Innovation is popular if not well understood, we recognise it when we see it and every man, his dog and their company aspires to be innovative. To cite Wikipedia, “an innovation is a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.” However, I’m not so much interested in what innovation is as how to be innovative, which requires above all else a willingness to act on your ideas.

Information vs Knowledge

To understand innovation we must first differentiate between explicit knowledge (information) and tacit knowledge. Information is data: a description, diagram or instruction which which has been recorded. Information is convenient because it’s something tangible which can be copied and transmitted.

Knowledge, however, is tacit and intangible, perhaps best described as our individual understanding of “how” things are done. If you want to be innovative then it’s not good enough to simply remember information. You have to transform it into knowledge. Tacit knowledge is not written down and thus often difficult to explain and transfer from one individual to another.

Understanding this difference is very important in today’s society because we suffer from information-overload (yet so many bad decisions are made because we don’t have the right knowledge). It’s dangerous because we can waste a lot of time, energy and brain cells by trying to understand information in the wrong way. It’s not about the quantity or quality of the facts you have or even how efficiently you can process them, but how quickly you can put the information you have into practice, because knowledge can only be created through first hand experience.

It is experience and tacit knowledge that enable a pilot to fly and land a jumbo jet, not the operating manual. It’s a doctor’s training and practice, not their textbooks that save lives.

The Knowledge Conversion Process

Japanese professors Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) developed the following matrix which visualises how information and knowledge is transformed, in other words: how innovation happens when we turn information into experience and back again. It’s the best theory I have found so far to explain how innovation actually happens on a practical and individual scale. You can apply it without needing an R&D team or budget at all!

The Knowledge Conversion Process

Starting from the top right quadrant moving clockwise:

1. Tacit knowledge and experience can be made explicit by externalising and recording it as information.
2. Information can be combined, integrated and distributed.
3. Internalisation transforms information into knowledge through practice and experience.
4. It’s also possible to share our tacit knowledge with others through socialisation.

It is only when we have moved through all four quadrants of this model that our own individual learning process is truly complete. That is when we have actually improved something. Externalising our own learning and experience is important because it allows ourselves and others to repeat or start the process, thus enabling innovation to take place.

A Simple Formula

Knowledge is what makes the world go round. Information itself doesn’t travel far, but people are compelled to share knowledge and insights. It’s the difference between Wikipedia (information) and Twitter (socialisation) on the web. My simplified formula for innovation is therefore:

Innovation = (Information + Knowledge + Socialisation) x T

Information, knowledge and socialisation are easy to do once you know where to look, what to do and who to work with. The successful innovator understands that what really matters is the variable T, how quickly and how many times you can repeat the process over your competitors.

The way I prefer to tackle innovative ideas and creative projects is to find the best ways of putting the theory at hand into practice as soon as possible. It’s often necessary to go back to the drawing board, or choose an alternate strategy because the experience gained from practice shows you how and why it won’t work. If you are the one investing time and money, wouldn’t you want to know this sooner rather than later?

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin

If you have a big idea, stop dreaming and find a way to start working on just a small part of it or you won’t even complete one cycle of the innovation process.

The Killers of Innovation

It would also be amiss of me not to mention the things that stifle and stop the process of innovation. These are a combination of environmental and personal factors which affect an organisation’s and individual’s ability to be innovative.

Rules and Bureaucracy
Rules themselves are information, created to guide decisions and actions in the absence of individuals being trusted to use their own knowledge. Too many rules prevents individuals from internalising their own knowledge and thus actually learning anything new for themselves. Innovators don’t follow rules, they rely on their knowledge, experience and intuition. Rules kill innovation. Period.

Too many layers of bureaucracy will also prevent innovation because tacit knowledge cannot always be externalised to an outsider who does not share the same experience as the innovator. Trying to intervene and micromanage during the knowledge conversion process will only produce a lot of meaningless jargon that has been lost in translation.

Fear
Fear comes in many shapes and sizes: fear of failure, fear of breaking the rules (above), fear of ridicule and Australia’s own Tall Poppy Syndrome (the tendency to disparage conspicuously successful people). This is possibly the single biggest killer of innovation because it originates and resides within the self. Innovators can’t do their best work and many won’t even try if they must operate in a culture of fear. Be bold and brave as an innovator by understanding your fears and not letting them overtake your intuition and confidence.

Image: Creating Passionate Users Blog

Pessimism and Un-constructive Criticism
Since socialisation is such an integral part of the knowledge conversion process, receiving the right feedback from the right people is crucial. Innovation thrives in an environment of open and trusting collaboration where new ideas can be explored to their full potential. In my own experience, who you share your ideas with is just as important (if not more) as your idea itself. Choose whose feedback and constructive criticism you listen to very carefully as a pessimistic partner could be your worst enemy. An optimistic partner will encourage you to reach for the stars. Be an optimist yourself because if you don’t believe in your idea no one else will either, and if you can’t learn to appreciate someone else’s idea then you are also part of the problem.

Perfection
There is nothing wrong with seeking perfection as long as you understand it is a continuous process. Don’t spend years in the dark hiding your baby from the rest of the world until you think it’s perfect. Launch early and be ready for feedback. Nothing is perfect, it’s about the journey and not the destination so be sure to enjoy it or you may find yourself sorely disappointed.

Now that you have this information, what you do with it is in your hands.

References
Nonaka, Ikujiro; Takeuchi, Hirotaka (1995). The knowledge creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ian Thorpe is a household name in Australia but our indigenous issues and failures are both unpopular and taboo. So it was a complete surprise to me when I discovered the following speech he gave at the Beyond Sport Summit in London on July 9, 2009.

Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates once said that “in 50 years from now Australians will still marvel at the feats of Ian Thorpe”, so when a 26 year old five-time Olympic gold medalist and world champion says “I do intend to work hard at this for the rest of my life”, who can possibly doubt his commitment?

I thank you Thorpey for championing this cause from the bottom of my heart.

“Dirty Little Secret”

Ladies and Gentlemen, first may I thank you all for participating in this wonderful event. I am incredibly excited to be able to address you in regards to Beyond Sport.

For me this is an ambiguous topic.

As you may or may not be aware I am indeed an Olympian, I am no longer competing as a swimmer. I do take pride in my achievements in the pool and the valuable insight and education it has allowed me to take on, as I travelled the globe throughout my career.

When we speak of athletes there is a great deal that we know, like what is required of them, for me that meant 30 hours of training a week. We do this training just so we have a sporting chance to fulfill our life long dreams.

My travels with my sport since I was a very young and shy 14 year old opened the world to me, I didn’t realise at the time that this adventure would turn into a career beyond my wildest dreams.

I was the youngest male to ever represent Australia in swimming. By 15 I was the youngest ever male world champion. 16 I broke four world records in four days and at 17 I was Olympic Champion, I had fulfilled my life long ambition as a child. I quickly realised I was a child in an adult world.

It was the child in me that throughout my career questioned why? Why is it so? Why is it done that way and Why is the world the way it is?

In my travels competition took me to places where sometimes I was met with abject poverty, whilst I simply swum. Why was my life so blessed when others just by fate had less opportunity than I?

I guess I witnessed at a very young age how sport is an international language, a language that transcended borders, boundaries, cultural ideology, politics and even socio economic disadvantage.

I have only discussed my career up to when I was seventeen. It is because when I was 18 I established my charity, “Fountain for youth”. I didn’t realise at
the time that this may be my biggest accomplishment. An achievement not in the sense of doing something right, rather a stepping stone where my values that I had gained from sport could be transferred to something that is bigger than sport and in my opinion far more important.

That said, sport was what has made me who I am today and has afforded me the privilege to work beyond sport. My charity work didn’t begin at eighteen, I was just 15 when I began working with those less fortunate then myself. It was those years that shaped my understanding of what charity was. It gave me an insight into the power of celebrity and sport, especially in sport mad Australia.

I realised my value to organisations trying to bring positive change lent enormous weight to these causes. I must say though this should be an outrage, because as an athlete I am not as qualified to comment on health or education as the health professionals and educators who daily tackle the big issues.

In fact it is a bit disappointing that a teenager’s opinion garnered more attention than those who had been working on their chosen causes before I was even born.

This realisation of the opportunity that my voice and name could lend to an excellent cause was the simple foundation laid, for my very own charity.

I continued to win medals, breaking world records and continued travelling around the world recognising the needs of people, particularly children, in many places I visited. By this time my charity had enough money raised to commit to larger projects, I sat at a board meeting and stated that I wanted to help the world’s neediest children.

I started to think of what impact my effort could have in places like Africa or South East Asia. I then visited some of the worlds neediest communities, places without access to planes and cars that seemed to be a world away……..but now they were truly at my back door.

The communities that I visited had illiteracy levels at 93%……that was staggering only seven percent of a populous being able to read and write…

Up to 80% of the children in these communities have serious hearing impairments because of “glue ear”; middle ear infections neglected from infancy. – these kids will never hear the teacher in front of them in a classroom….that is, if there is a teacher and indeed a classroom.

Malnourished mothers are giving birth to babies that are seriously underweight and this only gets worse throughout a life born into poverty.

Here diabetes affects one in every two adults. Kidney disease is in epidemic proportions in communities where living conditions; primary healthcare and infrastructure are truly appalling.

In this part of the world even the community leaders are afflicted by clusters of chronic illness. Syndrome X…. the doctors call it, diabetes, renal disease, strokes, hypertension, cancer and heart disease. Some people die with four or five of these chronic illnesses.

Rheumatic heart disease among the children in these places is higher than in most of the developing world.

But I was not visiting communities in the developing world, I was in the middle of Australia, remote, yes, but this is Australia, a country that can boast some of the highest standards of living of any nation in the world. How shocked I was that Syndrome X was afflicting so many of the 460, 000 Indigenous people of my country.

As a result of these chronic illnesses and conditions Aboriginal life expectancy has fallen twenty years behind the rest of Australia.
For some of my fellow countrymen life expectancy had plunged to just 46 years.

Australia’s grim record on health care for Indigenous people is by far the worst of any developed nation. Developed? How can a country be “developed” when it leaves so many of its children behind?

Australia has not provided its citizens with an equal opportunity for primary health care, education, housing, employment, let alone recognition and a life of dignity.

Now I don’t expect you to just take my word for it. I am not a Doctor, I am simply an athlete. But ask Australian health professionals like Doctor Jim Hyde who says that while our nation has plenty of medical problems, only Indigenous Australians are facing a genuine health crisis.

The Governor of NSW, my home State, Professor Marie Bashir, an eminent Child Psychiatrist, has repeatedly pointed out the national disgrace of allowing the forty per cent of Indigenous children under the age of fifteen to put up with health problems found in no other developed nation.

Patrick Dodson, winner of the Sydney Peace Prize and one of out greatest Statesmen, identifies health as a human right for Indigenous Australians. ‘Only the most urgent government action’, said Australia’s ‘Father of Reconciliation’, ‘could change the inequality that has created this health tragedy in our own backyard.’

How could citizens with the greatest need be so under funded? If we were to indeed recognise the severity of this gross neglect, funding to these communities should be extradited.

A commitment to the first Australians is well within the means of my country, and this is what I find inexcusable. I am talking about an issue with a solution.
For Australia to heal its wounds that have been weeping for 200 years we must not ignore the issue, we must start the healing. Like many people in Australia I was completely unaware of the huge gap in health and education outcomes let alone the differences of life expectancy. I, as many had, made an assumption; Australia is a rich country, don’t we throw a lot of money at that problem?

It disgusts me to speak those words now but that was what I thought. This was not just my lack of knowledge of this area but it is echoed throughout my nation.

An Aboriginal health expert, Shane Houston says: “Aboriginal people are viewed by too many in the Australian community as an unwelcome burden on the nation. Governments say they have spent a lot of money on Aborigines but where do you see the results in this squalor? So the mainstream concludes that Aboriginal health is a waste of money. It is all the fault of the poor blacks. My people are somehow expected to just extricate themselves from this maze of life-threatening conditions. And if we can’t manage to do that, then many white people will shrug and say our end is inevitable.”

Visiting Aboriginal people, in their homes, their communities, on their land, has allowed me to listen and given me some idea of the problems that Aboriginal people face.

I listened to the concerns of mothers and fathers for the betterment of their children. This unwavering strength, in the face of social injustice. Within these communities I witness poverty, despair and pain…. but I also see hope….hope from those men and woman who want more for their children.

With the words of these people in my head, I became part of a campaign in Australia called; “Close the Gap”, it is quite simply a program that recognises the difference between Indigenous and non Indigenous life expectancy in Australia and the huge gaps in all of the factors like education, jobs and housing that leave aboriginal people so deeply disadvantaged.

Close the Gap is a commitment that this difference is unacceptable. It was supported by the Government and also the opposition. This is the kind of action that is required in Australia. The issue of Indigenous health and education goes beyond government, it is a fundamental right. I hope all sides of government continue to commit to this policy as a starting point and it is not another hollow promise that falls short.

Just this week Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd said that it was ‘devastating’ that a new report by our productivity commission showed that Aboriginal people had made little progress to close those gaps since 2000. He said this was ‘unacceptable’ and ‘decisive action’ had to be taken.

The truth is that none of the problems I have mentioned can truly be rectified until our government and my fellow Australians recognise the injustice faced by Aboriginal Australians and how they are denied so many human rights.

This has been highlighted once again by what is called in Australia “The Intervention”, the Federal Government’s takeover of 73 remote Aboriginal communities.

The Intervention was constructed by the previous government and has since been reported to have been assembled in the space of just one day. The irony is that Aboriginal people had been campaigning for decades about the living conditions and the neglect of their children within their communities. The programs to protect and nurture the children, had been grossly neglected and under funded by government over the last decade.

What appears to be a political stunt and a grab for government control over Aboriginal people continues to this day under the new government. Once more an Australian government has claimed it is doing its best for Aboriginal Australians by taking over their communities, appointing white managers, more government bureaucrats, promising all kinds of things, if Aboriginal people will just sign over their communities under forty year leases to the Federal Government.

And politicians wonder why Aboriginal people do not trust them.

The truth is for over 200 years Australian governments have neglected and patronized aboriginal people.

The Intervention is unlikely to provide any lasting benefit to Aboriginal people because it tries to push and punish them, to take over their lives, rather than work with them.

One of Australia’s oldest and wisest aboriginal leaders, Galawuy Yunupingu says the only way forward is for Aboriginal communities in these remote areas to be led and organised by their own organisations. Assimilation will not work.

So in the work I do, the way I try to contribute through my organisation, Fountain for youth, we work with Aboriginal teachers, health workers, parents and children, with the health services and the schools, to encourage people to believe that we can move forward together.

We support pre-schooling, health education, literacy backpacks that let kids carry home reading for the whole family.

And we use sport where we can to make a difference.

As a swimmer, who would have thought I would have ended up supporting Flipper Ball, junior waterpolo for little Aboriginal kids in the mining communities of Western Australia.

As a swimmer, who would have thought I would be back at university studying psychology and at the same time working with young Aboriginal university graduates on a mentoring program to help get more kids to complete High School and go on with their studies.

As a swimmer, maybe I was expected to just be satisfied with the gleam of those gold medals.

But all sportsmen and women know the truth – there is something beyond sport.

There is the challenge of playing a part in the human family…to contribute and make a difference.

We can use sport and use our sporting status to improve the lives of children and whole communities in so many places.

We can make it a fairer, safer playing field for everyone.

In twenty remote Australian communities and with thousands of Aboriginal children I know life will have some extra opportunities if I commit to work hard on this.

I do intend to work hard at this for the rest of my life.

THAT IS MY PROMISE TO YOU — BEYOND SPORT!

Learn more about Ian Thorpe’s Fountain For Youth.

Let me tell you about a girl I recently came to know of. Her name is Rachel and she’s from a middle-class American family you could describe as politically liberal and economically conservative. She grew up in Washington with an older brother and sister. Her dad is an insurance executive and her mum an amateur flautist. She studied art after high school and took a year off to serve in the Washington Conservation Corps, a nature conservation program. For three years, she also volunteered weekly visits to patients with mental disorders in a hospital diversion house. Her family has hosted a number of international exchange students and Rachel spent six weeks with a family in Sakhalin, Russia. She is a good writer, likes art, isn’t the most punctual or tidy person in the world and likes to retreat into fantasies of being in Hollywood movies or sitcoms starring Michael J Fox.

In 2003, Rachel proposed an independent-study program which allowed her to fly to Israel and travel to Rafah in the Gaza Strip where she joined the International Solidarity Movement to protest against house demolitions by Israeli armoured bulldozers. One of her projects there was to make Rafah a sister city of Olympia, her hometown.

During this time she wrote emails home about her experiences in Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people, sixty percent of whom are refugees, many twice or three times. She received training on basic rules of harm avoidance such as wear fluorescent jackets, don’t run, don’t frighten the army, try to communicate by megaphone and make your presence known.

Rachel was shocked by the reality of the situation there, which nothing could have prepared her for. She was safe and free as an unarmed US citizen while people were being shot driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank just two days before she arrived.

She wrote… “They know that children in the United States don’t usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone—once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn’t surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed “settlements” and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing—just existing—in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth largest military—backed by the world’s only superpower—in it’s attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.”

During her time there, the Israeli army destroyed wells that provided half of Rafah’s water supply. Many of the communities requested internationals to be present at night, she was one of only five or six, to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten p.m. it was very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treated anyone in the streets as resistance and shot at them.

She had money to buy water when the army destroyed wells, she could leave whenever she wanted. The greatest risk she faced was of arrest and deportation. She received a lot of tea and food amidst the gunfire and explosions. The woman who kept the key for the well where she slept beside to protect kept asking if she was calling her mum back home. It made her sick to her stomach that she was doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who were facing doom. An explosive detonation broke all the windows in a family’s house where she was being served tea and playing with their two small babies. She was genuinely scared for the locals. She watched as a father led his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. She was witnessing a chronic, insidious genocide which made her question her belief in the goodness of human nature. It really hurt her to witness how awful we could allow the world to be, that something like this could happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. Then she also learnt about the resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military, which gave her strength and hope.

In spite of her haunting experiences, she is still hopeful of seeing a Palestinian state or a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state within her lifetime. She thinks freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world. That it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes, which the US supports. She looks forward to people developing better skills for working in democratic structures and healing our own racism and classism and sexism and heterosexism and ageism and ableism.

Her time in Rafah changed her life. At the end of her time there, she knew that she didn’t want to move back to Olympia, but had to go back to clean her stuff out of the garage and share her experiences. She thought perhaps of getting an English teaching job or buckling down and learning Arabic. Like any twenty three year old girl, she was thinking about what she should do with the rest of her life.

Rachel is an idealist, someone who wants to see an end to the injustice in Gaza, but also just a girl. Someone who is reserved in large crowds but intimate one-on-one, who likes to dance around to Pat Benatar, have boyfriends and make comics for her co-workers.

I would like to meet Rachel but I can’t because she was run over and killed by an armoured bulldozer while trying to protect a stranger’s house in Gaza. I believe in standing and fighting for what you believe in but it makes me sad that Rachel had to die before I, and now you, would even spend a fraction of our busy, important lives to learn about what it is she wanted to live for.