Merlin Mann on Innovation
Merlin Mann has been around the web and doing great stuff for a long time. He’s best known for his productivity blog 43folders, and we find him amazingly entertaining and insightful.
Here's a recent podcast featuring his thoughts on innovation, which were simultaneously simple, clever, and profound. He delivers a stark reality check to companies that are calling out for innovation but in truth are actually stifling it.
(This is our slight paraphrase. For the direct, conversational quote, listen about 40 minutes into the podcast.)
With almost every company I work with that's struggling, you eventually hear people crowing about innovation. Innovation is certainly important, but first of all, innovation is like history—it's something you can only really recognize in retrospect.
But secondly, and more importantly, when a company asks why they can’t get people to innovate, I ask, “Who's the most powerful person in your company that's failed six times in a row?” And they say, "What are you talking about? They'd be out of here after one failure!" I respond, "Okay, well that is a message that has been sent to everyone in the company."
Innovation requires (a) a tolerance for failure and (b) having a manager who's willing to take stuff off your plate so that you can innovate. And innovating means doing stuff that seems like dicking around. Right? Innovation means I'm doing something that's never been seen before. It's creativity; it's combing two things you've never seen.
Check out the audio if our paraphase wasn’t clear—good, inspiring stuff!
Posted by Ryan Dunphey
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