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Innovation Can't Be Taught

I've been thinking of innovation these days, and how it's being given as a password, and passport, to sustain economies, especially in the Old and New Worlds—that is, us. And how—and why—we are given rules to innovate. It's odd to me that anyone should be told how to create.

I'm aware that consultants and their ilk are easily tempted to promote anything that might return a profit. A former boss of mine, as just one example, was greatly valued because he invented a lucrative slogan so compelling it could be used to sell freezers to the Inuit. (Frank Schatzing made these entrepreneurs famous with his 912-page novel, The Swarm.)

In Great Ideas in Modern Science (Bantam, 1967), Robert W. Marks wondered, "Is a diamond hard when we don't touch it?" Similarly, our metrology colleagues are always asking themselves whether the measurement device they use is reliably measurable.

My comments aren't random: I push them forward to illustrate how innovation processes work. I'm no psychologist, but I do observe what my brain does, and that's no easy thing. When I "audit" my brain, am I truly objective?

To the extent we believe we must be innovative to sell our widgets to survive, well, let's look at the poor, who carefully observe tourists to guess what they want. Does this mean innovation belongs to the poor? Let's not kid ourselves here: This approach isn't limited to underdeveloped countries. Even the most advanced car, computer, and telephone makers do the same.

Michael Hardt and Mario Negri answer this question well and clearly in their book, Empire (Harvard University Press, 2001). No million-dollar consultant can ever teach us how to be innovative, not really. The basic, true, and only rule is that when and where there's a need, there's a way to satisfy it. Our increasingly overweight and satisfied western societies—and by "societies," I don't mean just people—will only be truly innovative when they are truly hungry. 

When I was at school, a Netherlands-based electrical company awarded a cash prize every year to the best technical idea developed by students. I remember one that was won by a boy who invented a mechanism to show how motion is transferred from one body to another, a few suspended metal balls banging one against the other. The item, known as Newton's cradle, still sells very well as a science and executive desktop toy in malls the world over.

Was this boy taught how to be innovative? Or did he just develop his idea when playing with marbles?

Ideas often arrive as a result of many disparate elements coming together at a given moment. I'm no alcoholic—not out of Pareto, anyway—but the lightheaded sensation that can accompany a couple of glasses, a sign of too little oxygen to the brain, can also herald a so-called bright idea or two. The same thing can happen when you're showering or walking the dog, or whirling like a dervish into quasi-unconsciousness.

So, please, fellow consultants, do at least try to consider the human perspective when developing your innovation training courses. Innovation is not, and will never be, the result of a mathematical formula or a nice-looking chart made by your secretary. Innovation may be truly 10-percent inspiration and 90-percent perspiration, in which case Pareto is once again right: It's the 10 percent that really counts, that makes the difference.

We must not teach ourselves—and our younger generations—how to be innovative. We must teach ourselves, and them, how not to be close-minded. In other words, how to live by trusting our own creative process and following more than the external rules.

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