Pivoting Behaviour

Pivoting in a ‘behaviour-innovation’ context. 

Recently I’ve been listening and reading many views on innovation culture, but it was not until last week, when I attended an on-line forum entitled "Change Culture by Doing" hosted by Innovation Management that I heard the word ‘pivoting’ in a ‘behaviour-innovation’ context. 

It is a fascinating concept that Bengt Järrehult brought to discussion when answering “Which behaviours help to accelerate innovation?”

He explains: “You think you have the solution to a problem… You realise that you may be 80% wrong in your solution, but 20% right. You get new insights and try to reformulate your solution to that, so next time you may be 50% right. Then in an iterative way you are finding your way through. At the end, you might not even come up with the solution to your initial problem (the one you initially thought of) but you may find that there are new problems to solve and new solutions for them.”

It is a brilliant concept, originally introduced to entrepreneurs, and now recommended to larger organisations to practice it in its company culture. It all comes up to the adaptability and flexibility of the nature in innovation. A ‘pivotal’ behaviour culture will be more open to view external changes that will affect them, and act on them.

Innovation is about strategic change. Many thought leaders and practitioners have different views, definitions, processes and models, to be successful at innovation. In the end, they are all right. Successful innovation will depend on how adaptable the choices made by management are to the views and working scenarios of the company. Strategy starts by knowing the goal (even if it changes), strategic changes follows when ‘how the goal is reached’ becomes an open progression. 

Innovation is personal and unique to each company, and that’s what’s challenging. However, there are common characteristics that allow company culture to embrace change, even though they may be manifested differently, depending on the processes and methodologies within each company. It will be a culture of continuous improvement, open to change, accepting failures and learning from them. A pivot culture will be packed with persistence, striving for excellence, not perfection.