How might teams grow innovation capability?
It grows differently in every team, in every context, and in every relationship with complexity.
This site documents doctoral research into what that could look like in practice. The research comes out of my Relational Design practice and feeds back into it. At its centre is an artefact built around Hautū Waka, a design methodology for wayfinding in complexity. It gives teams a shared narrative for the work: not a linear framework, but six phases, each both a stage and a state, that the work moves through forward, around and back as it needs.
How it works – TL;DR
1: Enter the narrative
The narrative is Hautū Waka, developed by Roimata Taniwha-Paoo and Ayla Hoeta under the guidance of Matua Rereata Makiha. It acts as a shared mythic container of experience, language and meaning.
2: Use the tools
Nine tools help teams ground the narrative, turning metaphor and story into practical decisions. Any of them can be used in any phase, and your own tools can join them.
3: Grow the muscles
Using the tools, inside the narrative, grows the collective muscles a crew needs to find its way through unpredictable, complex change. There are five, one for each dimension of Te Whare Tapa Whā. This is how a team grows its capability to innovate.
The Reflexiv crew
Baruk Jacob
Chief Conspirator
He Tangata Tiriti ahau, nō Inia ahau. E noho ana ahau ki Kaipātiki ki Tāmaki Makaurau, e mahi ana ahau ki CounterFactual. Ko Baruk Jacob tōku ingoa.
I work as Director – Relational Design at CounterFactual Studio, a behaviour change studio working at the intersections of Sustainability, Resilience and Engagement. I am particularly inspired to learn from oral cultures, and believe that orality has much to teach us about living and thriving in an increasingly post-literate world.
My whakapapa (ancestral layers and connections to land) is to the Kumbanad family of Kerala and the Hmar tribe of Mizoram, both in modern-day India, and I am tangata tiriti in Aotearoa New Zealand. I am currently doing a PhD, exploring approaches to growing innovation capability in teams.
Koda Laldogpuia
Dogface Poobum
I neba beg for food five minutes after a meal. I neba has poisonously stinky farts when Baruk is on an important call. I is head of security. I is very good at protecting the neighbours house from demselves. Dey lub dat I always tell dem when dey come home to dey house.
Sometimes I show Baruk's friends & colleagues my sharp teeth and loud barks because otherwise how dey know? I also head of motivation for Baruk. If he don work and make money to buy me food, I eats his books. Sometimes I eats his books anyway as a friendly reminder.