 Commentary by Praveen Gupta Subscribe via Email or RSS |  Biography |
June 6, 2008
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Seven Killers of Innovation |
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Corporate leadership understands innovation is important for success, employees understand how to innovate, and innovation occurs in every business. However, the extent and rate of innovation have been insufficient. I believe that following seven killers innovation suppress our innovation instincts: 1. Harmful Vocabulary – Words such as ‘used to, ‘hate it, ‘shut up,' and ‘why' have been used since childhood to discourage innovative thinking. The ‘used to' implies resistance to change, ‘hate it' is to demoralize a person, ‘shut up' is a personal attack on the innovator, and ‘why' is to discourage from trying something new.. 2. Standardizes Tests – SAT and ACT like standard tests promote rote test taking skills, and do not test for or encourage true learning. Individuals conforming to the norms succeed and have no reason to be innovative. 3. College Education and Grading System – Many college courses are taught in a crowd with a little interaction, require standard assignments, and promote regurgitation of the outdated material. Then these students are graded according to their test taking skills. Grading may make teaching easy, but limits learning. Teaching without grading generates in learning, a prerequisite for innovation.. 4. Group Thinking – Studies have shown that conventional group thinking methods are not suitable for innovation. Experience shows in a typical brainstorming session, only about 20-30% of attendees participate actively, while others remain passive. Instead of group thinking and fragmented execution, innovation requires grouped-individual innovative thinking, and networked execution. 5. Subject Expertise – Mastery of a subject poses a dilemma. On the one hand domain expertise is a necessary requirement for innovation, on the other hand expertise has an adversarial impact due to associated baggage – I know! 6. Focused – Similar to expertise, too much focus on one thing can limit free or diverse thinking and experience, inhibiting innovative thinking. 7. Too Busy – Most companies hire the best and brightest, and give them a little time to think. The highly qualified employees are kept busy fighting fires generated by rushed management decisions such as launch of new products, or shipment of products in an unrealistic time. The above list can be expanded by you. If you have experienced an innovation killer, share it here. |
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Comments [16] | Permalink |
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| Categories: Methodology | |
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| posted by Ellen Domb [ http://www.trizpqrgroup.com ] | June 6, 2008 at 6:53 pm |
Thanks, Praveen! My favorite/worst is "It will cost too much." It is a real killer, because the commenter assumes that he (she?) knows what "it" will cost AND that amount is "too much" -- leaving no room for discussion. Is it too much if we sell a million of them? Is it too much if we sell 10 of them? One rule in my TRIZ workshops is that nothing is rejected for costing too much. If we can find a way to achieve the objective, we can ALWAYS find a way to make it less costly. In 13 years I have never had this rule fail because of the method, but I have had it fail because someone who is resisiting the change is unwilling to try. I hope this starts a broad discussion on overcoming the negatives. |
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| posted by Praveen Gupta [ http://accelper.com ] | June 6, 2008 at 7:17 pm |
Ellen, I agree with you that cost is a major excuse used by people to suppress innovation. In my opinion, that excuse is another reason for more innovation. Whenever we experience constraints, that is an opportunity for innovation. Thanks for your comments, Praveen |
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| posted by Navneet Bhushan [ http://innovationcrafting.blogspot.com ] | June 7, 2008 at 2:08 pm |
I think the biggest Killer is "Yes, but ..." This in my experience has been used in so many brain storming sessions and general discussions to KILL very nicely and divert the attention to totally different dimension. I BAN this phrase to be used in my brainstorming sessions. As soon as some uses it others are instructed to cut-short the person! |
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| posted by Robby [ http://www.jamesrick.com ] | June 8, 2008 at 5:48 am |
Wow! well said. Those things are really killers and should be blamed for not coming up with different ideas. I was stunted by the 4th one : Group Thinking. I didn't know that could be a hindrance for us. Maybe brainstorming is actually good IF everyone participates and stops acting like a parasite. |
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| posted by Saeed Khan [ http://onproductmanagement.wordpress.com ] | June 10, 2008 at 0:03 am |
There's certainly a language needed to facilitate these kinds of discussions. Stating reasons why something won't work is easy and costs the speaker very little. Instead, people who object need to be required to define the problem that needs to be solved or the obstacle that needs to be overcome to move forward, and then propose a solution that can be discussed. Words like "disagree" are danger words. If asked "why", the person who disagrees can simply respond with an unsubstantiated claim to support their position. Before discussing potential for success of an idea, things like success requirements and key success factors (those are different things), should be listed and those are the things that are discussed. e.g. if someone wants to build a hydrogen car to address the very high cost of gas, then looking at the space around the car -- not just the technology -- but the things needed to make that successful should be listed and discussed. Some ideas are easier to shoot down than others, but the root problem they are trying to address may still be relevent. If the hydrogen car isn't viable, the problem it is trying to address still is (high cost of gas) and alternate solutions can be investigated. Saeed |
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| posted by fiona [ http://mp3aim.com ] | June 23, 2008 at 10:31 am |
Negative thinking too is a killer of innovation so always be positive. |
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| posted by Dani Bartov [ http://dandelion-fluff.blogspot.com/ ] | April 11, 2009 at 11:53 am |
In my experience, one of the biggest innovation killers is bureaucracy. When you have to go through layers and layers of administration for the approval process, and every individual feels they have to comment in some sort of justification of their job, 9 times out of 10 even if you began with an innovative idea you end with a slightly different version to what came before. True innovation comes when people are trusted to do the job they are hired to do. |
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| posted by Praveen Gupta [ http://www.accelper.com ] | April 11, 2009 at 7:31 pm |
Yes, Dani, you are right about bureaucracy being one the major hurdles to innovations. Culture of innovations flourish with freedom to think, and collaboration to commercialize. With the freedom comes fun. Having fun is a requirement for being innovative. Thanks for writing! Praveen |
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| posted by adrian ramsay [ http://www.prizminnovation.com ] | April 14, 2009 at 8:36 pm |
The killer, I see more often than not is that innovation means change and that scares people and egos get all caught up on this, I’ve seen many people say "yes" then go behind doors to undermine the process to hold onto their perceived value, before the job is even started as their fear gets a hold of them, the questions that race through many minds all have "I" in them, "will I be able" "will I look stupid" "will I still have a job" " I’m not creative" and so on, so finding a safe way to include everyone and “TeamBuild” is the approach I use with PRIZM, I call it “GameStorming” and base almost all activity’s around Games that allow people to have “Fun” as this is essential to Innovation. Often I think a “training” is a safer approach than a “WorkShop” as everyone has the opportunity to blame the Trainer rather than look like they didn’t take part or “get it” and be judged on the result. We guarantee a "WorkShop" result using their participants so this gets tricky, I’m open to suggestions. thanks for starting the discussion its great Cheers Adrian |
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