Innovation: the first of three critical foundations for technology strategy and architecture in a fast-changing world

Change is a constant, but it is also accelerating, especially in technology. Look at the iPhone, the cloud, and electric cars; they all have come into our day-to-day lives much faster than technology changes we saw 50 years ago.

In addition, more and more products being developed are dependent on software, often cloud-hosted software, to enable or add capability. Whether we are looking at SaaS products or non-software products with software enablement, change is happening faster. In recent years I’ve seen the selected technologies change during the execution of a software development project. That throws a wrench in the works.

This post is the first of many that will look at different components of building a technology strategy and supporting solution architecture that takes advantage of these changes while minimizing the costs related to adoption.

Three foundations are needed to support this concept. They are innovation, adaptability, and attainability. Let’s begin to take a look at them. This blog post and the two related ones that follow will be short introductions to these three concepts and start the conversation about what you can do to achieve them.

Innovation

Innovation is hard to define. It seems that different people have different definitions.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines innovation as:

- a new idea, method, or device

- the introduction of something new

Nick Skillicorn, in his article, "What is innovation? 26 experts share their innovation definition," interviews twenty-six innovation experts and gets twenty-six different answers. However, some themes are consistent.

I see innovation as introducing something new that adds value for the customer. When building a product, innovation needs a purpose, and the customer needs to be at the center of that purpose.

Innovation can be evolutionary or revolutionary, go from mild to wild, be iterative or bit leap. Often the innovations a company will tackle will be a mix of that range.

Also, change can act as a catalyst for innovation. A new technology or technique comes into the market, enabling doing something impossible or too costly to do before. Interestingly, the innovations that come from that change can also be a catalyst for new change—those innovations are new changes themselves! This is a cycle that an intelligent organization can take advantage of.

So, how does this relate to technology strategy and architecture? I refer to innovation as one of the foundations as it needs to be actively considered in defining your technology strategy and in laying out your architecture. How are you planning for change? How are you working with your product team to ensure they understand the “art of the possible?” Does your process explicitly require consideration of innovation?

Here are a few things you should do to ensure that innovation is incorporated into your technology strategy and architecture planning:

1. Ensure that innovation is a checklist item in your process. Stop and actively discuss what opportunities you see for innovation and determine which should be pursued. Make this happen in every cycle of the process.

2. Learn to coach yourself and your team in achieving the innovation mindset. Clear your mind of the day-to-day problems and priorities that are distracting you. Set aside your constraints and other things you “know to be true.” You can apply these things later to make your ideas attainable.

3. Have a process for ongoing collaboration around corporate, product, and technology strategies about innovation. Often one group will perceive that they are limited when one of the other groups can get past those perceived limitations. Open and free-thinking conversations around corporate, product, and technology vision enabled by discussions of the “art of the possible” can open new avenues for expanding markets, increasing customer satisfaction, and reducing the cost of servicing the customer.

The next few blog posts will introduce the two other foundations of technology strategy and architecture: adaptability and attainability. Then will follow some posts on actively including these in your strategy and architecture planning processes. All three are essential, and if any are omitted, there can be high costs.

Foreshadowing a little bit, I also intend to dive deep into some of the suggestions provided here and in the next few posts.