No Innovation Police, Please!

Many bloggers (myself included) spout strong opinions on various topics.  A popular topic of late has been the positive or negative contribution that designers make.  This is a discussion that I have not wanted to join in on, but today is different.  It has been brought to my attention that this Saturday is Creativity & Innovation Day.  I hadn’t heard of this previously, and I am not sure I am very keen on the idea as it makes me think of innovation being relegated to the status of something that is trotted out once year and then tossed back in the closet until the next time.  Within five minutes of learning about Creativity & Innovation Day, I chanced upon  Fernando Vallejo’s article, “Stop making crap”, over on the ‘round Design blog.

Fernando’s main point is that too many young designers waste they energies pursuing empty and meaningless design rather than focusing their energies on what Fernando might consider more worthy pursuits.  Such commentary has its place, but it is also inherently highhanded.  Fernando asks “Aren’t there enough lamps, trash bins, chairs, tooth-brushes, etc?”  Perhaps, there are.  But then again, sometimes innovation catalysts appear in the oddest places.  If someone invents an ionic tooth-brush that use bimetal technology for power instead of batteries (as has been done), perhaps that will give someone else the idea they need to create another invention that some will consider more worthy.

There is no danger that too many irrelevant ideas will bog down innovation.  Individual designers and inventors, as well as companies, should have no trouble filtering out what seems like noise from their perspective to focus on the concepts that will advance their specific mission.  There are technical solutions available that can help innovators leverage cross domain intelligence effectively and improve both the quality of their ideation and the conversion ratio of ideas to useful product or service innovations. 

The global innovation landscape is a vast marketplace of ideas.  We should embrace the diversity of ideas as this diversity creates a richness of dialog that can only benefit all innovation.  Rather than constrain creativity by sending the innovation police after those who do not meet one’s standards of sensibility, we should let ideas come from where they will.  The strong and important ideas will rise above the rest so long as we foster an open environment for a dialog of sharing those ideas.

Comments

[Fernando]

Hi James,

It's nice to know that somebody actually reads my blog, I thought that nobody would even care about those comments. I like being provocative to make people think.

I wouldn't want any design censorship either, I just wanted people to think about how (and if) we value the freedom we enjoy as designers... or if we are abusing that freedom manufacturing too much junk.

And here let me tell you that I am not referring to good, honest, methodical R&D. In fact dealing with young designers who think that design is only artistic, is hard to convince them to use tools such as TRIZ.

I just posted a follow up on that matter: http://rounddesign.blogspot.com/2007/05/sustainability-killed-styling-star.html

ciao

[James Todhunter]

Hi Fernando,

There is certainly nothing wrong with stirring up the pot to get people thinking. But we should never forget that innovation require space and freedom to thrive. Your friend Hooper is wrong (from your more recent post). Freedom is not about choosing what is right; it is about being able to judge for yourself what is right and then acting on that. You have clearly decided what is right for you, and you are acting on that. Bravo! Now, the harder part of freedom is to share that freedom with others.