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How to innovate - Skate where the puck is going


“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be” – Wayne Gretzky

This cliché quote from Gretzky has been so overused that people have stopped paying attention to anything that follows it. So why do I bring up this quote in the context of Innovation? I bring it up to highlight that most people using this quote do not talk about difficulty involved in, and practice and patience needed to anticipate where puck is going.

So I want to recognize that anticipating where proverbial puck is going is not easy. It requires physical and mental conditioning, developing specific skills and lot of practice. It also requires being comfortable with going to a place where the puck does not arrive. If we want to innovate, we need to get comfortable with not finding the puck where we anticipated it to go. And keep ‘pivoting’ till we become good at reaching as close to puck as we can.

Same is the case with Innovation – it is not easy, it requires cultural conditioning (collaboration, openness, comfort with failure), development of new skills and lot of patience when expected outcomes do not happen in as quickly as we may want them to. We still need to keep trying and pivoting till we become ‘Innovative’

So how do we apply this for Innovation? Here is an approach that we can use at Blue Shield of California:
  • Identify key areas that impact how we as an Organization perform (where are the big problems? – For any business there are generally 6-8 areas / functions)
  • Look for Indicators that suggest if an area or function is ‘ripe’ for innovation
    • The process is complex and painful
    • Technology is not embedded into the process
    • People working on those functions are stressed

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