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Bursting Innovation Myths

Bhupendra Sharma
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Bhupendra Sharma
For most of us, a social conversation in Bangalore starts and ends with feelings and words exchanged about the infrastructure and the pathetic state of response from the state machinery. This is true not only of Bangalore, almost all the cities going through the pangs of development face the same kind of official attitude. Almost all these issues need innovative ways of dealing with. Not only issues in the cities, but also the way we are governed and the way administration is run require a whole lot of innovation if India has to get going and truly live up to its potential as often talked about.

Innovation is now getting into boardroom discussions, and thankfully has moved away from just academic limelight, which it enjoyed till the early part of this millennium. But to ensure that it succeeds it would be necessary to look at myths surrounding innovation and the way companies are trying to drive it.

In my work over the last 20 years I see how people and companies get frustrated with the overall rate of success with their innovation attempts and so I decided to look into this issue and studied the methodology and approaches that have been used over the last 3 odd decades. It was fascinating to observe some deep-rooted notions on what it takes to make innovation happen, and therefore the myths associated with them.

For entities to truly derive full benefits from innovation it would be important to understand that the challenge here is to increase the strike rate of successful innovation; let us see if we can do that by understanding innovation differently.

Myth 1. Innovation is out of the box thinking
Well, indeed so, however there is a catch about the box here. Most innovation in attempts don’t succeed the way they were conceived, primarily because there are forces of gravity that pull them down. These forces are in the invisible mindsets in the organization’s or industry’s or country’s culture. It has by far been the area most ignored by the innovators to be able to skillfully create a breakthrough at the mindset level before attempting to offer ideas in technology and products. Newsweek’s sept 3 cover story details this aspect brilliantly. It would be a breakthrough for the U.S. to apprehend Osama Bin Laden, and since the last 5 years they have put the best ideas, talent, technology, and resources in this pursuit. But, what has come in the way is the ‘gravity’ at some level of the mindset that has made the task not only difficult but has also diluted the troops’ resonance with the purpose. The next time you hear someone say ‘out of the box’ do ask him ‘out of which box’, as the mindset gravity could be sitting anywhere in the culture of the mindsets.

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