Innovation Dies in the Board Room (Photo credit: thecrispone)
How do I Measure Innovation?
Let me Count the Ways…
- there are fundamental prerequisites: a spirit of creativity, an attitude of enquiry and a mentality of curiosity
- but these can’t be quantified and thus don’t become comparables
- then there are persistence and perseverance, the commitment to pursue and the courage to hang in there;
- for the world at large does not like innovation, ‘cause it does not like change
- institutions and corporations are not made for brave enquiries, creative spirits and innovative thinkers
- in times of increasing insecurity, people hold on to their job at all cost and don’t risk thinking: outside pre-fabricated boxes? Beyond templated framesets? Without regurgitating existing phrases?
- the business of competition and the challenge of excellence are but hollow sound bytes in a climate of pressures and expectations;
- but the Japanese measure success in the number of risks taken
- and so do innovators count their rejections, stack up their misunderstandings and keep on working
- for there have been countless others who suffered the same fate
- there have been innumerable artists and inventors, creatives and innovators who keep trying to convey what they see and know, what they think and understand
- yet as beauty is in the eye of the ‘beholder’, so is innovation in the mind of the assessor of innovators who dare to think: with logic and concepts, in order and systems
- it takes courage to question, curiosity to try and logic to persist.
- and when innovation is understood by others but the inventor, then there is breakthrough, then there are shifts:
- of paradigms and mindsets, of fashions and trends, of beliefs and values;
- for knowledge is as individual as insights are
- and individual ideas need to be cherished and polished
- before they are robust enough to touch ground – on collective platforms of competition – in corporate boardrooms of bottom lines.
- Meanwhile the innovators stick to their guns: for they can’t escape providence,
they have to fulfil their destiny – no matter what the world may think, irrespective of societal consequences.- Innovators are ahead of their time. But the Zeitgeist knows their ideas. And thus their time will come when their ideas become accepted: by but a pithy few, a minute minority.
- But wait till the time is right: for nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come![Victor Hugo]
November 2006
Related articles
- 2013 BRW Most Innovative Companies List Melbourne (woman.com.au)
- Innovation in the NHS (intechnology.co.uk)
- The Morning Download: Making Innovation Count (blogs.wsj.com)
- Happy 150th birthday to the Tube (intechnology.co.uk)
- 7 Ways to be Creative (innovationmanagement.se)
- Inc.com, 7 Steps to a Culture of Innovation, in IT as well as in business (itconnecter.wordpress.com)
- Yahoo’s ban on working remotely: a creative step for innovation? (csmonitor.com)
- The Future Depends on Developing Tomorrow’s Innovators (triplepundit.com)
- Stanford Study Finds Companies Get Less Innovative Post IPO (forbes.com)
