Having tried different approaches to innovation we started attempting to do events which are just opposite of what we do on a normal day-to-day. It goes with a peculiar name 'Kairos', as is the peculiar nature of the event itself.
What is it all about: Kairos is free flow day (more or less) where there is no bounds for ideas, be it in the current products or new technologies. Team members form groups amongst themselves and work on their ideas, make rapid prototypes or sketches, work on a pitch and present it to the product teams at the end of the event. There is no time-keeping per se, some team gets moving in matter of minutes, other team get to spread over days.
To understand this approach to innovation, let us go back to the golden days of free-thought, Greece!
The Greeks had a dual representation of time - Chronos (our modern approach) and Kairos.
Chronos (the quantitative measure of time), which is the widely used - clock and calendar based approach. In essence, we split time into a linear sequence – 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours to a day, 7 days a week and so on…
In chronology, our understanding of time is that each hour is equivalent to any another hour for reference and they are interchangeable in terms of value. This thinking leads to our measures in project sizing like man-hours treating each hour as having same level of productivity as any other hour of the clock...
However this is good only for well-defined and repeatable endeavors. This representation of time fails miserably when dealing with abstract ideas or to explain creativity and genius. For example, when it comes to value, an hour of Picasso's would not have been the same as an hour of any other artist of his time.
So in comes...
Kairos (qualitative measure of time), which is not widely used in our day-to-day, but is being realized to be key to innovation and break-throughs... Artists, thinkers and even sports personalities believe that the time-instance of peak performance is the key to success and any other time-instance is not of same or of equivalent value. This is in stark contrast to chronological approach to time, where each segment is treated of equal value.
An example of Kairos in Archery... An Archer would take several seconds to prepare to take position, load-up, aim the target and shoot. However the key ‘second’ is when she is actually shooting with all the focus and energy she's got, that single moment or ‘instant’ is crucial. It significantly determines the success or failure of her performance more than any other point of time. Hence the claim in Kairos, that all the chronological moments are not of same value. Spontaneity is the essence.
A popular example of Kairos is the Eureka moment that Archimedes had, an opportune moment that he realized in an unconventional setting of a bath-tub. There are several historical events that serves as showcase of Kairos.
Our innovation event is named Kairos, to highlight the focus on creativity, to deviate from routine, to inspire all to think different, and to celebrate those differences. All with our hope to bring the ‘Eureka’ moment that any innovation event badly needs.
Kairos lets us get away from the time-boxed day, at least momentarily!
Let me know your organization's approach to innovation... what are you doing that is different... how is that helping... share your stories in the comments.
