If that entirely inaccurate definition of insanity were true, why would persistence and perseverance be celebrated? Why would a sane person try anything more than once if only the insane thinks that one day the result will be different? Why do people every day apply for a job, pitch for funding, ask for a sale, ask for a date, cast a fishing lure, or do any of the hundreds of things sane people do again and again with the hope that one day the result will be different?
Most good ideas come much sooner than the time by which they can be made true efficiently. She said that she was working at the Patent Office.
Back in the s, when I was with Intel, a calculator company named Busicom asked us to manufacture a set of 12 custom chips for some new calculators it was planning to introduce. Each chip would be dedicated to performing a single function. I wondered if it would be possible to have one chip, a general-purpose central processor, that could be programmed to do all the functions.
My frame of reference was some recent minicomputer designs, which were very simple but which enabled you to do a lot of complex things.
Those managers allowed me to break a cardinal rule of business: Always do what the customer wants. We did something better. She is also the founder and former president of Cartoon Network Worldwide. Both organizations are headquartered in Atlanta. A couple of years ago, the cable world was abuzz with talk of convergence, but nobody really knew what that meant. Since it was a brave new world, we recognized that we had to experiment with a variety of experiences for Cartoon Network fans that brought together on-air and on-line participation with the channel.
And then we tested everything—from simulcasting Web and TV versions of the same cartoon character premier to a live on-line viewer request weekend to a more interactive on-line action and adventure show. What prevents innovation? The dangerous brew of fear and complacency—staying where you are out of fear of failing, of blowing too much money, or of placing the wrong bets. Daniel Vasella trained as a physician and is now the chairman and chief executive officer of Novartis, a pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland.
One way we try to foster innovation—both the technological innovation that leads to new drugs and the organizational innovation that improves the way we do business—is to align our business objectives with our ideals. But I believe that people also do a better job when they believe in what they do and in how the company behaves, when they see that their work does more than enrich shareholders.
In the past few years, we have complemented our goal of economic value creation with another goal: good worldwide corporate citizenship. With this in mind, we founded a research center in Singapore that focuses on developing drugs to treat diseases such as dengue hemorrhagic fever and tuberculosis; in all likelihood, such drugs will be barely profitable at best.
These activities have deep meaning for our employees and unleash their energy and enthusiasm. With regard to our breakthrough cancer drug Glivec called Gleevec in the United States , for instance, our researchers overcame every obstacle to develop the drug, and our production teams worked around the clock to produce enough supply for clinical trials.
The alignment of objectives, ideals, and values contributes greatly to the motivation and thereby the energy that employees at all levels, myself included, devote to their work. In , the organization was named to Vision , a listing by British Telecommunications of the most innovative organizations in the United Kingdom.
When I joined the British Geological Survey in , I found a hierarchical organization structured around the various disciplines and sub-disciplines in geology. These had developed into competing empires, and collaboration on creative approaches to a customer problem was, at worst, unthinkable, and, at best, forced. The key to spurring a wave of innovation was creating a structure and climate that ended the internal competition. A program, headed by a manager, would be responsible for a range of projects.
But the people working on those projects would come from a human resource pool whose allegiance would be to the mission of the organization rather than to a specific program.
The structural change, in addition to eliminating internal competition, heightened our external competitive focus, which fostered increased innovation. People hated letting go of their identification with specific divisions. And I was a foreigner coming into a very old organization—one founded in So we spent two years in discussions, gradually winning consensus for the change. The change was more orchestrated than directed by me; the orchestra members brought about change for themselves.
She is an active investor in and adviser to a wide range of young IT companies in the United States and Europe. I question the assumption that companies should try to inspire innovation.
Some companies reorganize every six months just to do something different. What they really need is better internal communication, not a new reporting structure. So how do you encourage useful innovation? By doing two things. As late as , only one-third of all US doctors believed that the case against cigarettes had been established.
Today there are still some 1. To open up inflexible corporate minds to new ideas requires a change in perspective. And changing perspective is hard. It often comes locked in with the problem itself. To change perspective and get the creative juices flowing, you need to be in the right mindset. This can be challenging for many people. To children it usually comes more naturally — especially during play. Psychologists tell us that as we age, we become self-conscious in the classroom and other public settings, and quietly begin to suppress our playful tendencies for fear of being called childish or breaking with social norms.
Creativity requires that we fight against this trajectory. At the renowned international design consultancy IDEO, play is in fact an important part of innovation, acting as an intuitive form of learning.
What is play for IDEO? A state of mind. At IDEO they try to encourage open-ended behavior. Through playing with different scenarios, through prototyping different possibilities, they get to that narrative. To take the risks necessary to innovate in a company environment, employees must also be given the freedom to try different things and that naturally leads to making mistakes. Of course, if a mistake is made, it should be fixable and not serious enough to severely damage the company.
Thomas Edison in his Laboratory. It all comes down to how one views mistakes or failures. In his view, if you analyze a failure, it can help you figure out how to succeed the next time. But mistakes only have value if you take the time to examine them, so as not to repeat them. Figure out why a mistake occurred and use it as an opportunity to teach those involved. Mistakes often reveal inefficiencies in processes. If it is swept under the rug and forgotten, the opportunity to rise to the next level might be missed.
Mistakes and failures often lead to the most surprising and successful innovations. So how can we innovate in the most effective manner possible? He urges people to go ahead and explore those crazy ideas, but offers some tips about how to go about efficiently:.
So fail early, fail often, fail cheap, fail fast. When playing around with radical ideas, most will be too far out there to work. For example, somebody suggests sending free catered filet mignon dinners to the best clients every month.
Sometimes collaboration is necessary to allow an idea to reach its true potential. Often solutions come from individuals from a different domain or area of expertise who are thinking about or framing the problem in a totally different way.
Recombining ideas from outside the field, where those ideas may seem foreign or crazy initially is a terrific way to bring new light to a problem. Big innovation is often right on the edge of ridiculous ideas. Sometimes those are the ones that are close to being the most brilliant. Studies show that once evaluation apprehension arises from criticism or screening, creativity and new idea generation declines.
People have to be permitted to get those crazy ideas out there without fear of being judged or criticized for them. However skepticism itself should not be viewed as the enemy. Once the creation phase is over, we need skeptics to shoot down the vast majority of half-baked ideas, so that we spend more time on the best ones. Seriously, if you don't yet subscribe to their weekly newsletter, you're missing out!
Here goes:. Here are a few more innovative examples, related to skills and status:. The Night School's Midnight Symposium series, for example, invites guests to gather and discuss a particular reading, while the Drinking Lessons series in the hotel's Hunt Club bar offers two-hour lessons in the preparation and history of three distinct cocktails. More ». Bars and Restaurants Spanish restaurant chain Fresc Co offers free English language lessons to its patrons.
Fresc Co operates 40 restaurants in 11 Spanish cities, focusing on fresh ingredients and Mediterranean dishes. Last February, two of its Barcelona locations began offering two-hour sessions targeting professional workers with a focus primarily on everyday language and work situations.
Services include everything from pre-production bottle washing through a range of bottle capping options, labelling and finally shrink-wrapping.
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