Comments on: The 7 Must-Do’s of Innovators

By: Audiolathe

Audiolathe — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 22:38:01 +0000

Good point. However – rather than moan I did want to make this a constructive post so if none of these things happen then consider the inaction on the point a SIN.. make sense? Hope so.

By: John

John — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:36:33 +0000

It’s a bit weird that the title is 7 Cardinal “SINS,” and then the itemization is things you do want to do.

By: Mark Earls

Mark Earls — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:17:23 +0000

Great post, C.
Yes, there’s lots of examples of how together we are smarter – both as a collective and as individuals (though we can also be stupid, too). Brainjuicer (www.brainjuicer.com) have taken the Decision Markets technique mentioned in (amongst other things) The Wisdom of Crowds and turned into a new product development research methodology. John Kearon a very nice man – contact him if you want to know more.
Also, there’ a great story in Howard Schultz’s story of Starbucks which supports your point on multi-dimensional innovation: when coffee prices went through the roof in the early 1990′s, Starbucks got through it (despite a mauling of their shareprice by Wall street) by engaging the entire company in finding ways to improve what they did, to iron out inefficiencies and stale practices. This in itself, according to HS, allowed the company to go well beyond facing down the problem but actually come out stronger than it would otherwise have been.
In addition, Mckinsey have done some good stuff on “innovation” or “creative networks” and how to manage them. http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=1766. In particular, this work goes a long way to flesh out the previous comment. As ever, the answer is “yes, but”.

By: Gijsbert Huijsen

Gijsbert Huijsen — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:48:17 +0000

All of us are less smart than any of us?
While it is very important to involve as many people in innovation as you can, I’ve often seen that the ‘innovation’ of a group is way worse than the ideas of each individual separately. Trying to achieve consensus sometimes leads to combined solutions, that have none of the real advantages of the individual solutions but all/a lot of the disadvantages of the separate solutions.
It’s important to have many people interact in brainstorm/innovative sessions to generate and test ideas. But after that someone with great insight/experience/gut feeling has to make a decision, in order to avoid those kind of solutions that have been reached ‘democratically’ but have a devastating impact on the product.