Innovation or Idea Generation

You don’t need to be a Nano-technologist to start innovating. You don't have to be Einstein either to disrupt standards. Well, actually, you do — Einstein himself said that his greatest asset was his imagination, not his knowledge. Well the buzz word in all organizations is all about Innovations. Not just within the organization but also within the whole wide world. Everyone is talking about Innovation and idea generation. My manager had forwarded an amazing article on Innovation, the one that was catalogued by HBR (Harvard Business Review). It was just an article on how innovations evolve or what can be done to foster the culture of innovation.

Not every organization is a Google or an Apple to develop and foster the culture of innovations or innovate something new every other day. The opportunity as it stands now is not in the hands of the beholder but like Harvard puts it “Give your best employees, the most monotonous or stultifying issues – they will come up with approaches and solutions to annihilate the inefficiencies and enable new opportunities for value added enhancement and growth”. Come to think of it who best can get that idea or who best can think through the situation to accomplish the final goal? If you want something to get done, give it to a busy person because they have the energy, incentive and capability to do it. 

The other day, I was reading about Thomas Edison. He was the most innovative man of his times and if not for him we would be in Stone Age forever or would have been using a computer under the candle lightJ. His company Edison labs was all about innovations and researches and failures of course. He had innumerable ideas and had researchers to try and test if it could be done. Well did anyone know that when he invented quadruplex telegraph and wanted to sell it. He didn’t expect more than $4000 and was surprised to hear an offer of $10,000?

DreamWorks (yes the movie making unit) seems to be the best Innovation and Idea generation firm - where even accountants & lawyers are trained to provide ideas – no wonder they are able to bring out lot of good animation box office movies like Shrek, Madagascar, etc. So what makes it different from other companies? The company it seems takes pain to keep all employees up to speed on new projects and trains all workers to pitch their ideas effectively “that’s what engages people. To feel integrated and part of the company, no matter what your job is”.

Some critical success factors that I feel which provide a platform for innovations are as follows:

-          Willingness to take risk and see value in Absurdity – Albert Einstein had said “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Give people the chance to take risks. Otherwise you are just creating the obvious ones.

-          Visible Senior Management Involvement - It motivates employees to have their ideas and innovations get that limelight that it deserves – getting noticed and above all a visibility of their achievements. Senior management involvement also catapults the idea to a bigger arena of major players. And the pursuit of game changing innovation cannot happen unless the person who can provide the cover and yes to big changes.

-          Foster teamwork in support for passionate champions – A passionate champion can make decisions and engage the team to support the decisions. Otherwise consensus sinks between ideas to its lowest possible value.

-          Ability to synthesize facts – A person who can identify issues and has the ability to synthesize these facts quickly to a workable solution gives the right balance in the innovative team.

P.S. The biggest enemy of Innovation is “Brainstorming” – Killing an idea before it’s born.