Messy Innovation

Innovation is many things.
It’s new methods. New ideas. New products.
It’s challenging, improving, revamping what already exists.
It’s discovering what was pervasively unseen, unknown, or unbelievable.
It’s inventing the unforeseen, the unimaginable, and the strongly doubted.

Here are (my) three “bottom lines” for innovation.

1. 1. Don't listen to the critics, the greatest of which are the established theorists (and their theories). They’re wrong. Any time you’re pushing boundaries (or running and jumping over them), your own barometer-for-better is authoritative.
   2. Don’t lose yourself in the process. If you’ve sacrificed your true self, you’ve traded what’s priceless for what is new. That’s never worth it. Besides, innovation requires your intuition, your brilliance, and your unique imaginative capabilities: all of those are tied to your true self. To “innovate” and deny that part of you is not authentic innovation.
   3. Innovation ought to be messy. If it’s too clean, then it was likely cooked up around an executive table near the corner office. That’s not innovation; that’s strategy. There’s a big difference.

(H/T to John Paul Leberach for pointing me in this direction)