"You Lie!" - the shout heard around the world

[Yvette Dubel]

No doubt by now you have heard about Rep. Wilson's poor behavior during President Obama's speech. I am not going to chime in on that political discussion although the accusation stuck in my mind but for a different reason.

It seems it could have happened at the table of many of the conversations going on about innovation. While many organizations are meeting and discussing "the issue" ad nauseam I don't think that innovation is really what is of concern.

The real issue is one of survival without evolution as part of a growth process within a broader context. There is an underlying fear that belies these discussions that makes them somewhat less than honest. That being that organizations (or organizational leadership) fears innovation which will render them powerless or obsolete. For example, many of the questions that are used to anchor these discussions perpetuate the same way of doing and seeing things therefore reinforcing the very obstacles to innovation within the organization.

Recently in checking out what my Twitter Followers are up to I stumbled upon yet another person who is immersed in innovation group discussions and it seems they are all taking place within the same box because the result are questions like this:
"Where should innovation reside in an organization, and who should 'own' or manage innovation?"

What if innovation means a different way of organizing that is not controlled in the ways that we are accustomed to understanding it? And what if evolution of systems does not lend itself to old models of ownership? In companies for example, the innovation of individuals in the organization must be controlled by the leadership and subsequently owned by the company. Never questioning how this supports inequality - profits are owned by the company but losses will be shared in the form of job losses, pay cuts, etc.

This is obviously, to me, out of synch with everything we see in terms of where things are heading. The momentum is clearly in the move toward open systems with shared ownership.

Television and music industries are evidence of what I mean. Clinging to their old models they are engaged in an up hill battle where they are clearly out numbered. The masses, certainly my generation and those younger, have embraced the more open models that have evolved on the internet. Blip.fm is one of my favorites and has replaced the radio - which I had been unsatisfied by for years. I can create my own play lists...be inspired by others and listen to their play lists. And if a song is removed from one source, it is quickly replaced by a new one so fast that one scarcely notices any interruption at all. However, this has provided an alternative to the file sharing model Napster was busted for facilitating. I won't go too far into the problems of the music industry here although I have given this considerable attention and have had some discussion about research to address the quagmire.

While we are all enjoying the site now, if it were to change in ways we didn't like we would promptly leave to find a new solution...and it would be likely a group of dissatisfied users would be the ones to embark on creating it. Now if one can get that kind of personalized service for free imagine the expectations that are being cultivated for paid services. But paid services have overwhelmingly adhered to old business models that are not capable of factoring in this kind of personalized - market of one- services/products. Furthermore, how to contend with competition that can pop up without notice to capitalize on an organization's greatest weakness. In the time it would take the organization to get a group consensus of the problem, the competition could come along to dominate an unknown niche within the marketplace that disrupts, if not completely displaces, the old regime.

So organizations that are only listening to those who share the same tainted rose colored glasses or those that are obsessively looking within the organization to manage and structure innovation that will not disrupt business as usual (whatever that means for a given organization) is completely missing the point.

It is the environmental factors that shape the course of evolution and social media is making that path more visible....and what is certainly clear is that the power is in the hands of the people not the organization. When one has a perspective that is so oriented to see the world one way, it is almost impossible to know what you don't know because you are looking to reinforce what you have assumed.

The lowest common denominator, the one thing an organization can focus on that will help them understand the proper context of their delima is to develop a better understanding of the realty of Attention. And so doing, to take the risk of seeing their problem and the world in a whole new way.

Since that is an area of inquiry in our research via Cultural Fusion - this is a topic of great interest to me but it is not an easy discussion to have with those who most need to pay Attention to it because they are too busy asking and pursuing the wrong questions.

Perhaps a bit of honesty and a lot more authenticity is needed to get to the real heart of the matter?