“Companies do not fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes around them. They fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves.”
– Jim Collins
“To innovate continuously, you need to be open to receiving great ideas from anywhere in the company, and must have systems and processes to manage idea gathering, evaluation, and development. Often this requires a financial and personnel investment.”
– Braden Kelley
“Somehow I can’t believe there aren’t many heights that can’t be scaled by one who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy, and the greatest of these is Confidence.”
– Walt Disney
What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?
Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!
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I’m seeing an increasing number of articles about innovation personalities and the like, and I’m a firm believer that it’s not personalities that matter so much when it comes to innovation, it’s the roles that we play in making innovation happen (or not). So, I would like to add my Nine Innovation Roles to the conversation.
Too often we treat people as commodities that are interchangeable and maintain the same characteristics and aptitudes. Of course, we know that people are not interchangeable, yet we continually pretend that they are anyway — to make life simpler for our reptile brain to comprehend. Deep down we know that people have different passions, skills, and potential, but even when it comes to innovation, we expect everybody to have good ideas.
I’m of the opinion that all people are creative, in their own way. That is not to say that all people are creative in the sense that every single person is good at creating lots of really great ideas, nor do they have to be. I believe instead that everyone has a dominant innovation role at which they excel, and that when properly identified and channeled, the organization stands to maximize its innovation capacity. I believe that all people excel at one of nine innovation roles, and that when organizations put the right people in the right innovation roles, that your innovation speed and capacity will increase.
The Revolutionary is the person who is always eager to change things, to shake them up, and to share his or her opinion. These people tend to have a lot of great ideas and are not shy about sharing them. They are likely to contribute 80 to 90 percent of your ideas in open scenarios.
2. Conscript
The Conscript has a lot of great ideas but doesn’t willingly share them, either because such people don’t know anyone is looking for ideas, don’t know how to express their ideas, prefer to keep their head down and execute, or all three.
3. Connector
The Connector does just that. These people hear a Conscript say something interesting and put him together with a Revolutionary; The Connector listens to the Artist and knows exactly where to find the Troubleshooter that his idea needs.
4. Artist
The Artist doesn’t always come up with great ideas, but artists are really good at making them better.
5. Customer Champion
The Customer Champion may live on the edge of the organization. Not only does he have constant contact with the customer, but he also understands their needs, is familiar with their actions and behaviors, and is as close as you can get to interviewing a real customer about a nascent idea.
6. Troubleshooter
Every great idea has at least one or two major roadblocks to overcome before the idea is ready to be judged or before its magic can be made. This is where the Troubleshooter comes in. Troubleshooters love tough problems and often have the deep knowledge or expertise to help solve them.
7. Judge
The Judge is really good at determining what can be made profitably and what will be successful in the marketplace.
8. Magic Maker
The Magic Maker takes an idea and makes it real. These are the people who can picture how something is going to be made and line up the right resources to make it happen.
9. Evangelist
The Evangelist knows how to educate people on what the idea is and help them understand it. Evangelists are great people to help build support for an idea internally, and also to help educate customers on its value.
As you can see, creating and maintaining a healthy innovation portfolio requires that you develop the organizational capability of identifying what role each individual is best at playing in your organization. It should be obvious that a failure to involve and leverage all nine roles along the idea generation, idea evaluation, and idea commercialization path will lead to suboptimal results. To be truly successful, you must be able to bring in the right roles at the right times to make your promising ideas stronger on your way to making them successful. Most organizations focus too much energy on generating the ideas and not enough on developing their ideas or their people.
If you would prefer, here is a slide deck that I posted to slideshare.net:
Download the simple Nine Innovation Roles Worksheet from my FREE STUFF page and use it in your groups to help understand what innovation roles people tend towards and which ones are underrepresented.
Do you believe these are the roles that drive successful innovation? If not, why not.
Now that my local Blockbuster has gone out of business, I’ve made the jump and joined Netflix (although I will miss taking trips to Blockbuster with my daughter).
The first disc in my queue to arrive was the venerable, enjoyable Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
I was very excited to share this musical celebration of innovation with my daughter last night.
The story of course puts innovation (and learning from failure) front and center, and is a lot of fun at the same time.
The star object is of course the car, but the best supporting object as it were, is a sweet with holes in it.
At first nobody thinks much of the sweets with holes in them made by one of the Dick Van Dyke character’s inventions (“your sugar is getting too hot” comments Truly Scrumptious), but then he discovers that these sweets with holes in them can work like little miniature flutes and he thinks he is on to something. But, after demonstrating them at the candy factory a mob of dogs swarms the place, and he has to flee the scene (no sale). It’s only at the very end that the sweet failure is again transformed into a treat for dogs and everyone is going to become very wealthy as a result.
It’s a great lesson in changing perspectives, learning from failure when it does occur and also illustrates that sometimes you have to adapt an invention from your intended target market to another one in order to transform the invention into a successful innovation.
But, learning from failure is highlighted in an even more fun (and musical) way in the ‘The Roses of Success’ number.
If you’d like to see the video of the song, here it is:
And if you’d like to give the words a closer look, here are the lyrics (courtesy stlyrics.com):
Every bursted bubble has a glory!
Each abysmal failure makes a point!
Every glowing path that goes astray,
Shows you how to find a better way.
So every time you stumble never grumble.
Next time you’ll bumble even less!
For up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Oh yes!
Grow the roses!
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
(spoken)Yes I know but he wants it to float. It will!
For every big mistake you make be grateful!
Here, here!
That mistake you’ll never make again!
No sir!
Every shiny dream that fades and dies,
Generates the steam for two more tries!
(Oh) There’s magic in the wake of a fiasco!
Correct!
It gives you that chance to second guess!
Oh yes!
Then up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
Disaster didn’t stymie Louis Pasteur!
No sir!
Edison took years to see the light!
Right!
Alexander Graham knew failure well; he took a lot of knocks to ring that bell!
So when it gets distressing it’s a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes, Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success.
Grow the ro
Grow the ro
Grow the roses!
Grow the ro
Grow the ro
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Grow the ro
Grow the ro
Grow the roses!
Those rosy ro
Those rosy ro
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster, grow the roses of success!
Start the engines!
Success!
Batten the hatches!
Success!
Man the shrouds!
Lift the anchor!
Success!
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