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One thing many people struggle with when it comes to innovation is the thought that innovation is 1) easy; 2) hard; 3) impossible for “me”; 4) all of the above (take your pick). Sure, it’s not necessarily like turning on a light switch, but thinking innovatively (is that a real word?) is possible for just about anyone who really wants to.

In this post from Dave Snowden over at Cognitive Edge I found even more great thoughts on innovation, so I figured what the heck, let’s continue the thread on innovation and just call this “Innovation Week” here at MZM.

“I have long argued that there are three necessary, but not sufficient conditions for innovation to take place. These are:

• Starvation of familiar resource, forcing you to find new approaches, doing things in a different way;
• Pressure that forces you to engage in the problem;
• Perspective Shift to allow different patterns and ideas to be brought into play.

Creativity is just one way, and not necessarily the most effective to achieve perspective shift. In fact I am increasingly of the opinion that creativity is not a cause of innovation, but a property of innovation processes, it’s something that you can use as evidence of innovation, but not to create it.”

What he seems to be saying here is that just because you’re a creative person, it doesn’t necessarily follow that innovation will naturally occur. These three conditions must be present as well (and their presence does not guarantee it either - it just “sets the stage”, so to speak) : starvation, pressure, and perspective shift. Allow me to illustrate by personal example.

A few years ago there was a severe downturn in my industry (Engineering), causing a huge glut of engineers on the market. As a result, I experienced an exceedingly long period of unemployment (it was, alas, years, not months). During this time I joined a job networking group, and weeks stretched into months as our savings slowly ran down. One day while attending the networking meeting I discovered quite by accident that there were about 25 PhDs in the group (it was a very large group).

Over coffee later that day, I and two friends got to thinking, what can you do with 25 PhDs? The obvious answer was (and you knew this was coming) “consult”. Since this was something of a non-answer, we realized that despite the amount of knowledge and expertise this group represented, the real challenge was to harness such a group in a productive way.

So I formed a new company called Mars Hill Group (coming up with a really good name was a real bear. “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” was already taken. As was “The Society of the Large-Brained”), and we started with 19 members, all with PhDs, who together represented a combined 80 or so degrees (one gentleman had 5!) in a variety of disciplines. After brainstorming for suitable ideas, we decided to address Homeland Security, and eventually produced a proposal and submitted it for consideration.

I’d like to say we received a contract with the DHS and all of us are now working for the government – but alas, the only true part of that statement is that we’re all now working again.

Be that as it may, I think it illustrates what Dave was saying above. Starvation and pressure forced a perspective shift. Thus our need (for positive cash flow, for jobs, for a creative outlet for our passion and expertise) led us to try something new. So instead of waiting for someone to come along and offer us a job, we basically created our own.

Now you’re possibly thinking, “But what kind of illustration is that? You failed!” But did we really? Is that even the point?

No, I think the real point is if we had continued to look at our situations from the same old perspective, we would have wasted the opportunity to have a great experience with something completely new. And from that, we all managed to benefit.

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