Some innovation patterns from concept blending

A lot of my work at Ibbaka turns on innovation. We develop new value and pricing models for innovations and help people understand the skills needed to execute on these innovations and bring them to market .

We also invest in innovation ourselves. We are designers. We design value models, pricing models, skill and competency models and the software platforms that connect them.

One of the tools we use for our own innovation is concept blending. I first learned of this approach reading The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending And The Mind's Hidden Complexities by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier.

This book takes George Lakoff's work on metaphor and thought to the next level and provides some formal ways to engage innovation. The basic idea of concept blending is simple. Take the conceptual frameworks, processes and attitudes from two different fields and combine parts of them to create something new.

A common example is the desktop metaphor in user interface design. In the beginning there may have been a command line (tip of the hat to Neal Stephenson, we should all read his new climate change novel Termination Shock ) but today we mostly use Graphic User Interfaces that on our desktops and laptops us a the idea that the screen is a desktop on which we can put folders and documents that we open and close. Of course this metaphor has been blended with windows. We use windows to see in to, or see out of, enclosed spaces. You get the idea.

Here is another example from the excellent summary paper by Manfred Eppe and team 'A computational framework for conceptual blending. ' They use the example of 'house' blended with 'boat' giving 'houseboat.'

At Ibbaka we use concept blends all the time to spark innovation. A few examples ...

• 'Portfolio management' plus 'pricing actions' to give a portfolio of pricing actions that one can invest in and manage using ideas from portfolio management.
• 'Agile development' plus 'scenario planning' to give 'agile scenario planning.' We came up with this approach for a client who was finding traditional scenario planning approaches too time consuming and rigid to support a response to the Covid pandemic.
• 'Skill graphs' plus 'competency frameworks' to provide multiple ways to focus in on and organize different parts of the skill graph.

A few days ago I had been playing with ideas around innovation patterns for some work we are doing together with the innovation management platform Ideascale . That night I had a dream about some of the different ways conceptual blending combines with sustaining and disruptive innovation (I know, I need more interesting dreams). Here is the sketch I made on waking up.

Later I tried to catch what I dreamt in a series of drawings.

(Aside, am listening to CBC Radio as I was writing this, and heard a concept blend new to me, longboard dancing . Watch this, it is graceful and fun.)

First some framing. The domain I am working in here is that of solutions (innovations) and problem spaces. I find the idea of problem spaces powerful as it let's me think about ways to explore and map problems and then use ideas from fitness landscapes to evaluate solutions.

Sustaining innovations tend to stay within one problem space. In pricing work we think of this as enhancing existing value drivers. Disruptive innovations sometimes stays within the problem space where they arose, but they are just as likely to change the space or create a new space. Disruptive innovations generally involve the creation of new value drivers in the space, which is why they can be so challenging to price (and introduce to a market).

Ok, back to the dream patterns. The first was a pretty simple view of sustaining innovations. One moves the solutions forward without changing the problem space. Focussing innovations address one part of the existing problem space, often more effectively as they reduce complexity (product led growth companies are often leveraging focussing innovations). Expansive innovations expand the problem space, making it relevant in more contexts or expanding the range considered relevant (edge cases become part of the normal range of solutions). You can see all three of these in the sketch on the upper right.

It occurs to me as I write that renga (Japanese linked verse) was an expansive innovation from waka (traditional Japanese verse with a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern) while haiku are a focussing on renga (haiku emerged as the first 5-7-5 stanza of a renga became there own thing.

So far not much about concept blending. Carrying on, one common use of concept blending is to bring new ideas into an existing field from the outside. This happens all the time, sometimes without us even noticing. Many ideas from traditional sales management (funnel, stages, conversion rates) have been imported into marketing management.

The classic model of disruptive innovation is when a concept blend from two areas outside the problem space come in and completely replace existing solutions.

Sometimes the result of a concept blend is a new space. This is where a lot of category creation happens. Some examples ...

• Game theory and algorithms have combined to create the transformative domain of algorithmic game theory
• Customer support plus customer experience combined to create the new category of customer success (with a push from subscription businesses that needed to ensure renewals)
• Customer success plus value management are now combining to create a new category of customer value management (where the focus shifts from experience and usage to value paths and value drivers )

One can explore these ideas further by thinking about how Jazz emerged from the blending of African music, French folk music (from the Acadians), orchestral instruments and has continued to absorb influences from many musical traditions.

The final pattern I have noticed is when two fields combine to make a larger field. This is happening in business as marketing and sales combine into a unified approach to revenue generation. CRMs such as Hubspot and Salesforce are now suites that combine content marketing with funnel management and make the whole revenue generation process more traceable.

There is (I hope) a fundamental change happening in how we think about the ecology and economy where the two are considered as an integrated system. Work being done at the Santa Fe Institute is foundational for this.

I plan to continue to play with these patterns, look for more examples, and see if there are ways to use them intentionally. I will also be working on a conceptual blend of these ideas with value drivers . Are there some common mappings between value drivers and innovation patterns? What other ways are there to find patterns that can help organize how we think about innovation? Please share your ideas on this as we explore the problem space of innovation.