Mapping the Big Green Challenge - The Skills & Learning ...

60 Chapter 6 - Proposed Innovation ProcessesThere is a final potential network relationship to be considered which relates to the way the changeis to be maintained. This is particularly significant in relation to changed practice or behaviourwhere it might be relatively easy to ‘lapse’ back into earlier habits. Proposals which relied on thechange being maintained by the person / group affected were distinguished from cases where someon-going role in maintaining the change was intended to be undertaken by the Challengerthemselves or another group at community level.6.2.2.4 Transfer of InnovationsAnother dimension of network relations is the routes by which an innovation might be spread morewidely to new markets or be taken up by different producers. In conventional business terms thistends to occur either through the growth of the original innovator or by them selling their idea orbusiness to another (usually larger) concern. These models are being challenged to some extent bythe concept of open innovation discussed above. As signalled earlier it is also important to considerthe type of innovation involved with the process anticipated to be more complex in relation to ideasthat lie outside the dominant regime.As identified in an earlier chapter the 3 rd sector is often characterised as being weak with regard todiffusion and applicants where explicitly asked to address the ways in which their ideas might betransferable, replicable or scalable. Common explanations for the weakness of the sector in thisarea tend to focus on lack of resources (including time) by participants or a lack of a wider interestor vision of how their situation relates to that of others. Accepting these types of explanationssuggests that the problem lies primarily with the 3 rd sector groups rather than being an inherentlydifficult problem. As such it is common within the community literature to attempt to resolve theissue via identifying and publicising ‘good practice’ examples or models.However this might be to underestimate the degree to which the success of those identified asdisplaying good practice depends on the dynamics of a specific community, of the particularcharacteristics of the community group and its members, a consideration of context or the differentcircumstances of ‘leader’ versus ‘follower’ organisations. Leat (2003) argues that replication(broadly meaning the ability of the project to succeed elsewhere) is actually a highly complexprocess which depends on there being a well understood model to replicate, confidence that it isworth replicating, communication of the model in the right form to the right people, adoption bychampions who can promote it to others, implementation in organisations with appropriate capacityand resources, and the ability to sustain itself.Mulgan et al (2007) present the problem rather differently by modifying a model of how ideas arespread in a business context. They provide a spectrum of models based on different levels of controlretained over ‘what, who, where and how’ diffusion occurs. This ranges from ‘uncontrolleddiffusion’ where the idea is allowed to spread informally through ‘directed diffusion’ which caninclude promotion through formal networks, and various loosely controlled scaling up mechanismssuch as federations, licensing or franchising (this probably comes closest to Leat’s model describedabove); through takeover by a more powerful organisation to finally organisational growth. Theyexplore the appropriateness of these different models in terms of issues relating to the innovatingorganisation and the context. These concerns mirror issues discussed in the business literature inrelation to the growth of small firms or the development of an initial innovation to a more widelyavailable product / service and within the innovation literature in relation to whether an innovationAppleby Ltd July 2009