Vincent Van Gogh, "The Sower," 1888. Image via Wikipedia
Innovators all!
That should be a natural, legitimate, goal for all organizations, but earlier this month, when I asked thirty-five senior managers from a well-known, successful, European consumer goods company "how many of them had innovation responsibilities?" the response was less than 20%. Clearly, I had set them up with a disarming question, but the results were so disappointing that we were all impressed with the need to rethink the value that we bring to our organizations -- and to ensure that innovation was included among our responsibilities, no matter what our functional description. Innovation is more than R&D and technology! After all, innovation in supply-chain has helped make Zara the success it has become, and Apple's retailing innovation is often overlooked until you walk into one of their amazing stores. Google and Pixar are justly celebrated for what can only be thought of as HR innovations, in order to get more fulfillment from the high-powered talent that they employ. Can we really think of any corporate function that could not use a bit more innovative thinking?
How then to improve the innovation contribution of all of us? I suggest three simple New Year's resolutions for 2012 in the spirit of becoming more effectively innovative:
- More effective conversations: Conversations are the basic building blocks of all innovation. An idea at rest adds no value, so an innovative organization must ensure that ideas are in motion, and better conversations are the way to do that. Open doors, values to encourage conversational challenges, and Devil's advocates, are all representative of easy ways to raise the probability of having better conversations. Think of this as conversational engineering and think about how to increase conversational partners, encourage conversations in locations that are conducive to inspiration, and at times when the participants are fresh and energetic. Too many critical conversational elements are too often left to chance!
- New conversational partners: When Vincent Van Gogh became despondent over a perceived lack of innovativeness, he arranged for Paul Gauguin to join him in Arles for a nine-week sojourn in order that they might learn from each other. The results, although ultimately corrosive to their friendship, resulted in unprecedented creative output for both. Why not pull a "van Gogh" and invite somebody different into the conversation for even a brief period to get new ideas?
- Prototype everything: Denmark's famed chef René Redzepi (of Noma) and California chef Daniel Patterson (of Coi), recently spent a weekend together in an experimental cooking-conversation (Food & Wine, January 2012) where they severely constrained their hunt for eligible vegetables to "two square meters of the California organic farm County Line Harvest," and foraged for sorrel in sight of the Golden Gate bridge. The result was twenty impromptu new dishes, all experimental, all created in a very short time, with no real expectations about perfection, but immensely valuable as the seeds for future innovation.
The best part of this is that none of these require investments, none require the mastery of new skills, and none should require "permission" from above. And, best of all, each of them should raise the likelihood of obtaining a good new idea. Not a bad way to start the new year!
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Bill Fischer is the co-author (with Andy Boynton & Bill Bole) of The Idea Hunter (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
Bill Fischer can be followed on Twitter at @bill_fischer
