The Routine of Innovation
About an Innovation Evangelist’s daily drive to work.
(Seemingly about creativity, there is surely enough space on this blog to talk a bit about innovation — though this might blur an already far to blurry border even more.)
Several months ago a Google innovation evangelist visited the University of Duisburg-Essen (some posts below I talked about it). It was a great event, a bit boring, and many people participated. I think I forgot most of the things strived during the one-hour keynote. Probably it did not have a great impact on me.
However, just yesterday I remembered one story the evangelist told the audience, and I had the impression I saw it in a different light this time. It is this different light what I want to share here. And thinking about how to start sharing what I remebered, I start remembering more and more details about the keynote, I just moments ago labelled as boring — it may well be that the keynote was’nt boring after all:
The Google expert was actually talking about (that was the bigger context) the implementation of innovativeness in everyday life. I am sure the same or similar notions of implementing certain practices cover talks like that all over the planet with thousands of glimmering eyes — all very ready to innovate (something)—staring at the preacherman. And I guess the following story he told us didn’t just reach and teach me, but all the sons and daughters of innovative thinking:
When he started working at Google, he moved from place A (where he used to live) to place B (where Google lives nearby and where he was going to live from now on). With this changing of living and working place came undoubtedly also a change of route to take everyday from the living to working place. In order to innovate now or put differently: keep on innovating, he decided to change his driving route to work every day.
With this story the evangelist of course tried to convey several aspects of “innovativeness” or “newness”: find new aspects in everything you do on a daily basis, refrain from falling into the sticky hands of the everyday routine, be aware of opportunities that actually pave every way you take and always be at the edge of discovering unseen grounds. I, however, wondered, why he didn’t formulate what he was actually trying to express: make innovation your routine — actually quite a catchy phrase, I think.
Yet, wondering abit more, I am not sure if the innovation evangelist may have missed the point or, better, the bigger picture. For one distinct question kept popping up in my head: Is innovatively picking ones nose innovation or still nose picking?
At least the pictures indicate that innovatively nose picking is — unsurprisingly — both: nose-picking and some kind of innovation.
One could say that an easy escape out of this mess between routine and innovation is to add purpose or value or something else shared among concerned thirds/evaluators to the possible innovation at hand. Meaning that even the most routine action might be evaluated as innovative evaluating thirds. Yet, driving to work innovatively is of course nothing to be shared with others. It has no need to be evaluated, has the nature of a mantra with the purpose of keeping the innovation evangelist in an innovative mood on a daily basis.
Still, even with ideas of mantra, metaphor in mind, the innovation evangelist obviously stays inside his circle of being routinely innovative: he takes another route after another route after another route (until he dies or finds a new employer). So I decided to come up with an non-exhaustive list of some advise and position myself as the consultant of the consultant, the innovation evangelist’s innovation evangelist:
- Don’t drive to work every day! Stay at home.
- Don’t improve anything. Drink beer.
- Don’t innovate at all.
For, if innovation is the routine, it might be actually innovative to stop doing something possibly innovative at all. Generally this might lead to some aspects often neglected when fostering innovativeness:
- the repetition of innovativeness is still a repetition (but of innovativeness)
- a routine can be innovative, but an innovation can also be routine
- acting purposely in a routine manner can be innovative
I guess the innovation evangelist knows all that stuff and considering the gazing followers of innovation he acquired during his one our visit of Duisburg’s lecture hall there seems to be a lot of need for innovation talk before it is time to go back to some good old routine.
