Research
Research led by Dr Stuart English at Northumbria University has demonstrated that an organisation’s capacity for innovation is dependent upon the way they perceive problems and opportunities. Organisations can sometimes be dominated by pre-conceptions and rely on familiar approaches to innovation, which may be inaccurate or not fit for the emerging challenges they face. This can create a tunnel-vision that excludes alternative potential opportunities or approaches, and thereby limits innovation and growth.
Through research conducted with SMEs, multinational businesses, and public sector organisations, English and his collaborators developed and studied how integrated mind-mapping techniques facilitate team-based workshop activities and combine multiple perspectives into one canvas for ease of navigation. Iteration of these techniques with 80 collaborating organisations resulted in the Multiple Perspective Problem Framing (MPPF) approach to design-led innovation. MPPF involves collecting various datasets which frame issues and opportunities from widely different, singular perspectives in order to evaluate, compare, and determine their commercial potential. MPPF synthesises this onto a single canvas of interrelated factors where the competing benefits and challenges of different perspectives can be seen in an original framing unique to each company. The collaborative process enables a company to visualise and navigate its relationship with technology, intellectual property, and commercialisation, allowing potential strategies to be robustly and holistically evaluated. English’s research also indicates how MPPF facilitates organisations in developing or refining their innovation strategy and product/service delivery to meet industrial and sectoral trends, ensuring the adoption of an economically sustainable route to internal innovation.
