Knowledge Management book review by Wilma Garvin

Title: Hyperinnovation
Author: Chris Harris
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 0-333-99438-8

Outline

Chris Harris' thesis in Hyperinnovation is that the business world is interconnecting in every conceivable dimension from ideas to technology to markets and even entire industries. As a result, the boundaries between once disparate business concepts are increasingly multi-dimensional. This demands a complete rethink in terms of strategies, cultures, organisations and methodologies to bring about innovation. He goes on to discuss how uncertainty is not just an occasional deviation from predictability. It has become a common feature of the business environment.

Complexity is an underlying theme of the book and the definition of complexity science is given as the understanding of how a collective of large numbers of interrelated agents behave as a whole.

In Hyperinnovation, he has put forward three principles of hyperinnovation. The first principle is that the potential for hyperinnovation is proportional to the number of the meaningful interconnections between agents. He explains this with an equation that says that the number of possible (meaningful or otherwise) interconnections is half of the square of the sum of agents in a network so that 10 agents in a network would have 45 possible interconnections. Chris Harris describes the payoff as being the increase in the number of innovation possibilities.

The unexpected is the second principle of hyperinnovation and this says that the greater the complexity and/or novelty embedded within a given innovation, the greater the frequency of the unexpected.

The third principle is uncertainty, says that the degree of novelty (Newness) and complexity (diversity of ideas), embedded within any particular invention seta a limitation on the cycle-time to market so that the novelty and complexity factors need to be defined before deciding whether a specific launch window can be achieved.

Analysis

Innovation is something that all companies are seeking. In The Knowledge Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) described how knowledge creation leads to continuous improvement which results in competitive advantage.

Knowledge Creation è Continuous Innovation è Competitive Advantage

Hyperinnovation also holds that innovation is the core of today's competitive strategy.

It looks at the five building blocks of core competences – explicit knowledge base, skills, tools, processes and focus. In her book, The Wellsprings of Knowledge, Dorothy Leonard has also discussed the need to plan for the continuous rejuvenation of a company's strategically important knowledge assets, its core capabilities which she explains as problem solving, values, skills and knowledge, managerial systems and physical systems. She also goes on to point out that paradoxically core capabilities can also be a company's core rigidities and recommends that companies can improve their core capabilities by ‘purposeful experimentation' to ensure that today's core capabilities do not become tomorrow's core rigidities .

Hyperinnovation also discusses how important prototyping is in managing risk in any innovation process as learning is the single most effective way to de-risk anything. The importance of prototyping is emphasised by Dorothy Leonard for both technical and organisational purposes. David Kelley, founder of IDEO, a leading design firm in Palo Alto has said that you have to have the guts to create a straw man.

A useful section on hyperinnovation tools is also included. Amongst these, he has listed the Simplex method of applied creativity, developed by Min Basadur. Howard Rheingold describes these tools as ‘intellectual power tools' and the Simplex method is a powerful example. It offers a way to avoid the serial thinking that Hyperinnovation says blinds us to the highly novel business contexts emerging today.

Readership

Chris Harris' background is in the telecommunication, media and aerospace industries so this book will probably strike a chord with other people who are working on complex, technology projects. However, as companies are seeking innovation for competitive advantage, Hyperinnovation offers a wealth of insight built up over Chris Harris' 20 years in complex systems innovation and new product development performance that would be useful addition to for anyone interested in knowledge management who is involved in innovation initiatives.

Verdict

In 700 BC, Amen-em-apt said that the pilot who sees from afar will not make his boat wreck. Hyperinnovation offers a roadmap to technological development in the 21st century. Hyperinnovation covers many different aspects of the multidimensional enterprise that managers are grappling with now.

It provides useful guidance for setting up a futuring workshop, developing a culture of multidimensional leadership, motivating a multidimensional team and on how to start the bottom-up ignition of multiple targets.

Bibliography

Basadur Min, The Power of Innovation: How to make innovation a way of life and put creative solutions to work,, Financial Times Prentice Hall (1994)

Leonard D, Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the sources of Innovation, Harvard Business School Press (1998)

Nonaka I and Takeuchi H, The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies create the dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press (1995)

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