Too much feeback

Scott Anthony in an HBR article asks a very relevant question in the Innovation Process:

Are you giving too much and may be contradictory feedback to the ideas before they are presented to the ultimate decision makes?

Are you killing the raw idea by making it acceptable to all and exciting to none?

Innovation process designers need to create a balance between providing feedback to Idea generators and diluting the idea due to excessive feedback.

Bust your Innovation Myths

Art Markman in his HBR article tells you to bust your Innovation Myths. And for a change I like an HBR article. We indeed need to understand that lot of well celebrated innovations did not actually happen in an 'Eureka' moment. There was a whole lot of work that went behind the scenes before someone took credit for it all and portrayed as if it happened in one genius moment. 

This explained, we need to understand that coming out with innovations, big or small, needs a disciplined and persistent effort and that too on part of a team and not just one individual. Even if you get the idea in a magic moment, you need to work on making it a practical reality by testing it, tweaking it and working on its application. All this needs hell lot of effort and patience. Magic moment myths sometimes tend to convey the otherwise and create apprehensions in those are working on innovation programs.

100 years of IBM

HBR talks about 100 years of IBM, the years that saw depression, war and competition. 

Just a few years ago, the same magazines were writing off IBM. Today, they talk about its survival through various ups and downs, it adaptability through various changing external and internal environments. In a true HBR style they come out with 4 points that made them survive. How I wish life was that simple !

It is so simple to look at a giant organization like IBM and say these are the 4 factors that made them successful. Can it be dependent on a single individual as the author of the article tries to portray. An organization that has lived and lived successfully for 100 years is definitely worth studying. And IBM has many more reasons besides longevity to be a subject of study for organization scientists and management enthusiasts. We need to look at its lows as well as we need to look at its highs and the reasons why it oscillated between them. Why belittle it by restricting it to 4 points.

Gary Hamel on Organizations for Humans

Gary Hamel talks about organizations that are fit for humans in his video at Managament Innovation Exchange. 

I have always liked Gary's work, specially when talks about Innovation. Though I do not agree completely with what he says about humanizing organizations, I do agree that we need to go back to being human. The age of industrialization tended to make humans into machines, where they would come out with a predictable output, almost killing their creativity. Now the world is not necessarily getting de-industrialized, but there is an emergence of more democratic spaces both for creativity and for its expression. Spaces like internet are as democratic as you can expect it to be. We do not know about tomorrow if it also get monopolized by the large or powerful organizations, but as of today it provides an almost equal opportunities to those who have access to it. 

Not sure how much the established organization work towards making their work places good for human creativity, and even if they do, how much time will it take for them to really achieve it. But go and experiment with your own creativity and express it.

Can technology help us reduce consumption?

Sanjay Dalal applauds President Obama's drive to make more fuel efficient cars and tells us about a program that would help American's save $2 Trillion.

My question to Sanjay and if possible to Mr. Obama is : Do you think you can take care of the ecological problems and hence lot of financial problems by pumping more money into discovering new consumer objects while not knowing what to do with the ones that already exist?

Can you work on reducing consumption - by way of providing better public transport or encouraging car pools or encouraging local consumption, rather than encouraging consumption and then within it looking ways to reduce the usage of one particular item?

Can you invest in technology that helps us reduce the overall consumption and not just the consumption of depleting resources, because today it is one item that we know is depleting, tomorrow it will be another? Then, would you change the whole paradigm and create programs centered on those products. Think holistically and beyond just your career shelf life or your generation.