“From Chaos Comes Creativity, from Order Comes Profit”

There is saying, kind of a crude little formula, I have been using for years when I write and give talks on what it takes to build a culture where people innovate routinely (which I think I stole from Charles O'Reilly at the Stanford Business School):

Creativity + implementation = innovation

I have always found it a useful oversimplification of the two big things that have to happen in order to innovate, to cash in on new ideas.  It is also related to one of the main ideas in Weird Ideas That Work, that creativity is about increasing the amount of variation and all around messiness and routine work is about driving out variance and driving in order and predictability.  

In this spirit, one of the student groups in my class on Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach, did a fantastic case study of the culture of innovation at Lunar Design. The members were Ioannis Alivizatos, Meeta Arora, Stephen Streeter, and Ben Merrick.  They heard the quote in the title of this post from John Edson (pictured to the left), Lunar product design firm that has designed many familiar products including the HP Touchsmart, the Oral B CrossAction toothbrush, and the Modu phone.  I think that "“From Chaos Comes Creativity, from Order Comes Profit” conveys a similar message to the one I borrowed from Charles – that the messiness and failure required to generate a new idea needs to be shut-off as you move into the implementation phase, where more control and order are required.  Knowing how and when to make that shift is tough, although the best firms and bosses make it happen routinely.  For example, Intel’s motto “disagree and then commit” reflects this spirit – you fight during the creative part, but join arms to make the idea work during the implementation part, even if you think the decision was wrong.

P.S. And following my last post on failure, I also liked how a key element of their culture was that, when people made mistakes, they framed it as "Paying for education."

Comments

[ffxiv gil]

you said "Creativity + implementation = innovation"but i think for some people it is not a easy thing,especially the creativity.what we lack is the creation,Sometimes this is natural，also the most important is ourselves effort.

[guild wars 2 gold]

Creativity + implementation = innovation
Intel’s motto “disagree and then commit” reflects this spirit – you fight during the creative part, but join arms to make the idea work during the implementation part, even if you think the decision was wrong.

[Staysmall]

"..the messiness and failure required to generate a new idea needs to be shut-off as you move into the implementation phase"

Powerful stuff :) This helps me understand what I have been living recently. We are currently in the impl. phase so it is more ordered. This was preceded by the chaotic creative phase, and there have been a lot of questions from senior management on why we could not have started with the "orderly" phase and completely avoided the "messiness" :)

Appreciate your post. Helps me put in words my struggle.

[John Edson]

Thanks for the shout out, Bob. Glad to help your students. I have to come clean though. The title quote belongs to Joel Spira, founder of Lutron. The p.s. quote is why I'm still at LUNAR.