Setting goals is critical for business. They define criteria that can be used to improve an existing system or keep an individual tracking on the same path with a fixed outcome.
Being SMART.
But innovation requires change. Setting fixed goals can help to improve existing systems but only at an incremental level. Innovation is about changing the system itself. Moving the goal posts. Breaking through.
Innovation does not start out as an Achievable, Realistic or Timely option,
but it is usually Smart.
Setting rigid SMART goals defines boundaries and limits the freedom. True innovation involves uncertainty and a possibility of failure. Addressing something that is not currently realistic. It requires inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules and making mistakes.
Being SMART in innovation should be a combination of the two; setting a vision to work toward. Providing direction but not fixating on the the how and the when. Accepting that it may be two steps forward, three steps back before a goal itself is finally achieved - and that that goal may not be the exact same one you started out to achieve in the first place.
Hypha is the tool to bring ideas and people together to work toward the vision in their own way, but reach the goal together.