Yesterday, we went to a TEDx event organized and hosted by Xavier University, right here in Cincinnati. There were some tremendously inspiring presentations and speakers which inspired quite a bit of thinking and idea generation for us.
The first speaker of the day was Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative: How to be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice. We’re grateful to be connected to Todd, and originally posted about his book release back in July. Todd talks about the need for rhythm in our professional and personal lives as a catalyst and enabler of brilliance and creativity. There are 5 elements of rhythm, according to Todd, and one of them is Relationships. Within the context of relationships, Todd defines Innovation as the collective grasp of the next.
It’s a simple concept, but too often, we see innovators pursuing ideas on their own. There are likely several reasons why we go after ideas on our own — we don’t think others will be interested; we’re worried that our manager might not want us working on something that could be outside the responsibilities of our role; we don’t want to share the idea “too soon;” or we want to make sure that we get the credit for the idea.
But, the reality is that this “solo” approach to innovation rarely produces results — in other words, the ideas we pursue on our own rarely become reality. Often, they barely make it beyond a sketch or scratch in our notebooks.
Innovation is the collective grasp of the next.
When we regularly engage in building relationships with a diverse network of folks, suddenly making meaningful, impactful progress for the future becomes a reality. And, when a group of people come together to create against a defined problem, formally or informally, the collective ideas they generate ultimately have much more chance of solving the problem at hand. We find when we conduct ideation sessions that the momentum only starts to build when folks develop a collective understanding of the problem, are inspired, and begin to share and build from each others’ ideas.
We can’t make an impact on our organizations, business results, or other people by keeping ideas to ourselves …
Photo licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 via Flickr user: giantginkgo