Mind of the Innovator

I’m intrigued by the work of Matthew May, a real thought leader and the author of The Elegant Solution and In Pursuit of Elegance.

http://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Solution-Toyotas-Mastering-Innovation/dp/0743290178/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265333630&sr=8-1

He has looked at lots of different companies to understand how and why innovation works (or not.) He has found seven critical derailers when it comes to innovation including:

• Talking shortcuts and leaping to solutions. Like in the rest of life, when you try to cut corners your innovative “solutions” usually don’t work
• Having blind spots. We rely on muscle memory, assumptions, biases and such to go down familiar paths to the same old (sub-optimal) destination
• Dismissing solutions that were “not invented here.” If you think you don’t do this sort of thing, how many times have you gone to an elevator bank and re-pushed a lighted button that someone had already pushed before you?
• Not pushing ourselves deeply and broadly to find even better solutions than the first ones we come up with
• Making compromises and then compensating by trying to sell the benefits of our sub-optimal ideas (cutting corners)
• Making things too complicated. This might seem to contradict the point above, but remember Einstein said “Everything should be made as simple as possible and not one bit simpler.”
• Stifling or dismissing the ideas of people who might be “lower” on the corporate ladder, newer to the team or seem to have less experience

Matthew May is a brilliant writer and he’s got a terrific blog here… take a look!
http://www.inpursuitofelegance.com/