There's a theory in some organizations that innovation is R&D's job.
You know, there's innovation that need to be done, go get those guys over there.
Isn't that their job? My job is production, or my job is sales,
or my job is, you know, cleaning the floors.
Well, if you make innovation everyone's job, you're much more likely to get
somewhere better with that. Because everyone in the organization is
innovating, everyone has the tools for innovation.
And so R&D has as much support driving innovation as every other part of the
organization does. Because we know innovation is not just
this technical thing. Innovation can be in process.
Innovation can be in product. Innovation can be in, in thinking.
And to be able to do that, we need to touch every aspect of the organization
and not just R&D. And so, the fact that the people think
that innovation is R&D's job means that there's something wrong inside culturally
or in terms of the way we talk about innovation in our organization.
I say, explode the idea of what innovation is and make everyone
responsible for it, not just those few people who work in R&D.
There's an idea that a streamlined organization is a creative organization.
Yeah, while streamlined organizations are good at being efficient, I don't think
they're necessarily good at being creative.
And you can streamline a creative organization, but if you start out with
trying to create a creative organization and streamlining that, that's very
different than starting with a streamlined organization and trying to
make that thing creative. And so again, if you're focused on
productivity and efficiency and things like that, you're not going to have the
kind of access to create. You're not going to be able to make
yourself as creative as you might otherwise.
And so, seeking this kind of efficiency is problematic if efficiency means less
time for learning, less time for exploration, less time for exploring
other alternatives, other possibilities that are out there.
Finally, there's this idea that you can't routinely innovate, that sometimes you
have to just sort of sit down or take a shower or go great.
Do some, go in some altered state in order to have the idea that needs to be
had? That's not true.
You can be routinely innovative. We've seen number of examples of
organizations as we've gone through of people that we've gone through of groups
that we've gone through that are able to routinely innovate.
And now, we have some of the secrets why. It's, you know a newspaper.
The newspaper has been new every day and they have a system for and there is a
process for it. If you do that process, you'll come up
with something new all the time. You can't routinely innovate.
And so, this myth does not have to dominate your thinking.
It doesn't have to dominate the operational view in your organization.
So, here are the myths and, hopefully, now we know why they don't matter.
So, the last thing I want to talk about is stopping creative people.
Sometimes creative people must be stopped.
If people asks me about the title of the book creative people must be stopped, and
do I really believe that. And I tell them a little bit it's tongue
and cheek but also it's sort of true, that there are things we need to stop in
creative people. You know, creative people have to be
stopped because they sabotage their own creativity.
People get stuck in one way of thinking and one way of seeing the world, and then
they're stuck in that, and then they can't get anywhere new.
You have to stop them from that. You have to stop them when they are
afraid to stick up for their ideas in groups, and when they're working with
other people, and they have a group that goes again, you know, an idea that goes
against the group's mindset they're afraid to.
You have to stop them from doing that, right?
And how do we stop them? We've, we discussed that at the group
level, how it is that we can create a, make the constraints go away that operate
that level. Individual must be stopped.
they wander down paths and they go down these places that the organization will
never value. And even if the organization should
value, they don't think that they have to, they can have the responsibility to
tell the organization why. They think that if I make this widget,
somehow the world should, is obligated to understand why it's a great widget.
And so, they end up down these paths that can't end well.
It just cannot end well. So, we have to stop people from that
frustration that they're going to get by going down those paths.
You have to stop people from only using, you know, traditional characterizations
of the markets and, and the way that we create value, and our value chain, and
who we compete with. The people want to do that, and they want
that to stand still, right? Almost by definition the, the industry
is, never stand still. It's always moving.
And we can't see the future and there's no obligation that other organizations
have of being obedient. And especially, people in our market, the
customers. They're certainly not obedient, right?
They want things faster, better, cheaper, and they will switch if they can.
And so, what we have to do is we have to stop people from thinking about
industries and thinking about their organizations and thinking about
competition and thinking about value creation in the same ways all the time.
We need to stop them from that and get them to think about it in different ways.
We also have to stop people when they start judging the desirability of the
world of changes, of innovations in terms of their own values.
And they only look to themselves to say whether something is meaningful or not.
Oh I, customers would never like that, or they would never like this, or customers
should like that. That's problematic.
And that's something we have to stop. Creative people have to be stopped if
that's what they're doing, if they're judging.
Desirability of things is only based on, their own self image and their own
values. An finally, creative people must be
stopped, when they become so sure, that they know, that they really don't know.
Right? And so, we get this unconscious,
incompetence, because people are so sure that they know that they don't bother to
test, they don't bother to try, they don't bother to look, at different
problems. Had problems in different ways and
understand that they are potentially fallible.
So, these are many reasons why creative people must be stopped.
And I think it's, these are good reasons and fair reasons to intervene and to
actually go about stopping people. So, with that I want to say thanks for
joining us. It's been great.
hopefully you all have enjoyed the drawings and and enjoyed the class.
There have been a bunch of people who have helping here.
This is a few of the the prime movers, but there also have been a number of
other people helping as well. So, thanks for joining us.
tune in for more courses from Vanderbilt and we'll see you next time.
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