That’s what you do with ideas, to see whether people start to salute them. Today’s roundup is about how - and how well - this is done, today.
Showing the way. As Thomas Edison argued (you’ll see it in the piece referred to in the next item), there are no failed experiments; there are just those that successfully show you what doesn’t work. More recently, Tom Peters has been an enthusiastic advocate of the approach wherein idea creation, testing, and termination are all done with rapidity, pouring the unexpended energy and lessons learned back into new ideas. These are powerful concepts, although, it must be added, there is the possibility that Google, a major practitioner, may be placing its current method of executing them under review.
But, Carmine Coyote, who authors Slow Leadership, is a believer in the value of aggressive and intelligent mistake-making (not as an end in itself, mind you, but as a means). She has offered a terrific essay on the topic. She begins, insightfully, by pointing out what the consequences are of trying to avoid this approach. You should stop over to see what those are.
Simulating the way. Innovation is so potentially important that people are seeking inspiration about it from multiple fields. This is one of the more intriguing: The Economist reported last week that the concepts of evolutionary design are being modeled in computers - the software programming is referred to as evolutionary algorithms - to help product designers in various industries determine what direction to take. This is a growing field, and you would do well to read this item.
Leading the way. We’ve looked before at this topic, including in this piece - which referred, by the way, to another Economist item about open source innovation. The main point of the post was that we can’t really force innovation onto our organizations. This article, produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit (a sister organization of The Economist - have all of you gotten your subscriptions to this magazine, yet?), outlines how poor we are at trying to do that (thanks to Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership for the tip to the piece).
It seems we need to find innovative ways to look at and generate innovation. Who would have thought? It’s kind of like those images hidden in broader patterns; you know they’re there, but the harder you look the less likely you are to discern them. We’ll be returning to that thought next year.
In the meanwhile, we wish everyone who will be observing it a great holiday weekend, and look forward to seeing you back on Wednesday.
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Today’s tip: Speaking of sources of innovation, take a look at this NYT piece on the continuing move toward appointing people from around the world to executive - especially CEO - positions in US companies.
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You should really try this out: If you double-click on any (non-hypertext-linked) word on the main page of the site, a window provided by Answers.com will open providing definitions or encyclopedic material about that term, together with links to additional sources of information. Try it out - it’s interesting and fun.
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10 Comments
Hi Jim,
Innovation has to balance between process and creativity. One company, Seeds of Innovation, has found a way to do just that. I encourage everyone to check out their work.
Cheers,
Joe
Hi Joe,
Thanks for stopping in and offering this information. I will certainly look up Seeds of Innovation, at your suggestion, as soon as I get back.
Thanks, as always, for your visit and your ideas - and your work - and Happy Holidays to you!
On experiments. If you see trials of business ideas as experiments and you believe that no experiment you learn from is a failure, you can create a culture where people try things. You don’t have to get into “making it OK to fail” because there are no failures.
Which leads to innovation, which is vastly over-rated by most businesses who see it as the “magic stone” that will make all things profitable and by consultants who write books about it.
More often than not, the ability consistently to deliver on the promise of meeting customer wants drives profit more than innovation.
Sometimes innovation is confused with creativity. Creativity is coming up with good ideas. Innovation is selecting ideas, modifying them and combining them to create a positive change.
Sometimes we see innovation as a few magnificent changes that create huge profits and upon which who industries are based. There are those, to be sure. But for most businesses, most of the time, innovation is far closer to kaizen or what James Brian Quinn called “logical incrementalism.”
Wally,
This comment is a mine just loaded with valuable insight that deserves elaboration. Your observations about innovation - how it is represented, how it is perceived, what it really is - are very important distinctions that cause a lot of damage when not properly made, and generate a lot of value when they are. I hope we hear more about this from you on your site, soon.
It’s a tough call, but my vote for best line is: “for most businesses, most of the time, innovation is far closer to kaizen or what James Brian Quinn called “logical incrementalism.” Apply creativity to discovering your customers and their needs, and to developing ways to meet them, and innovation to doing so efficiently.
Thanks for your visit and valuable advice. Happy holidays to you, and great shopping at CostCo (I’m with you on that, too!).
Logical incrementalism always struck me as a great way to encourage innovation. Implied in the approach are ideas such as slow creativity, the opportunity for productive failure and so on.
I’m from UK and tutor on a couple of MBA programmes. I also made a film on leadership for the Institute of Directors where some of these ideas are explored. It can be seen at http://www.business100.co.uk
Declaration of Interest: I’m the author of ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll’ - Leadership ‘tamed’ with rock and pop culture. Acclaimed by Tom Peters
All the best
Peter Cook
Hello Peter,
Thanks for your visit and your observations. I look forward to viewing your material - thanks for the link and the reference.
I appreciate your reference to “productive failure” and its implications not just for innovation, but for an environmnent of organizational leadership.
Thanks again - hope to see more during 2008!
Jim wrote:
I appreciate your reference to “productive failure” and its implications not just for innovation, but for an environmnent of organizational leadership.
Hello again Jim and Happy New Year!
On the subject of failure and innovation, I sponsored a rock world tour for a cult punk rocker - the venture failed due to an over emphasis on invention and rather less focus on innovation. Too much inspiration and no perspiration. Nonetheless the lessons from this ‘comedy of errors’ compare favourably with comic rock films such as the Blues Brothers and Spinal Tap.
Some of the more unusual aspects of the tour are summarised at http://www.academy-of-rock.co.uk/tour - there are 3 articles collected there.
All the best
Peter
Hello again Peter, and Happy New Year to you!
“Too much inspiration and no perspiration.” - that’s a good line, summing the issue up pretty well!
Thanks for the link; I look forward to viewing the articles. And thanks again for your visit and your terrific work.
Hi Jim,
Happy NY to you and your online community.
It’s perhaps an unpleasant thought to reduce the perspiration comment to ‘blood, sweat and tears’, nonetheless it is true that ‘ideas are cheap’ and executing them requires hard sweat.
In the words of Billy Ocean ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’
Very best from an overcast UK!
Peter
Thanks again Peter - overcast is better than raining (which we can use more of here in Istanbul)!
Happy New Year to you and yours as well!
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