MikeLigalig.com

By Jeff De Cagna
www.changethis.com

Organizational leaders can beneit by viewing the dynamics and demands of innovation through 
the lens of the six contexts that are key to any innovation effort. These six contexts also provide 
a useful way to think about the wide variety of innovation opportunities on which any organization
can capitalize.

1. Strategic context—The organization’s comprehensive understanding of the forces driving its
operating environment, as well as an appreciation of emerging trends and issues. (Opportunities
include strategy and business model innovation.)

2. Technological context—The organization’s use of technology to engage contributors in the
work of innovation, as well as the impact of current and new technologies on the organization, 
its customers and other stakeholders. (Opportunities include innovation in current and new products,
tools and other “tangibles.”)

3. Cultural context—The organization’s internal climate and intrinsic support for collaboration,
including encouraging risk-taking, supporting experimentation and the importance of genuinely
learning from failure. (Opportunities include innovation in the structure and substance of the 
relationships between and among staff, customers and other stakeholders.)

4. Intellectual context—The organization’s mindset and approach to identifying and leveraging
ideas and knowledge both internally and externally. (Opportunities include service and experience
innovation, as well as innovation around other “intangibles.”)

5. Financial context—The organization’s underlying structures for managing both the uncertainty
and inancial exposure of innovation in order to minimize risk. (Opportunities include process, 
practice and delivery methods innovation across different organizational functions.)

6. Leadership context—The capacity of leaders to fulill their responsibility for making innova-
tion consistently possible without exerting undue inluence or control over it. (Opportunities include
innovation in models for organizational stewardship.)
Leaders can achieve a deeper understanding of how to make innovation happen in their organiza-
tions by looking carefully at how the balance of freedom and discipline inluences the underlying 
relationships between and among these contexts. For example, when the organization needs to 
ensure greater discipline within its inancial context, how can it increase the degree of cultural
freedom to ensure that innovation doesn’t grind to halt? 

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