Building Blocks of Agile Innovation (Oza and Abrahamsson)

Building Blocks of Agile Innovation is a book that summarizes the findings of a large European research project. It reads as a collection of separate papers, the quality of which is varies greatly. Some chapters are really insightful and well written, while others are barely readable, sometimes due to unfortunate language problems. The book is freely downloadable as a pdf. Below I describe my favourite chapters.

Chapter 3: Agile Principles and Innovation Enablement by Nilay Oza and Jari Still

This is one of my favourite chapters in the book. The authors list the principles of agile development and compare them to the current state of the art in innovation. The finding is not surprising: agile methods inherently support innovation. Especially the emphasis on interaction with the customer and on supporting the motivation of the decelopers are seen as innovation enablers.

But there are still many things companies can do to support innovation, according to the authors. Ensuring that there is time for innovation is one such thing. Providing an innovation infrastructure with clear visibility for and fast feeback on new ideas is another.

Chapter 9. Innovation Challenges in an Agile Context by Minna Pikkarainen, Kaisa Koskela and Xiaofeng Wang

The authors describe a case company trying to improve their innovation. They have an innovation database, but are not seeing the benefits they want from it. The challenges found are related to both inefficient innovation handling and incorrect application of agile methods. Examples of the former are that not everybody has access to the innovation database and resources for analysing the database are not allocated. Examples of the latter is project managers unwilling to yield their power and lack of coordination between Scrum teams.

Random ideas and quotes

• Luke Hohman, Innovation Games
• Install an idea repository, in order to not lose any good ideas.
• Creativity is a characteristic of an individual, and a prerequisite for innovation, whereas innovation is the process of transforming an innovation into action within an organization.