Sandra Sears

• How is your presentation relevant to the theme of this year’s BBC conference: Innovation in the Fast Lane?

What do business rules have to do with innovation? Innovation enables organizations to solve problems. However, there is no single path or methodology for achieving innovation. As Greg Satell wrote in Harvard Business Review, innovation can be classified into four categories based upon the answers to two questions:

• How well is the problem defined?
• How well is the domain defined?

The answer to these two questions will determine what type of innovation approach is best suited to finding the solution to a problem.

Naturally, understanding and having access to documented business rules enables an organization to better answer the above questions. In addition, “knowing your business (rules)” better enables you to better define a problem and to better understand the breadth of domain knowledge desirable in addressing a problem. Understanding business rules also jump starts the journey to creating a solution by enabling an organization to understand the magnitude and impact of change to an organization’s processes, data, procedures, and culture.

• What are your top tips for companies or employees wishing to innovate?

• Understand what problem you are trying to solve
• Look outside your business, your processes, and your standard way of doing things for ideas for problem solutions
• Look inside your business, your processes, and your standard way of doing things for ways to innovate and solve problems
• Try looking at the problem while standing on your head. The world will look very different!
• Try using familiar tools in unfamiliar ways.