Quiet brilliance
James Whitmore, managing director at Postar, wonders whether one of the reasons that tech companies are the most innovative in media is that they offer a safe environment for the more retiring and reclusive individuals. Not a statement you could readily attach to an agency or a media owner…
Evolution. It is a life choice.
The natural world, with the possible exception of the creationist American Midwest, is a constant battle of the fittest. It is a place where only the most well adapted species survive.
The business world apes this. Companies innovate to succeed. In media we are blessed with some of the most adaptive and innovative commercial animals on the planet. Think Google. Think of Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix and Zynga, who are also in many of the innovation top tens for 2011.
Of course, adapted does not mean strongest, or biggest. Otherwise there would be no mice or moles, shrews or voles.
Earlier this week I attended an Ipsos MORI seminar on innovation. To be frank, there were few surprises, although DJ Collins of Google was a compelling speaker. Everyone thinks they know the “rules” of innovation and these don’t appear to change much through time.
Embrace catastrophe, as it is exciting to be wrong. If you never cock anything up, you never learn anything. You need a healthy disregard for the unimaginable. In many senses, the most challenging problems are the easiest to resolve. Few people ever attempt the impossible, so perversely it can be the easiest nut to crack. There is less competition, there are lower expectations and hence there is a greater chance of success. Set out to do big things and you will make great strides.
What is interesting is that with the internet we now succeed or fail faster than ever before. The lifecycle of ideas gets shorter and shorter. As we do more, we fail more often. As a consequence, the fact of failure carries fewer stigmas than it might once have done. These are unaccountably good things that make business today a positive and enriching experience.
None of this is possible if you do not work with people who burn with curiosity and who are set free in an environment that encourages risk and rewards experimentation. Innovation has the power to motivate everyone in your company.
Easier said than done of course. Although any CEO worth his or her long-term incentive plan will know this, they will also yearn for structure and organisation to ease the complexity of running the company. They may also fear disruption and risk. This filters through the organisation. Hierarchies, job titles and processes are the killer shrimps of creativity.
The common response is to get people together and “work on some innovation”. How many brainstorms have you attended where your boss got funky with a marker pen and a post-it note? Are you now a champion of crowd sourcing and the power of the crowd? I read in this week’s Marketing Week of a couple of firms trumpeting how they are getting together with other, more innovative companies, in order to learn the processes that lead to success. If I stand next to Wayne Rooney, perhaps my hair will grow back too.
I question why the response is always to go to groups of people – usually the mouthiest ones; the most ostentatious; the extroverts. Let’s ask the lions and gorillas. What about the mice and moles? How come they survive so well? What do they know that we don’t?
I recently came across a newish book by Susan Cain: “Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking”. She suggests that we live in a value system that she calls the extrovert ideal – the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight.
But some of our greatest ideas come from quiet cerebral people. Introverts include Einstein, Orwell, Ghandi, Newton and Proust. JK Rowling and Steven Spielberg. Me!
The best thinkers do not necessarily function well in groups and gatherings.
Perhaps one of the reasons that tech companies are the most innovative in media is that they offer a safe environment for the more retiring and reclusive individuals. Not a statement you could readily attach to an agency or a media owner.
It is food for thought. Do the best ideas come from individuals given time and space to think, or from extroverts working together in groups?
Don’t feed your challenges to the pride of lions. Stuff them in a few mouse holes and see what happens.