Ambidextrous Organisations & Other processes

Innovation can be an extremely chaotic and messy business. Many theories, many alternatives, many views. Yet, the real thinking needs deepen to understand what works for us and be well contextualized for innovations for tomorrow.

One article that I was greatly inspired is the ‘Ambidextrous Organisations’. It pointed the different models of organizations that deals with both incremental and radical innovations well.

"... these kinds of companies "ambidextrous organisations", and we believe they provide practical and proven model for forward-looking executives seeking to pioneer radical or disruptive innovations, while pursuing incremental gains. A business does not have to escape its past, these cases show, to renew itself for the future."

On why Singapore Quality Assessment is still key to put organizations ‘in place’ people need understand that the difference in the process of SQA and innovation is in the extent of turbulence created by the external environment. An organization need have an understanding of how to respond to changes around. Theodora Tan, Supt of E5, extracted the concept from the book by Brent Davies and Linda Ellison entitled 'Strategic Direction & Development of the School’. It explains the differences between emergent strategy, intraprenuership, strategic planning and strategic intents.

The SQA process assumes that there is a high level of understanding of how an organisation should respond to the challenges it faces. Hence it plans and puts in place processes in a systematic manner. However, when the level of understanding is low, which is essentially the work that we do and what innovation is all about - breaking new ground, the process is messy and a lot more fluid.

Can all the approaches co-exist in an organisation? In my mind, the answer is 'yes'. It just depends on what aspect of the work we are talking about and the level of understanding of how we should be approaching it.