DataPalooza 2022

Innovation Mindset As you begin to implement innovation, there are some guiding principles or attitudes that help to begin developing an innovation mindset. Several of these come from Design Thinking principles, and they are applicable in a variety of situations. • How might we? This is a way to frame a question to gives room to imagine ways to improve or accomplish something new. There are always reasons an idea might NOT work, but how MIGHT it? For instance, if a parking lot was always getting backed up at pickup time for a program, you might ask the question “How might we provide the resources without causing delays at pickup?” A related way to frame problems is “What would it look like if we solved _______?” • Bias toward action. When you have an idea that you suspect might be valuable or an area that you would like to learn more about, find a way to perform some activity to test it. This gives you a chance to find out if it is as valuable as you thought, and what roadblocks you may encounter. “Instead of talking about an idea, you will take that idea and turn it into reality. By doing, we learn so much more about the process and how to improve it in the future. • How can we test that? Many innovation activities are essential methods to test an idea. This means you need to propose a question or hypothesis you want to explore and choose a method that will explore it. This is closely related to the Bias toward action above. A “disciplined experiment” requires planning but will provide concrete feedback and learning. • Avoid free puppies. Sometimes if we test out a potential process or product, it becomes “live” by default, requiring long-term maintenance. This is like the care and feeding that a supposedly “free” puppy requires. To avoid this, plan for your innovation activities to have a set end date and a retrospective meeting at the conclusion. This meeting should include a “go/no-go” decision point to decide if the benefits of a process or product outweigh the maintenance cost.

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