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INNOVATION
on the rise who used to say, if you want to learn about changes in the world, you’ve got to talk to 13 year olds. He was willing to subordinate himself to younger people. I know that many senior people find learning scary and it slows them down in tackling new opportunities because they don’t want to feel dumb. In the culture of innovation we build in the things that counter the stiflers.” A number of elements have to be part of this culture of
innovation. “First of all, you have to have respect for ideas of all sizes. You need a culture in which you think small as well as thinking big. If you have a culture in which the only thing that counts is the next breakthrough drug discovery, then you’re not going to have sufficient innovation to keep thriving while waiting for the next blockbuster to drop on you or somebody to create it. They don’t come along often enough and you often don’t know in advance which ones they are. You’ve got to let a lot of little ideas see the light in a small way. “If you build that into the culture, you get three things. You
get a lot of modest innovations that keep you making progress, making continuous improvement. You also ensure people are more accustomed to change. If you have a culture in which people are always tinkering, experimenting, making things a little better, you have a culture in which people expect change as a way of life, so they’re not so resistant. The third thing is, sometimes a small idea can turn out to be a big idea. If you value small ideas you provide opportunities for them to flourish.” The second important element for a culture of innovation is
having people who really care about the idea and its impact, says Kanter. “You do need values and purpose. You’re going to get more innovation in a culture where people really have a
64 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 7 Autumn/Winter 2013
strong sense of commitment to the purpose and see how what the company does can actually matter in a significant way to the world.” People also need to be resilient, she says. “You need people
for whom failure is okay. Innovation isn’t going to work all the time but if you’re learning and you keep going then it’s okay. I have a law of the universe, I call it Kanter’s Law and it is that everything can look like a failure in the middle. Everything in life: your home, your business, your products. Everything hits an obstacle. Everything fails to meet forecasts. “If you’re not willing to take the risk of a failure, you don’t have
a culture in which people are allowed to bounce back. When I first started studying innovations and innovators I wanted to talk to people who were known innovators in companies about a great success and a great failure. And none of them could talk about a failure. Maybe they didn’t want to. But they couldn’t identify one. And it wasn’t that they were perfect. It was that they kept going. They were allowed to redirect, they were given support and they could start it over again. That’s the secret of entrepreneurship in the United States – after they fail they can raise even more money, because everyone thinks they’ll do it so much better. “The secret of innovation is that if you want more successes
you have to have more failures. There has to be a culture that tolerates failure and that helps people with resilience to bounce back. You don’t want to fail big. You don’t want too much risk. So you do things in segments; you do things in small units and you help people see that they’ve learned.” A culture of innovation is a culture of education, says Kanter. “Ireland is fortunate to have such talent, such levels of
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