What does innovating feel like?

Moments like today remind me that while I love reading about innovation I can often spend time in that challenge of ‘thinking about’ innovation rather than being or doing innovation. 

I’ve had a few moments of innovation in my career that remind me of today and sometimes when I pass them, I think back and wonder if I really remember them accurately.

It’s for that reason that I’m gathering this story now. So I can record and remind myself what innovating feels like and in particular these three things:

 Firstly  the seesaw of difficulty with the rush of having an impact.

Right now I’m innovating on something that’s needed and it’s recognised as needed by communities who have the potential to impact global systems change. Gradually these communities are getting involved and it’s really possible to see the changes happening and NO ONE is funding this innovation. It is increasingly clear to me that innovation that enables systems change is not well funded and based on the system we live and work within, it may never be. I’m really confident in the business model that  I’m innovating around so the finance will flow but this is a learning that governments, business leaders, impact investors, policy makers etcetera should really be paying attention to. Otherwise we could all get stuck in that ‘talking about innovation’ versus actually doing it 

Secondly language change. There isn’t the vocabulary to describe what myself and my team are innovating around because it hasn’t been done before. This means I find myself using more unusual terms and explaining what they mean. Then suddenly I hear someone saying the term back to me and we have a moment of a shared meaning, a shared vision of what we’re working towards and what we see is been possible in the future.

Thirdly  the ongoing Inclusion of everybody in the future vision. Most of my time is spent bringing a vision for the future to life with people who can take action but equally important is building this vision in a way that is accessible for everyone. The best way I can think of it is innovation as being like a compost pile in the corner of a shared garden. Innovation doesn’t happen in one room with certain people giving their input. Innovation happens when people put input in their own different ways from their own different places, like a compost pile gathering input from different gardens, different waste items. There’s something that happens that’s magic about the combination of all of these ideas and input. It is not an exact recipe.

I’ve tried to keep my communication today about innovation in general rather than specific to the project which I’m innovating around.

 It is a reminder to myself in the future that these are the feelings/ the experience  of innovation. I understand that today’s innovation is going to  become tomorrow’s normality and the focus very soon is going to shift from innovation, to growth and implementation.