The Problem with Open Innovation

“There is no inno­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty with­out fail­ure. Peri­od.” — Brene Brown, researcher, best-sell­ing author

My fam­i­ly and I recent­ly stopped for din­ner in a small town, on our way back from a week­end adven­ture – a bit of vaca­tion and time rac­ing cars at the race track. The restau­rant had run out of nap­kins, and some­body with a cre­ative, inno­v­a­tive mind made the effort to tear pieces of paper tow­el from the bath­room and then write the name of the restau­rant on every sin­gle piece.

Beau­ti­ful cre­ativ­i­ty open inno­va­tion — but also hor­ri­ble and not what their brand is all about. If you’re going to go through such a painstak­ing effort, at least cut the paper prop­er­ly, and write neat­ly. This was just awk­ward and weird.

Some­one made a mis­take in not order­ing enough nap­kins – fine.

Some­one had a pas­sion to fix the prob­lem – fine.

But they didn’t have the fil­ters about appro­pri­ate inno­va­tion and made the sit­u­a­tion worse.

In this par­tic­u­lar case, this well-mean­ing per­son would have been bet­ter off with just pieces of paper tow­el, with­out the writing.

Now, the prob­lem isn’t with the per­son – they did the best they could, and their ini­tia­tive is actu­al­ly quite impres­sive. A cul­ture of open inno­va­tion is great. How­ev­er, it can go hor­ri­bly wrong if man­age­ment does­n’t pro­vide con­text, prop­er guide­lines, train­ing, and over­sight for what makes the brand effective.

Open Inno­va­tion in Context

You want peo­ple to be cre­ative and to inno­vate but they first need to under­stand the big­ger pic­ture, the strat­e­gy and the brand — and have the para­me­ters, tools and train­ing to do their best work, in a way that ensures the cus­tomers get what we intended.

It’s also impor­tant to lever­age good ideas and have forums or oppor­tu­ni­ties for this cre­ativ­i­ty to be put to work. I nev­er would have come up with that idea! This speaks to a dif­fer­ent kind of mind that could be high­ly valuable.

The Chal­lenge

1. Think about the areas of your busi­ness where you are under-uti­liz­ing people’s ideas. Areas where peo­ple have had cre­ative ideas and, with some guide­lines and con­text, could come up with bet­ter ideas and ways to improve your business.
2. Where are peo­ple inno­vat­ing in ways that, in their view of the word, looks bril­liant – but based on the busi­ness’ big­ger pic­ture, are horrific?
3. Where are the hand­writ­ten logos on nap­kins in your business?