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Emergent Innovation in Nonprofit Organizations
Changing Organizational Landscapes
Every modern organization confronts the necessity of change. Whether forced by the current global economic downturn, increased competition, a declining historical organizational model, technological shifts, or potential new clientele, organizations know innovation is essential for their viability. As Stanford University Graduate School of Business Professor Anthony Davila noted, the only reliable security an organization can possess is their "ability to innovate better and longer than competitors." Because limits to internal efficiency may have been reached, organizations realize that getting "better" remains important, but getting "different" is a matter of organizational life and death.
Leadership may have unintentionally overlooked a powerful source of fresh, innovative ideas: the organization's employees. Most innovation programs impose foreign innovation processes, often guided by external expert consultants or academics. Leaders should instead consider emergent innovation, a new low-risk innovation paradigm. Emergent innovation assumes that, regardless of how small or seemingly insignificant, the heartbeat of innovation is already alive and at work somewhere in the organization. Emergent innovation is "emergent" because of an intentional process to seek out, recognize, and promote "underground" innovation methodologies already successfully at work. In contrast to massive organization change expected from traditional innovation techniques, emergent innovation seeks to uncover and extend "small wins" that may develop momentum and beget additional innovation success.
Who Are The Underground Innovators?
An "underground innovator" is any employee who quickly and quietly develops products, services, ideas, processes, or environments informally and outside of regular organization channels, without the knowledge or permission of appropriate authorities. In colloquial terms, they exist and work "off-radar." The work of underground innovators fulfills practical customer needs but features a physical or performance level below normal company standards. Underground innovators typically appropriate insignificant quantities of the organization's resources in their efforts, making them impervious to economic downturns. MIT's Nicholas Negroponte said, "The ability to make big leaps of thought is a common denominator among the originators of breakthrough ideas. Usually this ability resides in people with very wide backgrounds, multidisciplinary minds, and a broad spectrum of experiences." These mavericks are highly inclusive, even discreetly seeking the advice and skills of experts within or outside of the company. Underground innovators are adept at sidestepping traditional institutional rules and may skip entire stages of a standard organization innovation cycle.
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