There’s a natural phenomenon called “The Edge Effect”. In ecology terms, it’s where two extremely different environments meet (i.e. desert meets rain forest). These regions all over the world are known to have some of the highest biodiversity — they have more diverse animals and richer flora than any other parts of the world.

The same happens with innovation.

Often innovation is not something that is cooked up in a lab hidden away, 20ft below the surface. We used to think this is where innovation was born, we created these massive R&D departments, locked people in them away in them and only let emerge when they had tinkered their way to the next Google or solved world hunger — but seldom is this actually how innovation happens.

The R&D myth is now much more common knowledge thanks to recent events like Google’s famous 20% time that birthed all kinds of innovative products for them, from Gmail, Google AdSense and Google News.

To truth is innovation is not often found in arenas of endless possibilities and freedomless boundaries, rather they’re often found in constraints — like two extreme environments colliding being forced to coexist.

Yes, a number of inventions have come from R&D labs but often they have been happy accidents. Far more groundbreaking territory have been covered in ‘edge effects’ like war (atomic bomb, stainless steel, even the wristwatch), economic collapse (Scotch Tape, the fluorescent light bulb, and even Diet Coke), and even the current COVID-19.

Thus, unlocking innovation at your organisation is more about producing ‘edge effects’ and looking for them over establishing some innovation lab somewhere.

Lesson 1: Don’t Lock Away, Unlock Across the Org

The first is an obvious on. Don't go down the path of creating these massive R&D labs, they’ll like only cost you a lot of money and produce low results.

Rather look to unlock innovation across the organisation.

This starts with creating the space for people to innovate — to prototype, tinker and explore new spaces.

Google’s 20% time is a perfect example of this — and although 20% is a lot to ask and is much debated if it ever truly existed even alternatives of this like monthly hackathons days (that’s 5%) have proved strong results for many other companies.

Atlassian famously runs what they call ‘ShipIt days’, where they look to produce and ship something within 24 hours.

Atlassian’s ‘ShipIt days’ are a prime example of creating freedom but within constraints — they are an edge effect.

The constraints they set are time = 24 hours, and that it needs to be skippable. In Atlassian’s own words they state “Embrace the constraint”!

A perhaps paradoxical part to innovation and working within constraints is that the ‘what’ you work on, its domain, is the one thing that is better off unconstrained.

A key part of hackathon’s, like ‘ShipIt days’, and 20% time’s success is the freedom to work on whatever you want to.

Freedom to explore is crucial for innovation — it’s part of the process.

I’ve helped a number of organisations facilitate ‘ShipIt’ style hackathons and there’s generally a common discomfort about giving people the freedom to work on whatever they want. There’s a desire to constrain the domain with parameters like — “it must be related to your product” or “must be towards our OKR”. But restrain from doing so.

Constraining the domain, the what, can be detrimental to innovative efforts. It’s typically not further exploring deeper into your current domain that yields results, but rather the exploration of other domains — this is the crux of lateral thinking; “solving of problems by an indirect and creative approach”.

Therefore although letting people work on whatever they want may seem counterintuitive, it’s necessary for innovation.

Lesson 2: Don’t Invent, Reinvent

As such a large portion of the biodiversity are not unique animals or plants, but rather the facilitation of co-habitation of species from different environments that would not normally be found together.

Much is the same with innovation.

The common fallacy is that you need to invent something new to be innovative, to create a new piece of technology. Rather a large number of innovations are actually the result of finding new applications for existing and even old technology.

One of my favourite examples of this is Nintendo.

Gunpei Yokoi, the mastermind behind many of Nintendo's famous inventions had the infectious mantra — “lateral thinking with withered technology”.

The application of this mantra inside the walls of Nintendo saw countless of their products be not a showcase of cutting-edge technology but rather a construct of old technology applied in a new way — an innovative way.

Gunpei Yokoi’s first application of this at Nintendo was in 1966 when he created the Ultra Hand — Nintendo’s first-ever toy which went on to sell over 1 million devices and single-handly saved the company from bankruptcy.

Years later Yokoi would have his most famous moment with the invention of the Nintendo Game & Watch — Nintendo’s first handheld gaming system.

Gunpei Yokoi got the idea for the Game & Watch, after observing a bored businessman on the Shinkansen home playing with his calculator. Inspired by the handheld calculator with an LCD screen and buttons, Yokoi designed a similar device but for gaming — The Game & Watch — another fine example of “lateral thinking with withered technology”.

By this point, LCD screens had been used in calculators for years but applying them to form a handheld gaming device turned the world of technology on its head — and it was old tech!

This mantra became so ingrained into Nintendos culture, even the launch of the famous Gameboy years later saw Nintendo choose to continue to use old black-and-white screens in the first release rather than the new colour screens which many competitors had adopted. As a result, the Nintendo Gameboy’s battery life was superior which created a far better user experience than having to change AA batteries every 20 minutes.

“Lateral thinking with withered technology” — Gunpei Yokoi

Lesson 3: Find Areas of Tension

As part of the Design Thinking process, we look for these edge effects — points of tension because that’s where the magic happens!

When I synthesis customer research I often look for edge effects in contradicting data — where positive experiences met negative ones.

Generally, these are your gems, opportunities for innovation.

As you can probably tell this is partly because conflicting data introduces a constraint — how might we keep these people happy whilst alleviating the pain of others?

However, there are all kinds of tensions to look out for during discovery — the fringes of your customer segment, cross-product/platform intersects, and user edge-cases are good examples.

Often we overlook edge-cases, we discard them — oh it’s only 2% of users, not worth it — and sometimes true, it’s not worth it but they can often be opportunities for innovation.

Often it’s the fringes and edge-cases which make you ask why — why are they behaving unexpectedly? They are also your opportunity to branch out, to do something slightly different and branch into a new market or customer segment. Another example of why innovation is rarely found by going deeper into what you already know and are good at.

A great example of this was how Instagram came to have filters.

Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram shared this story. Whilst taking a break from the hectic startup-life, Kevin was on holidays in Mexico with his wife Nicole in the early days of Instagram. Naturally taking plenty of photos of their trip and Kevin asked Nicole if she’d uploaded them to Burbn (what Instagram was called back then), which she declined. She said that she didn’t feel comfortable uploading photos, however loved to use the app to view other people’s photos, particularly their friend Greg’s photos.

Naturally, Kevin Systrom was curious as to why Greg had such amazing photos which when Nicole told him that Greg used a number of photo filter apps to make his photos look great. And right there was the ‘lighbulb’ moment Kevin needed to introduce, the now-famous, Instagram filters — the market differentiator they desperately needed.

Innovation is found in tension, not in harmony.

Harmony is great for discovery, it gives you confidence but seldom are they the areas where you’re going to find anything groundbreaking.

Rather it’s tension like the starkly different experiences between his wife Nicole and their friend Greg. This is where the opportunity for innovation often lies.

Wrap up

As product leaders, we should not only be actively looking for these edge effects but also cultivating the right environment for teams to find them.

Innovation doesn’t need to be this mythical, unattainable thing. There are ways that you can help cultivate innovation within our organisation.

Constraints are one of those ways. Against popular belief, innovation is seldom found in the boundless realm of an R&D lab.

Second is to make sure you are creating space and time for exploration, it’s often the unexpected and adjacent domains where opportunities lie — time to explore them is a prerequisite to innovation.

Consider working with existing technology — embrace the constraint and try to reinvent, not invent.

And finally, remember to actively look for edges effects — pay attention to the fringes of your product as well as any points of tension. These are the places where you will find your opportunities for innovation.

“If you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.” — Steven Johnson