Four false myths of innovation and creativity

Four false myths of creativity from The Innovation Architect blog:

1. Creativity should be fun - brainstorming and coloured post-it notes are preferred to the hard work of challenging existing practices and solving recurrent problems. As a boss, are you prepared to be told that "you have been doing it wrong"?
2. All ideas are good; all good ideas are self evident - I have heard my bosses at various moments in my career state "all ideas are good ideas".  This is not true.  Some ideas are really bad ideas.  Some ideas are breathtakingly stupid. Truly original ideas are often not self-evidently "good". If you have been part of the existing system for long enough, you will be blind to some great ideas that break long-held assumptions about the way the world should work. Music and book publishing companies will not be capable of seeing new ways of delivering music or book content to listeners and readers that challenge their core assumptions of how the world should work.
3. Innovation is entrepreneurship - many of the most innovative people haven't got an entrepreneurial bone in their body - they can be quite impervious to the commercial aspects of their new solutions. 
4. The creative imperative - This is the final and overarching myth - that you and your company need to pursue it in the first place.  Innovation has a cost.  It needs time, money and attention if it is really to become part of the company DNA.  If you are not willing to commit the resources then perhaps your best innovation strategy is to not innovate at all.

The Innovation Architect blog is written by Professor Paddy Miller and collaborators Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg and Azra Brankovic from IESE Business School.

6 Reasons we give up on Goals

1. It takes longer than we thought
2. It's more difficult than we thought
3. We have other things to do
4. We don't get the expected reward
5. We declare victory too soon
6. We have to do it forever

From Marshall Goldsmith's book Mojo.

Dustin Johnson, not Thierry Henry will save our Economy

I watched the world’s top golfers play in the prestigious PGA tournament over the last 4 days. This is one of the top 4 prizes in world golf and a massive achievement for the overall winner.  Winning a “major” is a vital brick in the career of the world’s top golfers.

I want golf and not football as a values system for life.

Dustin Johnson was leading coming into the last of 72 holes and needed only a four shot par to win.  His first shot ended out in the area where a large crowd was gathered.  His second shot was from a rough scrub area in a sandy patch.  He touched the ground with his club before making his swing and striking the ball.  He ended the hole with 5 shots.  This left him in a tie for first place with two other golfers.  He still had a chance to win one of golf’s great prizes (and a lot of money).  As he waited, a rules official approached him and told him that the second shot that he hit from the sandy patch had infringed upon the rules.  After reviewing the situation, Dustin Johnson took out his eraser, rubbed out the 5 he had scored on hole 18 and wrote in the number 7 – in one self-regulated moment taking away his dream of victory.

I was struck by a massive disconnect between the attitude of the players in golf’s “world cup” and the recent FIFA football world cup in South Africa.

The world’s children grow up looking for role models that drive their developing value systems and aspirations and ideas of what a good life looks like.  I believe that sports stars attitudes translate directly into children’s beliefs about what is appropriate behaviour in life.

The French football team were a particularly pathetic example of poor attitude, cheating being ok, laziness and lack of respect for everyone else: countrymen, coaches and the referees.  The team should not have been there in the first place having beaten the Irish in a game where Thierry Henry handled the ball into the Irish goal net in plain view of all the world’s video cameras – but not the game’s referee.  When the referee gave the goal there was uproar from the Irish team.  Thierry and his mates in the post-match interviews did not deny that their victory was a victory of blatant cheating.  Every Irish and French boy watched this.  Every Irish and French boy saw what the football authorities think is ok – if the cheating is undetected by the referee then it is ok.

The world’s most talented football players spend a lot of time falling over without being touched and arguing with the referee over each and every decision.

Once at the world cup, the french team truly delivered a performance that embarassed every french person that I know.  Nicolas Anelka, the captain had a poor attitude in training and was sanctioned by the coach.  He publicly insulted the coach.  He was taken out of the team and sent home.  The rest of the team went on strike and didn’t show up to practice.  The coach refused to shake hands with coaches from other teams believing that they had insulted him.  All in all, a ten out of ten score for pathetic performance. (French team world cup summary on BBC)   The French president was so insulted by this group of fools representing their country that he called them in for a meeting to explain themselves.  Two were sanctioned for sex with an underage girl about a week later.

We are currently in a global financial crisis brought upon by banks doing what they could get away with (like the French football team) rather than what they knew to be right (like the golfers).  I often hear the claim that we need more regulation.  Football won't change by putting 2 referees on the field.  It will only change when the culture of football rejects cheating and ostracizes those that regularly cheat.

The financial services answer is not more regulation – it is about making sure that the 10, 11 and 12 year old children growing up today see more sports stars with the attitude of Dustin Johnson than Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka and when bankers celebrate great client service (that was the point of them wasn't it) rather than publish lists of how much money each dealmaker has scraped together.  Goldman Sachs looks more like french football than US golf.  I hope that the generation of 10 year olds of today forget about Thierry Henry and remember Dustin Johnson - and 20 to 30 years from now, when they are running Goldman Sachs - they will live with some basic values (not asking for charity; just not lying, not cheating and not stealing) - rather than defining "not illegal" as their operating boundary.

I still haven't found what I am looking for

A young man was walking along the shore of the sea. The beach was of pebbles. A wisened old man approached him. “I’ll give you one million dollars if you bring me a touchstone”. The young man paused. “What is a touchstone?” “It looks like any other stone, but when you hold it in the palm of your hand it feels extremely hot”.

The young man wanders down towards the shore and starts picking up pebbles. Initially he takes a moment to feel each stone, but as he gets into the process he becomes so busy picking up stones and throwing them into the sea that he doesn’t really have time to feel each individual stone.

The young man returns to the beach day after day, week after week. The seasons change and the years go by. Daily he picks up stones and throws them into the sea.

One day, a day where the young man is no longer young, about mid-morning he picks up a touchstone – but he is so busy in his process of picking and throwing, picking and throwing that he hardly notices the extreme heat of the touchstone.

He continues to the end of his life, but never again picks up a touchstone.

FIN.

Have you picked up a touchstone recently?  Would you know it if you saw it?

On holidays in Portugal

Last night's sunset. I was impressed.  As always, the real thing was better than the photo (like how books are always better than the movie (except Star Wars)).

Sunset at Quinta do Lago, Portugal. @me

I hope you are having a great August.