Why did I decide to write about the Innovators Drama?

We don't discover that we are innovators. We discover that we want to pursue innovation challenges.

image - Photo by Nadim Merrikh on Unsplash

I always knew I was curious, and I always knew that I loved new things. So, it made sense to become an innovator. But, had I known how challenging it would be, would I have made the same decision again?

Whatever the approach to innovation may be, innovation is a challenge. When you are talented, you will always be ahead of your clan and need to deal with the ramifications. If you are less motivated, you will lag behind and have to deal with the consequences.

More than 15 years ago, when I first began advocating for innovation management, I met confusion and doubt. Learning and reading that design and innovation must be rigorous; I became rigorous by engaging with numerous initiatives and learning as much as possible about innovation management.

But regardless of my rigor, I encountered resistance, impatience, and ignorance very often. The drama was just beginning to unfold.

The innovator geek in me and the manager in me began to conflict. I discovered many theories, models, and frameworks that were intriguing, smart, and inspiring. Nevertheless, I realized that all the innovation models and theories required more attention to practice. It is impossible to expect busy managers to "go back to school" and get up to speed on new aspects of necessary rigor.

As a result, innovation management theories and concepts are often characterized as a buzz. But, the high degree of inoperability of many innovation management practices raises much resistance. And any attempt to explain them increases their rejection even more.

Innovation is challenging twice: Once because it's a complicated social co-creation process. The second is that there are significant tensions and conflicts between the motivation to innovate and the practice of doing it right.

Innovation quickly becomes a dramatic event due to objections, rejections, and challenges we need to face as innovators. And also due to the built-in conservatism that each one carries - including the innovators themselves.

Overcoming the knowledge, experience, and motivation hurdles during the innovation journey makes innovation dramatic. And it's important to acknowledge the dramas of innovation if we want to improve our innovation performance.

The catch 22 of innovation.

If you innovate, you will get stuck, and when you get stuck, you fail to innovate.

Many experience the drama of innovation. Tensions and conflicts make innovating difficult. Innovators quickly experience obstacles that seem like a distraction but are, in fact, core activities that need to be performed. These distracting experiences are easily mistaken as nuisances, but they are opportunities to learn, practice, understand and develop more skills and knowledge.

Simplified, this catch 22 of innovation guides us to the inevitable understanding that - if we want to grow, we must accept more dramas.