The New Buzz Word - Innovation

Innovation. It seems to be the new buzzword around town. Used to be efficiency. Or quality improvement. Now it's innovation.

All the major companies seem to be infected with it. Staying ahead of the curve through innovation. Problem is that we tend to forget that innovation has been around for a long time, but innovations (mutations) that didn't make it, aren't around any more.

Nature has been innovating for a long, long, long time. Matter of fact, without innovation, there wouldn't be a Nature at all!! What if we make the feathers on this bird just a little bit darker to improve it's ability to survive in the winter. If the bird lives long enough to breed then perhaps that innovation (okay it's a hybrid) will work. Most don't. No, by far the vast majority don't work. Almost none? Of course what these companies are all trying to achieve is some kind of an "edge" - a competitive advantage that will either maintain or increase their market share. (In nature we call that surviving.)

So to tell someone or some group of employees that they need to be innovative (so many ways to use that word) are we forgetting that we are, by nature, innovators and the product of innovation? Perhaps we would be better off to concentrate on how we have stopped people from being innovative. In some cases from beating it out of them when they were children. That's NOT the way we do it here. (Modern translation - not made here.) Everyone I know (who has remained awake at all meetings) can identify people who can espouse innovation as long as you don't "do it" around them. Almost sounds like, "I command thee to be innovative!! Good luck.

According to evolutionary theory all plants and animals adapt and are the product of adaptation. The ones we see are the ones that made it, remembering of course there was no up front "plan" for adaptation. No mechanism planned for whatever variation we see. For some reason the variations we see offered some kind of advantage to the species - ergo evolutionary success (even though maybe only for the short term).

So innovation is related to evolution. Without evolution as we know it, we wouldn't be here - and nothing else would either for that matter. Of course no company has the resources to create 20,000 new products a year to see if they stick so they do plan in a way. Without even asking the question, Nature has found the niches in the population (market place). No plan. Just using the basic hardware that comes with the original equipment.

So maybe we can take a lesson from nature. Instead of saying that innovation will save us, or make us bigger or better, perhaps we should pause and remember that Mother Nature already has. In Nature there is no one to say, "That won't work!" If it doesn't work - aka staying alive long enough to reproduce - then it doesn't. If that happens in a company, heads will roll. (New coke, Edsel, and, alas, the Segway.)

(My opinion. No matter how hard GMC innovates, it won't work. New things compete for food (money) and if you can get (eat) something equal or better for less money (expend less energy) then Nature will have her way. The less efficient eater will starve and die or be to week to have sex (unless supplemented with bail outs) while the smaller more efficient specimen (that doesn't have to share its food with retired family members) will survive and propagate (get bigger, build more plants, be seen or more highways).)

You can't train people to be innovative, to (God help us), think outside the box, but I think you can allow innovation to take place by not demanding that people be innovative. Just find the ones who already are and let 'em rip.