"Wanting to be innovative doesn't make sense! Unless deliberately falling into the famous paradoxical and paralyzing injunctions. Repeating over and over again "we must be innovative" has never generated the slightest idea. It's even the opposite! Because the energy devoted to repeating this mantra is definitively lost for our cause.
Innovation cannot be decreed, it is most often the result of an obsession, or at least a very powerful individual or collective motivation to solve a problem. A startup is not innovative because it decided to be, it is because it has the obsession to change the world and to succeed where others have failed. An obsession that turns into a daily requirement to challenge oneself to improve.
But even if we had common obsessions, we are not all Steve Jobs or James Dyson... Incredible innovators, visionaries.
Can we imagine being innovative without these "super creatives"?
Innovation often arises from a different way of seeing a problem. What I call the diffraction of thought. A kind of new perspective that illuminates things differently and opens up new avenues (this should remind you of ANEO's "the other solution" :)).
And the good news is that the number of different perspectives on a problem is just infinite... Because we, Humans, are all different and unique, and the way we look at things is too. This diversity combined with an ability to collaborate can turn us all into these "super creatives"... If... we know how to listen to each other!
If we have this requirement to understand each other.
If we have a common goal then the only barriers to innovation will be pride, ego, or arrogance. All these character traits that diminish our intelligence rather than increasing it.
So, should we work on innovation processes or on identifying our common obsessions?
Should we work on the governance of innovation or on our level of demand and our ability to listen?
Tim Cook said "when there is an innovation boss, you should worry," which means that innovation must be embodied and that it is only the natural result of a system... It is this system that we must work on!
