Read insightful articles on innovation. We believe that the process for achieving breakthrough innovation is chaotic, random, mysterious & unmanageable. A product of pure serendipity, genius or an inspiration of a rare visionary. But, breakthroughs can be systematically generated & create new sources of value by solving important problems or creating demand that didn’t exist.
Moderna, one of the Covid-19 vaccines is a success story. It has launched over 100 life-sciences businesses. Adopts a creative approach, a rigorous set of co-ordinated activities for prospecting of ideas in novel spaces, developing speculative what if scenarios & relentlessly questioning hypotheses. A repeatable, structured & disciplined process of intellectual leaps, iterative searches, experiments, selections & prioritisations.
There was no aha moment when the mRNA breakthrough happened. Counter-intuitive. Moderna platform was built on a constellation of technologies & methods that evolved over time. Breakthroughs emerged from an accumulation of numerous advances. Some big, many small. Innovation originated from highly speculative, even seemingly unreasonable scenarios. The question ‘what if messenger RNA could be a drug was purely hypothetical.’ But, that was the point. The sole purpose of the what-if question was to aim for exploration, leading to a robust inter-disciplinary collaboration, a range of perspectives that is itself a source of stimulation. A narrow focus on a specific problem is not necessary for breakthrough innovation, not having one leads to creativity. Organisations seeking breakthrough innovation in unexplored realms need freedom for initial inquiries & an expanded scope of experimentation.
Even a failed experiment is a platform for further development of alternative hypotheses. With each iteration, hypotheses are discarded, confirmed, refined & core ideas about what’s possible evolve until an actionable invention is created. An active integration, an incubation of diverse concepts. Pursuing breakthrough innovation is as much a leadership challenge as it is a technical one.