WHERE DOES INNOVATION COME FROM?
               WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF
         CREATIVITY IN ORGANISATIONS?

Reasons Why Innovation Comes from the Periphery or Why Decisions Should Be Made At the Lowest Levels©

Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal. – Mike Ditka  

General Dwight David Eisenhower got it right back in 1946, when discussing civilian scientists’ efforts: they “are more likely to make new and unsuspected contributions to the development of the army if detailed directions are kept to a minimum.”  

When managers try to tightly define what the problems are and micro-manage the actions of people who must solve them, they risk sacrificing the fundamental breakthroughs that come from “outside the box” thinking.  They short circuit the generative effects of “blue sky,” “wool-gathering,” free thinking that can be pursued by people who are closest both to the problems and to the likely underlying causes – because they live with them daily. 

People at the top can’t see everything, everywhere, particularly in the little nooks and crevices of today’s large organisations with the continuous changes they undergo.  Nor can they know everything about everything, particularly in technological environments where change is the only constant.   

Perhaps a short anecdote will suffice to show why leaving the details to the people at the lowest level is both the most expeditious route to innovation and likely the most economically sound approach also.   

While serving in the US Army Medical Service and assigned to a hospital in Würzburg Germany, the author encountered a situation of having two children under the age of two who needed fresh milk etc, but wound up living in quarters with no refrigerator... refrigerators being heavy and costly to ship overseas, all officers were “guaranteed” a refrigerator would be made available from the housing support folks in the Engineer Corps..... right!   So, when none was forthcoming, the hospital commander was asked to allow the good Captain to borrow a minimally used refrigerator on a hand receipt from the hospital.... such a refrigerator was located, a redundant refrigerator in an outpatient clinic designated for storage of vaccines, but actually used to keep soft drinks for the staff.  When asked to sign for this Sears Coldspot refrigerator, the good Captain balked at becoming responsible for a refrigerator alleged to be worth over $18,400.00.... how could that be possible?  How could a Sears Refrigerator that could be purchased by anyone out of the catalogue for $295.95 become so valued?  Curiosity provided the answer.  It seems that when the refrigerator was procured , the Specification on the contract for purchase cited the use as a biologicals storage unit that must maintain temperatures between 36 degrees and 58 degrees Fahrenheit.... well, to make the refrigerator do that, it was necessary to re-engineer the whole thing at great expense to change its regular temperature range of 32  - 70 degrees to the more narrow but included range..... in other words, micro-management of this decision resulted in wasting $18,104.05 to make an item less versatile and useful than it might have been otherwise.... a mere cost ineffectiveness of over 6,000%, and a delay in availability for two years.  Nevertheless, the Captain signed and needless to say, the kiddies milk was immaculately cooled.   The point of this anecdote is that had the clinic staff been allowed to deal with the “problem” on their own, they would have purchased a small, counter top refrigerator on the local economy at a cost of less than even the original Sears Coldspot – and they would have had it when they needed it, not two years later (time for specifications to be drawn up and approved, bids for contracts to be let and considered, procurement time, delay due to modification funds coming from Engineer Corps budget and not budgeted for so it had to wait until next budget cycle, etc).  During the delay, they not only had to inconvenience patients by sending them to another clinic for immunizations, but also,  by the time they received it, the hospital had reconfigured and it was no longer needed... hence a $18,000.00 employee soft drink cooler. 

    Decisions at the top often define problems inadequately due to incomplete second-hand knowledge of the situation, and tend to be formulistic based on out-of-date SOPs.  The end result is too often ineffective, very costly non-solutions. 

   Edward De Bono, world renown expert on creative thinking puts it very well when he talks about the fact that one cannot see in a new direction by looking harder in the old one.  And, as Margaret J.Wheatley puts it in discussing creativity and change: “...cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for the new.”           

Before you leap in and make decisions, cool it!  Maybe the folks who are closest to the problem have better, cheaper, more innovative solutions.

 ©Exerpt from: Engdahl, R, Management Skills Upgrade V.20/20: Going from Knowing to Doing*  (*Because it’s not what you know but what you can remember to do in time that makes a difference in life.); Victoria, BC, Canada: Trafford Publishing, (2004).  ISBN 1-4120-3944-4