The Innovation Killer (book by Rabe)

The Innovation Killer by Cynthia Barton Rabe

 The Innovation Killer

 Book in bullets:

1. Success breeds confidence. Confidence breeds groupthink. Groupthink resists innovation. In the extreme case, ideas disappear down the black hole of “expert” rejection.
2. Groupthink effects can be undermined with zero-gravity (outsider) thinking.
3. A good “outside” thinker will have psychological distance, renaissance tendencies and related expertise relative the group and jot to be done.
4. There are many places to find outside thinking, inside and outside of your organization. People can improve their “outside” thinking capability.

The sub-title of this book begins with “how what we know limits what we can imagine”. Organizations that have had lots of success develop strong opinions/assumptions about how things work, that ideas that challenge the assumptions are rejected. The author compares these fixed mindsets to gravity that crashes fresh ideas. In some organizations, this expertise becomes so strong that it is like a black hole for ideas. They disappear, and the organization’s chance for innovation disappears with it. The book suggests that the phenomenon is almost inevitable, so organizations striving for innovation must involve “zero-gravity-thinkers” in an effort to break away from this gravity. In this summary, zero-gravity-thinker and outside thinker (or outsider) will be used interchangeably.

The book begins by describing how organizations evolve from being open and naïve towards group that value social cohesion, and ultimately organizations that value their own expertise, experience and common history over novelty. The first phase of this is development of groupthink. Academic studies have identified 8 characteristics of groupthink, including:

1. Conformity pressure on the minority*
2. Self-censorship
3. Illusion of unanimity
4. Shared mindset/stereotypes
5. Unquestioned belief in the inherent morality of the group
6. Collective rationalization of the group’s decisions
7. Illusion of invulnerability
8. Protection of the group from negative information

Groupthink is a social phenomenon more than an individual weakness, but very strong individuals can lose their independence over time.  Groupthink is very detrimental for innovation because innovation usually involves challenges to the status quo, including in the organization’s. Organizations can become more deeply attached to their mindset and progress to a state of “expert-think”. In this case, the organization compares ideas against their absolute certainty about how things work. In particular, it is almost impossible for experts to question their fundamental assumptions. The graphic here represents the fate of an idea in an organization where expert thinking dominates. The idea goes in, but does not come out.

People engaged in groupthink or expert-think are probably unaware that they act this way and the effect is unintentional and unconscious.

 

Most books on innovation and culture advise leaders to break the expert’s stranglehold on idea acceptance, but this book suggests that this is extremely hard on many levels. Individuals may have large investments in their expertise and cultural dimensions may reinforce the importance of the expertise. To be clear, this expertise may be related to technology, customers, operations or any other business activity or function. Given the reality of organizational life, a better approach might be to utilize “zero-gravity-thinkers” who are resistant or immune to the organizational gravity.

 These people may already exist in the organization, but are quieted or suppressed. They may seem to be outsiders, even after a prolonged period of being in the organization. Finding them and letting them loose is one way to utilize them. Other sources of these outsiders can be other departments, business units, or functions within the organization. Consultants are a common source of independent thinking. Finally, other companies might be willing to exchange people to enable both organizations to benefit from independent thinking. These thinkers share three general attributes:

1. Psychological distance
   1. A combination of open mindedness and non-conformity. These people are comfortable creating some social unease.
   2. Renaissance tendencies
      1. A wide range of interests and continuous drive to learn. Learning is driven more towards diversity than depth. This is probably the most important attribute of the three.
      2. Related expertise
         1. Expertise in an adjacent and related field is more beneficial than expertise in a distant field. The desired description of people is “non-experts-who-are-smart-enough-to- understand-the-basics.”

Of course, people with two of the three attributes can help, but all three attributes may have the greatest effect. A good candidate could have two kinds of related expertise: industry or functional expertise. Graphically, this may look something like this. A combination of direct experts and related experts in the team is the desired mix of expertise.

If an innovative effort is desired and 1 or 2 of these thinkers are brought onto the team, a few guidelines can improve their effectiveness.

1. Make sure that they know that they are there to provide fresh insight. Knowing that their insight is valued will increase their drive to speak up and to resist having their ideas “dumbed down”.
2. Make the assignment temporary, but not short. This gives outsiders time to get immersed in the situation but not time to get absorbed by the group.
3. Clarify to the team clear that novel ideas and solutions are being sought. The diverse team was assembled to maximize the possibility of novelty.
4. Zero-gravity-thinkers may have the greatest impact on understanding (or re-understanding) the problem. Consequently, it is desirable to enforce a distinct period of problem definition on the team, and prevent the team from going straight to problem solving.

 Overall, these “outside” thinkers can provide two kinds of services to the team: process and content. Process aid is less likely to have a great impact, but outsiders can help insiders by facilitating discussions or teach new approaches. Because these have less impact, they are barely mentioned in this book; these topics are extensively discussed in other books.

  There are three main content roles: informing, collaborating and doing. Informing is typically a brief interaction where the outsider shares their perspective but does not deeply engage in the effort. Many consultations with experts follow this pattern. When a specific expertise is being provided, organizations sometimes ask the outside to do the work for them. Again consultants often are engaged this way. The most valuable way to use the outside thinker is to have them collaborate with inside thinkers. Many design firms now pride themselves on their collaboration skills. They no longer take assignments and deliver the final product, but now contribute people to inside development teams to help stimulate novel thinking. Leaders who bring in outsider thinkers must be very aware that the effect of their thinking may not be obvious. The book cites cases where the effect outsiders is very subtle and essentially releases people to use what they already know – but don’t know they know.

 

The book reviews some of the mechanics of using a zero-gravity-thinker as a collaborator, much of which is really describing the complete ideation process. Of particular interest is a list on conditions that might be associated with failure.

1. A team doesn’t understand and/or accept the role and doesn’t work collaboratively and open-mindedly with the outsider.
2. The leader doesn’t show support for the Zero-Gravity-Thinker pr the type of different thinking and actions that result from the engagement.
3. The team and Zero-Gravity-Thinker can’t speak a common language fairly early in the process (i.e., when expertise is related enough).
4. Deliverable expectations are inappropriate for time, resources, or Collaborate role.
5. Individual recognition is perceived as more important than team recognition.

 A final main topic of the book discusses becoming a zero-gravity-thinker. Six practices that may help are:

1. Think about the problem from many different perspectives. Put yourself into another’s shoes, and then another’s, etc.
2. Connect things. Good ideas often start from crazy, illogical connections made intuitively – not logically.
3. How you think about thinking matters. You must give yourself permission to think, and maybe deliberately carve out time and space to practice it. Many notably creative people set aside time just for thinking and sometimes even specific places to do it. Sometimes just a sign to signal your intention is all that is needed.
4. Start by defining the problem, then solving it. How you define a problem has a huge impact on how you think about solutions. Some specific questions to guide problem definition include:
   1. What or who else is involved or impacted?
   2. What are the options…?
   3. Why is this a problem?
   4. What is the root cause of this problem?
   5.  What are the implications of this problem is not resolved?
   6. f.        Given unlimited resources, what are all possible ways that this problem could be addressed?
   7. 5.       Figure out what limits your thinking about the problem? What are you assuming to be true? What is the implication of the assumptions being false?
   8. 6.       Practice. Specifically, broaden your own horizons and discipline yourself to react with more positive thoughts than negative thoughts.

 The combination of “outside” thinking and weaker groupthink of expert think can be likened to the use of gravity to accelerate ideas. The novel idea can interact with the expertise of the organization, gain energy and come out moving faster.

 

Realistically, it will take some time for an organization in the grip of expert think to become open enough to collaborate well with an outside thinker. First, individuals need to become a bit more open minded. Leaders need to visibly support novel thinking and thinkers.  With this in place, outside thinkers can provide either of the process elements, informing or doing. Finally, the organization will be ready to take advantage of the benefits of ideas created thank to zero-gravity-thinking and the people who participate in their creation.

 

*text in italics is quoted directly from the text