If you want any guidance or information on innovation the subject is readily available all over the web. There’s a page from the Daily Reviewer devoted to listing the top 100 blogs that write on innovation alone not to mention Harvard Business Review and BusinessWeek getting into the act.

So what new do I have to add to the conversation that will or could make any difference? Only that I am not going to promote a system in order to ensure innovation happens (one preferably lead by me ;)). It’s my own not just professional opinion but experience that informs that posture. As a rule I engage companies when I have worked with them directly on their change initiatives at the disruptive technology level as opposed to incremental (see how much I’ve learned by reading the blogs and engaging in LinkedIn forums?) which means something tangible got the ball rolling, then ideas naturally started pinging as a part of the conversation….., which then led to the systems just as a checkpoint or an ad hoc R&D model. Of course at the time, since I’ve been doing this dating back to 1997 (and earlier if you want to count the oh so successful Barrington Rep Group which I can no longer claim affliliation with), I didn’t realize that is what I was doing, it’s just the knack (read talent, education, experience and exposures) I had for finding exceptional talent and helping put it together in such a way that it became destined for commercial success with ready adoption by large corporate entities. It’s a record of success and achievement I am very proud of and only recently have come to understand its now infamous label of “innovating disruptive technology.”

So, it’s good we have some well versed academics on the job who can name that tune for the rest to learn and therefore benefit from. It is an important point though as disruptive technology is a whole other ballgame from incremental, carries more risk and therefore more reward, but does require going outside the box for solutions, again in my experience, so people become the other important foci to getting results from your innovation practices. Leadership styles can be a way, or at least a start, to get a handle on what might facilitate the process at least from inside the corporate view.

So currently Proctor & Gamble has launched their initiative “Design Thinking” that is in effect going to help them thwart the private label progress now being made and eroding their market share. It doesn’t say so much about innovation per se as it does about assuming a mindset that allows for innovation to come through. I can’t argue its merits….for a large corporation like that you have to do something to ensure a steady and consistent output of innovative product but more the better is P&G’s willingness to work with smaller agencies to help with those efforts. Everyone seems to agree that P&G alone, along with many other too large corporations, are not able to innovate with the same creative passionate interplay smaller agencies are capable of.
After all, that is how the Swiffer came about: not from P&G executives but them working with a small agency, Design Continuum, that created the Swiffer, one of P&G’s most successful consumer products yet.

So now the issue is, as one pretty astute forum member asked, if you aren’t IDEO, and you are working on change initiatives with corporations, how can you make sure you are not in the shadow of that corporation so you can go on to work with other companies in order to continue that sort of innovation? There is more than IDEO I can assure you that is out there creating and on the level of bringing such innovation to the table that the results have been nothing short of game changing and setting industry standards for over a decade. While that’s immense for society (at least for a decade), what about the little guy that did the heavy lifting?

It reminds me of the movie about the intermittent windshield wiper guy who lost everything fighting for the right to his invention that Ford Motor Company got most of the credit and therefore dollars for. Or how Mozart in his final days was so poor as to be forced to write compositions he would be commissioned for by some wealthy businessman….

I mean, why? Why kill off the goose that lays the golden egg? Do we live in such an environment of scarity that that kind of talent is to be robbed from instead of nurtured, supported, paid well so that they can live to do it again for others, making society all that much richer? Or are we to continue down this path of the self destructive robber barron mentality that only serves to make the rich richer? We all have families to support Mr CEO, so why not instead of building walls do like Berlin did in the 80′s and bring that Berlin Wall down. Society will be all the better for it and you will still be remembered fondly for what you did by historical standards and still gain riches as a consequence. It’s just this time you will bring along the people who helped you do it. So now what you will have done is become the P&G of your product cateogy instead of wilt and die after a decade of riding the little guy’s wave with no other BigIdeas generated in the process.

If you want to reinvent the wheel, do like the Wright Bros & create the airplane. Jack is nimble, quick and thinks outside the box.

So, my recommendation is, for the sake of society, the American Spirit and maybe even the world, open your hearts and minds and resources and build your next new BigIdea (psst, I can hear India nipping at your heels….).

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