January 2006

Innovation Tips

…ideas for building collaborative innovation

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Incongruities—the power to fix what’s broken

In identifying important windows of opportunity for purposeful change, the widely acclaimed teacher, writer and philosopher, Peter Drucker, has provided an invaluable roadmap.

In his seminal work, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker identified seven windows through which the most meaningful and relevant clues and cues appear—unexpected events, incongruities, process needs, market structure, demographics, perception, and new knowledge/technology. Monitoring the operating environment through these seven windows captures the vital information that generates invigorating change.

The window of “incongruities” often produces a great number of insights about opportunities for productive change. Incongruities are those events where something is happening that ought not be or the inverse: something is not happening that seems that it should be. These issues can be catalysts for positive, purposeful and lasting innovation. One example of converting an incongruity to productive innovation is the American Dream Project.

The Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) created the American Dream Project as an experimental program to help break the cycle of poverty for the working poor. It addresses a fundamental social inequity—approximately ninety-nine percent of the wealth generated in the United States goes to the wealthiest twenty percent of the population.

Their project creates Individual Development Accounts (IDA)—savings accounts for the working poor. The program provides matching funds for investments that help to break the cycle of poverty—first homes, business start-ups or education. CFED also structures training for families in the essentials of finance, savings and investment.

Conceived in 1997 with just three local initiatives, the project grew by the year 2000 to include more than two hundred and fifty initiatives serving over five thousand account holders. In those three years the program generated more than $1.3 million in deposits.

Their project demonstrates how incongruities—in this case a fundamental social inequity—can serve as a catalyst for purposeful change and meaningful results. Catalytic incongruities are everywhere—in the organizations we serve, in our personal lives and like this one, in the social infrastructure of our communities. Seizing incongruities as opportunities for change generates the power to fix what's broken.

CJS/JGJ

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