Real Clear Truth

In the high-tech industry where I work, innovation is highly valued. Where would an Apple or a Sony or a Google be without innovating totally new products or ways to do things that no one has thought of before (or thought out nearly as well)? In my business, the enemy of innovation is frequently conventional wisdom, or as others might call it — tradition.

Why is that? Well, quite simply conventional wisdom is what works. Once you discover something that works — and sells — it would be quite foolish to diverge from that successful path. But sticking to what works also has the effect of putting you in a rut — the very thing that stifles creative thought and innovation.

Here’s how this dynamic works. Some creative person will come up with a new idea and offer it as a way to improve a given product or process, at which point all the experts that have worked for years perfecting the current conventional wisdom will quickly spot problems with the idea and proceed to shoot it down. The new idea inevitably will somehow violate the principles, guidelines or conventions they have established as essential to success. They know — with good reason — that going outside the parameters they have set is a mistake.

And so the new idea goes nowhere. Unless.

Unless the company has leaders who value innovative ideas and encourage them to be developed. For new ideas to succeed they have to have champions who have sufficient influence and authority to see that they are given the time they need to develop. Any idea that is given only half-hearted support will likely never succeed. It is simply too easy for the critics to constantly point out the flaws, in essence sabotaging the new idea.

In short, for a new idea to succeed, somebody has to believe in it who also has the influence to nurture it to completion.

Now, in business new ideas are needed because technology constantly changes, undermining the very assumptions that previous conventional wisdoms are based on. What wasn’t possible a few years ago, may well be possible now.

The root of the problem is that people forget what the core assumptions are that the previous products were based on. They stop asking themselves what are the real problems that their products are trying to solve. The more you fail to go back to drawing board and ask why you do things the way you do, the less likely you’ll ever see that your original assumptions are no longer valid.

But businesses are not the only ones who can fall into the rut of conventional wisdom. Churches can fall into ruts of tradition as well.

How many churches have creative people who have a heart to do something different, who are then silenced because what they are asking for goes outside the bounds of what tradition allows?

Note, this is not to say that there isn’t real wisdom that should never change. What I am saying is that it is so easy to stick with our traditions that we fail to see that our assumptions are not necessarily valid anymore. Worse, we may fail to ask ourselves why we do what we do, and we may fail to value the creativity and innovation that God has gifted people with.

Not all innovation is good. But unless innovation is valued, you likely will see very little of it.

How about you? Have any of your innovative ideas succeeded? Why or why not?