Ideas

The Innovation Genome™

The Innovation Genome describes the underlying patterns that shape how innovation naturally occurs within individuals, organizations, and situations. Just as a biological genome influences behavior and capability, the Innovation Genome reveals why certain innovation approaches feel natural, why others create resistance, and why no single style of innovation works everywhere.
Rather than prescribing one best way to innovate, the Innovation Genome helps leaders understand which innovation approaches fit which situations—and why.

Innovation Practices as Competing Forces

At the core of the Innovation Genome™ are four innovation practices, which function as competing forces that must be balanced rather than chosen between:

• Create — experimentation, imagination, and exploration
• Compete — speed, ambition, and performance
• Control — discipline, structure, and reliability
• Collaborate — connection, trust, and shared purpose

Every individual and organization expresses all four practices, but in different proportions. These patterns shape how innovation efforts emerge, stall, or succeed.

Dominant Logic

Dominant Logic refers to the prevailing mental models that guide decision-making. It reflects which innovation practices are emphasized, which are undervalued, and how leaders interpret risk, opportunity, and change.

Dominant Logic explains why organizations often repeat familiar innovation behaviors—even when conditions demand a different approach.

Creative Conflict™

Innovation emerges through creative conflict, not consensus. Within the Innovation Genome™, two fundamental tensions shape how innovation unfolds:

• Magnitude — how much innovation is pursued (Create vs. Control)
• Momentum — how fast innovation moves (Compete vs. Collaborate)

These tensions reveal an organization’s optimized innovation approach—the pattern that best fits its context, constraints, and goals at a given moment.

Nesting Levels of Innovation

Innovation operates simultaneously at three nested levels:

• Personal — how individuals think, lead, and create
• Organizational — how practices, culture, and systems are designed
• Universal — the broader purpose and situational demands shaping action

Innovation is situationally specific. Different challenges require different combinations of practices across these levels. There is no universally “right” innovation style—only a fit between approach and context.

Leadership Across Three Levels

Because innovation operates across nested levels, leadership must as well:

• Leading Self — understanding one’s own innovation tendencies
• Leading Teams — integrating diverse perspectives productively
• Leading the Organization — shaping systems, culture, and strategy for sustained innovation

The Innovation Genome provides leaders with a way to diagnose, align, and adjust innovation behavior across all three levels.

The Innovation Genome provides a shared language for understanding why innovation looks different across people, organizations, and situations—and how leaders can intentionally design for that difference.

Key Takeaways:

• Innovation Practices – The four competing values (Create, Compete, Control, Collaborate)
• Dominant Logic – The prevailing mental models that shape decisions
• Cultural Artifacts – The visible symbols and structures that reinforce innovation behaviors
• Resource Allocation – How time, money, and attention are distributed across innovation types

The Innovation Code™

The Innovation Code™ translates the Innovation Genome™ into action. While the Genome describes the underlying patterns of innovation within an organization, the Innovation Code™ provides a four-step method for harnessing constructive conflict—the disciplined use of difference to generate better ideas, decisions, and outcomes.

Innovation does not emerge from consensus or
harmony. It emerges when opposing perspectives are intentionally brought into relationship and worked through productively. The Innovation Code™ outlines how leaders can design and lead this process rather than leaving conflict unmanaged or avoided.

The four steps of the Innovation Code are:

1. Assemble a diversity of perspectives – Bring together individuals who represent different values, experiences, and innovation practices.
2. Engage in the conflict – Encourage disciplined debate and inquiry, allowing opposing viewpoints to surface and challenge one another.
3. Establish a shared goal or vision – Create a unifying purpose that shifts attention from individual positions to a collective challenge.
4. Construct hybrid solutions – Integrate insights from competing perspectives into solutions that are stronger than any single point of view.

Through these steps, constructive conflict becomes a repeatable leadership practice—one that transforms difference into innovation and enables organizations to adapt and perform over time.

Key Takeaways:

• Innovation is a learnable skill, not a gift
• Constructive Conflict™ drives breakthrough thinking
• Transformation emerges from embracing paradox
• Multiple innovation practices must be mastered simultaneously

The Paradox Cycle

The Paradox Cycle explains how transformation unfolds over time when organizations face persistent contradictions. Rather than treating paradox as a problem to be solved or eliminated, the Paradox Cycle shows how opposing forces can be worked through in sequence to produce meaningful and lasting change.

Where the Innovation Code™ focuses on harnessing constructive conflict in the moment, the Paradox Cycle focuses on how organizations evolve through repeated encounters with tension. It provides a way to understand why change often stalls, why progress feels nonlinear, and how breakthrough transformation emerges from engaging—not resolving—contradictions.

The Paradox Cycle is used to:

• Make sense of recurring tensions that cannot be permanently resolved
• Help leaders recognize where they are stuck in cycles of overcorrection or avoidance
• Guide organizations through phases of tension, integration, and renewal
• Support transformation that is sustained over time rather than episodic

In practice, the Paradox Cycle helps leaders stop asking “Which side is right?” and start asking “How do these opposites need to work together over time?” This shift enables organizations to move beyond short-term fixes toward deeper, more resilient forms of change.

Creative Tension

Innovation doesn’t happen in harmony—it happens in the dynamic tension between competing priorities, values, and approaches. Learning to productively manage these tensions is essential for breakthrough innovation.

Types of Creative Tension:

• Exploration vs. Exploitation – Balancing new ventures with optimizing existing businesses
• Speed vs. Quality – Moving fast while maintaining excellence
• Individual vs. Collective – Honoring both solo genius and collaborative creation
• Discipline vs. Freedom – Creating structure while preserving flexibility