How not to foster an innovative culture
March 15th, 2007 by rivercrow
I’ve been thinking about innovative cultures. I’ve been in a few–marketing departments, magazines, art school–so I do have a vague idea what an innovative culture looks and feels like. I also can recognize one that isn’t.
For starters, productivity is not the same as creativity. I can work all day at manufacturing things, but if I never question what I am making, I can’t call what I am doing creative. Creativity is the engagement with the product or the idea and the exploration of possibilities or the willingness to explore mistakes. A certain level of playfulness, willingness to suspend disbelief, willingness to challenge the “intendedness” of things and ideas.
So what’s a sure way to kill this? Elevate productivity over creativity. Demand adherence to a preconception of things. Squelch all dissent.
Information technology departments, for all their abundance of high-tech folks and developers, have a reputation of not being innovative. Why? I’m convinced a certain amount of this is due to three resistance areas: emphasis on productivity, interest in preserving the past, and desire for immediate closure. The interest in productivity is obvious–time spent reviewing and questioning is time wasted on producing. Preserving the past? Once a complex system (solution) is created, efforts must be made to protect this system at all costs–even if the system (solution) does not answer the question. Immediate closure is needed to maintain high productivity; taking time to consider the implications of possible solutions, to examine the boundaries of the puzzle, or to reframe the known delays closure.
What are the costs of stifling innovation? Lack of creativity, of course. On an employee level, lowered morale, more stress, and disengagement. On a company level, loss of credibility as fostering improvement, less productivity, staff attrition, and loss of competitive edge.
Links on innovative culture
Review of Creating the Innovative Culture
Creativity and Innovation in Business: Culture Transformation
“Putting an innovation culture into practice” (PDF)
Innovation Culture Group
New & Improved
One Response to “How not to foster an innovative culture”
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It always did surprise me how resistant to change the IT world is. I always thought that a bunch of people who’s work is half covered by the ever present undo button would be more willing to experiment but no they want to use the technique with history “don’t fix what ain’t broke”. Unfortunately so few understand that the statement they quote is based entirely on what you consider broke and what you consider acceptable.
I think that Wildcat and I found the key problem to the lack of space for intuitives in the mainstream. Too much obsession with knowledge and the ability to provide answers to problems, not enough appreciation for the strive to think independently.
I take quite a bit of flak for investigating new methods with my database at work. You should see the head-scratching when the new release comes along with all new sections and processes.
I think the last version came out in about 2004. the gaffer has just found one of the basic features. I think that next time the GUI will have to have some work
Anyhow, intuitives are often victimised for habitually “bucking the trend”. This is where I idolise the ENTJ approach. They seem to operate not only with the ability to get others to follow their system but have the mindset which includes no doubt that others should follow their system (well not outwardly anyhow).