Every so often you meet people in innovation who really understand what it’s about. I mean : really understand. Inevitably one of the questions that I ask is what’s their background?

After the second or third time asking this question I gave up being surprised by the answers. Inevitably those that are passionate about innovation have had the most interesting backgrounds.

For instance a friend who used to be the Head of Innovation at one of the worlds largest phone companies (and who reported into the CEO), used to spend time teaching waterskiing.

A colleague in Holland used to be a marine biologist and study human-dolphin interactions. Curiously enough this is also what I started out training for at university.

Why is this?

(Actually it’s because dolphins always look so damn happy with their little perma-grin. And they get to surf all day at some of the worlds best beaches if they like. But I digress.)

It’s because if you are content with following the path you trained for at school or university or where-ever, then it means that you’re not that curious about the world. Those that are naturally interested in a whole range of things tend to move jobs/countries/professions every so often. When they start finding out about the sort of creativity that goes into innovation roles, they’re hooked.

What’s more they are usually amazed that they can get paid to do the sort of work which makes their brain hum until steam comes out their ears.

I was talking to a guy at an innovation lab in Sydney and he used the term ‘corporate refugees’.

I like it.

If you’re stuck in a beige cubicle reading this, and wondering if there is more to life in the business world, then why not apply for asylum?

It dates back to December 2006, but the message in this article is very relevant for a culture of innovation :

…it’s nearly impossible for companies to develop breakthrough products, processes, or approaches without encouraging the kind of trial and error that inevitably generates failures as well as successes. The challenge is to craft incentives that will make creative people comfortable with thinking big and taking risks.

This link comes from the now defunct Business Innovation Insider.

I’m proposing doing some work with a public sector client who wants to take a serious look at the culture of innovation.

As part of this I’ve been putting some focus on innovation spaces and come across two really worthwhile sources.

The first is from Leland Maschmeyer where he writes with a lean towards agency office design.

The second is a paper by Ed Reilly which takes a very serious look at the topic and can be found (in PDF form) here.

As many people have observed, the word ‘innovation’ is overused and little understood. In todays business environment, your chances of making sense of it are about the same as your chances of successfully translating the drinks menu at Starbucks for a non-coffee drinker*.

When this starts to happen with a trend – especially in the business world – the end result is a blend of confusion and scepticism. Business Week – among others – has noted a backlash against design and innovation. It was only a matter of time.

Bruce Nussbaum blogs about it here, and makes reference to the original article which has a couple of interesting quotes :

Kanter says that the most common mistake companies make is to focus on so-called practicality, or the application of traditional corporate processes to adventurous new projects. The problem, Kanter writes in an e-mail, is that applying tried and true processes to “fledgling ideas that are still unfamiliar, undeveloped” is problematic because truly innovative pursuits are “hard to forecast or measure in traditional ways.”

* I’m talking from experience here. As a non-coffee drinker I was recently offered a free tasting by a roving Starbucks evangelist. I tasted it. It was nice. I asked what it was. “Oh,” he said, slightly confused I’d even ask. “It’s a Decaf Light Toffee Frappuccino”. Like I’m going to remember that?

Update : Bruce Nussbaum (of BusinessWeek) commented that it’s hard to find humour in the field of innovation. I agree. That’s the motivation behind this post. Enjoy…

Over the last few months it’s become apparent that innovation is finding it’s way into all sorts of odd nooks and business crannies. However there’s very few people who actually know what it is and how to effectively do it.

And that’s why it seems remarkably similar to tantric sex, at least to an ‘outsider’ like me.

Here’s ten reasons why innovation is like tantric sex :

1. You can read lots about it, but there’s no substitute for doing it.

2. Lots of people talk about it, but few people know actually know how it works.

3. You can attend conferences about innovation, but when you leave your innovation methods/culture won’t change a whole lot.

4. People can make a lot of noise about innovation, but things stay the same.

5. The people on the top generally make the least amount of effort. It’s the people underneath who really want it to work.

6. With innovation efforts, there’s usually a whole lot of noise over a long period of time before anything happens. If it happens at all.

7. There’s nothing quick and easy about innovation. It takes a while to get good results.

8. Innovation is a bit mystical.

9. It makes for interesting conversations at dinner parties : “Innovation, oh yes – we’re the most innovative company in clerical administration. Why, just the other day we decided to use yellow paper for duplicates instead of white…”

10. There’s lots of trial and error.

Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile is in the midst of a ten-year study looking at, among other things, how time pressure in a corporate setting affects employee creativity. Interviewed here she talks about how her study is the first to empirically study creativity in the wild.

By stripping out assumptions and myths about creativity with solid research, she has uncovered some interesting things about creativity, which, in turn, has serious implications for innovation.

Overall, very high levels of time pressure should be avoided if you want to foster creativity on a consistent basis. However, if a time crunch is absolutely unavoidable, managers can try to preserve creativity by protecting people from fragmentation of their work and distractions; they should also give people a sense of being “on a mission,” doing something difficult but important.

Her study has also uncovered insights into how to encourage creativity. Amabile goes on to say that

…our research suggests that managers should try to avoid or reduce the “obstacles to creativity” (time pressure and organizational impediments like political problems, harsh criticism of new ideas, and emphasis on the status quo) and enhance the “stimulants to creativity” (freedom, positive challenge in the work)

On a slightly different – but still relevant note – she talks about a study she did a while back about creativity and motivations. Amabile found that artists were significantly more creative when intrinsically motivated (e.g. by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself) as opposed to when given large sums of cash and being told to produce something creative.

This reminds me of the story about the Motorola team that developed the Razr phone. They were given all sorts of perks based on the success of the design, but in an interview one of the team said that the greatest reward was the most unexpected. Out of the blue, the key members of the team were asked to attend a meeting which they had no knowledge of. One by one they were bought in. They walked in to face the board of Motorola, who then rose as one to give them a sustained standing ovation.

Now that’s what I call a reward.

From the FastCompany blog, comes this interesting post about the difference between people talking about something, and actually doing something. This is a classic with innovation inititatives in many large organisations.

It’s trendy, it’s sexy, everyone likes to think they’re innovators, and the marketing department just put the word on the box of the latest widget (because it now comes in a range of trendy colours).

Lots of talk, little action.

I’ve often found a frequent offender to be the manager who’s gung-ho about a new management book. He likes the concepts. He talks about them often. He gets others to read the book. They like them too. The book’s jargon makes its way into their everyday language. Everyone’s excited to be on board with the latest management thinking. Amidst the excitement, everyone fails to realize a simple fact. They’re not actually putting the concepts into practice.

The post is written by an executive coach called Doug Sundheim. I’ve often read his column in the magazine itself, and he offers an interesting little exercise at the end of the post. If you are involved in an innovation scheme in your organisation, spend five minutes on the exercise, ponder the result, and then treat it as a call to action.