Authentic Organizations

Cause and effect. Intent and impact.

There’s a vast gulf of questionable causality captured by those ‘and’s.

How do we know if generative practices have generative impact?

It didn’t surprise me when this question came up at the HBS Digital Initiative seminar, since it’s been haunting me for some time.

The question haunts me because– if I can’t show that certain kinds of practices create opportunities  that other businesses take advantage of, I can’t rightly call those practices ‘generative’.

What are ‘generative’ practices? 

The practices have to make things happen that are new, not premeditated, not controlled by the giving organization, and not specifically predictable. Otherwise, they are productive practices (that make predictable things happen) but not generative practices (that create a much more open opportunity for new things to emerge).

My biggest assumption is that when a business makes resources easily available to other businesses, those business (or enough of them) will ultimately take up these resources and use them to good effect.

But do I know this is true?  Especially, how can I tell whether one company’s practice has had a generative impact when I can only look at what’s externally visible?

5 Ways to Assess Generative Impact

Here are five ways that I’m currently assessing generative impact, with the most concrete tactics first.   [click to continue…]

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