Editor's Corner
Protecting Innovation
In today's world of high complexity and competition, innovation is required not only for improvement and growth, but for survival.
So what is innovation? Academic definitions abound and no two seem to match exactly. (e.g. X,Y,Z).
Rather than quibbling over minor wording differences, let's start with a "good enough" definition that seems to take into account the most important aspects:
Innovation is the ability to generate and execute new ideas - incremental, evolutionary, or revolutionary—and it starts with creativity. (IDEO 2025)
If we can agree that innovation is important for everyone, no matter the specific context, then it is worthwhile spending some time understanding what enables an individual or group or organization to be innovative.
The first question we should examine is, "Can individuals by innovative on their own?" and the simple answer is "yes". The more nuanced answer is, "yes - but it requires some specific skills that not everyone has." For an individual to be innovative, they need:
- Curiosity - In general, curiosity means a strong desire to learn or know. In the context of innovation, it can also mean more specifically establishing behaviors that question the status quo (asking the five whys, and why not and what if). Curiosity also requires openness to new ideas and developing comfort with the risk and change.
- Creativity - Closely linked to curiosity, creativity is the ability to generate original and unique ideas. As a skill, this includes utilizing techniques to promote divergent thinking and explore multiple possibilities while resisting the urge to settle on a single idea too quickly. Creativity also includes developing one’s imagination — the ability to concretely visualize what can be versus what is. (CLO 2023)
- Problem Solving - Trying to solve a problem is often the root of innovation. Identifying and resolving problems can lead to developing new ideas and processes. (CLO 2023) Solving a problem depends on correctly identifying its cause so the best solution can be selected and implemented for sustained results. (ASQ 2025)
- Critical Thinking - We must be able to analyze the problem(s) being addressed. Critical thinking explores underlying issues and root causes, clarifies gaps between the current and desired states, analyzes risks and rewards, and evaluates the outcomes of experimentation and prototyping. (CLO 2023)
- Resilience and Adaptability - Though two separate skillsets, these are closely enough related that it is worth discussing them together here. Resilience is the ability to cope with setbacks — particularly learning and moving on from failures. Adaptability is the flexibility with which humans cope with environmental challenges (modified from Brown 2012) and
is necessary to cope with the waves of change experienced in cultures of continuous innovation. (CLO 2023)
As an individual, we can begin to understand how we fair in these areas. But being a creative, curious, problem solving, critically thinking, resilient and adaptive person does not guarantee innovation. The truth is, while an individual can be innovative, the tackle truly complex problems often requires a team. The last critical skill an individual often needs to be innovative (IDEO) in itself implies the team context:
- Collaboration - "Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. It occurs when humans come together and collaborate, which can happen at many levels." (CIO 2023) Collaboration is working effectively with a broad ranging group of other people, communicating clearly, embracing a range of perspectives, and sharing knowledge.
I've heard many different people share their views that systems engineering is by necessity a group activity. Whether it be people at conferences siting our discipline as a "team" or "contact" sport, the frequent statement that systems engineering "can't happen in a vacuum", or the implication in the 2019 update of the definition of systems engineering by the INCOSE Fellows as "transdiciplinary", we as a community seem to agree that we have to have multiple perspectives from multiple people to be successful. The same is true for innovation.
In any group - be it a team focusing on a specific problem or a large business organization or enterprise - innovation has become a common theme. And there are things that groups need to do to foster innovation. Though there are a lot of ways to think about what makes an organization innovative, I've had success in my career working with the Quality of Interaction or Qi index. This is a tool that allows groups to assess how innovative they are by looking at two main factors: psychological safety and cognitive diversity. Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. (Reynolds and Lewis 2018) Innovation - and in fact most problem solving efforts - include things like brainstorming, where it's important to get many different ideas on the table. In an environment without psychological safety, however, people generally only share ideas that fit within the current status quo. If innovation is in part challenging the status quo, it is easy to see how this could stifle innovation. Cognitive diversity is having differences in information, experiences, and processing styles within a group. A study by Reynolds and Lewis in 2017 found that a specific aspect of this - how individuals think about and engage with new, uncertain, and complex situations - was one of the most critical aspects of cognitive diversity for fostering innovation.
What does it look like if groups don't have both characteristics of cognitive diversity and psychological safety?
(Hutcheson and Jones 2018)
Sincerely,
Learn More
Wolt Fabrycky
Oklahoma State University Page on Wolt Fabrycky: https://ceat.okstate.edu/iem/people/cowboy-academy/wolter-fabrycky.html
Wikipedia page on Wolt Fabrycky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolt_Fabrycky
Wolt Fabrycky's Obituary: https://obituaries.virginiacremate.com/obituaries/charlottesville-va/william-scherer-12057631
Blanchard and Fabrycky. 2013. Systems Engineering and Analysis. 5th Edition. https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Engineering-and-Analysis/dp/1292025972/
Fabrycky. 2010. "Systems Engineering: Its Emerging Academic And Professional Attributes." ASEE 2010 Annual Conference and Exposition. https://peer.asee.org/systems-engineering-its-emerging-academic-and-professional-attributes
Theusen and Fabrycky. 1992. Engineering Economy. Pearson College Division. https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Economy-G-J-Thuesen/dp/0132799286/
Paul Collopy
SERC Article on Paul Collopy's Leadership and Contributions to Systems Engineering: https://sercuarc.org/celebrating-dr-paul-collopys-leadership-and-contributions-to-systems-engineering/
Paul D. Collopy and Peter Hollingsworth.“Value-Driven Design.” Journal of Aircraft 48(3). May 2012. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.C000311
Paul D. Collopy. “Managing Technical Risk.” IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, Montana, March 8-12, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2015.7119093
Jon Wade, Jorge Buenfil, and Paul Collopy. “A Systems Engineering Approach for Artificial Intelligence: Inspired by the VLSI Revolution of Mead & Conway.” INCOSE INSIGHT. 23(1):41-47. March 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/inst.12284
Paul Collopy, Valerie Sitterle, and Jennifer Petrillo. “Validation Testing of Autonomous Learning Systems.” INCOSE INSIGHT. 23(1):48-51. March 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/inst.12285
Paul D Collopy. “Systems Engineering Theory: What Needs to be Done.” IEEE Systems Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia, April 13-16, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1109/SYSCON.2015.7116807
Taylan G. Topcu, Konstantinos Triantis, Richard Malak, and Paul Collopy. “An Interdisciplinary Strategy to Advance Systems Engineering Theory: The Case of Abstraction and Elaboration.” Systems Engineering. 23(6):673-683. 18 August 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/sys.21556
Dinesh Verma, Paul Collopy, and Spiros Pallas. 2018. Systems Engineering Research Needs and Workforce Development Assessment. Hoboken, NJ: Systems Engineering Research Center, Stevens Institute of Technology. SERC-2018-TR-102. https://sercproddata.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/technical_reports/reports/1529521319-A013_SERC%20RT%20174_Technical%20Report%20SERC-2018-TR-102.pdf
Bill Scherer
University of Virginia In Memoriam page on Bill Scherer: https://engineering.virginia.edu/faculty/memoriam-william-t-scherer
University of Virginia Dean's Message on William T. "Bill" Scherer: https://engineering.virginia.edu/news-events/news/message-dean-william-t-bill-scherer
Bill Scherer's LinkedIn Post on "Scherer and Smith. "Time to Rethink Professional Training.": https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7255326467566264320/
Gibson and Scherer. 2007. "How to Do Systems Analysis." Wiley Interscience. https://www.amazon.com/How-Systems-Analysis-John-Gibson/dp/0470007656/
Richards, Gorman, Scherer, and Landel. 1995. "Promoting Active Learning with Cases and Instructional Modules." Journal of Engineering Education, 84(4): 375-381. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2168-9830.1995.tb00193.x
Smith, Scherer, and Conklin. 2003. "Exploring Imputation Techniques for Missing Data in Transportation Management Systems." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 1836(1). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3141/1836-17
Hauser and Scherer. 2001. "Data mining tools for real-time traffic signal decision support & maintenance." 2001 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. e-Systems and e-Man for Cybernetics in Cyberspace, Tucson, AZ, 07-10 October 2001. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/973490