Makinginnovationmore

I was thinking over the weekend that for years we've positioned innovation incorrectly.  Too often we position innovation as creating a new and valuable offering or solution, ready when customers are ready to demand new products and services.  In other words, we've positioned innovation as something to do to prepare for future business, future needs and future demands.  Innovation does answer for these issues - identifying needs and developing ideas for products and services for unmet and perhaps unanticipated needs.

But in the hustle and bustle of day to day business, the main focus is on the now.  What can you deliver today, this week, this month, this quarter?  How can you help me achieve my quarterly revenue and income goals?  Sure, the future is nice, but I'll worry about that when I get there.  With this mentality, cost cutting, becoming more efficient, gradual but general improvement is the key focus, not innovation per se.

Making innovation more relevant right now

So the question becomes, how do you make innovation more relevant, right now, to executives and managers who are so focused on the short term?  One approach would be to focus on the "short term", what can innovation do for us to put better products on the shelves in less than 90 days.  The general answer to that, given product development cycles, channel issues and customer awareness is:  no much, except perhaps in the virtual world.  Building, modifying and releasing a physical product is going to take more than 90 days, and 90 days is the magic timeframe.  Anything we can do to impact revenue and cost within 90 days is good.  The timeframe beyond 90 days seems almost imaginary.

Innovation, where practiced at all, becomes incremental because of this pressure to generate rapid results.  Even if we can speed up innovation activities (we've run innovation programs from problem definition to fully developed prototypes in under a week) you've still got to go through the product development and launch cycle.  This means innovation will be focused on items and attributes around the periphery - messaging, packaging, claims, rather than interesting or radical innovation of the product or solution.

Another approach is to use innovation to ferret out efficiency gaps.  If we can't create better products and services, can we use innovative thinking to shorten any barriers or gaps to bringing our products to market with less cost or with fewer inputs?  This has been the management focus for years - right-sizing, outsourcing, automating.  It doesn't necessarily lead to new products but may lead to less expensive products or more rapid turns of incremental products.

So, while we can speed up the existing processes and use innovation to identify gaps or inefficiencies, or use innovation to make some changes to the periphery of the product or service, there's not a lot of innovation that can be delivered and impact the bottom line in 90 days or less.  So we need to think about innovation differently, or perhaps in different categories.

Categorizing innovation

Clearly, as I've defined above, there's a real need for focus on process and peripheral innovation.  These innovations are meant to gradually improve the product or service, cut costs and deliver more bottom line value, and to do so quickly.  The driving pressure for this innovation focus is cost reduction, time reduction and the desire to show customers something "new", even if the newness is relatively minor.

There's also a need for preventative innovation.  I'll call any work to blunt attacks by existing competitors or new entrants as preventative. This kind of innovation identifies potential openings and gaps in a product line, or new "in demand" features or benefits that you don't currently offer.  Preventative innovation considers a slightly longer time frame - perhaps 2 or 3 quarters - doesn't necessarily create a new product as much as identify missing features or product line gaps and carefully evaluate what competitors and potential entrants are doing.

Then there's radical or disruptive innovation, creating a completely new product or service, or disrupting an existing adjacent market.  This kind of innovation takes focus and planning, commitment for quarters or even years, and full commitment over several planning and budgeting cycles.  This kind of innovation ends up on the magazine covers and is what every CEO wants but can't quite understand how to deliver given the demands for quarterly results.

Three horizons

The three categories I've defined above are exceptionally similar to the "three horizons" model that many innovation consultants talk about.  But rather than call them "incremental", "radical" and "disruptive" I think it makes more sense to describe them based on what they are:  constant evolution, preventative and creative.

The first type of innovation is necessary (and is almost always underway) because your products and offerings can't sit still.  You must find ways to cut costs, make your delivery more efficient and tinker around the edges of existing products.  The second type of innovation is probably the least understood, because too many companies don't understand what their competitors are doing, and are often shocked by the offerings of new entrants.  Companies need to do a lot more preventative innovation, from a defensive point of view, to ward off new entrants and sustain or grow market share.

Everyone acknowledges the importance of creative innovation - that is, the creation of a completely new offering that radically changes the competitive landscape - but few truly know how to do it or are willing to commit the resources to do it.

Investment cycles

Here's where every innovation consultant will lecture you about how much time and investment should be made in each of these three portfolio segments.  You can think about the three horizons, or my evolution, preventative and creative phases, as components of an innovation portfolio and next ask:  how much time, energy and investments should go into each one?  The general rule of thumb answer is 70:20:10.  Seventy percent of your innovation effort should go into evolution, 20% into preventative and so on.  But what if your budget for innovation is:  zero?  What if executives demand innovation but don't provide budgets or funding or resources?

The inevitable fall back position is to conduct efficiency innovation (evolution) because that's something your teams understand and can do relatively well now.  And, of course, you'll build and staff one high profile team to explore some really interesting innovation (creative) but they won't have the commitment or funding to stick it out - it's merely window dressing, because you expect to show some immediate results from the evolution innovation in the next few weeks and everyone will be satisfied.

Let's change the language

I think innovation champions and teams would do themselves a big favor by refocusing innovation language and talk about innovation in line with processes and outcomes.  We can flavor our language with:  evolutionary innovation to deliver short term benefits, preventative innovation to resist new entrants and sustain market share, creative innovation to win adjacent markets and customers.


Once we win the language battle and demonstrate we can deliver on evolution and preventative efforts, we can get the funds and resources to do truly creative innovation.

In television, an outlandish episode that seeks to introduce revive a series often signals the eventual downfall of the show.  Those old enough to remember the TV series Happy Days will remember the episode when Fonzi jumped the shark on water skis.  This gave us the expression that something had "jumped the shark", an event signalling an inevitable downfall.

Today I'm wondering if making a movie about toys is a signal that something has "jumped the shark".  In strange and disappointing news, Lego announced that it was facing dire sales projections, with growth slowing from over 25% per year to low single digits.  Strange, when just a few years ago Lego was on top of the world, with great new toys, Lego kits, Lego Robots and the Lego movies.  While the management team blames internal complexity for the slowdown, those factors don't necessarily contribute to slowing sales.  Rather, I suspect that a company that had been on the brink of bankruptcy only a little over a decade ago discovered how to innovate in desperation, and began to neglect innovation as growth accelerated.  What we are seeing now is the aftermath of too little innovation and too much marketing.

What lessons can we learn?

Of course I should admit I'm doing this analysis from a distance, without complete information since Lego is a private company, but over the last few years Lego hasn't done nearly the innovation or introduced nearly the range of products and services that it did from the mid 2000s until 2012 or so.  Lego management turned the company around in the mid to late 2000s, and growth accelerated, only slowing in the last year or so.  The signals were out there, of course.  A new CEO was hired and let go within only 8 months.  What can we learn from Lego's example?

Growth can lead to bureaucracy and risk avoidance
Lego may be challenged by its aggressive growth, and with that growth came size and complexity.  However, and complexity isn't necessarily a factor in its innovation success, unless Lego allowed complacency and bureaucracy and risk avoidance to grow as sales grew.  Innovating at the brink of bankruptcy clarifies the mind (Steve Jobs would agree) and forces companies to focus on what's really important.  Getting large and perhaps bureaucratic can mean that concerns grow about taking new risks.  Internal bureaucracy didn't cause slow sales growth unless it blocked new innovative products or redirected investments.  Lego probably just lost some of its edge and taste for risk and innovation.

Only the paranoid survive
To me, one of the most important take aways should be, you simply cannot become complacent.  Good innovations from just a few years ago will only sustain your growth and differentiation for so long.  Customers are hungry for new solutions, rapacious in their research and unforgiving in their quest for new stuff.  In the past products and solutions had long shelf lives.  You could create an interesting product and merely tweak it, adding a handful of new features every few years.  Those days are over.  Customers demand and expect new capabilities and features on a regular, recurring basis.

Companies need to gin up a consistent innovation program which aims for incremental and disruptive innovations to occur all the time.  Lego is just an extreme example of desperate but winning innovation to avoid bankruptcy followed by a period of less interesting or less successful innovations while harvesting the profits of the prior innovations.  Lego and companies like this are particularly subject to this boom and bust cycle because of their target audience (children and teenagers primarily) who age out and don't want the same toys their siblings or parents had.  But while Lego is an extreme example, companies in every industry should take note.  From the peaks of profitability and industry acclaim to laying off 8% of its workforce in a period of only a few years.

Explore the adjacencies
I had hopes for Lego when they built some of the early Lego robots, because 1) the robots were cool 2) the robots extended Lego's audience into older kids, teens and even adults and 3) they were more expensive and had pull through.  But more importantly the robots were an exploration of an adjacent market or customer group.  Good innovators must constantly evaluate the adjacent markets and customer segments and provide new capabilities, features and products that entice new customers.  The apocryphal story is that Lego discovered lead users building robots with basic Legos and entered the market with their own product.  If that story is true, perhaps it's time for Lego to go back to evaluating what users are doing with Legos and capitalizing on new adjacencies.

The quote from the Lego chairman that he wanted to simplify the business model in order to reach more children suggests that Lego isn't reaching for new adjacencies, but doubling down on a fickle core market.

Grow up but don't grow old
Lego's problem mirrors Disney's problem in a way.  The business scales, but only so far.  Both attract children and young adults, but have difficulty really capitalizing on the adult market.  Disney has made forays into music and movies with some success, but they should be able to win more share and more business from adults.  Both of these firms need to grow up (expand their customer base using their trusted names and capabilities) but not grow old (build sclerotic bureaucracies that resist innovation).

You'll forgive me if I lapse into a bit of consultant speak - can't help but do so since I've been in consulting for many years.  One of the factors that dictates what people do as consultants (and in other jobs or industries where time is tracked to projects or other expense categories) is the availability of charge codes.  Everyone knows that lawyers, for example, typically bill their time in 15 minute increments.  They need not only to bill their time in these time segments, but they also need a "charge code" - some mechanism to associate the time they just spent to a client, a business development activity or some overhead charge.

As consultants, most of us are no different.  Regardless of how you ultimately bill the client (time and materials, fixed fee, gain-sharing or other mechanisms) almost every consultant and consulting firm I'm aware of tracks consulting time.  I'm sure the same is true in many other industries where people are accountable for a time sheet at the end of a week or month.

Tracking Time

In a consulting firm, where you spend your time matters, especially if you are expected to generate revenues by billing clients.  As a consultant one of your primary goals is to generate enough business to sustain your salary and overhead costs.  A second goal is develop new and interesting value propositions or skills that can provide customers with new insights and create service differentiation for yourself or your company.  In the consulting business we call this "practice development".  A third goal is business development, spending time to talk to new prospects and existing customers about new work. Finally, in every business there is some time that is simply "overhead" - filing, retrieving data, filling out time cards, doing stuff that drives the business forward but isn't billable.

As an individual with a time sheet, you are constantly evaluating your time commitments:  how much time for this customer?  How much time and effort for that customer?  How much time in business development? How much time in practice development?  Time and how it is accounted for, becomes a major consideration in everything you do.

Cobbler's Kids

Which is why even consulting firms need a charge code for innovation.  While we in the consulting industry are good at tracking and allocating time, we aren't always good about spending time innovating our own products, services and business models.  And time allocation matters - if you have a goal of being 70% chargeable, that's where your focus and emphasis will be.  Which means you'll spend more time with customers and less on business development, practice development and lastly, of course, will be innovation.  This is why even consulting firms that lead innovation efforts are often like the Cobbler's kids - they have the worst shoes.  Even those of us who talk to our customers about making time for innovation often fail to do it well.

If we, who track time so assiduously fail to define time and account for time spent on innovation, what must it be like for corporate practitioners who don't account for their time or worst, don't have specific time allocations?  As we know, innovation is very important but rarely urgent, so it frequently slips down the "to do" list until it becomes an utter necessity, at which point it becomes a "rush job".  No time allocation, no fixed expectation of time spent in innovation and an acceptance of allowing innovation to fall to the bottom of priorities mean that very little time is spent building skills to become better at innovation, let alone actually doing innovation.

What If

But what if everyone in your company had to account for their time, and what if everyone had a specific time allocation for innovation?  That might differ depending on the individual, their experience and interest in innovation of course, but what if at the end of each year you could look across your team and see how much time an individual spent building innovation skills and contributing to innovation projects.  Wouldn't that be valuable as a manager?

Wouldn't the signal that people will be expected to spend time on innovation, and that time will be managed and accounted for, send signals about the importance of innovation and the expectations that innovation must deliver results?    All too often we hear that people within corporations don't have time for innovation.  That's because they believe they are 100% allocated to their "day jobs" and can't afford distractions or time away.  What if managers and executives specifically allocated and measured time spent in innovation by individual, team and department, and set goals for each individual or group, and examined the outputs and outcome.  Do you think people would find time for innovation?  Do you think more innovation would get done?  Of course the answer to these questions is "yes".

Innovation with a purpose

But the final twist to this story isn't just that people should spend significant time, but that they should be focused on significant opportunities.  It's easy for people to commit 5% of their time to innovation and to generate really incremental ideas.  That outcome isn't really all that better than what happens today.  Beyond simply allocating and evaluating time, management teams should include specific portfolio goals - 70% of your innovation time on incremental tasks, 30% on disruptive ideas, and then measure against those goals.  If every individual or team in your company spent 5% of their time on innovation (100 hours in a 2000 hour work year) and 30% of that time was focused on disruptive innovation (30 hours per individual per year), could we expect some really new and interesting ideas?  You bet we could.


What's holding innovation back?  Time.  Time to think, time to explore, time to experiment.  And strangely, we aren't time deficient.  Most people work a 9-5 job and spend inordinate amounts of time in meetings where very little gets decided or done.  If we could reclaim even a modest amount of that time and reallocate it to more important activities, and direct those innovation activities to more interesting outcomes, the innovation most companies could create would be incredible.

It seems strange to me, after working for over 12 years in innovation, that so many people can view the same set of circumstances and opportunities in so many different ways.  Our economy is awash in innovation opportunities, and the opportunities are growing and expanding.  There are opportunities to innovate new products and services, of course, but also new channels and new business models.  Customer experience is rapidly becoming an important innovation avenue.  Paul Hobcraft and I have been writing about the opportunities that are available in entire platforms and ecosystems, and these of course create in turn new opportunities.

The basic building blocks of opportunities - customers, unmet needs, emerging trends and technologies - are all growing.  Beyond that most of us have our basic needs fully met - food, clothing, shelter are all reasonably achieved.  That means that new innovations may be more intangible, psychological, emotional, notional - but there are as many opportunities there as there are in tangible innovations, if not more so.

With this opportunity abundance, why is it that so many individuals and companies see restrictions, limits and barriers to innovation, rather than the vast potential that's available if only they'd set aside past conventions and risk tolerances.  After all, this isn't a 'glass half empty, glass half full' conundrum. This is more akin to a 'glass half empty, barrel overflowing' situation.  People simply aren't paying attention, are too distracted or too fearful to really think about all the potential innovation opportunity.  Or, as I'll explore below, we give into a perspective that suggests that many issues, conventions, regulations and cultures are fixed, unable to move.

Like an insect in amber

You may be familiar with amber - the gemstone that originates from ancient tree sap that hardened over time.  The Czar of Russia had an entire room that was covered in amber - supposedly one of the most beautiful rooms in the world.  You'll often find in amber insects from long ago that were captured by the sap as it flowed down pre-historic trees.  I often think of modern business executives and their teams share similarities with those insects.  They are caught up, stuck, and have lost their freedom of movement. But unlike the insects, that loss of freedom isn't because of a tangible, sticky substance, but because of the stickiness of their perspectives, their cultures, their experiences and education and their industry conventions.  They are insects in a virtual amber, doomed to limits that are dictated and prescribed by their own thinking.

Innovation comes from outside

It may not seem evident at first, but virtually all radical and disruptive innovation originates from outside an industry's boundaries, by people who often weren't even in the industry, who were serving other clients or other needs and saw a way to serve a new set of customers or solve a new set of needs.  The reason these outsiders can so easily disrupt an existing industry is because they haven't been paying homage to the conventions and cultures that built the industry or market.  These entrants have little or no stake in how the industry or market is built or its existing business models, and in fact can profit by radically changing the business model.  These individuals, like Richard Branson or increasingly Elon Musk, are radical free agents, who aren't bound by industry conventions or past expectations, who actively look across industries for rigid decision making and adherence to past ways of doing business.

Weak links / Strong links

The other way to think about this stickiness is a "weak link/strong link" framework.  There are two perspectives: first, the linkages within the industry or convention and second the linkages between the participants.  Disruptive innovation is easier in the first example when there are few strong industry conventions or shifting from existing conventions is relatively painless for the consumer, or when everything is shifting, so the customer accepts that shifts are necessary and important.  An example is when digital music appeared via MP3s and Napster made music sharing acceptable.  Apple was able to disrupt music distribution and publishing because the form factors changed, the technology (digital versus physical media) changed and the music players themselves changed.  When multiple factors are changing, disruption is easier to accept.

Conversely we can see why it is difficult to innovate in the airline industry.  There are too many rigid, regulated or business model conditions.  Safety concerns, unions, the transparency of pricing, the reliance on key volatile inputs (oil, labor), the fixed number of gates and so on don't leave a lot of options for innovation. This means that much of the innovation needs to happen outside of the core offering, and explains why the most interesting innovation has come from outsiders (Branson for branding) or new entrants (Emirates/Qatar) for new services.  But even these innovations pale when we compare them to innovations in technology, in software and in other markets or industries where conventions or regulations are absent or easier to ignore.

What's fixed / what mutable?

So the questions a potential innovator must ask themselves in any situation is:  what's fixed, and cannot be changed?  What do competitors assume is fixed but could change?  Where are there strong linkages that would be difficult to change, and where is change already occurring that we can surf to greater success?  And, how "fixed" or transmutable is my company's culture, perspective and thinking?  Can others around me recognize opportunity and move with it?

Innovation is possible in any setting and in any industry.  Even a very heavily regulated industry such as air travel has plenty of potential for innovation if only the participants would think beyond product innovation.  In other industries that are less regulated, innovation opportunities abound.  Innovators must determine the "fixedness" of their perspectives and cultures, and then the fixedness of the industry or market they compete in.  Otherwise, like the insect swallowed by the tree sap, they'll find themselves encased, unable to move and unable to innovate.

For the last few years a commercial has been running to advertise Dos Equis.  In these commercials there's always some hyperbole (I know, who would of thunk it in a beer commercial) about a suave, sophisticated gentleman who can simultaneously drink Dos Equis and entertain heads of state.  He is, we are constantly reminded, the most interesting man in the world.  We are told that his mother has tattoos that say "Son" on them.  Superman has pyjamas with his face on them.  And so on.  And because he drinks Dos Equis beer, you should too.

In light of this (admittedly interesting and captivating) advertising, I thought it would be interesting to describe in the same way what the most innovative man (or woman) in the world might think, might do and how they might behave.  While the most innovative man in the world doesn't exist, wouldn't it be worthwhile to imagine what skills, attitudes, perspectives and beliefs that individual would have?  Here we go...

The most innovative man (or woman) in the world

Motto
The most innovative man or woman in the world would have to have a motto.  The most interesting man says "stay thirsty" because he's selling beer.  I believe the mantra of the most innovative man in the world would be "stay curious", because he's interested in identifying and solving interesting problems.

Sidekicks
The most interesting man in the world, according to the ads, is almost always surrounded by supermodels and beer.  The most innovative man (or woman) in the world would be surrounded by customers and prospects, because he or she would be constantly trying to ascertain what the really interesting, unmet needs were.

Settings
The most interesting man in the world is always shown in exotic locations - skiing in the Alps or yachting in the Med.  The most innovative man or woman in the world would be found in more mundane places - research labs, startups, focus groups - always searching, always curious, open for any new insight.

Connections
One thing both share is the desire for connections, but for very different reasons.  For the most interesting man, connections are about social advancement, getting invited to the right party.  For the most innovative person, connections are about exchanging new ideas, mixing, combining and blending new ideas and experiences to create new solutions.

Approach
The most interesting man in the world has a "been there, done that" aspect, always with a wry twinkle in his eye that suggests he's done this before and knows how it will end.  The most innovative person in the world approaches every experience as if for the first time, with a Beginner's Mind approach, hoping to learn something new.

Conventions
Another thing they share is the lack of conventions.  Neither are interested in following conventions but in setting new conventions, new ways of thinking.  The interesting person does it for attention and followership, the innovative person does it to disrupt markets and industries and create new solutions and value.

Insider/Outsider
The most interesting person is a total insider - knows everyone, knows where the bodies are buried and his or her social capital is built on that, and on sustaining the status quo or bettering it.  The most innovative person is a near outsider - knows a lot of people in the in-crowd but also knows plenty who aren't "in".  He or she understands the social conventions and industry standards but doesn't rely on them, just as happy to subvert them as to sustain them.

Amalgamation
Finally, the most interesting man in the world is an amalgamation - the combination of a number of stories and people combined into one fictional person.  Likewise, the most innovative person in the world is also fictional, because it takes a group of people or a team to bring an idea to full reality, and few people possess all of these traits.

 Just as no man is an island, no one person can contain all of the skills and traits to take an idea from concept to realization.  The sooner corporations understand that innovation is a team sport that requires an interesting blend of different skills and experiences, and the environment in which these teams can thrive, the sooner we'll see more interesting products and services.

The most innovative person on the planet isn't known, and probably won't be, because innovation is a team sport, where many different people bring many different skills, perspectives and experiences to bear.  Stop searching for the most innovative person and start building the right teams and placing them in cultural and business environments where they can succeed.

There's probably few activities that corporate folks enjoy less than corporate training.  For most it's guaranteed to be a slog, or a review of policies and procedures rarely used and important only to a specific team or set of circumstances.  While people are attending the "mandatory" training to learn material of vague importance to their day to day jobs, their inboxes are filling up, cat videos are going unwatched.  Most people assume they have enough knowledge to do the jobs they have, and they are often comfortable simply winging the rest.

That's why innovation often presents such an interesting challenge.  For the most part people have the suspicion that innovation is unusual and requires new insights and skills they don't possess.  And, since they don't possess those skills, they will avoid doing innovation work (from fear of failure) or will make innovation work align to existing programs and policies (which they know well).  In response, many organizations are turning to innovation training and innovation workshops.

I'm just back from leading a couple days of innovation training with a client, and the more we do this, the more convinced I am that 1) corporations can do a very good job innovating with the people they have 2) innovation training - learning the skills that make up a good innovation activity isn't difficult and 3) people will need to both learn, relearn and unlearn some things in order to achieve innovation success.

Learning

The fact of the matter is that most of us have spent the last 20 to 30 years learning to be efficient, to succeed at our first attempt.  This makes all of our efforts very careful and very incremental, and doesn't embrace innovation or disruption.  We aren't good at discovering new needs or experimenting with new ideas, and we need to learn some tools and methods to help us do a better job of finding unmet needs and creating interesting ideas.  You can learn the tools to innovate, and the more you practice these tools and methods the more creative and capable you'll become.  In this regard, innovation training is important, but must be quickly followed up with putting the learning into practice.

Relearning

A lot of what we teach when we teach innovation skills is going back to basics.  First is doing a good job defining an opportunity or problem to tackle, rather than simply solving the most obvious problems or symptoms.  Next is taking the time to understand what customers actually want and need, rather than presenting your latest technologies.  Third is having an open mind, creating and combining ideas.  Like Fulghum's book All I needed to know I learned in kindergarten, some innovation thinking is simply taking the time to contemplate and analyze a lot of ideas, using interaction methods and perspectives that you learned earlier in life and later abandoned.  It's also important to allow ideas to evolve and not judge them immediately - to build on and expand ideas and to provide the room for really crazy ideas to develop.

Unlearning

There is some unlearning that's required when people learn about innovation.  For too long we've settled for success, lack of variation, efficiency.  This means we've curtailed exploration, discovery, and wonder.  We approach problems as experts rather than as naive beginners, which shuts down a lot of good ideas and exploration.  We rush to converge when we should take time to diverge.  A lot of innovation seems almost counterintuitive, not because the tools and methods are difficult but because they seem to conflict with how we operate our businesses today.  To do good innovation you must sometimes take the opposite view, take on new perspectives, ask what would happen if industry norms were eliminated.  You have to unlearn some of your assumptions and ask unusual questions.

The benefits of innovation training

Like us old guys who laughed off yoga, stretching and warming up who are, later in life, coming to realize how important core strength and flexibility are in day to day life, you can get a lot out of innovation training and can become far more creative and innovative if you are willing to adopt some new tools and a new perspective or mindset.  This is true for individuals, small teams and ideally for an entire corporate culture.  You simply need to learn the tools and methods that work, relearn how to work together and unlearn some of the things that seem so certain.  Once you do that, or your teams or culture does that, you have the chance to be far more innovative.

Thank goodness for Twitter.  What would we do without this constantly refreshing stream of bromides, insights, accusations and occasional bursts of wisdom?  Just yesterday while perusing the Twitter stream I saw a quote attributed to Jonathan Ive that made me want to sit up and scream.  The quote was relatively straightforward and seems innocuous on its face:

"To do something innovative means you reject reason"

Sounds about right, doesn't it?  Innovation means that you are creating something new and potentially disruptive, and that means that you may have to go against "reason".  As I've said before, I'm a big fan of George Bernard Shaw, who said that all progress is due to "unreasonable" men and women. But do we have to reject reason in order to innovate?  I don't think so - in fact I think we have to embrace reason, knowledge and insight in order to innovate.

Reason or Convention

What I think gets confused here is the idea of fighting "convention" and somehow that becomes conflated with reason.  When we innovate we are often changing the status quo, and there are plenty of people with reasons to protect and sustain the status quo, who can give you plenty of..wait for it.. reasons why you shouldn't disrupt or change the status quo.  Convention is powerful, and if the quote had said, "To do something innovative means you reject convention" I would have said: Amen.

However, we cannot reject reason when we innovate, in fact we must rely on insight, intelligence, research and reason when we innovate.  That's because the only way to encourage people to commit to new ideas is to demonstrate new insights, new needs or new experiences, which are all based on research, insights into unsolved problems or challenges or new technologies.  This all appeals to reason - why would I choose an uncertain unknown over a predictable certainty?  Only if the unknown is promising, compelling and valuable.  And how would I communicate those benefits?  By appealing to your reason, and overcoming your fear of rejecting convention.

Innovators/Artists/Creatives

So, it might be rightly said that innovators, artists, creatives and others of a similar ilk are unconventional, even unreasonable in their pursuit of new ideas, but not that they lack or reject reason.  Shaw suggests that only people who are willing to bend the world to their viewpoint, who don't accept the status quo, create change and progress.  Only those who use insight, research, intelligence and sometimes their gut see what's coming and apply their reason to overcome conventions and objections to create a new reality.


I didn't have the opportunity to work with Jobs - Ive did - but I'd think Jobs was often unreasonable in his pursuits of innovation and rejected convention, but his insights called on his reason and his intellect.  And Jobs was simply better at spotting emerging needs and markets than others were - this isn't a rejection of reason, it is a validation of reason and a rejection of convention.