The Middle Ground of Design Thinking

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, corporate leaders have relentlessly pursued operational efficiency. The fundamental institutional goal was that of exploitation—maximizing the payoff from existing knowledge to solve problems. Using historical data, quantitative analysis, and inductive and deductive reasoning, explicit, incremental, step-by-step processes were developed to reliably predict outcomes and assure risk-mitigation. A sterling example is Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, who “Simplified the McDonald’s system down to an exact science, with a rigid set of rules that spelled out exactly how long to cook a hamburger, exactly how to hire people, exactly how to choose locations, exactly how to manage stores, and exactly how to franchise them.”

The polar opposite of exploitation is exploration—the search for entirely new knowledge. Exploration involves creativity and innovation and is based upon gut feelings, intuition, and instincts. Through knowing without reasoning, exploration is focused on achieving valid solutions and often results in false starts and major unexpected leaps forward. Exploration grasps risky new opportunities efficiency thinkers ignored. For example, “Early on, McDonald’s left health issues by the wayside. Subway made healthy eating the centerpiece of its value proposition, touting its fresh ingredients and low-fat specialties in response to consumers’ increasing concerns about unhealthy fast food.”

Are we stuck choosing between exploitation and exploration in our organizations? The answer is a middle ground, call design thinking. Design thinking seeks to balance innovation and efficiency (BOTH are necessary for success), continuously redesigns the business to take advantage of each, and closely matches consumer’s needs with what is technically feasible. Unlike the use of inductive and deductive logic in exploitation, and intuitive thinking in exploration, design thinking utilizes abductive logic. Abductive logic asserts that anything is possible, reaches out toward what might be, and can only be proven when the future arrives.

Martin, Roger (2009). The design of business. Boston: Harvard Business Press

Strangling Innovation

Whether called an innovation antibody, organizational antibody, or devil’s advocate, a malcontent employee may effectively shortstop corporate innovation. As Tom Kelley of IDEO said, “The Devil’s Advocate may be the biggest innovation killer in America today…The Devil’s Advocate encourages idea-wreckers to assume the most negative possible perspective, one that sees only the downside, the problems, the disasters-in-waiting. Once those floodgates are open, they can drown a new initiative in negativity.” Tony Davila similarly noted, “Typically, the more radical the innovation and the more it challenges the status quo, the more and stronger are the antibodies. Also, the greater the past successes of the company, the greater are the organizational antibodies,” and, “As complacency grows, organizational antibodies become more prevalent. Good ideas are attacked because they would require more change, and the organization is complacent—so complacent that it encourages rather than fights organizational antibodies.”

Innovation antibodies rarely publicly challenge innovation efforts “head-on.” Instead, one preferred method most commonly used to slow innovation progress to a crawl during times of financial exigency is to quietly influence and take control of the development of corporate policies and procedures surrounding innovation practices. Few bright employees volunteer to review and update procedures manuals, but wily innovation antibodies realize that burying innovation practices in convoluted policies and procedures effectively kills them. If unchecked, the underground control of corporate innovation policies and procedures by corporate antibodies will slow innovation so that it finally experiences death by inertia. Who has volunteered to “refine” your organizational policies and procedures, and where is the bus headed now?

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, innovation policies and procedures, innovation antibody, leadership, strategy


References

Davila, T., Epstein, M., & Shelton, R. (2006). Making innovation work. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing.
Kelley, T. (2005). The ten faces of innovation. New York: Currency Doubleday.

Recasting Innovation Resistance?

During periods of fiscal exigency, corporate innovation efforts may be associated with greater urgency, pressure, and risk than are similar organizational activities in more tranquil times (Kotter, 1995). Corporate leadership may become more frustrated by and less tolerant of behavior exhibited by employees and customers (Caruth et al., 1985), and may become competitive, defensive, or uncommunicative (Ford & Ford, 2009). Moreover, leaders may label a broad range of behavior as indicative of resistance to innovation efforts, and may consider such behavior as justification for operating in different and potentially more aggressive ways toward employees to signal that the behaviors are not aligned with the innovation process and are therefore unacceptable. Valid questioning of specific planned innovations by employees may receive an uncharacteristically harsh response from leaders who feel mounting economic claustrophobia. Leaders, has your innovation insight been muddied during this economic slump?

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, corporate communications, employee relations, leadership, strategy


References

Caruth, D., Middlebrook, B., & Rachel, F. (1985). Overcoming resistance to change. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 50(3), 23-28.
Ford, J. & Ford, L. (2009). Decoding resistance to change. Harvard Business Review, 87(4), 99-103.
Kotter, J. (1995). Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59–67.

Who Else Is Innovation For?

Today, virtually all innovation in products, services, ideas, processes, and environments, is accomplished for those who reside in the top 20% of the global economic strata. Common logic holds that innovation should be directed to those who can most easily pay for it. “Common” logic is not God’s logic, however. Searching online Bible sites for the keywords “poor,” “money,” or “poverty,” quickly reveals that allusions to the poor are everywhere in Scripture. One example is the challenge of Moses to his people found in Deuteronomy 15:10-11 (Peterson, 1995): “Give freely and spontaneously. Don't have a stingy heart. The way you handle matters like this triggers God, your God's, blessing in everything you do, all your work and ventures. There are always going to be poor and needy people among you. So I command you: Always be generous, open purse and hands, give to your neighbors in trouble, your poor and hurting neighbors.” Our personal relationship with the poor is an indicator of our present status with God.

Perhaps we are obligated to redirect a portion of our innovation resources to those at “the bottom of the pyramid.” The development of efficient markets and effective business models through enterprise innovation should generate a needed economic transformation, but more importantly, must provide members of our global community respect, choice, self-esteem, and a welcomed future (Prahalad, 2006).

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, poverty, esteem, choice, design, Christian leadership


References

Peterson, E. (1995). The message. Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress.
Prahalad, C. (2006). The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing.

In Praise of Amateurs

The entire staff of San Diego, California design firm NDI, Inc., ventured out into the bright sunlight in the company courtyard to view the latest full-scale model of a new automobile code-named “Cocoon.” As NDI CEO Jerry Hirshberg noted, “Under the midday sun, every undulation and nuance of the Cocoon was thrown into mercilessly high relief, helping to throw critical attention on it.” All of the designers, who had worked non-stop for months on the project, stood nearby to listen to the comments offered by the rest of the staff. The remarks were underwhelming. “Not bad at all” said one person, and “Much improved since the last show” said another. The tepid remarks failed to mask their lack of exuberance for the new car.

Cathy Wu, an executive secretary born in China, and educated in Japan and England, stood quietly sipping her tea and listening to the comments of others. Finally she raised her voice and said, “Well, it just looks fat, dumb, and ugly to me!” The designers were stunned by her comments and the review meeting quickly broke up. Deeply chagrined, the designers returned to their studios to meet and discuss the comments and consider possible re-designs. Some months later, when the new car was unveiled at the Tokyo International Automobile Show, it was a major hit with media and consumers alike. Every member of the NDI design team pointed to the comments of Cathy Wu as the origin of the new and remarkably successful design.

As British design icon James Dyson said, “You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can’t be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking that they have been taught to think.” Listen carefully to amateurs. Their sometimes obtuse observations may ultimately spell the difference between failure and success for your innovative ideas.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, leadership, corporate communications, compensatory behavior, design


References

Dyson, J. (2003). Against the odds. New York: Texere.
Hirshberg, J. (1998). The creative priority. New York: HarperBusiness.

Town Crier for Innovation

Andrew and Sirkin said, the “Chief innovator is a role often played by the CEO or chairman, especially when the company must make a change from another business strategy, such as cost cutting, merger and acquisition, or geographic expansion.” IDEO CEO Tom Kelley likewise noted, “The role of Director s more complex and nuanced than any other in the world of innovation…You are not just in charge of today’s operations. You are responsible for making sure there is a tomorrow.”

While the CEO takes numerous actions to encourage innovation, including giving permission and providing specific resources, the most important role of the CEO is to loudly, continually, and convincingly promote the absolute necessity of innovation. Corporate executives must publically endorse innovative work to signal their expectation of others in the company to provide cooperation and assistance. As author Scott Berkun noted, “Whether through power, inspiration, or charisma, managers have the singular burden of protecting their teams…If a project needs more time, money, or political cover fire than its leader can provide, the effort will be discovered, lobotomized, or killed.” It is impossible to over-communicate the necessity of innovation and the CEO should utilize as many communication methods as possible to continually focus employee attention on innovation. Whether through formal speeches, memoranda, emails, annual reports, videos, or face-to-face meetings, the drumbeat must always echo the same theme: “Innovation is critical to our corporate future, and everyone is expected to actively participate.”

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, leadership, corporate communications, resilience


References

Andrew, J. & Sirkin, H. (2006). Payback: reaping the rewards of innovation. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Berkun, S. (2007). The myths of innovation. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.
Kelley, T. (2005). The ten faces of innovation. New York: Currency Doubleday.

Innovation Begins With An Eye

What is visible is an important first element in our process of perception. Common to most creative people is the concept that “Innovation begins with an eye.” Joan Fulton Suri of IDEO noted, “The starting point for most of our projects—whether related to products, spaces, or services—is observation of behavior in its natural setting. Teams do this together, along with clients, as a way of learning firsthand about the context, habits, rituals, priorities, processes, and values of the people we are designing for.” IDEO CEO David Kelley also asserted that, “Focused observation can be a powerful source of innovation. As you observe people in their natural settings, you should not only look for the nuances of human behavior but also strive to infer motivation and emotion.” Mark May said that revising your view may yield different results: “The value to innovation in learning to see lies in changing your perspective on the problem. Viewing the subject from every possible angle is a technique artists, sculptors, and photographers use regularly to enhance their ability to capture and render ‘the truth.’”

Because of the importance of first-hand observation to perception and innovation, Kim & Mauborgne said that field research should be the purview of corporate employees: “Send a team into the field, putting managers face-to-face with what they must make sense of: how people use or don’t use their products or services. This step may seem obvious, but we have found that managers often out-source this part of the strategy-making process. They rely on reports other people (often at one or two removes from the world they report on) have put together. A company should never outsource its eyes. There is simply no substitute for seeing for yourself.”

In the 19th century, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “Earth's crammed with heaven. And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” If we have not noticed God’s dynamic presence in the world, perhaps it is because we have outsourced our eyes.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, market research, empathic research, observation, customers


References

Browning, E.B. (1864). Aurora Leigh. London: J. Miller.
Kelley, T. (2000). The art of innovation. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Kim, W. & Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue ocean strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
May, M. (2007). The elegant solution. New York: Free Press.
Suri, J. (2005). Thoughtless acts? San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

God Changes Minds

Enough was enough! Milton was a popular and highly respected bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, and was attending the denomination’s annual conference. The discussion at the conference turned to possible new technologies that would help men achieve greater levels of success and prosperity. A report to the denomination even included the possibility of a future flying machine to transport people from city to city. Milton was furious! From his chair in the audience he rose and loudly decried the absurdity of such talk, noting that it was blasphemy against God to believe that man would ever fly. Milton very publically stomped out of the conference, gathered his wife and children, and caught the next train home.

In the years that followed, Milton underwent a gradual but nevertheless remarkable change. He bought his young sons a toy “helicopter,” based on an invention of French aeronautical pioneer Alphonse Penaud. It was roughly a foot long and made of paper, bamboo and cork with a rubber band to twirl its rotor. His sons were captivated by it, and when it eventually wore out, they built another. As their interest in mechanics grew over the years, Milton made sure that his sons had access to the latest books and journals on the subject. Milton provided financial and emotional support when the boys started and grew fledgling companies, and even visited his sons Orville and Wilbur as they experimented with new models of aircraft on the windswept beaches of North Carolina. God changed the mind and heart of Bishop Milton Wright, and his crucial but unheralded support changed the world.

Are you open to a change of mind?


Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship

Keywords

Innovation, airplane, Wright Brothers, Milton Wright, Holy Spirit

References

Crouch, T. (2003). The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Leadership Obedience

Please check out my recent article entitled “Downstream from Babel: Lessons in Obedience for Contemporary Leaders” in the journal Inner Resources for Leaders.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship

Deciding What Is Right

Christian innovation is not limited to developing the new to replace that which already exists. It also means deciding for and supporting that which is important and should never change. Albert Einstein, one of the most remarkable people in world history, was exiled from Nazi Germany because he was a Jew. He said the following:

“Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love for freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”

In this period of moral and ethical ambiguity, what does the Church stand for today?

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship

Keywords

Innovation, Einstein, Nazi Germany, doctrine, faithfulness

References

Cochrane, A. (1962). The Church’s Confession Under Hitler. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Minds Limit (And Extend) Innovation

All innovation is dependent on the limitations of the human mind. We are unable to change and improve that which we cannot perceive and understand. As Canadian scholar Alexander Manu noted, “An individual’s or organization’s inability to recognize the meaning and potential of signals—be they in emerging technologies or emergent behavior—comes from the limits of their rational boundaries.” Our minds consistently retreat to the known and familiar.

One fascinating example was provided by Schoemaker & Day. The early morning hours of December 7, 1941 had been exceptionally busy for the captain of the destroyer USS Ward. Just hours earlier the ship had detected an enemy submarine moving toward Pearl Harbor. Releasing its depth charges, the crew of the Ward had sunk the submarine. While sailing toward Pearl Harbor, the captain could hear muffled explosions coming from the mainland. Turning to his lieutenant commander, the captain said, "I guess they are blasting the new road from Pearl Harbor to Honolulu." Even though his ship had engaged a foreign submarine only hours before, the captain made sense of the exploding sounds by reverting to his peacetime mind-set and completely failed to perceive the hostilities that lay just ahead.

How do we expand our sensemaking abilities? Education, experience, interaction with others, intentionally trying on new ideas, and developing multiple perspectives all help. Another important way is to ask God to “open the eyes of our heart.” In Ephesians 1:17-18 (NKJV) we read the prayerful admonition, “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints…” There can be no clearer vision than that given by God.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship

Keywords

Innovation, sensemaking, leadership, institutional learning, perception

References

Holy Bible, New King James Version (1982). Nashville: Thomas Holman Publishers.
Manu, A. (2007). The Imagination challenge. Berkeley: New Riders.
Prange, G. (1982). At dawn we slept. New York: Penguin Books.
Schoemaker, P. & Day, G. (Spring 2009). How to make sense of weak signals. MIT Sloan Management Review, 50(3), 81-89.

Innovating Christianity(?!)

Organizations, including churches, corporations, and universities, continually face the challenge of new and unsettling ideas. The preservation of longstanding corporate values, ideals, and principles is the sine qua non as new ideas are considered. Personal and group alignment with the “main thing” helps guarantee organizational perseverance, and the organization doesn’t want to fall prey to every new idea. As we learned in Ephesians 4, the faithful are enjoined “that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting…”

And yet, without fresh ideas and innovation, an organization quickly stagnates and dies. IDEO CEO Tom Kelley noted that leadership plays an important role in ushering new ideas into the organization: “You are not just in charge of today’s operations. You are responsible for making sure there is a tomorrow. You must constantly juggle the balls necessary to make new projects happen, to replace a just-finished innovation with a fresh exploration of another opportunity.”

This begs some important questions. Are there definable differences between new and untried ideas, doctrine, and dogma? How do we separate what is cultural baggage from essential biblical truth? When are orthodoxy, tradition, and best practices essential foundations, and when do they become unnecessary weighty impediments? What is the connection between personal and organizational revelation? In the crucible of idea consideration, can the process of discernment be speeded up or improved? What roles do leaders play in organizational acceptance of new information, and what roles do employees play in vetting new ideas prior to the leader’s acceptance of them? These important questions lie at the nexus of change management, the life of ideas, values transmission, and ideals preservation. These are dark woods that many fear and consciously avoid. It is an area that we must nonetheless choose to explore with an open mind and committed heart.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship

Keywords

Innovation, values, corporate history, doctrine, dogma, leadership

References

Kelley, T. (2005). The Ten Faces of Innovation. New York: Currency Doubleday.

Hazy Memories of Innovation

It was Henry Ford who asserted, "History is more or less bunk” to a newspaperman from the Chicago Tribune in 1916. Ford was urging people to live in the present and not to be hobbled by tradition or orthodoxy. Mr. Ford also unintentionally focused on another issue: our historical record of innovation is accidently hazy at best, and intentionally distorted at worst. In brief, the guys who “won,” e.g. created the most successful innovation, were often those who helped write the revisionist history of their innovation efforts. As Scott Berkun noted, “Just because dominant designs developed before we were born, or in fields so far from our own that we’re ignorant of their struggles, doesn’t mean their arrival was predictable, orderly, or even in our best interest. Yet, the dominant designs, the victors of any innovative pursuit, are the ones that get most of history’s positive attention.” Looking in the rear-view mirror can distort historical reality: “Much of the literature of the history of technology is colored by post hoc kinds of explanations—that is, explanations that account for the emergence of a technology based on the final effects that the technology has” (Friedel, 2007). James Utterback similarly discussed historical distortion: “The emergence of a dominant design is not necessarily predetermined, but is the result of the interplay between technical and market choices at any one time.” That history doesn’t have to be too lengthy to be blurred. As Steve Wozniak, inventor of the personal computer for Apple said, “That’s what’s been bothering me—the fact that no one has gotten the story straight about how I built the first computers at Apple and how I designed them, and what happened afterward.” The lesson to be learned is that, to be of value, tales of innovation should come from primary sources, be consistent with other verifiable historical records, and always be considered with a measure of doubt. As my grandmother used to say, “Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see.”

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, historical record, innovation history, technological change

References

Berkun, S. (2007). The myths of innovation. Cambridge: O’Reilly.
Friedel, R. (2007). A culture of improvement. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Utterback, J. (1996). Mastering the dynamics of innovation. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Wozniak, S. (2006). iWoz: Computer geek to cult icon. New York: Norton & Company.

Emergent Innovation

To meet the increasing pressure for innovative ideas, companies often impose new and foreign innovation techniques on company employees. Conversely, emergent innovation is a new paradigm that seeks out, recognizes, and helps promote useful innovation methodologies already successfully being used in the organization by “invisible innovators.” For more details, please read Emergent Innovation: A New Strategic Paradigm in the latest Regent University Journal of Strategic Leadership.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, emergent innovation, Christian innovation, leadership, innovation theory

Reality & American Auto Companies

The fundamental problem afflicting the American auto companies is that, for decades, they have intentionally cocooned themselves inside a bubble of unreality. As a long-term subcontractor of the Big 3 auto companies, I found it stunning to see how far away from the real world of economics and competition they were, and how strongly they fought to remain in their comfortable fantasy world. As Bossidy and Charan noted, “Though businesspeople like to think of themselves as realists, the fact is that wishful thinking, denial, and other forms of avoiding reality are deeply embedded in most corporate cultures. But what’s been tolerated in the past can’t be tolerated in this new environment. The price for failing to confront reality is simply too high.” Bankruptcy and sale to foreign interests is indeed a high price. Dance icon Twyla Tharp similarly noted the danger of avoiding reality: “Denial becomes a liability when you see that something is not working and you refuse to deal with it. You tell yourself ‘I’ll fix it later,’ or you convince yourself that you can get away with it, that your audience won’t notice the weak spots. This is bad denial. You won’t get very far relying on your audience’s ignorance.”

Honesty begins with corporate executives. As former CEO Max DePree said, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” Bossidy and Charan noted that this is not always an easy task: “To confront reality is to recognize the world as it is, not as you wish it to be, and have the courage to do what must be done, not what you’d like to do.” Kouzes and Posner have studied the importance of leader honesty to subordinates: “Honesty has been selected more often than any other leadership characteristic; overall, it emerges as the single most important ingredient in the leader-constituent relationship…It’s clear that if people anywhere are to willingly follow someone—whether it be into battle or into the boardroom, the front office or the front lines—they first want to assure themselves that a person is worthy of their trust.” Christians are intimately aware of the importance of honesty and reality, and they join with the Psalmist, “What you're after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.” How profoundly sad that the auto executives did not share the same desire.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Automobile manufacturing, Big 3, honesty, reality, values

References

Bossidy, L. & Charan, R. (2004). Confronting reality. New York: Crown Business.
DePree, M. (1989). Leadership is an art. New York: Dell.
Kouzes, J. & Posner, B. (2002). The leadership challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Tharp, T. (2003). The creative habit. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Why “Christian” Innovation?

As noted in an earlier post, Christians do not “own” innovation, and many faith traditions have ably informed the process of innovation through the centuries. Christians do possess a unique perspective on the Source of imagination and creativity. To learn more, please read Christian Innovation: Descending into the Abyss of Light in the most recent edition of the Regent Global Business Review.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, Christian innovation, faith, leadership, innovation theory

Working Conditions & Innovation Success

Media reports indicate that elegant facilities are important to innovation success in this modern age. Many companies hire a “starchitect” to design their plush surroundings, and then regularly lead customer tours through the facilities to remind them of how advanced the company is. As Becker and Steele asserted, “Just as a Ferrari performs much better on a well-paved road than on a sandy beach, a high-performance team or organization requires a high-performance workplace.”

Hang on! A thorough historical study of innovation generally refutes this concept. As Bennis and Biederman noted, “The tendency of great things to be accomplished in dreadful places should give architects and decorators pause. There is something about the controlled chaos of a garage, the joyless interior of a Quonset hut, that seems to spur the imagination. Perhaps the charmlessness of these places forces the people who work in them to turn inward, where problem solving takes place. Certainly these environments offer few distractions, including comfort. For reasons still to be discovered, creative collaboration seems to be negatively correlated with the plushness of the office or the majesty of the view. Awful places have come to be seen as almost a requisite for a Great Group.” Silicon Valley icon Guy Kawasaki echoed their thoughts: “A lousy building and lousy furniture are necessary because suffering is good for revolutionaries. It builds cohesiveness; it creates a sense of urgency; and it focuses the team on what’s most important: shipping! If you are ever recruited by a team that claims to be revolutionary and see beautiful, matched Herman Miller furniture, run, do not walk, from the interview. On the other hand, if you see a lousy building, lousy furniture, but fantastically creative workspaces, then sign up immediately.”

The apostle Paul, certainly no stranger to difficult conditions, was nonetheless incredibly innovative. Paul clearly explained his reasons in his letter to the Philippians: “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, Christian innovation, facilities, workplaces, human resources

References

Becker, F. & Steele, F. (1995). Workplace by design. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bennis, W. & Biederman, P. (1997). Organizing genius. New York: Addison-Wesley.
Kawasaki, G. (1999). Rules for revolutionaries. New York: HarperCollins.

Do Christians “Own” Innovation?

Do Christians “own” innovation? Absolutely not. Innovation has been ably informed by many faith traditions through the centuries, and this richness should be recognized and celebrated by all. Christians do, however, have a unique perspective on the Source of imagination and creativity. They possess the record of God’s remarkable innovations through the millennia as recorded in Scripture, a world-view that supports and encourages innovation, and innovation methods that often contrast with those of other faith traditions.

Is innovation simply a collection of methods to make customers happy and generate cash for a company, or might it be more? As renown psychiatrist Rollo May questioned, “Suppose the apprehension of beauty is itself a way to truth? Suppose that ‘elegance’—as the word is used by physicists to describe their discoveries—is a key to ultimate reality?” (May, 1975). Innovation may be redemptive: Scripture and the personal experience of Christians worldwide show that God uses innovation for humans to know more of Him, to communicate with Him, and to ultimately accomplish His earthly will for mankind. What makes innovation Christian innovation? As Francis Schaeffer said of art, “The factor which makes art Christian is not that it necessarily deals with religious subject matter” (Schaeffer, 1973). It also is not because the innovation was accomplished by a professing Christian. Instead, innovation is Christian when it is ultimately aligned with God’s purposes and methods.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, Christian innovation, faith, tradition, diversity

References

May, R. (1975). The Courage To Create. New York: Norton.
Schaeffer, F. (1973). Art & the Bible. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Reframing the Idea of Customers

Successful organizations have a visceral obsession with customers. Every corporate quest for innovation begins and ends with a customer in mind: “The best efforts come from organizations that solve for human desirability early in the process. You must uncover human needs to design compelling user value propositions. Otherwise, why would anyone want to buy what you sell?” (Rodriguez & Jacoby, 2007a) and, “Design thinking starts with people and looks for evidence of desire. This is one of the most fundamental ways to mitigate risk. Why? Because marketing things that people don’t want increases one’s risk of failure substantially. Ask yourself, what is the bigger risk: placing a bet on a value proposition that customers are asking for either latently or directly, or investing in an idea that springs from the cloistered assumptions of a conference room deep within your company?” (Rodriguez & Jacoby, 2007b). Taylor also noted the important role of customers in the innovation process: “Focus on your immediate competition, and you’ll end up imitating its possibilities. Focus on the consumer at the other end of the channel, and you’ll immerse yourself in your own possibilities” (Taylor et. al., 2000).

Christians have a substantially different perspective on customers, one that considers not only their temporal needs but also the eternal significance of each and every customer. As British author C. S. Lewis said, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is with immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors” (Lewis, 2000).

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship


Keywords

Innovation, customers, design, human needs, client focus

References

Lewis, C. (2000). The weight of glory. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Rodriguez, D. & Jacoby, R. (2007a). Innovation, growth, and getting to where you want to go. Design Management Review, 18(1), 10-15.
Rodriguez, D. & Jacoby, R. (2007b). Embracing risk to learn, grow, and innovate. Rotman Magazine, Spring, 54-59.
Taylor, J., Wacker, W., & Means, H. (2000). The visionary’s handbook. New York: HarperBusiness.

Clones or Clowns?: Diversity for Innovation

For generations, corporations believed that a uniform workforce promoted harmony and efficiency, and relied on observable outward characteristics to determine who was the “right sort of person” to fit into the organization. In an effort to reduce the uncontrollable and ensure harmony and unity of purpose, new employees across the organization were chosen who most resembled a chosen archetype. Through human resource policies, hiring and training procedures, and managerial preference, many corporations were intentionally populated with employees who were alike. Harvard Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter labeled this process of replication “homosocial reproduction”: “Managers tend to carefully guard power and privilege for those who fit in, for those they see as ‘their kind’…There was a decided wish to avoid those people with whom communication was felt to be uncomfortable, those who took time to figure out or seemed unpredictable in their conduct. Deviants and non-conformists were certainly suspect for this reason. Even people who looked different raised questions, because the difference in appearance might signify a different realm and range of meanings in communication” (Kanter, 1977). Human resource expert Francis Horibe similarly asserted, “The very qualities that make for great innovation—passion, drive, out-of-the-box thinking—are often viewed as arrogance, unreasonableness, and uncompromising behavior by many peer employees and organizations (Horibe, 2001). In their drive to improve efficiency and limit corporate risk, it was not unusual for corporations to purposely hire the vast majority of workers from a specific geographic area, school, religious institution, fraternity, club, or sport.

To succeed in the dynamic modern global economic environment, companies must continually develop new, fresh ideas into viable products, services, and processes, and only decidedly nonlinear ideas are likely to create new wealth (Hamel, 2002). In most instances, companies cannot create the future by imagining entirely novel solutions to customer needs and dramatically cost-effective ways of meeting those needs unless they abandon their historical trajectory and the shackles of policy, tradition, and orthodoxy. Homosocial reproduction limits the range of a company’s innovation capabilities and may ultimately derail the future success of the organization. Instead, there is an increasing awareness of the important correlation between the amount of diversity present in a corporation’s employee base and the number of valuable innovative ideas bubbling up within the company. Heterogeneity in decision-making and problem-solving styles is an important avenue to innovative ideas, and the successful generation of new, different ideas is based largely upon the diversity of motivations, experience, and thought among corporate employees. The concept of diversity itself must be reframed: innovation-driving diversity must include age, race, country of origin, sex, education, experiences, perspectives, attitudes, and other salient personal characteristics. The intentional mixing of different skills and abilities, attitudes and behaviors can generate enthusiasm, refreshing new ideas, and remarkable new opportunities.

The need for corporate diversity for innovation is biblically grounded. In 1 Corinthians 12 (NKJV), Paul notes that people possess a wide variety of God-given gifts, and this individual uniqueness should be celebrated: “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.” He uses the image of the human body, composed of many varied but collectively important parts to describe the importance of diversity: “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For in fact the body is not one member but many.” Max DePree noted that diversity is important in organizations: “Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed. It also enables us to begin to think about being abandoned to the strength of others, of admitting that we cannot know or do everything. The simple act of recognizing diversity in corporate life helps us to connect the great variety of gifts that people bring to the work and service of the organization. Diversity allows each of us to contribute in a special way, to make our special gift a part of the corporate effort” (DePree, 1989).

To hire the appropriate mix of employees to support successful innovation, there must be intentionality in the identification of needed capabilities and recruitment of new employees. The purpose of hiring must not only be quantitative expansion, but also qualitative expansion, including enlarging the range of a corporation’s capabilities and the breadth of its vision. To expand its boundaries, companies must also hire “one-offs,” those who are slow learners of the organizational code, the often-unspoken rules, assumptions, and traditions in an organization. As Stanford Professor Robert Sutton noted, “This means it is smart to hire slow learners, to tolerate deviants, heretics, eccentrics, crackpots, weirdos, and just plain original thinkers, even though they will come up with many ideas that are strange mutations, dead ends, and utter failures. The cost is worthwhile because they also generate a larger pool of ideas—especially novel ideas—than you can get from just hiring and breeding fast learners” (Sutton, 2002). If innovation is the question, employee diversity is definitely the answer.

Dr. Gary Oster
Regent University
School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship

Keywords

Diversity, extreme diversity, innovation, homosocial reproduction, employee recruitment

References

DePree, M. (1989). Leadership is an art. New York: Dell.
Hamel, G. (2002). Leading the revolution. New York: Plume.
Horibe, F. (2001). Creating the innovation culture. New York: Wiley.
Kanter, R. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.
Sutton, R. (2002). Weird ideas that work. New York: Free Press.