’s empathy. It’s
that empathy of what their world represents.”
“It’s probably also that we’ve redefined the
proposition. The reason we have more confidence in
the commercialisation is actually
we have changed the definition of the proposition.
The actual proposition now is not the widget. It’s how you deliver
the answers.”
“Now we’re at a stage where we are going, right
don’t need tolearn any more at the moment. Let’s get to market.”
jJOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j
change. Alternatively, if the set of solutions, relationships and boundary cases are understood,
then as conditions change the solution only need be adjusted rather than re-created.
Take care with clear direction and communication when resourcing and
implementing
In our research, we saw in the resourcing phase a great deal of energy devoted to seeking
out strategic partners that could help implement the innovations. In fact, the selection of
partners took most of the time and energy of our participants in this phase. This may have
been a factor of the small scale and remote location of our research cases, but we do
believe there is much to be gained from drawing on the skills, knowledge and networks of
others to bring innovation to light. Networking is one of Dyer’s key behaviours of innovative
entrepreneurs (Dyer et al.,2008). Too often, organisations hold their cards close to their
chest and are reluctant to engage with others in implementation. But forging mutually
beneficial relationships in this phase is in no way straightforward and a key reason why
implementation is difficult. Having clarity in this phase helps with defining exactly what the
innovation is, who it is for and what benefit it creates for each stakeholder. Clear storytelling
here aids in gathering the support and resources required. Time spent earlier in the
curiosity and creativity phases help with the clarity required here as the core issues being
addressed and value proposition of solutions are well understood and thoroughly tested.
Having clarity is also essential for change management during implementation. Having a
clear direction helps in three ways when implementing change (Heath and Heath, 2011).
First, clarity helps the rational analytic mind see the rationale and direction for the change to
embark on the journey. Second, finding ways to make any change emotionally safe or even
encouraging for the intuitive self also requires clarity so the messaging and systems can be
consistent. Third, designing the environment to ensure that the direction of change is made
easier by the organisational context also requires clear understanding of the impact of the
environment on the change being implemented.
Conclusion
In examining the processes in organisations while embarking on successful innovation, we
uncovered a common pattern of mindsets. These revolved around periods focussed on
curiosity, followed by creativity and then clarity. It is our hope that by taking time to fully
discover and understand the significance of new opportunities during curiosity, create and
test a wide range of solutions during creativity, and have broad resourcing and
implementing with clarity, strategists can improve their innovation processes and generate
more successful outcomes for their firms and stakeholders.
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Keywords:
Longitudinal,
Innovation,
Creativity,
Curiosity,
Clarity,
Mindsets
jJOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j
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Corresponding author
Christian Walsh can be contacted at: christian.walsh@canterbury.ac.nz
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