Innovation is one of those things that comes naturally to some people, and in my work it is less about an idea coming seemingly out of nowhere, but more a sense of feeling a way ahead, seeing half a dozen steps ahead feeling a way forward. Often people ask me to explain how I work, or what connections I am making, and it’s particularly problematic. Innovation is hard to explain, it’s a bit like when a weight is place on the edge of a wheel, and the movement is more jerky, a jump forward happens in response to a nudge. Innovation has a naturalality to it, it’s easy, fun, organic. Adaptation is hard work it, it turns innovation into a technological process, it means taking the time to explore the processes and reasons why an innovation worked, working out how to repeat and tweak it. On the plus side it means Adaption is easier to explain, someone has observered what’s gone before tweeked (often making it better) and then rolls out the adapted version. We need to the adaptors, but let’s not confuse the two, but more than ever the church needs to make space for and support the innovators, those making hesitant, jerky leaps forward.
The trouble is that too often the innovators are so far from the centre, and what they do is hard to explain and measure that they are overlooked by the centre or funders in favour of adaptors. Applications based on adaption are mistaken for innovation and don’t get me wrong often these adaptive change makers are often able to have improved outcomes, systemised processes that can be scaled etc, but don’t confuse the two.