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Published on: August 7, 2024
Developing an Innovation Mindset, with Robin Moore.
Find out what type of innovator you are with a new interactive tool, developed by the Media Cymru research team.
Developing an Innovation Mindset
Most of us are aware of the value of innovation, new ideas that improve our quality of life, deliver economic growth or find solutions to difficult challenges. However, explaining how innovation happens and how we get better at it is much harder.
Even the term “innovation” can be scary, so we need to help people become more comfortable with it and with their ability to innovate, particularly if Media Cymru is to achieve the aim of making the Cardiff Capital Region a global hub for media innovation.
This is particularly true for those with diverse lived-experiences, expertise and attitudes, who don’t necessarily see themselves as creative, let alone innovative. In my experience, most innovative solutions come from these diverse perspectives, from people who are closest to the problem at hand, but too often the least confident in their ability to develop, implement and scale a solution.
So, how do we help people in the sector to innovate?
Innovation requires a diverse set of capabilities
According to research undertaken by Adobe, almost half of us don’t believe we are creative, let alone innovative. For many of us, there is a long way to go to become confident in undertaking innovation – confident that we have the mindset to develop solutions of the future.
Innovation is too often conflated with creativity, a particular problem in an industry where creativity is business as usual. This is largely due to the stereotypes of the people involved in innovation, which focus on having ideas rather than delivering and scaling them. Frankly, we seek stories of ideas and inspiration over those of hard work and methodical analysis. But innovation is more than a momentary spark of invention, it is a hard slog. As inventor Thomas Edison famously said, it is “2% inspiration, and 98% perspiration”.
And while we are on Thomas Edison, we also need to bust the myth of the inventor as a lone genius. Edison pioneered a new approach to invention by building large teams with distinct disciplines. It requires collaboration – a team with different characteristics to deliver innovation– not just creativity.
Innovation is far too important, far too complex and far too intense to be left to individuals. It requires diverse teams with a range of complementary attitudes, skills and experience.
Together with the Media Cymru researchers, we’ve been looking at the diverse capabilities that make up a mindset that can deliver innovation. We hope that by helping you to assess your current capabilities, we can show you the steps you can take to develop an Innovation Mindset. We also hope to help you identify the right types of people to collaborate with, so you can access the skills you need to drive innovation forward.
What is the Innovation Mindset?
Drawing on both our team’s experience and a large body of research literature, we have settled on seven key roles we play to drive forward innovation. We believe these roles reflect the cross-section of capabilities required across the innovation process.
Assessing our current capabilities is the first step towards playing to our strengths and getting the development or support we need.
The seven key characteristics we’ve identified are:
- Changemaker: You are aware of the latest trends and opportunities in the media sector and actively adapt and advocate for change
- Empath: You focus on understanding the target user/audience, using a user-centred approach to ensure the solution fits their values and needs
- Narrator: You see the bigger picture and can create and communicate it with compelling narratives to bring others along on the journey
- Creative: You generate new and original ideas, challenge conventional thinking, and explore different perspectives
- Experimenter: You take planned risks to learn fast and love to iterate, revise and pivot your way to a successful outcome
- Critical Thinker: You think systematically about production or business processes and follow the data / evidence to make the right decisions
- Collaborator: You network effectively and create new ways of working together, to access diverse expertise and create shared value
Being able to ‘play’ all these roles and their characteristics appears to be rare, and is probably limited to innovation specialists. Most of us tend to excel in one or two, while others feel unnatural and seem to suit different personality types. For instance, the optimism of a Changemaker can conflict with the necessary scepticism of the Critical Thinker. The Experimenter is thinking one step at a time, while the Narrator is three steps ahead communicating the long-term vision.
We all have a mix of these different characteristics, and can step more easily in to some roles than others. The aim is not to be perfect, but rather to play to your strengths and find conscious strategies to mitigate areas where you are less confident.
What kind of innovator are you?
Try the tool for yourself to help you explore the profile of your Innovation Mindset and to understand the characteristics you have or are drawn to.
We hope in using the tool you’ll learn about the range of skills and attitudes necessary for innovation. Hopefully you can also start looking at your strengths and weaknesses, develop yourself, and then in the future return to the test to measure your progress.
We try to practice what we preach, and this is Research & Development in itself. Completing it – and especially coming back to it in the future – will help us refine it and improve the supporting information it gives you. We welcome your questions, feedback and queries about the tool and I look forward to seeing the tool evolve over time.
About Robin Moore
Robin Moore is Director of SHWSH, a creative technology company and an Innovation Consultant for Media Cymru, supporting media innovation across the Cardiff Media Cluster. He is the former Head of Innovation at BBC Wales and has developed and piloted the use of new tools and platforms for many of the BBC’s biggest brands, from iPlayer to BBC News, the Six Nations to Doctor Who. He currently focuses on the use of Generative AI, Virtual Production and XR in the media sector, and is a Visiting Professor at the University of South Wales.
