Fredrik Haren, author of The Idea Book, was the keynote speaker at the 2009 PMI Global Congress - Asia Pacific this week in Kuala Lumpur. Fredrik is a provocative speaker, with a tremendous amount of energy. The audience thoroughly enjoyed his presentation.

He has captured and promotes an interesting definition of innovation. A person innovates when:

Two formerly known "things" are joined together in a different and new way.

Well, now, that is as simple as it gets. It is interesting in that I read an article on 6 February in the Financial Times (FT) that addressed this very definition. It was titled "Interoperability: The Great Enabler," by Michael Schrage, a researcher at MIT's Sloan School of Business, and the Imperial College Business School in London. Basically, Schrage supports that the prospect for innovation in the current environment has never been more robust. He attributes it to the fact that innovation is occurring to allow "things to interoperate" or work together.

Interoperability has traditionally been attributed to information systems working together at some scale, such as internet protocols allowing diverse data warehouses to mingle and work together. However, innovation in interoperability has allowed the internet to leapfrog from an information resource to become a telecommunications, multimedia, and multifunctional platform.

This means that products and services, and business processes for that matter, will be able to leverage one another, and, as Fredrik Haren said, join together in a different and new way. Consider the Nike Shoe Accelerometer interfacing with a pacemaker, to ensure that a cardiac patient doesn't over-exercise. Or, a new BMW automobile that will have complete internet connectivity a so that it can get real time adjustments in engine performance directly from the factory.

For the project world, interoperability presents both an opportunity and a challenge. In its purest sense, every PM needs to understand the impact that their project has on its environment. Traditionally, it has meant the immediate "connective surroundings." However, in IT projects, this is not simple. Nor will it be simple as every project is assessed with its interoperability with the environment.

In fact, when I queried Fredrik about advice for project professionals, he said that innovation in project teams will be best suited by spending more time in a rich dialog about what you are supposed to achieve. Ricardo Vargas, 2009 PMI Board Chair, interprets this as spending as much time on scoping as you do on any other part of the project. In fact, he believes that the real payoff in any project is robust development of both scope (requirements planning) and a risk plan. If we look to the interoperability of any project to its environment, there is a real opportunity for a breakthrough in project performance.

Well, that what I think today. Read the article for yourself and let me know what you think.

More later.