You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.
Published by Toby Coop December 2nd, 2006 in Uncategorized, Innovation, creativity, training, talent, pig, lipstick, quality, divergent thinking, skilled convergence, business of knowledge, knowledge of businessInnovation means the creation of something new. But its essential meaning is getting lost in the flurry of corporate makeovers rushing to adopt the latest business fashion of innovation. As business magazines all compete with each other to throw up their latest innovation stalls, and as top executives pepper their speech with the jargon of innovation to show that they to are marching in step to the latest tune in business strategy, it maybe worthwhile spending a few moments in quiet reflection considering the logic of innovation, the search for divergence and its nemesis, skilled convergence.
Divergent thinking and convergent thinking are states of mind dependent on the skill with which you observe your patterns of thought. Sorry guys, looking for answers in the external environment is like playing musical chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Skilled convergence is caused by the unawareness that experience is organised into pre-established emotional patterns. You can see it at work as organisations struggle to clothe themselves in the language of innovation and yet totally fail to capture the genuine aspect of innovation and creativity. Changing the Human Resource Director title to Talent Director, Quality Director to Innovation Director without addressing the underlying principles of innovation is the basis of an organisational makeover doomed to failure.
When you see innovation talked about in terms of increasing productivity, or cutting costs, you have to understand that top executives - and, guys, you know who you are - who use this term in this context have failed to understand the concept of innovation. Look at the adverts from the top consultancies in the airports and train stations and you can see that they are trapped by their own thinking. They just don’t get it. Sorry, but using the word innovation instead of the word solution does not make you innovative. Cutting costs is a measure of increasing productivity, not innovation. Edward De Bono defines lateral thinking by stating that you cannot dig a new hole by digging the old one deeper. Innovation is about designing something new. That’s what Utterback and Christensen outlined in their deconstruction of corporate thinking in the late 1990’s. Ideas are by definition dangerous. Innovation is defined by the creation of ideas that threaten the status quo.
As businesses move from a marketplace defined by growing numbers to a marketplace defined by growing potential, executives are going to have to turn inwards. Executives and organisations are going to have to get out of the foxholes of their current thinking and learn to master divergence. Learning to break the taboo of subjectivity inherent in the current business paradigm means that organisations will have to move their north star from the knowledge of business to the business of knowledge.
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