Maturation and Innovation as Transformation

THE FACES OF CHANGE

Currently, the idea of Transformation suffers the usual range of audience reactions from hype to backlash dismissal. In between the extremes, sober inspection returns the attention to understanding why the idea is necessary and what actually distinguishes it as being valuable.

In the review below, the significance of the idea of transformation comes from a clear place staked out by metamorphosis and innovation. For the audience that concerns itself with how organizations work, innovation is the more urgent topic, with its connotations of sudden impact, starting over, being less proven, and bucking the norm of relying on the well known.

As a concept, “innovation” is necessary for referring to an unprecedented way of obtaining a desired effect within a given domain.

Being unprecedented is the most critical dimension of the idea of innovation. If the item referred to as an innovation is not unprecedented, then by definition it is not an innovation.

It might instead be distinctive as any of these other recognized modes of intentional change:

• A modification — improved fitness
• An optimization — higher performance
• An extension — more scope
• A translation — broader adoption

Each of those four modes of change are specifically purposeful and can occur without any of the other three. Although they may also be combined, in this list they are ordered first to fourth along a progression of increasingly strategic alteration required of the subject item.

Considering pathways of progression, we get to another set of concepts relevant to purposeful change:

• Maturation — higher propriety of capability
• Reconfiguration — alternative design of supporting structure
• Transformation — alternative elements of functional design

Of those three, maturation is the pathway in which the identity of the item is fully unambiguous as still being the “same” despite alterations. It is typically the last point of progression at which:

• the item is persistently recognized as a later “version” of its prior self
• the “formula” of its construction is still recognizable per the same model as before, despite other evident alterations

Meanwhile, in this group of three, the list is ordered first to third along a progression of increasingly fundamental restructuring of form — putting increasing pressure on the decision to retain the legacy identity. But none of them are necessarily innovation.

THE TIPPING POINT

Once we are in reconfiguration, two additional important and distinct ideas arise, that are both key underpinnings of the concept of innovation.

• Designs enable functions; redesign can introduce functional possibilities that are beyond the typical scope of the item’s formal purpose. Likewise, it can remove prior functional possibilities. This expansion or contraction is normally recognized as an unavoidable outcome of modeling.
• Two different items, modeled differently from each other, may each support a “same” given scope of minimum required effect, making either of them judiciously sufficient when necessary. This is normally recognized as inter-changeability — but the critical thing demonstrated is that different designs can serve the same purpose. That includes having a given item re-designed for application to the same purpose as it had been before.

In the final pathway of progression — transformation — the critically distinguishing idea at hand is that there is no current reliance on the prior form. What used to be in form X is now in form Y. The term “transformation” sees the new form as an expression of the “same” item as before. Including that simple fact, we can see transformation in its two main flavors: metamorphosis and innovation.

NATURE and NURTURE

Metamorphosis is a familiar term used to indicate that something with retained and ongoing Identity X has transformed.

We can keep track of a given child and know later that the adult is the same person as the child. Likewise, track a given caterpillar and know later that the butterfly it became is the “same” insect. Or know that the swan is that “same” bird as was the ugly duckling. Or that the vinegar is that “same” wine which was left unsealed. That delivery truck fleet is now a logistics consultancy. That online book seller is now a cloud services provider. Metamorphosis continues to recognize them on a level of identification that exists above their new form but that also identifies them with their new form in the recognition.

Metamorphosis both contrasts and echoes with how we understand “innovation”.

In similarity: with innovation we also have a higher-level identification (usually a purpose) that persists as our key reference, but we attend to a variation in it or of it.

In contrast: we think of metamorphosis as a kind of change that is “built-into” the way the item is put together, whereas innovation is an explicit decision to cause a change that wasn’t going to happen.

But the two modes share the question: “how much variation of a given theme can we tolerate before we see the variant as expressing a different theme?”

In what follows, the emphasis is on innovation. The theme or key reference — most often indicating a purpose — serves as the given context in which innovation is recognized.

Innovation comes in three flavors directly addressing “newness” versus precedent pertaining to a designated context:

• Something new in an old use — generally experienced as improvements or options
• Something old in a new use — generally experienced as resources or versatility
• Something new in a new use — generally experienced as inventions

We can see in those cases that they are not interchangeable and that the intention of each type must be appreciated before selecting it.

Of the three cases, only the third is dedicated to a total transformation — one in which the possibility of doing differently (i.e., ability) is entirely derived from the possibility of being differently (i.e., structure). It is a strategic level of transformation — flying to get to prevention instead of driving to get to a cure. GPS for real-time tracking instead of clocks for scheduling.

THE WHO CARES TEST

Because usage dominates the evaluation of innovation, the benefit sought from innovation always derives from effectiveness and satisfaction of demand. In an entirely ordinary way of thinking and talking, we look at innovation as being an unprecedented way of getting something done. The outstanding and essential feature of “successful” innovation is relevance.

However, in evaluation, the most common error in thinking and talking about innovation is that some mysterious threshold of popularity must be crossed before the innovation is officially acknowledged. In a casual sense, this insistence on the impact range of an innovation’s benefit helps us to be confidently selective about which innovations we will invest in; there is safety in numbers. Yet the main reason for selecting an actual innovation is to support our own needs and desires, not the needs and desires of others. Popularity is categorically not a defining criteria of innovation.

WRAPUP

So what did we mean by “item” in all of the above?

Items are simply singular things like an object, an idea, a process… a product, a theory, a program, an organization, even a relationship.

Items can be transformed. Transformation features new models of form for function and/or of function of form.

But what was described so far is that there is an association between an item and a purpose.

The purpose is in effect a context (e.g. of requirements) or a domain (e.g. of practices). Within them, different types of change have different meaningfulness.

As a transformative change, innovation, by definition, breaks a precedent in a context or domain, with something that is purposefully effective.