PAPERmaking! g FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY Volume 5, Number 1, 2019
In How to Treat New Ideas , authors David Magellan Horth and Michael T. Mitchell draw on decades of personal experience, data, and lessons from scores of organizations around the world. They identify 5 tips that can help companies nurture new ideas:
1. Resist the instinct to kill a new idea. Leaders need to understand that their first reaction to a new idea is typically “fight or flight.” When an idea that is new, foreign, or maybe even odd emerges, we’re programmed to fight it or resist it, perhaps maybe even ignore it in hopes that it will go away. Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple, worked at blue chip firm Hewlett-Packard before he joined forces with Steve Jobs. He reportedly went to his HP bosses 5 times with the idea of building a personal computer; 5 times they said no. This instinct comes from a finely tuned and powerful part of our brains — the limbic system. The limbic system is one of the larger and most ancient part of our brains. It’s the part of our brains that hel ped insure that we survived as a species. Where would we be without our limbic brains and the deeply embedded “fight or flight” response? Likely, our ancestors would have been extinguished as they chose to try to hug some prehistoric beast rather than fight it off with a club or run for their lives. The drive to fear or run away from a particularly novel idea is a natural reaction, and one that’s so powerful it overwhelms us. But leaders who want to encourage innovation should take a deep breath and allow themselves and their teams to think through the idea before rejecting it. They must watch out for signs they are subconsciously sabotaging innovation. 2. Practice innovation thinking. Innovation, by definition, means doing things differently. That creates risks and uncertainty — often considered enemies of a successful business. The logical, analytical thought processes we rely on usually are not very helpful in the early stages of innovation. The key is to practice innovation thinking. That means listen ing to your intuition and asking “What if?,” believing there’s always a better way.
Article 8 – New Ideas
Page 2 of 3
Made with FlippingBook Digital Publishing Software