When I’m out on the road speaking to audiences about innovation, it is reinforced again and again that innovation has become a buzzword, and much in the same way that people struggle to define love – there is no commonly accepted definition for innovation. Try asking someone:
“What is love?”
And then see if their definition matches your own. Chances are it will be completely different. Then ask them:
“What is innovation?”
Try this with a group of people and then the fun really begins.
In many cultures people talk about a language of love, mostly because the subject baffles most of us and we are always failing to truly communicate our love to the special people in our lives. And, if you think about it, often the most successful love language is non-verbal. I’m afraid this won’t work for innovation.
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A few years ago I looked around the corporate and consulting landscapes and I noticed that there was a talent gap in both places. There are many occasions when consulting firms look to their bench and don’t have the talent they need there to fulfill a client need right away and so sometimes they lose business to their competition. And on the corporate side, there are many occasions when a manager or director has more work than they can possibly do themselves and what they really need is not a consultant but a smart, flexible resource that can parachute in and get up to speed helping them very fast. Having been called in to fill both of these kinds of gaps from time to time alerted me to the existence of these two market needs, and so I started to create extendedbench.com.
Prevailing business culture these days is obsessed with speed. People are obsessed with fast prototyping, failing fast, and getting to market fast. But too often people don’t stop to think whether their innovation efforts are going too fast. It’s almost as if the word premature is fast becoming as taboo in the boardroom as it is in the bedroom.
People love the idea of ‘accidental innovation’. The term ‘accidental innovation’ is often used to describe the invention of things like penicillin, microwave ovens, Nutrasweet and vulcanized rubber. The stories behind these accidental innovations are intoxicating because they make it seem like innovation can come from anywhere – in an instant. But often people don’t tell the whole story behind these accidental innovations. As a result, people get the impression that innovation is easy, they confuse ideas with innovation, and as a result, a project-based approach to innovation is reinforced.
When it comes to education, we should adopt Nike’s famous motto and ‘Just Do It’.
