Even the NY Times agrees - Innovators are Rebels
Yesterday, I talked about Innovators being Mavericks.
Today, the NY Times web site ran a front page article entitled Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge?
“In addition to openness, tolerance is essential in an inventive modern society,” a report sponsored by the Lemelson-M.I.T. Program said last year. “Creative people, whether artists or inventive engineers, are often nonconformists and rebels. Indeed, invention itself can be perceived as an act of rebellion against the status quo.
Clearly, innovation creators face internal hurdles in almost any organization. It is critical that companies both recognize this an work to address those hurdles. Innovation Creators aims to discuss exactly what those hurdles are and outline the steps that organizations must take if they want to produce a constant and profitable stream of innovation.
In today’s hyper competitive environment, companies can only have one status quo: constant change.
As an example, look at Google. Google is designed for constant change. Google has deliberately build a culture that encourage internal entrepreneurs, and produces results with their “release early, release often” mantra.
That is true innovation.
It’s interesting that the NY Times article talks about James E. West, who used to work at Bell Labs. A few months ago, on a flight to SFO, I sat next to Dr. Curtis Crawford, who used to be the head of Bell Labs. Dr. Crawford was Mr. West’s boss. I showed Dr. Crawford the early version of my “Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators” paper. That paper is being released on this site.
Dr. Crawford said something very interesting: “Invention is not innovation. An innovation is applied invention. An innovation makes money.”
There is lies the key. Organizations that can take the genius of lab work and apply it to things people use - that’s the engine that makes our economy a success. To do this takes massive internal communication between people who understand the market, people who understand the product and sales process, finance and the inventors. The water that makes this river of innovation flow is open communication and tolerance of new ideas.
Hence, my inevitable argument for acceptance of Mavericks and for internal communication tools, such as Blogs and Wikis.
By the way, if you are interested in learning more about how Dr. Crawford helped to turn the inventions of people like James E. West into profitable products, you should check out his new book:
