Posted by Reilly Atkinson on January 23, 2000 at 01:23:35:

In Reply to: Re: Innovation and KM posted by Denham on January 22, 2000 at 18:26:39:

Denham -- How you can deduce from my posting that dialogue, deep or otherwise, does not play a role in coming up with new stuff? Rather I pointed out that sometimes it does, and sometimes it does not.
My problem is that there is demonstrably more than one way to foster innovation -- short term and long term -- dialogue is just one way to do it, and dialogue does not always work. I say this with perfect confidence because of my personal experience with innovation-- as a research scientist(physics&economics), as a consultant, a manager and a jazz musician.

Trust me, I've seen/experienced cases where dialogue hindered the conquering of cognitive blocks -- writer's block is a familiar example -- and the individual fixed things up by a great deal of individual effort. I'm highly familiar with this cognitive block stuff, quite a few years ago one of my sons, then in his twenties, did an enormous about face in his behaviour and thinking -- totally on his own.

Another example: many new companies are started out of shear desperation, the fear of going broke is the dominating force pushing innovation.

The point is that there is no one method by which to foster innovation. My favorite way of fostering innovation is: get a small team, 5 at most, of driven, super bright & and hungry people, and keep them together for 5+ years. The results of such a group can be astonishing. Note that this approach will virtually never work inside a large organization, so there you need other methods. It all depends, that's my point.
Regards,
Reilly

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