Innovation at Work: Light, Not Heat
Innovation as a business initiative seems to rear its head every six years or so. We’re on the tail end of another “let’s innovate!” run. What came of all those resources spent trying to come up with the next big idea? Did your company find a revolutionary change, new product, or client base that was worth all the effort? Or did the innovation teams post a slew of new ideas, declare victory and melt back to their old jobs?
True innovation is about creating a sustainable (product/idea/change/client). The last thing it is about is creating teams of people to brainstorm ideas. Ever hear a senior leader say, “I want five new ideas from each division by next month!”? VPs scramble, teams are formed, consultants are consulted. This in itself isn’t bad. The CEO usually gets ideas. How many get implemented?
The Shift - Light, not Heat
“Light, At Thirty-Two” by Michael Blumenthal from Days We Would Rather Know.
It is the first thing God speaks of
when we meet Him, in the good book
of Genesis. And now, I think
I see it all in terms of light:
How, the other day at dusk
on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
was the color of the most beautiful hair
I had ever seen, or how—years ago
in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park—
I saw the most ravishing woman
in the world, only to find, hours later
over drinks in a dark bar, that it
wasn’t she who was ravishing,
but the light: how it filtered
through the leaves of the magnolia
onto her cheeks, how it turned
her cotton dress to silk, her walk
to a tour-jeté.
And I understood, finally,
what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said:
Love is keeping the lights on. And I understood
why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:
Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire,
that everything depends on how light falls
on a seashell, a mouth … a broken bottle.
And now, I’d like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
this morning when we woke—God,
it was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
waiting at the window … they too are right.
All things lovely there. As that first poet wrote,
in his first book of poems: Let there be light.
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When asked for ideas, focus on the vital few that would create a sustainable future in your organization. Pulling people from their jobs to create a list of going nowhere ideas isn’t insightful and won’t light the way to the future. You’re just creating heat (i.e. friction).
Follow the light.
Joe Raasch :: May.12.2008 :: Change Management, Innovation :: Add a Comment Here
