Describing the innovation process is notoriously difficult. It’s a dynamic recipe that is always evolving, but we depend on key ingredients to create our special sauce. Explore the steps of the process that has led to our greatest successes over the last seven years.

1
Identify, recruit and nurture top talent
2
Experiment with small scale capital investments to catalyze ideas into an MVP
3
Catalyze projects quickly through Bias toward Action
4
Learn from our work through embedded evaluation
5
Share our work widely
1
Identify, recruit and nurture top talent

Our process begins with people. We put a bias on outstanding people over jobs to be done. We try to identify extraordinarily talented individuals, recruit them over a long time horizon (months and years), and nurture their talent by reinvesting in their ongoing learning and self-development.

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2
Experiment with small scale capital investments to catalyze ideas into an MVP

Much of our work is meeting new people and encountering new ideas. We call this the “churn.” The ideas and people we meet in the process of churn are rarely immediately applicable, but become the building blocks of new projects. To advance this process forward, these ideas are crafted and drafted into a “two-pagers” which is a brief summary of the idea, its budget and possibility for scaling.

 

To keep experimenting, we move with a bias toward fast action. Thus we spend more quickly and freely at the small (less than 5K) and mid-range (less than 40K) level than most organizations to allow for quick action. Our budgeting process allows for pools of capital to be used for unforeseen experimental projects.

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3
Catalyze projects quickly through Bias toward Action

We work fast, and see doing as a way to learn. Our default position is usually, “let’s try that and see what happens.” This bias toward action invites mistake and failure. We understand these to be necessary parts of the innovation process.

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4
Learn from our work through embedded evaluation

All our projects collaborate with an embedded evaluator who works like a critical reporter, who sees in real time as we build and critically reflects back. This allows for a more agile, real time response that is still critical.

 

In addition to evaluation, we write extensively and honestly about each and every project. The act of writing forces a different kind of reflection, one more analytical and slower than data or real time feedback can supply. This is more of a case study, autopsy or after action report than a grant report. Our goal is not to describe our results to a funder, but to reflect on what we learned that was novel and unexpected, whether we succeeded or not.

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5
Share our work widely

We see our materials as open source, to be shared widely with all who wish to use them. Moreover, we budget part of our work time to consult regularly and freely with others. In so doing, our experiments and their learnings can be maximally transferable.

 

We can visualize our process as a set of interlocking feedback loops.

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