Newsletter: Innovation

White cars and budgerigars ...

Innovation always seems to involve doing something uncomfortable. We have to change the way we do something (yet again). We have to implement another new process (yet again). Several people I have recently met have commented that a period of stability would be nice ... wouldn’t it be good if we could stop being so innovative?

And do you know, it struck me one day as I was taking the budgerigar for a walk, that maybe the most innovative thing we could do this year is … drop innovation for a while?

How much finance is wasted in changing things? I recently bought a brand new car that does 60 mpg. I was so proud of this green economic decision. It cost me £14 k approx. For another 20 mpg. So it wasn’t an economic decision at all … I could run the old car at 40mpg for another 18.6 years before I had saved enough money to buy the new car. It wasn’t a green decision either, as the new car generated more carbon emissions to actually manufacture than I would use running the old car for the rest of my life! So it was an innovative, but wasteful decision. Although emotionally it was a very good decision! I can have the pleasure of driving a brand new car around, and there is also room for the budgerigar when I want to take him out to the park.

But there is no doubt that I, and the planet, would definitely be better off had I not bought this brand new vehicle. "It was emotion what made me do it, Your Honour". And maybe that same emotion is often behind many innovations.

You see, when people do things the same old way, they actually get better and faster at doing it. Comfort isn’t a bad thing, it can help efficiency. Try any motor skill, the more we repeat it, the better and quicker we get. Talking about motors again, the new car is white. That is an in-colour now, and thought to be very innovative. So everyone is doing it, and white cars are becoming the norm.

And that is the pattern of innovation. Managers are good if they are innovators, then everyone catches up and we all do it, then the pressure comes on again to innovate. In some activities it works, and money is saved. But I bet my last budgerigar that in many cases it is a total waste of money. And I know, I used to work in I.T. I am an expert in wasting money through implementing new systems (if you work in I.T. please forgive that gentle dig, I am sure your team is different than mine was!).

So what should our attitude be to innovation? I think the same attitude as to our wardrobe. We buy something new occasionally, but broadly we fit comfortable into a few well worn outfits and we stick with them. That is how we operate best. So maybe at work we should be as cautious about change as we are about changing our wardrobe i.e. there has to be a very good reason for it, and it has to clearly bring benefit before we do it. It would be quite innovative to have to justify our innovation through thorough cost benefit analysis. Sometimes the cost of running an inefficient system is way lower than changing the system, and we shouldn’t be afraid of owning up to that. 

And a final word from the budgerigar. After many hours of repetition I got him to impersonate a frog and say ‘ribbit’. I figured when out walking he could make new amphibian friends. But hey, he is a budgerigar. He is good at being a budgerigar. He impresses other budgerigars with his budgerigar-ness. Being innovative and trying to get him to act like a frog has taken many hours of training, personal tuition and rigorous pronunciation exercises. But apart from the spectacle, it hasn’t achieved much. But I do now have a job as a consultant in training budgerigars in how to say 'ribbit'. So someone has gained from the exercise then. And with the new earnings which flooded in, I bought a brand new white car …

Mark Miller is Director of Goodfoot., click here for further details