Collective Sensemaking: Innovations that resonate to hear the societal voice

The world is changing so fast, with increasingly novel and complex scenarios. It is conspicuously implausible to suppose that what worked yesterday can carry through us tomorrow.

Many of us rush to stay on the pulse and propose ways forward amid rapid societal, technological and organizational shifts. There's a pervasive sense that it could be all over for us if we don't innovate and adapt to change quickly.

We regularly engage with CEOs, business founders and directors of organizations—both large and small—who face significant challenges when strategizing new directions or seeking innovative solutions to the opportunities and obstacles they encounter.

Some leaders desire to cultivate a culture of innovation and change, feeling behind the curve. Others, however, are overwhelmed by the multitude of ideas and proposals from eager team members, making it difficult to discern which suggestions are genuinely valuable.

Moreover, each individual or team pitching an idea often supports their proposal with evidence drawn from feedback surveys, select data analysis, or summaries of externally sourced strategic research. Yet, this information is invariably incomplete. In many cases, different data sets and surveys contradict one another. This unsoundness is hardly surprising, given the difficulties quantifying human perceptions of complex situations. 

Most of the time, the selection and interpretation of data depend heavily on the goals of those analyzing it. And as we know, with enough skill, even a series of squares can be made to resemble an emerging triangle. Habitually, we try to tackle contemporary complexities and their potential implications for us, like environmental degradation, the rise of AI and rapid social transitions, by throwing as many solutions as we can find at them, hoping something will stick.

The UN urges “game-changing ideas” to combat climate change, organizations strive to respond to fluctuating social realities, and businesses race to develop new products that set them apart. Meanwhile, change progresses unabated, the market fluctuates unpredictably, and competition and confusion intensify.

It's a shaky base to build any innovation or future-proof strategy.

Status quo innovation platforms: speed at the expense of insight or relevance

Online innovation and idea management platforms have sprouted everywhere. Qmarkets, Traction Technology and InnovationCast, aim to help groups streamline the process of idea creation, evaluation and prototyping. 

Speed and efficiency are the name of the game. These platforms seek to propel innovation by enabling organizations and businesses to collaborate on innovation development and strategic problem-solving. They invariably offer tools for idea management, communication, project tracking, and some form of AI data analytics, routinely integrating with other systems to enhance workflow.

Similarly, open-source and crowdsourcing innovation platforms help organizations actively seek external input and expertise to contribute to or even lead innovation development. This structured process involves scouting, licensing, and collaborative initiatives. 

When effective, these platforms can be tremendous assets to strategy and innovation; when they falter, innovation becomes bogged down in legal and patent issues, and strategy becomes reductive and myopic. Ultimately, despite the platforms' transformative claims, any innovation or strategy proposal remains dependent on the existing internal processes and understanding within the organizations seeking them.

Crucially, what's often missing from these innovation platforms is the thorough analysis and interpretation of the context of ideas and proposals suggested for action. 

What happens if the innovation is based on incomplete information or a narrow understanding of the issue it addresses? It doesn't mitigate risk to those responsible for introducing the innovation or the unintended consequences. 

Problematically, suggestions become a kind of popularity contest amongst a limited set of people.  Similarly, many new platforms defer to AI to consolidate and propose the innovative takeaways. The AI tool becomes the  “one smart person in the room” to provide the answers, and this is where innovation and strategy fail. AI can only ever recycle what has already been known and condense this into shorthand clarity at the expense of nuance. Most of the time, innovation and ingenuity are fueled by chance serendipitous encounters and relationships between people and events: interactions that are near impossible to automate.

Worryingly, many of the most popular innovation platforms need mechanisms to ensure that ideas and innovations align with and are understood by the people and contexts for which they are intended. 

Without an understanding of what's actually happening in the world around them, there's a risk that the innovations and strategies developed may not resonate with or be practical for those. This gap can lead to solutions that are innovative in concept but fail to deliver real-world value. The rush to prototype and quickly jump to rough and ready conclusions can normalize a reactionary approach to innovation, targeting situations that have already passed—or worse, addressing issues that never existed in the first place.

Out of touch innovation: lessons from Segway and Google Glass

Segway failed to meet expectations due to misjudging social contexts.

The business world is littered with resource-heavy, massively hyped, and highly funded innovative prototypes that misunderstand what people actually want and need. The Segway has become emblematic of what not to do when innovating. 

Initially marketed as a revolutionary personal transport device that would transform urban mobility, it ultimately remained nothing more than an expensive novelty. By misunderstanding the different contexts in which people lived, including the impracticality of Segways in many situations—and by overestimating demand—the product failed. The innovation didn't really solve any real-world problems people endured, and issues with safety, storage, and regulation only introduced a host of new challenges. Trying to tell diverse people what they needed rather than listening to what they said was doomed from the start.

The 2013 release of Google Glass manifests the same problem. Despite internal enthusiasm and the allure of cutting-edge technology, the wearable digital tech was lambasted by many as intrusive, ugly, and awkward. Insufficient understanding of societal concerns about privacy led to public backlash over its intrusion and monetization of people's private lives. 

Some now warn of innovation overkill, where people confront uncertainty and change through innovation cycles for innovation's sake. If Google and Segway had utilized some of the innovation platforms currently available, they most likely would have ended up with the same misguided results, albeit a bit faster. 

Innovation platforms like those cited above may not help address the fundamental challenges all collective actors face. Speed and efficiency are important, but not exclusively.  By failing to really break the silo of the organization or business, they are akin to the limited benefits AI chats provide creative writers: productivity but with an increasingly narrower and homogenized series of outputs. 

In our haste to innovate, we should remember that the capacity for true innovation and strategy stems from the ability to include, discuss with, deliberate on and interpret diverse experiences and perceptions. In the face of complexity, detaching innovation from the social context in which it operates—and focusing only on the preferences and understanding of a limited group—can lead to profoundly misguided efforts that fail to resonate.

How collective sensemaking drives meaningful innovation and strategic insight

The issue is straightforward: great ideas, inspired innovation, and future-proof strategies necessitate a deep understanding of contexts and the diverse perspectives and experiences located within them. Effectively managing innovation and strategy is wholly dependent on this multidimensional understanding.

When a diverse group engages in deliberation, we uncover shared ground, pinpoint disagreements and gaps and forge a shared path through complexity. As a result, our understanding becomes more nuanced and robust. 

This process, known as collective sensemaking, involves actively interpreting information and connecting the dots between people, places, and events. Collective sensemaking uniquely captures the unedited essence of present-day events and the realities that shape our communities. It helps us navigate uncertainty and make sense of the world around us. 

The emphasis on human experiences and interpretations in sensemaking is vital. Diverse groups of people embody the experiences of uncertainty and change. Experiences themselves change, as do our perceptions of our experiences. Diverse interpretations are important because how different people interpret something can be obscure to someone else who interprets it differently due to a different set of priorities.

Sensemaking draws from diverse, complex sources of ideas, perspectives, and expertise to inform meaningful decisions and innovations. By understanding others' perceptions, especially in the face of disagreements, contradictions, and paradoxes, we create a foundation for impactful outcomes. 

Over time, this allows for a nuanced understanding of complex themes. Unlike static data analysis and surveys, collective sensemaking is dynamic, iteratively incorporating real-time human perceptions and contextual awareness. This approach allows for a nuanced understanding of complex themes, enabling robust, innovative opportunities and transparent decision-making paths.

Avoid jumping to conclusions and understand what’s really going on

We need our innovations to be meaningful and relevant and our strategies to be as future-proof as possible. Yet, as we have outlined, the missing link in developing new paths forward is not simply opening innovation to digital idea management and external collaborators. No one wins when we innovate for innovation's sake.

Before embarking on this journey, we must deeply understand the societal context in which we operate. Hearing societal voices gives us some grounding in the very complex situations in which we develop proposals. Only then can we ensure our efforts hold real-world relevance. 

Hunome, the collective sensemaking platform, uniquely offers a means to understand complexity and change. It provides continuous access to diverse perspectives in different contexts.  Built to foster multidimensional deliberation, it coordinates the processes that uncover insights, supporting innovation and transparent decision-making.  By doing so, it addresses the limitations of innovation software and promotes resilience in innovation and strategy.

Dominique Jaurola, Hunome founder and CEO, explains the problems Hunome overcomes:

What happens easily with innovation in organizations is that the processing processes stale ideas, or ideas only from a few people. The activity is insular from the bigger picture or from the many expertise areas required for a comprehensive set of ideas to refresh the thinking. The methods used may not encourage shared innovation, ideas that are built from the serendipity of ideas colliding and generating novel ideas. Our platform and tools are designed to ensure the focus is on the latter.

Hunome helps groups break out of their silos to uncover hidden insights through meaningful and targeted deliberation. The platform supports practices that enable groups to adapt to uncertainty, avoid narrow perspectives, and reduce unforeseen risks by ensuring continuous access to diverse viewpoints.

By combining human-centered understanding and data driven insights, Hunome aids in making informed decisions and fostering resilience in innovation and strategy. It helps organizations quickly identify opportunities and risks in a rapidly changing landscape.

By leveraging the essential and fundamental, Hunome protects against jumping to conclusions or short-sighted strategies that collapse or fail to respond to real-world realities. It is a valuable partner for organizations seeking to build a sustainable future.