Anti-Serendipity

As soon as the corporate dinosaurs are re-educated or pressed into oil, our nation will be more likely to survive in this crazy environment.

Organizational sins that will kill innovation

Last month, I spoke at length of the role of serendipity in innovative problem solving, and I offered five axioms for maximizing serendipity within your organizations. This month, I’d like to address the roadblocks we all face in making this dream a reality, and in doing so I’d like to share five contradictory lessons shared by a very dear, very smart friend who has spent most of his life supplying “tools” - you know, planes, ships, guns, etc. - to the military.

This may help to explain where all of that money that we spend on military procurement actually goes, and why military projects often seem to go awry.

“I am amazed at how many of the military programs I’m working on now are examples of the opposite pole of human endeavor,” my friend says. “They are what I might call anti-serendipity.”

“You see as many ideas arise ‘by accident,’ many accidents arise from ideas,” he continues. “Some of these train wrecks unfold in excruciatingly slow motion, even over the course of 15 or 20 years.”

Here are my friend’s organizational sins that are guaranteed to kill innovation:

#1: Keep our minds completely focused on what we’re already committed to doing at the time. In doing so, strive to make all future results (no matter what tools or solutions they come from) lead directly back to the failed result we’re stuck to.

#2: Take the customer’s problem statement - no matter how many questionable assumptions it contains - as sacred. Whatever you do, don’t prod the problem statement. Remember, it’s not merely holy writ, it’s also a land mine waiting to go off, and it will. Just make sure it goes off under somebody else.

#3: If something doesn’t work, pretend it does. Whatever you do, don’t dig any deeper. If you dig down three feet, you might find a body, dig another three feet and you could find twelve more.

#4: Don’t make room for new ideas, or some other idea or innovation will move in that moves us out. We don’t want that.

#5: When it comes to ideas, there are no outside resources. Don’t tell anybody anything, pretend to respond to anything they tell you.

Of course, these sins are not limited to the military or the government. I am pretty sure that if you clear away your own fog, you will find all of them lurking in your own organization to some degree. Of all of those listed above, #4 and #5 — also known as the Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome — may be the most damaging.

Recently, from within the ranks of a forward thinking corporation that had previously been nothing less than willing and eager to look for new ideas through open innovation, I discovered there were still bogeymen lurking in the shadows.

In this enlightened company with visionary leaders who intend to grow through discovery, through innovation, though new product even in this darkest of downturns, I found a core of NIH dinosaurs standing sentry over the “Way We Do It” past. I was speechless after the run in.

I thought that we all had embraced the open innovation movement; I did not expect to find the mind numbing rigidity of an engineer who would not talk to me because I was an outsider. Me, a consultant who had already signed over dozens of NDAs, developed a host of IPs and alerted this gentle giant of a company to all manner of threats. The sense of ‘we’ was gone.

I probably shouldn’t pout, I talk to several of the old gear heads in the company, many who brainstorm without a specific NDA for possible solutions and know that they risk nothing by sharing. The IP is always theirs; they know it and trust it, just as I trust that we will eventually be made whole for the time we spend thinking aloud with them. It’s a mutual trust that drives the relationship.

These old gear heads get it. They know they can’t know everything, and while the company might have a million employees of all stripes, freewheeling discussion about possible solutions with the right combination of internal associates is not likely.

Everyone is busy, focused and mostly limited to their core business, not looking beyond the edges. But the essence of the open innovation movement, is the strength and wisdom of looking beyond your own limits.

This is why the open innovation movement is such a force. The more corporate America stumbles and the more companies become preoccupied with survival, the more they must rely on outsiders for solutions. I have sung this song before, you all have heard it. I just want you to hear the phase, OPEN INNOVATION once more.

I want those of you who understand this message and work in big companies that harbor NIH dinosaurs to print this article out, roll it around a lead pipe and beat those dinosaurs about the head and shoulders (figuratively, of course) until they get the message.

The knowledge base is too big, and technology is moving far too rapidly, evolving and coming from every direction. Global competition is too vigilant to harbor a scintilla of the archaic notion that your internal resources know all, see all and can do all. The sooner these corporate dinosaurs are re-educated or pressed into oil, the more likely it will be for your companies and our nation to survive in this crazy environment.

Mike Rainone is the co-founder of PCDworks, a technology development firm specializing in breakthrough product innovation. You can contact him via mrain1@pcdworks.com.