Innovation is a fashionable term in business development. A great deal of lip-service is given to ‘innovation’. Too often it is no more than lip-service.
Innovation always requires a readiness to do something new. Any new strategy is a risk. Anything new is a distraction from the normal routine. Anything new requires commitment of some resources.
For obvious reasons, many organisations do not like to try new things. Executives reach senior positions through being good at continuity and problem-solving. The readiness to try new things is not usually a factor in an executive’s success and promotion.
There are a lot of myths about creativity. For one thing, ‘idea creativity’ is quite different from artistic creativity - though the two may overlap in some areas.
Then there is the notion that creativity is a mysterious talent that some people have and others can only envy. Creativity is a thinking skill that anyone can learn and practise.
The brain is a self-organising information system. Such systems form patterns. Patterning systems are always asymmetric. The formal and deliberate processes of lateral thinking are designed to move across patterns instead of along them.
The brain is not designed to be creative. The brain is designed to make stable patterns for dealing with a stable universe. So it is possible to be trained to be creative.
There must be a readiness to explore and implement new ideas. This is usually not the case, even when much lip-service is paid to innovation.
