Innovation can be transformational, according to Sterling Hawkins, global innovation expert and tech entrepreneur. In a previous blog, I shared Hawkins thoughts on the importance of overcoming our discomfort to achieve real innovation in our businesses.

In a recent meeting I attended, Hawkins explained what he calls the innovation cycle. The cycle has four steps and completing the cycle can lead to great innovation.

Here’s a look at the four steps:

1. Source: You need to source possibilities. Speculate on new possibilities for your business. “We need to imagine the ‘if,’ but we get stuck by over thinking it,” he said. If you have not connected your vision, purpose and the feelings you have, the process will stall out. “Ask yourself what you want to do and why you want to do it,” he said. He explained that you can’t move into any possibilities if people are already resigned from making change. “As you bring emotion and passion to possibilities, they will get you through to realize innovation.”
2. Curate: The next step is to curate all the possibilities and select one. “This is hard because who wants to kill ideas,” he asked. But he believes you have to sacrifice potential and things that might be great ideas for actualities of what you are going to do. Some companies want to be everything to everybody. “You can’t do this,” he said. “We are defined in the marketplace by what we say no to. Anything is possible but determine what you are actually going to commit to.”
3. Act: This is the most obvious step. Once you commit to a possibility, you have to do something about it. “But it is not quite that easy,” he reminded the audience. “Some things masquerade as action when they are just busy work.” He cautioned the audience not to get caught up in repeating processes or measuring things. “That is not real action.” He said it is important to throw yourself into things. “The fool is the precursor to innovation,” Hawkins believes. “If you are doing something new you are probably not going to be very good at it at first, but you will learn quickly as you step into that action. We learn to produce results.”
4. Measure: You need to not only measure results, but also share them. “This is easy when the results are good” he said. “But the trick is to share the results when they are not as good.” He explained that when failure is not visible it creates an environment where it is not okay to fail. Leaders need to make failure okay even when it does not feel good. “Make it okay for others to fail because failure is where real innovation occurs,” he said.

While it may be uncomfortable to go through the innovation cycle, the result will be well worth it.