Día: 23 septiembre, 2010

A consistent point of controversy is whether or not innovation can be managed. If you think of innovation only as generating new, novel ideas, then it is very difficult to see how this could be actively managed (although there are in fact things we can do to encourage and improve creative thinking, so even here there is some scope for managing). On the other hand, if you view innovation as a process that includes steps such as generating, selecting, executing and diffusing ideas, then it is a bit easier to see how it might be managed.

Part of the problem here is how we define management. If we view it only as control, then it is hard to manage innovation because control will stifle the creativity needed at the front end of the process. However, if we view the main job of managers as enabling, or removing obstacles, then managing innovation starts to make more sense.

I ran across a quote today from the performance artist Marina Abramovi? that helps illustrate the issue. She is talking about how working in a studio can inhibit creativity by encouraging artists to follow a formula:

You understand the kind of work tha twill have success with your audience and you start making it again and again, and you lose yourself. The worst part is that you don’t surprise yourself with your work, you don’t get new ideas, or take risks, because of the possibility of failure. But failure is an incredibly important part of the work. Life itself is what’s important, not studio space.

So this is the problem: to create novel ideas, we have to be working at the edge – out where failure is a distinct possibility, out where the artists are. However, within organisations, unlike artists once we discover something new, we also have to figure out a way to make it again and again.

Managing the tension between these two acts – creation and re-creation – is the core challenge in managing innovation. Leer más “The Core Challenge in Managing Innovation”