"Most really useful information comes from informal conversations."
-- William Pape, Verifone Co-Founder
John Seely Brown, who calls himself Chief of Confusion, in an interview with Innovation@Work talks about managing innovation. His definition of innovation is the activities that follow invention, what he calls the "path to the sea from invention." We don’t agree with his definition but it’s always wise to learn from this thought leader. So, he states that you cannot "manage" invention, but you can nurture it. You can, however, manage the implementation of the invention.
How does he suggest nurturing invention?
His answer is based on his years at Xerox PARC managing some of the most creative (inventive) people around. PARC did a great job of nurturing invention but a pretty poor job of commercializing their ideas. So, JSB’s guidance on nurturing invention springs from a very successful source.
And the answer is ... conversations! Creating an environment where "serendipitous types of conversations" occur, a place where people from various disciplines bump into each other and start talking about possibilities. At PARC this space included wall-to-ceiling white boards, coffee pots and ways to capture the stuff on the white boards so that it would go to the individual work stations.
JSB reframed the question of how to manage invention to, "How do you enable really interesting conversations, how do you support those conversations, capture those conversations and find ways to keep the conversation going across multiple points of view."
We thought this would be a great question for us ... How do you enable really interesting convesations? Please respond in the comments section below.
More wisdom from John Seely Brown and comments from his talk at the Front End of Innovation conference.
Writing "Accidental Conversations" woke me up to the innovative power of freedom in conversations: The more unplanned a conversation, the greater possibility there is for unplanned outcomes.
Posted by: Jack Ricchiuto | July 17, 2004 at 05:23 AM