The Innovation Choreographer is a new role and although these individuals are essential, their efforts are not yet recognised. Their role is to connect people, organizations and technology to achieve a variety of large-scale goals from business innovation to global efforts to world problems. They bring talented people together to turn an ambitious vision into reality. Innovation Choreographers typically understand the big picture of a challenge, cross boundaries, strategically break rules, solve problems adaptively, and tell stories to elicit support.
Key tasks
In their book “Do Bigger Things: A Practical Guide to Powerful Innovation in a Changing World”, authors Dan McClure and Jennifer Wilde outline the three main tasks for innovation choreographers.
Many building blocks are needed to create an innovation ecosystem. Whether it’s people acquiring new skills, underutilized assets, or innovative technologies, there are more building blocks now than at any time in history. Choreographers arrange these elements functionally, seeing the big picture of the ecosystem. They understand that connections, not individual components, create the most value, and ensure that key elements are not missing.
Different motivations and rewards drive people and organisations. Ecosystems use this to create win-win situations that incentivise everyone to participate, which fuels continuous growth. Innovation choreographers give people and organizations personalized rewards that match their motivations to generate mutually beneficial outcomes that benefit everyone.
Unlike traditional businesses with strict rules, ecosystems easily adapt to new challenges by adding or subtracting blocks and connections. They take creative action despite uncertainty, adapt what they learn from that action to manage risks, and understand that every action and adaptation impacts their future choices.
Ecosystems in action
Innovation in ecosystems is appropriate for all types of complex tasks and opportunity seeking. This includes huge problems such as climate change or fundamentally changing an industry. People can also use it to innovate on a much smaller scale.
Ecosystems bring individual innovations together into a powerful system that causes synergies between the parts to emerge and create new value and growth.
