Lost a Billion? Let’s Celebrate!
As every popular topic, innovation is a powerful magnet for clichés — and, let’s face it, some of them suck.
For example, I’m not sure that mixing innovation and DNA is a good idea. Though I understand — kind of — what Clayton Christensen and his co-authors had in mind when writing about “ innovator’s DNA” (“…each individual…ha[s] a unique innovator’s DNA for generating breakthrough business ideas”), I cringe when I read that “successful innovation programs have a DNA consisting of seven elements.”
Dude, these days even toddlers know that DNA consists of only four elements!
Another one that rubs me is “celebrating failures.”
Sure, innovation requires a lot of experimentation, and experimentation results in failures more often than it ends up in success. Absolutely, we must accept failures, learn from them and try again, until we succeed. But why do we need to celebrate them?
In every language, in every culture, the word “failure” carries a negative connotation, and placing it in the same sentence with “innovation” makes no difference. By calling to celebrate innovation failures we might be announcing our belonging to a Secret Order of Innovators (those with a unique innovator’s DNA), but do nothing to advance innovation in places, still depressingly numerous, where the fear of failure…
