On innovation in Cleveland
Local media recently has been writing articles on the importance of education in stimulating innovation. While I agree that going to school (college) is very important in creating a foundation for broad and sustained economic development, it does not necessarily have anything to do with innovation. If you look at three of the world's most important industrialists/innovators of the last 1/4 century, Steve Jobs - Apple, Bill Gates - Microsoft, Larry Ellison - Oracle, none of them have college degrees. If any of them stayed in college long enough to graduate, they would have missed the window of opportunity to create their respective empires. These people are creative, risks takers and incredibly persistent, which are equally, if not more important than education in terms of "being innovative." While knowledge and the skill of learning are important in the process of innovation, they themselves are not mindsets or ways of being that provide people with the will, curiosity and courage to innovate. The latter are more intuitive (right brain) than skill/knowledge based (left brain) and, in my humble opinion, are not given enough consideration in our educational systems. To provide a simple example, how many colleges teach people to fail? What? Why teach people this? As described in two books on innovation, Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki and The Are of innovation by Tom Kelley, failure is a critical part of the innovation process. The more quickly you fail things and the more often you are failing, the more it means you are experimenting, prototyping and working your way to success. I can assure you that this concept is the furthest from what is being taught in local colleges and universities. Yet, at our company, KOYONO, it is one of the most important things we do. We set out to fail anything new 3 times before we launch it or kill it. If someone has a great idea, there is less discussion and more support to help people fail the idea fast. As we grow, we are looking for people who have this characteristic in their blood and the mindset to endure it. They have to be creative to generate great ideas, fearless in their attempt to test them, and persistent enough to endure mindless nay-saying and failure. If we want an innovative region, we need people that truly understand innovation. I have actively been in the community for the past three years and continue to be awestruck by how few innovators we have and how little people understand in terms of attracting and keeping them. Cleveland continues to sustain an intensely bureaucratic and hierarchical society with more importance being put on maintaining and leveraging power through relationships (social capital), and having meeting after meeting after meeting maintaining relationships, than getting out of the boardroom and on the ground floor where innovation happens. More education most likely will not disrupt this viscous cycle. While having an educated work force is important in providing resources for companies to scale, it does not guarantee a pool of innovators. Cleveland has tremendous opportunities across many industries, but there is a long road ahead to changing the culture to capitalize on them. In addition to creating a better educated workforce, let's have a business community mandate lasting one year, where the real heros of innovation, those at the bottom of the totem pole tinkering with processes and products, have an opportunity to solve customer's problems. Let's have them visit their respective company's top 10 customers, let them freely figure out what the customers really need and want, and let's give these heros a direct line to the top (bypassing management) with an obligation to plan and suggest 10 new products/projects. Have the officers commit to one or two projects and empower the team to fail their way to success, while maintaining direct dialog with the CEO and President. How many new innovations would come out of the process? How many spin-off companies could be created? How many new innovators can we attract to the region as a result of such a disruptive cultural shift? Maybe we can let a few MBA types from the local business schools participate and really learn something! Ohh, that might be too dangerous and risky. Let's have a few meetings to talk about it and get approval from the mayor. Better yet, let's keep things the way they are. It's comfortable.
from Cool Cleveland reader Jeasung Jay Yoo j.yoo@koyono.com (:divend:)