Lark Birdsong's List: Innovation

"We make invention accessible.

For centuries, becoming an “inventor” has been a hard gig to crack. Complexities relating to financing, engineering, distribution, and legalities have stood in the way of brilliant people executing on their great ideas.

Since launching in 2009, Quirky has rapidly changed the way the world thinks about product development.

We bring two brand new consumer products to market each week, by enabling a fluid conversation between a global community and Quirky's expert product design staff."

"Innovation can be a more uniform, repeatable and sustainable process. "

" where to innovate in this economy. Numerous presenters provided varied and surprising answers about where they find innovation and innovation-related opportunities."

"Second, Dr. Charles Volk, Vice President and Chief Technologist at Northrop Grumman Navigation Systems, showed how innovation can be found in the past — “where” can be a point in time. "

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Innovation History via 6,000 Pages of Annual Reports"

"It’s true. We’ve scanned 6,000 pages of GE’s annual reports to build this interactive visualization. But why? What’s the point? Not only does this provide a rich history of how GE has always been at work building, moving, powering and curing the world, but it is a true reflection of how the economy, U.S. and the world as a whole has progressed from 1892 until 2011. By diving deep into key terms, users can uncover interesting stories about innovation over the last century. Explore for yourself! This is best viewed in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

About this data: The data in this visualization is sourced from all of GE’s annual reports from 1892 until 2011."

"In my experience, the way invention, innovation and change happen is [through] team effort. There's no lone genius who figures it all out and sends down the magic formula. You study, you debate, you brainstorm and the answers start to emerge. It takes time. Nothing happens quickly in this mode. You develop theories and hypotheses, but you don't know if readers will respond. You do as many experiments as rapidly as possible. 'Quickly' in my mind would be years."

Leaders and entrepreneurs can learn the following from Bezos strategy:

1. Teamwork Leaders should never hold out hope for a creative “lone genius” to come along and plop a great idea into their laps.

Innovation is a group process. That’s why it’s crucial for leaders to build coalitions around their change agendas. The more people who are working together, the better the result will me.

Takeaway: Stop waiting for Godot. Build a coalition and start the discussion.

2. Tinkering Thomas Edison famously said, “I failed my way to success.” So to do teams. Bezos makes it very clear that he brainstorms, debates, and tinkers with ideas.

In the same interview, Bezos says, “I’m a genetic optimist. I’ve been told, ‘Jeff, you’re fooling yourself; the problem is unsolvable.’ But I don’t think so. It just takes a lot of time, patience and experimentation.”

Bezos works on big problems in a small, organized way. He welcomes debate and testing because he knows creativity and innovation will be improved.

Takeaway: Kurt Vonnegut said it best: “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”

3. Patience For Bezos, innovation isn’t an overnight thing. It’s a long process that could take years.

Leaders shouldn’t try to force innovation or speed it along. It’s a slow, natural process that needs time to grow, develop, and adapt.

Takeaway: Don’t force creativity. Let it develop and bubble to the surface naturally. You can’t mandate innovation.

In the final analysis, pragmatic leadership is about implementing innovative ideas and sustaining team momentum. Leaders and entrepreneurs should learn from Bezos’ pragmatic approach to innovation. They shouldn’t worry about cultivating a “lone genius.” What they should do is deliberately build a coalition. They shouldn’t spend their time worrying about failure. They should embrace it. Lastly, they should accept that innovation is a slow process.

Innovation isn’t going to be delivered instantly by a Lone Ranger riding into the boardroom. It’s going to be developed by a team over time.
IMAGE: ptufts/Flickr
Last updated: Oct 17, 2013

SAMUEL BACHARACH is a professor of labor management at Cornell and director of Cornell's Institute for Workplace Studies. He co-founded the Bacharach Leadership Group and blogs at The Bacharach Blog. Among his books: Get Them on Your Side and Keep Them on Your Side.
@samuelbacharach

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