innovating innovation

When I was a judge at the Thunderbird 2004 Innovation Challenge, Anil Rathi, who is the co-founder of the Innovation Challenge, sent me the book “What A Great Idea!” by Charles “Chic” Thompson.

Unlike all the other innovation books in my library (except Tom Peters’ “Circle Of Innovation” of course), “What A Great Idea!” looked like fun. And after a break from reading on innovation / creativity, I decided it would be a good place to restart.

Now, I have no idea who Mr. Chic Thompson is. I am however, very tempted to go online and do a Google. But I resist – for the greater good.

I open the cover of the book and a picture of an egg greets me – with this one line of text under it – “A goal of every living creature is to break out of the box.” And I think to myself, “Well yes! At least that’s what I’m trying to do these days!”

Then page (i) announces a New Creativity Workshop. The workshop is for an “interactive journey through the four steps of organizational innovation.” The steps of the workshop are then outlined below:

FREEDOM
– break the “old rules of school”
– learn from failure
– dream with your eyes open

EXPRESSION
– be curious first … critical second
– ‘shake the tree’ for inspiration by adding stimuli
– smile and change your world in a heartbeat

CREATION
– ask the right questions and see the uniqueness of your challenge
– look for second and third right answers
– expand your perspective with metaphorical thinking
– challenge your assumptions with paradoxical thinking
– learn a powerful brainstorming method called Idea Mapping

ACTION
– make your vision visible
– create a results-driven action plan
– sell your ideas with passion
– keep your brain alive

The first step in the creativity workshop says, “break the ‘old rules of school'”. I wonder to myself, “What are the ‘new’ ideas in innovation these days?” and honestly, I cannot find any! There are more studies, more research, some successes at replicating the old innovation successes, but the impression I get is that there is nothing “new”. There are only “old rules of school”.

And maybe it is time to innovate “Innovation” itself. Maybe it is time to look at it from a perspective not explored yet – which is going to be a tough one!

The purpose of any research is to simplify a subject. All the “serious” research on innovation only confounds me further.

I agree that success – in itself – whether in implementing innovation, or otherwise, isn’t simple or easy. But why can’t the process to get there involve simpler guidelines?