A How To Guide for
Bootstrapping the Innovation^TM 0

These Bootstrapping the Innovation^TM disciplines can be used to boost innovation within any innovation team or initiative tackling any important challenge or opportunity. Organizations wishing to dramatically improve the ease and effectiveness of such teams and initiatives are encouraged to form at least one innovation team focused specifically on boosting Collective IQ, with a mandate to rigorously apply all five of these Bootstrapping the Innovation^TM disciplines. This intentionality activates an Innovation Neural Network^TM throughout the organization. Large organizations would benefit from multiple such teams, while smaller organizations might have one very small team, and/or begin with a watered-down version. All organizations can benefit from joining forces with others on this path in an improvement alliance.

1. Focus on Capability: Collective IQ 1

For breakthrough innovation rather than incremental improvement, focus on an important capability;
For our purposes, we focus on boosting Collective IQ as the point of greatest leverage;
What is Collective IQ? Where to focus? How to improve exponentially? Study up (start here).

2. Engage your Innovators: ICs and NICs 2

Who has a stake in your initiative? Identify your customers, beneficiaries, champions, providers, related existing initiatives, etc.
Use the ABC Model to map out the relevant A, B, and C relationships (see Know Your Customer);
Network with selected stakeholders vertically and horizontally on your ABC map – think participatory and collaborative; start small, focused, then grow (see Making the Case below);
This is your improvement community (IC)
Establish a virtual venue enabling ongoing connectivity, share and exchange within and across your innovation network(s), including collaborative tools and processes.

3. Leverage your Collective IQ: Enhancing the DKE 3

This becomes your collective dynamic knowledge environment (DKE); pay special attention to the ease and quality of collaboration (CoDIAK), as well as the ease and quality of capture, integration, organization, and exploitability of the emerging collective knowledge repository (DKR); this whole piece is a core enabler for boosting Collective IQ;
Start simple, evolvable, open, with emphasis on evolvable; then expect to keep iterating; refer to OHS framework and Open Hyper Tools for some target requirements and guidelines;
This intentionality turns your IC into a NIC or networked improvement community.
Your ultimate goal is to shift paradigms, shift from iterating to morphing the DKE in extra-ordinary new ways.

4. Walk your Talk: Bootstrapping Leverage 4

Now you are engaged in boosting Collective IQ for your extended NIC and your core team, and, if your capability focus is Collective IQ, for your target end customers as well; rigorously harnessing what you provide to become a faster, smarter provider is the essence of bootstrapping
Be your own most demanding customer; experiment, push the envelope, stress test, weed out, feel the power of it, while working with your customers to delineate and refine requirements, as well as how much they are ready to deploy, and when.

5. Push the Frontier: Accelerating Co-Evolution 5

Adopt a pioneering attitude, you’re out on the frontier in a new paradigm, cultivating an adventurous, proactive, multi-disciplinary, experimental build-and-try innovation team;
Keep accelerating the co-evolution of both experimental tools and practices to advance your reach out on this frontier.
Join forces with like-minded pioneers in an improvement alliance (aka "C Community" aka NIC of NICs or MetaNIC).

As you keep practicing these five disciplines, the dynamic knowledge environment facilitating your innovation grows more and more powerful and robust, as does the emerging knowledge repository, serving as a vehicle for accelerative innovation, while your focus on Collective IQ, ABC networking, and bootstrapping the co-evolution are the catalysts. All translates into faster, smarter effectiveness and innovation in pursuing complex, urgent problems and opportunities.

RESOURCES 6

Augmenting Society's Collective IQs - vision highlights, connecting the dots, makes the case for this strategic approach for accelerating the evolution of our Collective IQ to its highest potential. This is a one-pager bird's eye view with hotlinks to the detail on each concept - a great jumping off point.
About a Bootstrapping Strategy - more detail and pointers on this strategic approach.
Making the Case - see Why Collective IQ?, Why Collective IQ Matters, SRI's Five Disciplines of Innovation, Patricia Seybold's Key Principles in Outside Innovation, and Tim Brown's Change By Design for starters.
Case examples and launch scenarios - coming soon.
Visit http://dougengelbart.org for additional resources and background.