A few weeks back, Andre blogged about correlating everyday activities to innovation processes; well here we go again.

Have you ever noticed how workflows and public transit system are so similar? You rarely have a direct path from origin to destination. When you reach a stop you wait. You get on another bus/metro/train only to wait for the next stop and repeat until you reach your destination. The nice things about using the public transit to go to work for instance, is that you know where you leaving from and you know where you want to wind up. The transportation workflow is always going to be the same and after a while you accept it as reality.

Now imagine that it’s the last minute for you to get a Christmas gift for your spouse. You not only have no idea what to get, but also no idea where to get it. How is the workflow that you are used to using going to help you then? What bus do you take? You are in a situation where you have to some extent “discover” many unknowns before you even begin to uncover the workflow process. And guess what? For your anniversary and for her birthday, you will be going through the same machinations - even if the year before you managed to pull the whole thing off; but this year the purpose and destination will require you to adopt a different transportation mode along with a completely different path.

In a lot of ways, the innovation process is almost identical to Christmas shopping using public transit. You may know where your idea is starting from but you do not yet have an inkling of the path that you need to take to achieve your goal. A set workflow is perfect to carry the worker from Point A to Point B daily; the routine doesn’t break. It is also perfect when you are dealing with known factors.

Consider the following questions: Is it going to be clothes? Jewellery? Something they can use for work? Is it going to be heavy? Will it actually be in stock? Something that you may consider obvious and nice may actually be the worst thing for her (hint - don’t buy your wife a vacuum cleaner for Christmas).

Let’s repeat the same questions for an idea: Is it a cost saving idea or a new product? It is a process change? Do you need upper management approval? Are all the participants needed known and available? Trying to automate an unknown at the front-end often create more problems that you started-out trying to solve.

For workflows to enable your process,  they need to be adaptive, flexible and configurable around each idea’s needs - not vice versa.