Bottling innovation through social technology

It could be you're reading this in the hope that you find awesome insights into social media marketing or growth strategies, in this case we’re sorry, you've been misled.

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Please keep reading if you're interested in leveraging human behaviour as a way to innovate and build a bridge of influence between tech leaders and the people they serve.
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IT leaders live in a world saturated with hardware & software technology, presented as the best options to deliver innovation. Innovation is a difficult beast to capture and keep. Even with the best intentions, innovation programs and initiatives often get derailed by those pesky human behaviours - politics, agendas, disagreements - that dissipate precious creative thinking sooner or later. What if there was a way to “bottle” this innovative thinking, so it’s always at hand, and didn’t evaporate under the pressure of conflict and lost momentum?
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There is! It’s called social technology. Very simply, social technology is a term that re-frames design thinking* in a way that aligns with organisational needs to surface and harness all the innovative thinking trapped in human brains.
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In her article Why Design Thinking Works, Jeanne Liedtka gave us a compelling case for human-centred design to be the enabler of choice for positive change when we deploy it as social technology.
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Professor Liedtka makes three key points about why design thinking is so effective in getting tech leaders who want to be innovators, and the humans they serve, to the best place possible.

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Design thinking emphasises engagement, dialogue, and learning. Designers recognise organisations as collections of human beings who are motivated by varying perspectives and emotions.
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Design-thinking processes counteract human biases that stifle creativity while addressing the challenges typically faced in reaching superior solutions, lowered costs and risks, and employee buy-in.
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Design thinking helps innovators collaborate and agree on what is essential to the outcome at every phase. It does this by bringing structure to the innovation process.
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Remember Fortress IT? Social technology can lift the siege. This is how it's done:

Structure gives support
Managers of technology teams aren’t used to researching user needs, getting deeply immersed in their perspectives, co-creating with stakeholders, and designing and executing experiments. Structure and linearity help everyone try and adjust to these new behaviours.

It's safe to innovate
Most humans are driven by a fear of mistakes, so they focus more on preventing errors than on seizing opportunities. They choose inaction rather than action when a choice risks failure. But there is no innovation without action — so psychological safety is essential.

Collaboration grows as trust is built
The framework, artefacts and tools of design thinking deliver that sense of security, helping people move more safety through the discovery of user needs, idea generation and concept testing.
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*A non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.