When it comes to ideas, be open or lose out (part 1 of 2)

This is a straight-forward “plain English” article explaining why the best and brightest never, ever rely only on their own ideas. Call it open innovation, call it delegation, call it foresight, call it whatever you want – just be sure to not only understand it, but to implement it as well.

“If you are even remotely creative,” starts author Max McKeown, “you'll never use all your own ideas. And even if you are very creative you will never create all the ideas that you need.”

That’s a pretty simple but accurate explanation of all of the reasons why open innovation works and why it needs to be a key component of any organization’s overall plan.

“Ideas cannot stand alone…,” the article continues. “…any serious [or semi-serious] attempt to improve, innovate, or invent – from a back-of-the-napkin session in a restaurant to a multibillion dollar research and development lab – will produce too many good ideas to use and not enough good ideas to meet all your objectives.”

So it’s about more than just ideas, it’s about turning those ideas into something real. And it’s about more than just turning those ideas into something real. They need to be something real that works within your objectives, your corporate culture, your mission and vision.

His assessment of the more “old-school” research approach is direct but mostly right-on: “Traditional corporate researchers tend to invent and discover for themselves and hope vaguely, if they think of it at all, that their ideas will be developed and commercialised. Meanwhile, traditional corporate development likes to have ideas ready for prime time – and to favour incremental improvement of existing ideas over radical anything in particular.”

In my next post, I will talk more about this article and a case-in-point study of how Xerox machines came to be.