Innovation

1
Innovation Improvisation
School of Business Yonsei University

• Sung Joo Bae
• Assistant Professor
• Operations and Technology Management

2
Realms of Individual Collective Action in
Organizations
Improvisation (Jazz improv.) Composition (Classic concert)
Algorithmic Execution (Operators in nuclear power plant) Algorithmic Planning (SOP Generation for NPP)
Novelty (Divergence from prior experience)
High
Low
Low
High
Temporal Separation of Conception and Execution
Source Fisher Amabile
3
A Model of Improvisational Creativity
Source Fisher Amabile Barrett

• Conception
• Provocative
• competence
• (Interrupting
• habit patterns)

External Problem Presentation

• Improvised
• creative outcome
• - Can feed into the idea
• generation stage of
• compositional creativity
• Retrospective
• Sensemaking

Preparation
Execution
Improvisation (Simultaneous/Synchronous Processes)

• Expertise
• Well learned
• facts routines

• Creativity-relevant
• Processes
• Distributed Task
• Soloing supporting
• Continual negotiation
• Risk orientation
• Hanging out CoP

Intrinsic Motivation Focus on problem/opportunit
y

• Work Environment
• Embracing errors
• Experimental culture
• Real-time info flow
• Minimal structures

4
Seven Characteristics of Improvisation Related to
the Creative Organization

• Provocative competence Interrupting habit
  patterns
• The difficulty of trying new things ?
  Consequences!!!
• Remember Kodak?
• Embracing errors as source of learning
• Errors often lead to a great invention, but it
  has to be embraced and nurtured by other members
  in the organization

5
Seven Characteristics of Improvisation Related to
the Creative Organization

• Minimal structures that allow maximum flexibility
• Music patterns of melodies, chord changes,
  sections and phrases
• Organization stories, myths, visions, slogans,
  mission statements, trademarks

6
Seven Characteristics

• Distributed task Continual negotiation toward
  dynamic synchronization
• Innovation is an ongoing social accomplishment
• You dont know what the other player is going to
  play, but on listening to the playback, you hear
  that you related your part very quickly to what
  the other player played just before you. Its
  like a message that you relay back and forth You
  want to achieve that kind of communication when
  you play. When you do, your playing seems to be
  making sense. Its like conversation
• - Tommy Flanagan (Jazz
  Pianist), 1994

7
Seven Characteristics of Improvisation Related to
the Creative Organization

• Reliance on retrospective sense-making
• The improviser may be unable to look ahead at
  what is going to play, but he can look behind at
  what he has just played thus each new musical
  phrase can be shaped with relation to what has
  gone before. He creates his form retrospectively.
• Those junk boxes at IDEO
• Samsungs efforts to understand what they have
  done recently

8
Seven Characteristics of Improvisation Related to
the Creative Organization

• Hanging out Membership in communities of
  practice (Informal educational system with rich
  context)
• Organizations must see beyond conventional job
  descriptions and recognize the rich aspects of
  practices
• Alternating between soloing and supporting
• Rotating leadership

9
The Processual Flow of Different Models
Sequential model
Compression model
Flexible model
Improvisational model
10
Kind of Blue (1959) Album by Miles Davis

• Musicians
• Miles Davis (trumpet), Bill Evans (piano), John
  Coltrane, Julian Adderley (saxophone), Jimmy Cobb
  (drum), Paul Chambers (bass)
• Davis had only given the band sketches of scales
  and melody lines on which to improvise (modal
  jazz)
• In traditional jazz improvisation (hard bop
  style), a chord progression or series of
  harmonies are given to the musicians

11
Davis elaborated on this form of composition in
contrast to the chord progression predominant in
bebop, stating "No chords ... gives you a lot
more freedom and space to hear things. When you
go this way, you can go on forever. You don't
have to worry about changes and you can do more
with the melody line. It becomes a challenge to
see how melodically innovative you can be. When
you're based on chords, you know at the end of 32
bars that the chords have run out and there's
nothing to do but repeat what you've just
donewith variations. I think a movement in jazz
is beginning away from the conventional string of
chords... there will be fewer chords but infinite
possibilities as to what to do with them. - In
a 1958 interview with Nat Hentoff of The Jazz
Review
12
Review of Kind of Blue (1959)

• Producer Quincy Jones, one of Davis' longtime
  friends, wrote "That Kind of Blue will always
  be my music, man. I play Kind of Blue every
  dayit's my orange juice. It still sounds like it
  was made yesterday".
• Pianist Chick Corea, one of Miles' acolytes, was
  also struck by its majesty, later stating "It's
  one thing to just play a tune, or play a program
  of music, but it's another thing to practically
  create a new language of music, which is what
  Kind of Blue did."