Innovation as Being

This week we had a Campfire Chat with Theresa Tang from Praxus Health. We are working with Praxus and Calgary Foothills PCN to build the skills for innovation. Theresa was talking about how innovation might be a way to manage through high degrees of system change. Ironically, Theresa started off the Campfire Chat by emphatically stating “I am not an innovator!”  

Here is the thing. I think innovation is a seed in each of us, waiting to be nurtured. Costa & Kallick in their book “Learning and Leading with the Habits of Mind” highlight that “all human beings have the capacity to generate novel, clever or ingenious products, solutions and techniques - if that capacity is developed”. They assert that creating, imagining, and innovating are a part of the thinking patterns people use to learn, thrive and adapt in the face of new situations.

Theresa went on to define what innovation is:

• It is a mindset that is about thinking flexibly, questioning and posing problems, gathering data through all the senses and responding with wonderment and awe

• It is the ability to work interdependently, to work through and with others, to listen and understand another person so that you can see things in different ways

• It is having a sense of hope and optimism

Innovation is not something you do; rather being an innovator is something you are. Being an innovator is part of our identity and a way of being that supports us when we are faced with new and uncertain situations.

Theresa highlighted her musings on how to foster the mindsets, interdependence and hope in organizations so that organizations themselves can be innovative. This is the work that we are embarking on with Praxus and the Calgary Foothills PCN, and we are all excited to think of what we will learn.

By the end of the conversation, I think Theresa might have started to see herself as an innovator.  

Think of a time that you were an innovator. What did you notice in yourself? What did you notice in the environment that supported you? Did you see in yourself what Theresa highlighted?