Framing for Accountability in Innovation for Twitter #innochat December 17 at Noon EST (USA)

Accountability – the currency of social innovation

This post is to trigger dialogue on innovation in the moderated Twitter #innochat on Thursday, December 17 at Noon, EST (USA) – all interested parties are welcome to join in. Follow #innochat to join at that time.

“The ancient Romans had a tradition: whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work in the most profound way possible: he stood under the arch.” – Michael Armstrong

In its most elemental form, accountability is the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable; the state of being held, or holding oneself, to account. Yet, accountability as a concept is relatively new.

The term only came into wider usage a little more than two hundred years ago with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The later part of the 18th century began a marked shift in large sectors of Great Britain’s previously manual labor–based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. With this shift production, which previously had been personal, was now delegated not to one but several people in environments owned by others. The concept of accountability was literally tied to the formal process of physically accounting for labor and output. Answering the questions of: who contributed what and how?

What does accountability mean in the present context of innovation?

Accountability within innovation must navigate two primary challenges. The first is that as innovation
is the introduction of something new the manner for measuring its performance may not be readily apparent. Without clear performance measures there may be limits to what someone may be held to account.

The second is the way in which organizations increasingly develop innovation through teams of people, both internal and external to an organization, that cross that organization’s formal lines of responsibility and authority. Unless there are replacement methods for linking individual and group performance to innovation outcomes accountability may also fall by the wayside.

In light of this, here are three questions for consideration to kick off the #innochat:

1. What does it mean to hold people to account for innovation?
2. What systems or processes need to be considered to support accountability?
3. What does the practice of accountability look like in your organization?

For a more detailed exploration of some of the facets of individual and mutual accountability and organization design in their support the following articles provide some additional (read: detailed) food for thought:
Organizing for Innovation in the 21st Century. By Deborah Dougherty – Professor, Management and Global Business Dept, Rutgers Business School.

Teams versus individual accountability: solving multitask problems through job design. By Kenneth S. Corts