Jeff De Cagna is chief strategist and founder of Principled Innovation LLC, and editor-at-large of SmartBlog Insights. Widely recognized as an association community thought leader, Jeff is the executive producer of the Principled Innovation Blog and Podcast, and also posts on Twitter as @pinnovation.
If you have feedback on SmartBlog Insights, Jeff can be reached at jeff@principledinnovation.com.
If you attended ASAE & The Center’s Annual Meeting in Toronto, you heard considerable talk about the need for associations to pursue innovation. This message was certainly music to my ears, since I’ve been pushing our community to get serious about innovation for a very long time. For better or for worse, it took a once-in-a-lifetime economic decline to expose the deeper flaws in our business models, and create a sense of urgency to identify new forms of value for our stakeholders that will translate into sustainable revenue streams going forward.
Despite the painfully obvious need for associations to begin innovating right away, however, many leaders in our community are still not sure where to begin. To help jumpstart your association’s innovation efforts, here is a rapid launch strategy you can begin pursuing immediately.
•Focus on who: Innovation is a social process that depends on people working collaboratively to identify, develop and nurture creative ideas. In the long run, your association will want to involve a broad cross-section of stakeholders in the innovation process, but to get going now, begin by pulling together a “hot group” composed of a diverse set of contributors who bring a vibrant mix of skills and experiences to the table. Keep in mind that the opportunity to work on innovation should not be limited to the right-brain creative types. Successful innovation will tap into the association’s “whole brain,” not just one part of it.
•Focus on what: Innovation comes in many forms, some of which will have more enduring impact on your association’s success, such as innovation in strategy-making, governing and business models. As you begin to build your association’s innovation capacity, however, it makes most sense to emphasize areas of innovation that are less complex and more likely to produce short-term results. Focus the attention of your association’s hot group on product, service and experience ideas that solve current or emerging member problems, and challenge the group to explore radical, disquieting and even dangerous ideas as a springboard for greater creativity.
•Focus on how: Innovation does not need to be extremely expensive or risky, but it does require consistent investment over time, along with a willingness to integrate failure as a learning strategy. In the early stages of your association’s innovation efforts, placing narrow funding limits on your hot group can lead to more creative thinking, while keeping innovation investment levels manageable. Challenge the group to embrace simplicity as a form of innovation by developing ideas that require no more than $500-$1,000 in funding for an initial prototype or test. This is an example of a “generative constraint” that can act as a catalyst for innovation.
Innovation is very much a part of the future of the association community, borne out of the dual imperatives of profound necessity and enormous opportunity. As a leader in your association, you cannot wait for “the right time” to begin the work of innovation. There is no right time. The time is right now.
Join Jeff for his high-impact Webinar series, The New Look of Associating: Innovation Strategies from the Social Web, beginning Sept. 25. To learn more and to register, please visit http://tinyurl.com/newlookofassociating.
