Minds and Machines

In The Seven Faces of Effective Innovation I wrote about the difficulties innovators face when they start to change things. Other people don’t like change. And they have a couple of possibilities how to react to change. Their reaction tells you, where they are in a process of five subsequent steps.

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We innovators are the bad guys.
We tell them what they do is wrong.
We tell them we know it better.
We tell them they have to change.
Wouldn’t it be much easier for all of us, if we just accept this unpleasant truth and stop wasting so much time for a more beautiful package?

In today’s world the word “innovation” is loaded with positive meaning. Everyone likes it. Everyone thinks it’s important. But does everyone know what it really means?

Looking back at a lot of discussions I had with other people about innovation, my feeling is: well, probably not. Many people seem to believe that it is something that simply happens. And after it happened, you can just use it like a product and make it work for you. When those people want to become innovative themselves, they often have to face a truth which doesn’t really correspond to the positive meaning of innovation they had in mind. It looks like innovation has more than a single face.

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