"Innovation is a Messy Business"

I really like the statement “Innovation Is A Messy Business” from one of a pair of posts on John Winsor’s blog and excerpted from his book SPARK

 

 

Innovation is imprecise and full of paradoxes and contradictions.  For example, one of the challenges in making innovation work is trying to counter the process-oriented faster, better, cheaper mantra of the last 20 years and yet when you talk about being innovative a key message is that innovation has a process (i.e. it’s not just serendipity and creativity).

 

Here’s another paradox- a lot of innovation discussion lately has focused on customer driven innovation - but then it’s also said you should ignore the customer because they can’t possibly tell you they want something they’ve never thought of or experienced.

 

John’s post struck a chord because I’ve been noodling on the title of Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble’s book “10 Rules for Strategic Innovators“. 

 

 

I’m only just starting the book so I’m not going to comment directly on its contents but I’ve been struggling with the title.  Somehow innovation and rules just don’t seem to belong together.  Can you imagine “10 Rules for Great Artists” by Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso?  Sometimes innovation is about breaking the rules.  But I also know that you need some reference points for making innovation happen.

 

So “Innovation is a Messy Business” works for me.  Try some things, get down and dirty, make some mistakes, take some rules and apply them, take some other rules and drive straight through them, try something different, throw some stuff around and see what sticks.  Yep – that should be messy enough!