Both useless and promising new-product and applications ideas emerge.įor the past decade at least, the holy grail for companies has been innovation.
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Example:Īt software firm Reactivity’s brainstorming meetings, employees jot technologies on one stack of index cards and industries on another-then randomly pair them. You can’t eliminate risk entirely, but you can ensure new ideas aren’t biased by knowledge of past successes. Therefore, back projects that have the most dedicated, persuasive heretics on board. Risky projects’ odds of succeeding increase with wholehearted commitment. Demote, transfer, or fire people who talk and plan but don’t act. You can’t generate a few good ideas without also generating numerous bad ones. Get happy people fighting about ideas they’ll surface weak spots in each other’s thinking.Sequestered in basement offices, Data General’s “MicroKids” designed a minicomputer better and faster than if they had worked under critics’ and bosses’ eyes. Keep creative types away from customers, critics-and anyone focused only on money.Founder David Packard gave him a medal for “extraordinary contempt and defiance beyond the normal call of engineering duty.” Ultimately, House’s monitor generated $35 million in revenue. When HP executives advised Chuck House to abandon a monitor he was developing, he went on vacation-and showed potential customers a prototype. Encourage people to defy superiors and peers.Prater proceeded to generate breakthroughs in fuel-cell technology that may replace internal combustion. novices who don’t know how things are “supposed to be” e.g., Dyson Appliances, maker of the hottest-selling vacuum cleaner in the U.K., employs new university graduates.īallard Power Systems hired chemistry professor Keith Prater to develop batteries, though he lacked related experience.Their offbeat backgrounds provide a broad palette of product-design ideas to try in new ways. people with seemingly irrelevant skillsĭesign Continuum hires engineers who have moonlighted as sculptors, carpenters, graffiti artists, and rock musicians.The lesson? Intentionally hire unlikable, creative people. When new hires at a toy company pointed out current products’ flaws, their behavior made senior executives “hate them.” But the complainers kept generating great new-toy ideas. mavericks and misfits who drive bosses and coworkers crazy because they reject popular opinion and bull-headedly champion their own ideas.Recruit people who aren’t blinded by preconceptions, including: To encourage creativity, take these counterintuitive approaches to hiring, managing, and risk-taking: Hiring Unnerving, yes, but consider the payoffs: broadened knowledge, fresh perspectives on old problems, and the freedom to break from the past. To innovate, companies must ignore longstanding management wisdom and adopt downright weird ways. Traditional management practices apply when you need to make money now from tried-and-true products and services-but they don’t foster creativity. Recipes for disaster? No, fuel for innovation. And keep your innovators away from customers. Hire people you don’t like, then promote them when they defy you.