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Innovation's Accidental Enemies

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Squeezebox Jan 19, 2010 11:23 PM GMT Don't forget the ultimate killjoy: Lean Six Sigma! You want to cut out waste and standardize your processes so the same input comes out the same way everytime. There's no room for experimentation because failed experiments are considered waste!
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Noah Jan 19, 2010 6:57 PM GMT Unfortunately, people with the checkbooks are afraid of the unkown. There is nothing wrong with a little risk. What can help with a promising innovation is qualitative market research to back up the innovators' claims. That may ease people's concerns, becasue it would show interest in the marketplace. People need to think logically and rationally when evaluating innovations, given the lack of concrete data to support certain claims, one must branch outside the of box and think of the amazing possibilities and strategize how to get there.
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Robert Brands Jan 19, 2010 5:53 PM GMT There is no Innovation, Entrepreneurship or reward without proper risk takingwww.robertsrulesofinnovation.com
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Robert S. Siegel Jan 19, 2010 4:02 AM GMT There is a process where innovators inundate themselves in their subject and also develop themselves beyond that area; i.e. get a life. This combination is a response to the, ??Prove it,? demand by enabling users to build even the innovations that equate to ??jumping into the unknown,? on a more solid foundation than is generally realized from the traditional creativity in most innovation processes. Too often, the ideas that become innovations are created ignoring the constraints the business faces. When the constraints assert themselves effort fails, exceeds cost, comes in late, or all of the above.Innovators need to face down their constraints. Write them on the whiteboards and post-its and stand back and look at them. Then attack them by digging deeply; understand even the smallest details. Inundate yourself into those constraints so deeply that you dream about them at night. That is how you build an innovation structure that executives believe in. When they believe they don??t demand, ??Prove it.? www.TheIdeativeProcess.com
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Tom Limoncelli Jan 16, 2010 3:45 PM GMT I like the bank example. That's the kind of faulty logic I saw at Bell Labs in the 1990s.http://everythingsysadmin.com/2010/01/how-to-kill-innovation.html
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Noah Raford Jan 15, 2010 4:40 PM GMT Going to have to call BS on the "Prove it" tagline.I completely agree with and support the overall notion of this post; that most firms are inherently risk averse. And this is because most humans are risk averse.Whilst I don't disagree with your emphasis on reasoning and logic, that's not where the real action is. The actual studies of people's risk taking behavior find that it's the emotions of the issue which drive decisions.Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated this over 30 years ago, and they called it "Loss Aversion Bias". People have a stronger tendency to avoid loosing something than they do towards gaining something; even in the face of proof.It's not proof that matters, though, it's the emotions. This is really where creativity and "design thinking" comes into play - having the emotional competency to dwell in the fear of uncertain outcomes and take actions which nurture them into being. In this regard I think your last paragraph is right on the money.
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