A Quote from AMACOM:
“It’s a harsh, competitive and tough business world out there. And if you want to thrive—or even just survive—you’ve got to innovate. So why is it that so many businesses big and small seem like they’re set up to crush innovation instead of nurture it? Poor planning? Bad execution? Lack of forethought? Or could it be that the real killer of radical, earth shaking and bottom-line quaking thought is . . . our own expertise.â€
Cynthia Barton Rabe advocates in her book “The Innovation Killer†that experts are the villians who break innovation.
“How do you know what you do not know?â€
I had a wonderful week a fortnight ago listening to Prof. Issac Getz lecturing on installing a management system of innovating ideas. He was 2 years ago, the keynote speaker of the conference organised by NPCC called “Innovate or Evaporateâ€.He was back last fortnight ago to lecture in the APM organisation.
His basic concept is to get the whole organisation to continously generate innovating ideas and bring these ideas to concrete actions.The organisation thus become transformed and innovating.
I wish that enterprises in Mauritius would take in and implement Cynthia Barton Rabe innovation strategies and Dr Getz implementation systems.
The Innovation Killer
Success has a tendency to create two villains: “group
think” and “expert think.” Group think makes decisions that
people working in a group agree with. Expert think is
perhaps more damaging as it believes decisions can’t
contradict what internal experts know.
These two villains trap themselves into into a situation of
“knowing what it knows,” but it “doesn’t know what it
doesn’t know†– the very essence of innovation.
The innovative process starts with questions. The answers
lead to creative ideas. With group and expert think at work,
companies can’t make the creative leap because the thinkers
are looking through the same old lens.
Innovative thinking requires “zero-gravity thinkers” who
start with a clean sheet of paper every time. They don’t
care where they’ve been or how they got there, only about
what’s going to get them to the next stage. Thinking in zero
gravity requires “psychological distance.” An open mind and
impartiality present multiple perspectives from which to
start.
Source: “The Innovation Killer,” by Cynthia Barton Rabe ( a
former innovation strategist for Intel who founded Zero-G,
an innovation and strategy consulting firm), Amacom