Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability

Citation

Maya Zhukovskaya (2015), "Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability", Foresight, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 88-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-12-2014-0083

The business environment is increasingly complex and interconnected. Therefore, the book titled Everything Connects may seem restating the obvious. Notwithstanding the significant previous contributions in this field, the authors attempt to provide greater understanding of social behaviours and psychological practices leading to innovation and organisational structures that enable sustainability of all these elements.

The first part examines different methods of self-understanding and self-transformation and its impact on the ways we interact with others.

Firstly, Hoque and Baer discuss long-term vs short-term orientation, proving that long-term-oriented companies usually have higher profits and higher levels of “contained volatility” in terms of innovation outcome. Following the importance of long-term commitment, the authors present three common principles that such organisations share:

1. converged disciplines (circulation of ideas across departments);

2. cross-boundary collaboration (deep listening relationships with co-workers); and

3. sustainably innovative structures that “reflect” the product.

Secondly, the authors stress the importance of authenticity and self-transformation for innovation performance and support their findings with case studies from Mayo’s clinic and Molly Crabapple. Developing the idea of self-transformation, Hoque and Baer introduce the reader to mindfulness meditation that turns attention to “inner and outer stimuli”, leading to deeper awareness of “what is happening”. Particularly, mindfulness meditation is presented as a key tool for introspection that reveals the content of individual identity. This identity reflects in one’s interactions with others, the sharing of ideas and in improved products. Therefore, deeper understanding of ourselves leads to deeper understanding of our organisational and innovation outcome.

Thirdly, Hoque and Baer highlight the “devotion” (that consists of ‘right effort’, ‘right mindfulness’ and ‘right concentration’), which is another key quality that could lead to new innovation potential.

At the end of this part, Hoque and Baer discuss “togetherness” – the necessity to collaborate. In particular, the authors suggest deeply connected “partnerships” as a form of co-working which allows comparing experiences and the emergence of new insights. Such “partnerships” require a lot of commitment, as well as honesty and directness, inspiration and the ability to think ahead that create trusted environment facilitating innovative culture.

Developing the idea of “togetherness”, Hoque and Baer deepen the previous discussion of long-term perspective providing more examples of Ikea, Nike, Amazon and Molly Crabapple and emphasising the value of introspection and vision that reveals new innovation platforms.

The second part highlights the importance of being sensitive to co-workers’ behavioural patterns and intrinsic motivation, as well as company’s communication framework and structure that “mirrors” outcomes of innovation activities.

Hoque and Baer challenge traditional ways of organising workflows and suggest cross-departmental ways of working towards innovation. Procter & Gamble (P & G) serves as an example of a company that created the product Whitestrips due to such intersectional thinking and linking together previously unrelated elements from different departments.

Further, developing the idea of intersectional thinking, Hoque and Baer discuss the creation of “clusters” – “a loose cross-functional method for creating and implementing ideas” (p. 145). The authors identify different types of “clusters” and roles within them, emphasising that “cluster” is an important workflow framework that fits the project, eliminating unnecessary barriers and assigning temporal duties. Thus, performance in “clusters” and “architect” innovation is through enhanced flexibility and higher circulation of ideas.

Additionally, Hoque and Baer stress the importance of positive emotions for long-term business success. Creativity lies with micro-moments combined with the skill of listening and an encouraging organisational culture. Following this logic, the authors further discuss career “trajectories” and the necessity for intrinsic motivation, and mutual benefits for employees and a company such as people growth leads to the overall organisational growth.

Hoque and Baer offer different tools to measure “mindfulness” progress such as iDoneThis, “clusters” and constructive feedback relationships.

The authors dedicate their third part to the outcome of innovation activities.

Particularly, Hoque and Baer begin their third part by rethinking tangible and intangible “assets” of long-term value in great detail. Learn how creativity as a volatile but systemic process is used in Suzuki or emotional value creation processes in Apple! The authors further examine tangible and intangible input and output and stress the importance of mapping the decision-making processes. In the authors’ view, products are individual experiences and inner capabilities. Hence, harvesting these is always capturing. Ultimately, mindfulness observation results in Everything Connects.

Overall, the book applies a holistic approach involving multiple methods and sources of data collection to identify social facets of leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation. The book provides plenty of useful material, is well structured and easy to follow.

Definitely, the extensive practical entrepreneurial and consulting experience of Hoque came in very handy. The book is a worthy read for everyone interested in the softer side of innovation and long-term value creation. However, the value of the book will strongly depend on how well the reader will be able to absorb, adapt and apply the material. After all, not everybody will find it easy to connect meditation with product innovation.

Still, one of the key messages of the book is that change in ourselves leads to change in everything that around us. Although this idea has already been examined by Drucker (1999) and is currently discussed by others like Parker (2012), Wright et al. (2013) and Witherspoon (2014), the message has not yet received the attention it deserves.

Hoque and Baer provide convincing and solid examples of corporations and individuals, such as Apple, Mayo’s clinic, P & G, Twitter, Da Vinci and Paul Slakey, to name a few, which complete a very comprehensive but coherent picture with detailed insights, deep and practical concentrated experience. However, the book would benefit from more specific practical examples of how, for example, mindfulness and prosocial behaviour leads to trusted culture and innovation or how to implement the Mehta’s case suggestion that everyone should work at their highest potential and with absolute “passion”. Nevertheless, the book is valuable contribution to the field of business management with interesting findings, unordinary and unconventional insights, and sensible strategies.