Let's dive into some current ways to use innovation. These are a combination of techniques I've used over the years in my career in the software industry, as well as ideas I've had more recently about up and coming innovations.
Creator Thinking
This is more of a mindset. The idea is that when planning on using innovative tech solutions, they may not provide what we want. Often, by switching to a creator mindset we can build a solution ourselves and have significantly more control over the outcome. As an example, let's say you need a modern AI chatbot LLM that has a specific safety component such as "suitable for teens in New Zealand." If you think about using ChatGPT or Claude you'd likely come to realize those can't be constrained enough to meet your safety needs reliably. And there probably isn't an off-the-shelf solution for such an LLM, either. But with a creator mindset, you can start thinking about how to build such a safety-constrained yourself. You might start looking into open source models such as DeepSeek that can be trained and otherwise controlled to suit your specific needs. Yes, it will likely entail development costs and QA costs, but the end goal is achievable and you'll have a significant amount of control over the outcome.
For more details, here's a sample prompt for ChatGPT that gives a good idea of the things to consider for building such an LLM chatbot:
If I want to build a general purpose LLM chatbot targeted at teens in New Zealand, how might I use an open source starting point such as DeepSeek to build what I want?
Hire or Fire?
Some big questions right now and in the coming years: will AI replace people in my office? Should I hire more people to handle the increased workload or should I rely on AI and get by with fewer people? Knowledge workers of all kinds are in the sink or swim situation here: use AI to help you do your job better or risk losing your job to someone who will use AI to augment their work. There are lots of stories of organizations either trying to get by with fewer people and relying on AI OR hiring more people and assuming that AI will not replace people at least in the near term. In my opinion it all comes down to how you view your workforce. If you view your staff as more or less cogs in a machine with well-defined functions then there's a good chance you can replace many of them with AI. If you view your staff as thinkers who can adapt to new situations then it's unlikely they can be replaced with AI anytime soon. There are a couple of underlyng questions here: Can your staff truly adapt to new ways of working? How do you view your staff, honestly?
What about replacing juniors with AI? Again, how do you view them? I do think juniors actually have more job security than senior staff. Why? Junior staff are more curious and malleable early in their careers. Those two attributes serve them well when the tidal wave of AI in the workplace hits.
Blockchain as universal ledger
This is a longer term trend that is good to be aware of. Blockchain technology is all about recording and maintaining contracts. Like a distributed ledger that can keep track of any set of contracts you can imagine. For example, a government entity like LINZ can create a blockchain that records transactions for all land in New Zealand. A house is sold, Rates are paid, a LIM report is stored, all on a blockchain created by LINZ. There is potential for abuse here, of course, and there are also lots of advantages that can be gained by such centralization of information. Blockchain technology can be used by anyone, private or government, as the technology is open source.
How to do risky innovation?
Whether you're working at a government agency or a business at some point you may want to do something new, something innovative. And immediately you'll get hit with "We don't have the time / money / risk appetite to do that." When I was working at Ministry of Justice the big fear was always "We don't want to appear on the front page of the Dom Post!" and that line was used as a way to say "We think that effort is too risky." I don't mean to pick on government here! There are plenty of objections in the business world, too: "The board won't approve." or "That'll cost too much." are common.
No matter where you work, here are some tips I've learned (usually painfully) for ways to get some innovation done, in order of effectiveness:
1) Timebox the work. This means allot a fixed amount of time to do the innovation. Make sure you have a clear outcome planned, which might be "proceed with a further 6-week trial" or "end the project" depending what the results are at the end of the timebox period. Be sure to set the timebox period to be the smallest that is meaningful for you. By setting a fixed length of time to evaluate the innovation, you've almost elimintated a typical fear: fear of the unknown. Your boss will be much more likely to agree to spend time on something if they know it's limited and there's clear outcomes one way or another.
2) Acknowledge risk. You may need to create some combination of these plans: risk awareness, risk management, risk mitigation. Even small versions of these can go a long way toward convincing management to spend some time on an innovation project.
3) Find a champion. This could be a person in your own or another group. If you can convince at least one other person to "join your cause" in some sense then you'll look less crazy to your boss. There's a big difference between you having an idea and even just one other person agreeing with you. If that person is outside your group, you now have two chains of command to try. Maybe the other's boss is more friendly to innovation?
4) How to be safe? Safety as a built-in ahead of time vs. figuring out safety later. I view safety as an attribute of a project. How much do you want? Does the innovation you're trying to do have a safety component that can be dealt with as you go or is it separate and to be considered later? I think it's absolutely possible to do innovation in a safe manner: just define the amount of safety you need up front and stick to it. Maybe the safety component slows down the innovation work, maybe not. Maybe the safety component is the innovation work!
Those are some ways I've learned to use innovation. It's a big topic and in our modern world the more innovation we can do the better. I hope these tips help or may spark some ideas of your own.