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# Corporate innovation and wicked problems
- URL: https://www.pesec.no/is-corporate-innovation-a-wicked-problem/
- Published: 2021-04-26T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-04-26T07:00:01.000Z
- Description: Of breeders and tamers.
- Author: Bruno Pešec
- Tags: Innovation

In my view, corporate innovation is a systemic challenge because every large enterprise consists of a multiple formal and informal sub-organisations, while overlapping and edging with a number of other organisations, communities, and ecosystems.

Further, I've experienced corporate innovation to be a breeding ground for [wicked problems](https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730?ref=pesec.no)—i.e. problems with complex, interconnected, and dynamic causes that cannot be fully addressed or resolved.

Defining characteristics\* of such problems are:

1. You don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.
4. Every wicked problem is essentially unique and novel.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one-shot operation.’
6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

Above are best tackled in a collaborative and iterative manner, learning fast and adjusting direction as needed. Wicked problems can be tamed, as long as you know how.

*\*Conklin, E. J. (2008). [Wicked Problems & Social Complexity](http://cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf?ref=pesec.no). CogNexus Group.*