Searching For Crazy Ideas

Modern corporations battling in the frenetic global marketplace are constantly on the hunt for the next great idea. That is a great waste of time and resources, as the best ideas (and those that make a company more competitive) come disguised as bizarre, loony, totally impractical ideas. The Director of one highly innovative firm recounts their weekly staff meetings, when staff members review potential ideas for development. He notes that, when the group unanimously hates an idea, he immediately writes it down, knowing that it likely contains elements of a viable future project. Renowned physicist Freeman Dyson believed that the appearance of wrongness was absolute proof of true creativity: “When the great innovation appears, it will most certainly be in a muddled, incomplete, and confusing form. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope” (Neumeier, 53). Even weird ideas that can’t be developed in their present form can be valuable: “Every idea, even a bad one, incorporates some form of discovery” (Robinson & Schroeder, 40). Losing a “good” idea to others shouldn’t be a concern. Howard Aiken, a famous inventor, said, “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats” (Berkun, 59). Scott Berkun similarly noted that, “Every great idea in history has the fat red stamp of rejection on its face…Big ideas in all fields endure dismissals, mockeries, and persecutions (for them and their creators) on their way to changing the world” (Berkun, 54). As global strategist Gary Hamel asserted, “Only stupid questions create new wealth” (Hamel, 144). The future belongs to those who are actively searching for “stupid” answers.

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


Keywords

Innovation, failure, ideas, invention, strategy


References

Berkun, S. (2007). The myths of innovation. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.

Hamel, G. (2002). Leading the revolution. New York: Plume.

Neumeier, M. (2009) The designful company. Berkeley: New Riders.

Robinson, A. & Schroeder, D. (2003). Ideas are free. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

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Helping Deep Diversity Flourish

Fresh ideas are the foundation of economic progress worldwide. Those new ideas ultimately result in viable products and services, healthy companies, and most importantly, meaningful employment. The only way to get better ideas is to get more ideas, and an organization’s ability to acquire new ideas and innovate is constrained by the diversity of its thought leaders. Stroll the hallways of any company that successfully innovates and you will bump into employees that are remarkably diverse in age, race, country of origin, experience, gender, education, etc. God built this rich diversity into the global population for many reasons, not the least of which is the need for diverse ideas in innovation.

After the tragedy of September 11, visas for foreign-born entrepreneurs became increasingly constricted. Although many involved in the process of innovation believe that we should staple a green-card to the diploma of anyone who completes a technical doctoral degree in the United States, we currently require most foreign-born students who graduate from a U.S. college to leave after graduation, taking their innovative ideas and entrepreneurial zeal with them.

In April 2009, Paul Graham, a partner at Y Combinator in Mountain View, California, wrote a blog post entitled “The Founder Visa,” venting his frustration at the number of young entrepreneurs packing up their remarkable ideas and heading home. Many in the tech community picked up the idea, and a grassroots media campaign sprang up. Soon, a planeload of techies from Silicon Valley, dubbed "Geeks on a Plane," headed to Washington DC to lobby legislators. The incredible result has been the introduction of legislation by Senators John Kerry (D) and Richard Lugar (R) entitled the StartUp Visa Act of 2010. If passed, the bill will provide a special EB-6 category visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who want to start a company in the United States, can demonstrate that they have raised $250,000 from a U.S.-based venture capital firm, and will employ at least five U.S. citizens. While this won’t add thousands of well-paying jobs in the near term, it certainly is a step in the right direction!

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


Keywords

Innovation, diversity, StartUp Visa Act of 2010, entrepreneurship, immigration, strategy


References

O’Brien, C. (2010). Why Congress should pass the Startup Visa bill. SiliconValley.com. Retrieved from http://www.siliconvalley.com/opinion/ci_14658639?nclick_check=1