Innovation in Mission
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Spirituality of Innovation Discussion
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Spirituality of Innovation Discussion
Hey gang,
I had the most mind-blowing conversation with Ron Nehring yesterday. It was humbling to realize how much of a beginner I am in thinking about innovation.
He outlined three schools of innovation: Human Design Thinking, Functional Modeling, and Systematic Innovation. His preference is the Systematic Innovation found in Genrich Altshuller’s TRIZ.
So my newbie question is this: Are there attributes in these three schools which are more compatible with faith and spiritual discernment than others?
I can’t wait to get into deep discussions with all of you about this topic. If you’d like to do it in person. The Winter Launch Lab at Frontier Ventures is preparing a gathering over a weekend in Arizona this coming February. We’re calling it inno+faith 2024 and here’s the registration link for more information: https://Innofaith2024.eventbrite.com
You are deputized to invite a few key people who you think will be just the right kind of people to attend. We want all the right people in the room. We’re capping the size at 70 people and 9 have already registered.
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7 Replies
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Hey, Nate. Though not specifically knowledgeable about those three schools, I’d say that the design tools I know (from Stanford’s “D” School), are neutral. They can be used in the service of faith and the values of the Gospel.
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I love how you are thinking about this Nate and I appreciate your shout out to the d.school Jim. At the Chalmers Center, we are indebted to Stanford’s d.school and IDEO for their work in the field of innovation.
But as Christians, “human centered design” doesn’t go far enough as we consider how we can innovate in God’s world. There are a lot of things that I want as a human that do not please God (necessarily) or lead to my flourishing. French fries from Five Guys are amazing, but (from extensive experimentation) they do NOT help me flourish. 😂
Brian Fikkert and I have spent these last years focusing into Kingdom Centered Innovation. I would LOVE to have input from all of you on our process. Take a look at https://chalmers.org/training/innovate/ and please reach out to me with questions. tabitha.kapic@chalmers.org. Thank you friends and thank you for your ongoing work.
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Discover a better way Innovate Your organization and context plus Chalmers’ tools and coaching leads to ministries that help without hurting. Register for Innovate! Address the broken relationships at the root of material poverty Apply the design thinking process and … Continue reading
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Hi Tabitha! Absolutely. Our design process must be in the service of Kingdom values and appetites. Because the tools are neutral, we can use them for Kingdom goals, governed by our Kingdom values.
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Here’s my train of thought about it.
The business world has discovered a bunch of empirical thruths, and they develop them into ISOs that are geared for their use with specialized terminology.
To my mind, if anything is considered empirical, it must be God ordained. Therefore, God must have arranged for its existence for the purpose of bringing him glory or expanding his kingdom. It doesn’t belong to the business world. They just had the marketing or R&D budget to discover it.
We in ministry have been paying attention and so we work to adopt the philosophies to further the kingdom, but we don’t really do much to interpolate the concepts back into the original spiritual context that God may have intended.
Rather than thinking of these tools as neutral, might we instead consider them inherently advantageous? If so, how might we more intentionally re-appropriate the concepts in our own terminology? What role does spiritual discernment play in our innovation principles?
I’m sure that many of you are way ahead of me in this thinking. Has anyone had any success at spiritually innovating innovation?
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By “neutral,” I mean neither evil or nor good; rather than advantageous or not.
If we use the tools well, for God’s purposes, I think they are repurposed for the Kingdom. Advantageous.
That’s how I frame it; but others may frame it differently.
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Thanks for the clarification, Jim.
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It’s just my two cents; hope it adds to the discussion.
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