Where is the people focus?
I am travelling in the US having attended Henry Chesbrough’s Open Innovation Speaker series at UC Berkeley. The speaker was Rich Friedrich, who is Director of Open Innovation at HP Labs. It was encouraging to learn that HP Labs – their main research group – really believes in open innovation although it was with a strong focus on university relationships. Rich gave a pretty good presentation, but I missed one thing: the people focus.
Today, I attended the World Innovation Forum in New York. I listened to two of the best innovation thought leaders out there, C.K. Prahalad and VJ Govindarajan. They both gave great presentations and again it was encouraging to learn that gurus on this level also embrace open innovation. However, with the exception of Govindarajan briefly getting into the importance of having doers in your organization I missed one thing: the people focus.
Do not get me wrong. Being inspired by new concepts is important and getting the right processes in place is perhaps even more important. However, nothing happens unless you have the right people with the right mindset and skills in the right place at the right time.
So my question to all the thought leaders and leading practitioners out there is this: Where is your people focus? Why do you not talk more about the people who drive innovation? Why not let us know about the mindset, traits and skills you think people working with innovation should have? In your view, how can companies identify and develop these people?
I simply wonder why we do not focus more on people. What do you think?
So true, often times we get caught up in fitting the players into the slots rather than profiling the best & successful traits of the innovators and searching for more like them.
This was a hot topic in the 60′s and many classic “creativity” theories and batteries were developed. I used many of these as a starting point in my master thesis study on inventive climate in design organizations. Through my research I came to believe that individual personality and motivation was at the heart of design activities ranging through invention- innovation- improvement.
I see the current problem as philosophical and created through two areas of thought. The science of industrialized work (i.e. Babbage, Taylor) created the idea of interchangeable workers through training and workplace design. This tactic has been made more potent through HR principles which seek to create policies and practices that disregard talents or predispositions of individuals to do work. Who among us has ever been given an aptitude test by an employer?
In short, I think the industrial revolution idea of the “interchangeable part” has informed the HR philosophies of the modern business organization and this in turn has created a post modern view that anyone is capable of doing any job (except sports stars but drugs are now leveling the field of play)
Exhibit one; George W. Bush- innovative thinker and leader. Our former president is a poster child for the idea that every man (and woman) is fit to do any job; even lead and control of the world’s most powerful economy and military.
If our current, post 43, situation isn’t proof that we need to pay more attention to individual fitness for the job at hand I don’t know what will do it.
I'm going to go one step further.
The people part is absent because most corporations don't see their employees as people. They see them as potential lawsuits, a 'resource' (human 'resources' as opposed to inanimate ones), drains on the bottom line, scape goats, etc.
People are depersonalized and as a result creativity/innovation suffers.
To a certain extent, everyone DOES contribute to innovative cultures – they all are innovators to greater and lesser extents.
The kicker is that Innovative cultures, like all cultures, equip their members to be effective within the culture through an osmosis of sorts. Training, being doers, etc., naturally occurs when the environment is properly structured and respects the contribution of each person.
People are intuitive, creative, innovative, by nature. The goal of all corporations (which hope to be innovative) is to get the entire company firing on the all cylinders by leveraging each person's inherent desire and ability to improve their lots both at work and at home.
Stefan and co-readers,
putting people first is an attitude – by doing so based on true intrest you install trust, and trust generates granting. Be it internal or external. This switches the relationship management (or relationship sales) on. Guess what it does for the company and business….
Have an ‘Attitude ‘ day
Paul VdB
I've had the opportunity to practice "Open Innovation" before books and careers were launched in this area. There is certainly something to be said for bringing new views and technologies to challenges at hand by reaching beyond the conventional industry footprint.
Where this process breaks down, in my opinion, is when it's reduced to broadcasting a "need" to a widespread community and hoping for a good outcome – a very passive approach that often results in an overwhelming number of responses that are often technologies that people are trying to sell.
What I have found to be much more effective is the "people" ideas others have mentioned. A real technology network that produces real useful output has a human component. By navigating through the world of technology through conversation and referral, many technologies, ideas, and solutions are revealed that wouldn't normally be connected through less personal approaches. People in laboratories may not fully consider the value of their work in areas outside their immediate applications – and that's where Open Innovation's real value exists.
the speakers were men—men are incapable of getting their heads out of machinery and into relationships—it is a hormonal swinging glands limit; they can posture, they can pretend, but ultimatelly they are incapable of
respecting and using well non-machinery stuff in this world. We need to have pairs (male-female) as leaders and thought-leaders not single males incapable of getting out of machinery-think.
As a fan of the research in Diffusion of Innovation, the irony strikes me that innovation itself is in the late majority adoption stage. While the early adopters were passionate about creating big ideas and getting them implemented, we are now in the opposite phase: “Let’s not waste time on anything stupid.”
George Land in Grow or Die wrote on a parallel track about the forming and norming stages of a business. Businesses often get caught in norming phase, then calcify and die, he says. Now innovation has moved from the “wild west” of great ideas and inspired design into clamping down on all that messy stuff with people and their ideas.
Like many ideas, it appears to me that open innovation took a wrong turn along the way. In the early 1990′s reengineering started as a way to reinvent your processes. But others seized upon it as an excuse to “downsize” hundreds of thousands of people out of their jobs.
Now open innovation has come to remind me of what we in the advertising agency business used to call a “gang bang.” Instead of trusting the people we had hired to know what they are doing, or hiring those who did, a creative director would throw everyone on the project. They would then show up at a meeting with their ideas, while the creative director would then sit in judgment on each – 99% either dismissed or rejected.
Ideas are very fragile things. The bigger the idea, the more it initially has wrong with it, and is therefore easy to dismiss or reject out of hand. I believe the so-called innovation industry focuses on the wrong part of the process.
Often times the people who choose the ideas throw out all the ideas that have any flaws. (Meaning the big ideas) So all you have left are the ordinary ones. Remember how uninspiring cell phones were in the two years before Apple got involved? The breakthroughs come when you can recognize as big idea without fearing it, then remove all the flaws while keeping the essence of the big idea alive. More ideas from thousands of people only make a bad selection. selling and implementation process perform even worse.
One of the problems in discussing innovation and more importantly, actively fostering it within an organization, is the lack of any clear agreement on what is meant by “innovative”. It is similar to “tall”. Exactly how “tall” is “tall”? When the pygmy village discusses “tall” it is a very different discussion that in the NBA discussions. For about twenty years, I have worked with applying psychological assessments of cognitive abilities and personality traits to business situations. Productive innovation within a company is dependent upon a broad pallet of creativity and intelligence. In other words, it is not just a particular type of person who is the “model” of innovation. The really effective, in a business sense, innovation comes from a collaborative effort, yet the effectiveness of the collaboration is critically dependent upon how the collaboration is structured. The ability to do that is dependent upon how specifically the innovative abilities of each person are measurably defined. This enable the productive communication that builds upon itself rather than fighting a series of debates and defensive arguments.
I agree with your thoughts and reflections, Stefan; an inspiring writing and proposition! — What I share with you is that I also think ‘People focus’ is key both private life and in business, and thus also when it comes to innovation and being innovative.
Over the years, I have realized that every single human being on this earth is indeed different; we are all different from each other. We do also have similarities, and sometimes many such, often following for example our cultural background, national origin etc.. Being similar is meanwhile not a bad thing at all; we were taught to be free and own-opinioned and thus different, but being somehow similar is to me still a positive fact when we all, more or less, face similar challenges in life; at home, in business etc.. The similarities allow us to LEARN short of ‘standard practice’; yet, we remain each of us, all different!
What this is about is therefore first and foremost to UNDERSTAND people! — UNDERSTAND the differences and cater for them throughout life. UNDERSTANDING is thus the key here. But how can we UNDERSTAND other people, even each other? — Well, to me; this all starts by INNER LEARNING; a LEARNING about ourselves and how we function mentally, physically, spiritually etc.. If and when we UNDERSTAND ourselves, it is then fairly easy to UNDERSTAND others too. That we UNDERSTAND ourselves gives us namely a relatively easy opportunity to compare ourselves with others. Such “human mirroring” is an interesting and inspiring process, and once we are use this throughout our daily living, we LEARN more about others and also more about ourselves too!
People need thus LEARNING as part of life! — if they do not, they will not develop, neither themselves nor their private lives, business etc.. Without LEARNING, life stands still! – and standing still is of course, in this context, rather the opposite of being INNOVATIVE, which is what we debate here.
Here comes then the point: if we do not UNDERSTAND ourselves, we will not UNDERSTAND others; and what helps us UNDERSTAND ourselves and others is LEARNING. LEARNING is thus the simple key to an inspiring and constantly “moving” life, where LEARNING PEOPLE are the only people with potential towards being INNOVATIVE!
Hence, for those seeking INNOVATION in life or in business, it totally paramount that a free-spirited LEARNING ENVIRONMENT is created and continuously developed! — yet, some would say: but how to control such? – and the answer is: do NOT control it! – develop it instead and be actively involved in that process, so some level of track is not lost, but aimed at. Being, for example, the leader of an organization, he/she must thus involve him/herself ACTIVELY in the company’s INNOVATION process; not to control it, but to develop it and be part of the shared success that INNOVATION can bring!
….. so yes, Stefan! – ‘People Focus’, that is indeed needed(!), when it comes to INNOVATION, and stimulating this in the PEOPLE that are thought to be INNOVATIVE!