Operationalising Anticipatory Systems:
Navigating uncertainty and ambiguity to drive innovation at the fuzzy front end.
— In my PhD, I explored how future-oriented reasonings can support innovation leaders in making more accurate strategic decisions under extreme uncertainty at the fuzzy front end of the new product and/or strategy development.
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Journal article
Abstract
Society is in constant flux and increasing in complexity, challenging organizations to approach innovation in a more proactive manner. This entails anticipating, rather than reacting to what could be next by preparing for a variety of possible futures. Specifically, it means exploring the future value of an idea rather than analysing it as is. In the context of the fuzzy front end of a new product development, scholars highlight the efficacy of using anticipatory systems and the underlying futures-oriented reasoning to make more accurate decision making (i.e., futures thinking, abductive reasoning and contingency mapping). Yet how to systematically stimulate such reasoning in practice is still understudied. The paper presents findings from semistructured interviews with expert innovation managers, which show that futures thinking approaches do feature in strategic decision making on innovation ideas. Yet they are limited in their use and in most cases outweighed by more classical, deductive reasoning patterns. The paper proposes the Innovation System Roadmap (ISR) for innovation managers making strategic decisions on early-stage ideas. It leads users to employ the cognitive processes underlying anticipatory systems. The Innovation System Roadmap stimulates innovation managers to hypothesize the future value of a given innovation idea and how it may (not) be turned into a commercial success following further development. We contend that the Innovation System Roadmap supports innovation managers for sound decision making in early-stage innovation under extreme uncertainties.
A little bit of context
Strategic Decision Making
Every day as human beings we make many decisions that shape our life. There is a continuous flow of decisions, based on previous ones, and so on until we arrive at the result for which we made the decision in the first place. These are not easy to make due to a high level of uncertainties. The future is unknown yet we can get close to it by envisioning alternative futures and shaping these uncertainties.
Design-Led Innovation
By definition innovation entails something new that has not yet experienced. Analytical technological feasibility, consequences and market acceptance are hardly known. For this reason, innovation is complex and wrapped in risk and uncertainty. We need to find ways to make innovation more familiar and mitigate the impediments to innovate.
Barriers
In the decision-making phase barriers (internal and external to the organisation) can hold back innovation. Bias, risk-aversion and uncertainties affect the decision-making process in ways that can have a negative influence and impact to the future of people and planet.