Innovation and busker bands

I appreciate creativity and innovation in all its forms - and sometimes you'll see it in the funniest places. On a recent vacation, I saw it in a band of street musicians who had taken the stand on the main street.

Street musicians are probably seen in most places, but this band - to be found on YouTube under the name of Camachophones, if anyone should be interested - distinguishes itself by bringing - in addition to trumpet, tuba, saxophone and two "regular" percussionists - a somewhat distinctive instrument - which is easiest to describe by recognizing that an image says more than a thousand words.

Add to this that the musicians certainly seem to enjoy what they do, and all of it actually sounds really great - then it's hard not to be happy with the experience - and put 10 € for the CD sold from the instrument box in front, and some coins in addition.

A souvenir that might cost more than the average postcard. But on the other hand, it is also more unusual than the average.

(Translated from Innovation og gademusikanter)

Can I show you my hallucination?

At some point I read a quote - by some people attributed to Thomas Edison, while other people doubt it - and I admit, it might be stated in a fashion more contemporary than what Edison might have done it.
But still, it is a good quote, so I want to share it anyway:

Vision without execution is hallucination

Actually Edison - or whoever is responsible - has a point. All our grandiose ideas are worth nothing, if they are not realised. But still, I do not think that we should abandon all hope, just because we cannot execute our visions on our own.
That's where our networks become handy - and where we should be demanding towards ourselves. Because: if I have a vision so exceptional that I realise that I will never ever execute it myself, then I cannot help but think that I have a responsibility to consider, whether I know anyone present it to - even if to me, it is a hallucination, it might be that they know how to execute it. The quote does not demand that all parts of the process must be carried out by the same individual.
And every time we doubt whether our visions can be executed, we can consider another quote (which is generally agreed to be by William Blake):

What is now proved was once only imagined.

(Translated from Må jeg vise dig min hallucination?, originally published December 5th, 2011)

Perfect Strangers

If you are struggling to come up with ideas for what to do next time you assemble a networking group, I would like to put forward an idea that I have been toying around with: what if the individual participants were given the assignment: Everyone will a companion, preferably of the innovative kind, who must not know (or be known to) anyone else in the original group of people. This gives you the opportunity to add new perspectives to the topics you are occupied by, and provide fresh air to the network.
 As far as I can see, the idea could be used in several contexts where you may be interested in breaking up old habits and bringing innovation into a more or less established group. If someone out there tries it out, I would be delighted to hear about your experience.
(Translated from Perfect Strangers, originally published May 31st, 2016)

When towers lean a little

In a fascinating way, the people we meet can naturally be divided into circles: I may have a couple of hundreds of followers on Twitter, a part of whom engage in my tweets, some come so close that they actually go beyond Twitter and start reading here, and a few go so far as to actively react on what I have written.
Thus I was inspired to write this post by Bojosi Gamontle, who had come to the innermost of these circles, and after reading the post about the tower that did not lean at Osborg asked whether there is room in our daily lives though to say, "maybe the tower can lean a little today"?
Such a question is a bit too complex to respond to via Twitter - even after we have been given twice as many characters per tweet - but on the other hand it's too good a question not to be answered. And therefore it ended up as a post here instead.
Funny enough, it's a question that I have also debated (in a slightly different disguise, though) with a close colleague: should we be afraid to fail as a result of trying to do things in a new way? My good colleague thinks we should be afraid. If the things we create are released to the customers and malfunction, people could get physically hurt. Period. I am however of the opinion that there is a time to fail and a time to be careful: the things that are released to the customers must of course be okay - but on the way towards the finished, tested and functioning result we should allow ourselves to be as innovative as possible and fail as quickly as possible, otherwise we will never become smarter and better.
The same applies to the master builder of Osborg. I have no doubt that he had been in situations along his way, where the things he tried to build had crumbled to pieces in spectacular ways - that is what it takes to eventually be able to stand tall as a master builder. And in the same way, we must also allow ourselves to be imperfect, embrace our failures, admit to our vulnerability and be able to assess where it is necessary that we deliver our best. We, too, need to try things that fail in order to learn what works and what doesn't - and in the end we may in certain ways be like the builder who stood impassive when he was accused of having made mistakes, while we know very well that we have many other things to polish when we return to our studies. So yes, there are plenty of times when the tower may lean a little. We may even say that there are times when the tower by all means should lean - because otherwise, we have not challenged ourselves and have not escaped far enough from our comfort zone to build even higher towers of the future without fear of having them crash to the ground.
(Translated from Når tårne hælder en smule)

On the topic of possessiveness and co-creation

On top of the recent post on ownership and possessiveness, Rebecca Elvy made me think of a story I heard recently. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I heard of it – but I remember that someone told me about the trick they used at this person's workplace in order to make people feel ownership without possessiveness. The trick is that they do not reward the good ideas people get, instead they reward those who contribute to making the ideas of the original idea generators even better. An idea is simply not rewarded before one person has conceived it and another person has refined it.
In this way, it is ensured that the good ideas are shared, and at the same time people will feel good sharing their ideas – because anyone knows that next time, she will have the possibility to refine someone else’s bright idea.
There might be downsides to this as well, of course, but essentially, instead of inspiring possessiveness, this approach breeds co-ownership and co-creation.
Which is a good thing for two reasons. Not only is possessiveness (which we established recently is the evil twin of ownership) discouraged – but it must also be remembered, (now that we are talking about “the ancestry of ownership and possessiveness”) that there is another unfortunate cousin in the family tree – the sentiment of “not-invented-here”, where people have an inclination to reject the ideas of others, simply because these are not their own ideas. The rewarding of co-creation is also quite good against “not-invented-here”, as it inspires people to be open-minded with regards to the ideas of other people – because they might be able to make them even better. It simply has a tendency to make people go from saying “No!” to saying “Yes, and…”, which is one of the pillars of creativity.
(Translated from: Noget om besidderiskhed og samskabelse)

(More) newcomer innovation

Actually, this heading intended for this post was "Why should the newcomers learn?", but standing on the shoulders of the recent post, it is now about newcomer innovation, but other newcomers than those in the recent post.
Because when an organization meets new people who come to it, there are two kinds of beginners - the obvious ones from yesterday, who are to learn how to act in the organization, and they less obvious yet not less interesting: those who are already part of the organization and who need inspiration to think differently - a field within which they can easily be as much beginners as the newcomers to they are facing.
The headline did not end up as it was originally thought. Of course, I do not imply that new people in an organization should not learn how the organization works, or learn how to work with it - but I'd love to use this post, on top of the recent one, to point out that the organization should take it as an obvious task to make sure to make use of all the useful new energy from these people before they unlearn whatever exciting arts they knew of before they sunk into the organization's conformance.
I explicitly write "a task". I could have written "a duty", I maybe should - but let me restrict myself to saying that unless you learn from the new ones before starting to teach them, you lose an important possible step in an innovation process.
(Translated from Innovation for (andre) begyndere, originally published December 26th, 2012)

Newcomer innovation

Image courtesy of pixabay / geralt

Everyone has experienced being a newcomer - to start something new in a field, where other people have more experience than the newcomer have. I remember when I got my first job, and soon after I was employed, I was invited to a meeting where the topics were important things that I did not have the least knowledge of.
I remember how I sat at that meeting - paralysed with fear of saying something stupid. I'm not sure that if I had said anything, I could have contributed with anything constructive. But I have since realized that people sitting in that situation should be encouraged to say something - because they are in a unique situation as the people who do not know what is not possible.
So I promised myself that in the future when I'm in such situations - either as as the newcomer who knows nothing, or as the one who is the experienced knowledgable guy - I will use the situation. Either by speaking up after having apologized for my ignorance, or by inviting the newcomer to speak her mind, no matter how stupid she may feel. Because in that situation there are no stupid comments or questions - there are only unexpected ideas, and it would be stupid not to benefit from them.
(Translated from Innovation for begyndere, originally published December 25th, 2012)

The killing of a good idea

The other day I read an interesting piece on Eric "Astro" Teller, who heads the Google X department that does stuff, which seen from a perhaps slightly more earthbound view would be regarded as an R&D department for high-flying ideas.
The point is that when you run a department, which is limited (and who aren't these days?) with regards to time, manpower and other resources, it is imperative that one does what one can to kill ideas early - you simply must go to work with the mindset: "how do we kill our project today?"
It is an extreme interpretation of Linus Pauling's view on how to get good ideas: get a lot of ideas; hereafter you "simply" have to find out which ones should be discarded. And it is in excellent thread with so many other theories about failing quickly and celebrating mistakes, something at which we probably all should be better.
If there is just one good idea that you simply aren't able to kill, it would be worth it.
(Translated from Mordet på den gode idé, originally published April 28, 2016)

On the topic of being creative

Image courtesy of Pixabay / qimono

In my list of blog topics was a point taken from a lecture I heard the Danish professor of educational psychology at Aalborg University Lene Tanggaard give in the fall of 2010 - it merely said:

Be creative - it works!

- to cut a long story short: let the creative ideas loose when they emerge; have them written down to an extent so that they can be reconstructed as needed, and then leave them to mature and have a critical look at them later.
As it has been said so often: if there is just one good idea that turns into something, then it has been worth it - but it begins when you give yourself the permission to get the good ideas; and the easiest way to do this is to allow yourself to have a lot of ideas and hold on to them. Then, you can always later find out which ideas that are indeed good, and try to use these as the basis for innovation.
(Translated from Noget om at være kreativ, originally published January 5, 2013)

On the topic of changing the game

The other day I read an interesting article by Shane Snow on "best practices" - how it represents one of the universal solutions of today: to search for particular best practices within one's industry in order to achieve excellent results. But Snow's point is actually thought provoking - as Snow puts it:

Best practices don’t make you the best. They make you the average of everyone else who follows them.

It is actually in line with the Muriel Strode quote that I took into account when arguing against copying the achievements of great people. If you walk in the footsteps of others; if you follow other people's best practices, or for that matter: if you copy the acheivements of great people - you will never become the person whose feet leave the footprints, never become the one who sets best practices; or the great person, whose achievements other people dream of copying - you just become someone who follows.
Whereas the one who tries to innovate and solve problems, which were never resolved before, puts oneself in the position, on which Snow says, "it's the way games get changed instead of simply played".
 And that would probably be the position which you would like the most, if you had the choice?
(Translated from Noget om at ændre spillet, originally published March 19, 2016)

Do not copy the achievements of great people

It is my pleasure to pick up a quotation, which I originally thought was by the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, but actually seems to originate from the poet Muriel Strode:

I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.

I am especially happy to use the quotation here because it fits so well with a headline, I collected at a lecture on creativity and innovation a number of years ago: "Do not copy the achievements of great people - become great in your own right".
It is so obviously right, when you look at it: if one has the desire to become great, it will actually not happen by following the path of others, copying their great achievements, but rather by following one's own path and discover new ground - and as a matter of fact it is quite possible that even if one has no ambitions to become great, one will becomes one's best self in the happiest way if not following a great role model's beaten path.
It may well happen that it will not be quite as easy - but it has a certain probability to become a more interesting, funnier and more exciting process.
(Translated from Kopier ikke de store, originally published July 23, 2013)