When in doubt, do: Behaving innovatively…

When in doubt, do: Behaving innovatively…
Posted by steven_spear | Under Business Strategy, Innovation, high velocity organizations, organizational learning
Friday Jul 17, 2009

When confronted with a problem, the natural inclination is to try and figure out an answer. Furrowed brow, eyes squinted, and shoulders hunched over a computer keyboard are the common postures and expressions–static, tense, and intense. Oddly enough, this is not true in the most innovative organizations. When they have a problem, there is seemingly a kinetic frenzy, people trying one idea after another. Why? They believe that if they have a problem, it is because they don’t understand a situation and no amount of thinking will improve their understanding. Only by acting will they get new data or new perspective and hence new insight.

The risk, you’re thinking, is that if you do when in doubt, you can make a big huge mistake. That’s right, which is why the most innovative drive themselves towards trials, tests, prototypes, and simulations that are ever quicker, cheaper, less intrusive, and less disruptive. That makes it safe to make mistakes. And it is only by getting things wrong that they can learn their way to getting things right.

There is an outstanding example in the news of NASA behaving innovatively (”For Mars Rover, Really Remote Roadside Assistance,” Robert Lee Hotz, Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2009). One of the Mars rovers is stuck in the sand. Rather than give up and abandon the mission or try sending instructions at the risk of stranding the rover even further, the rover team has taken a duplicate, created a facsimile ’sand box’ on Earth and their trying dozens if not hundreds of variations on getting the duplicate rover out its trap before sending instructions to the real rover 250 million miles away.

(For more examples of ‘behaving innovatively,’ please see the Navy nuclear propulsion example in Chapter 5 of Chasing the Rabbit and the several examples in Chapters 7 and 9.)