New and Improved Innovation Blog Site

Creating an Innovation Culture in the Family

Creating an Innovation Culture in the Family
( Watch the Video Here )

Client: Luke Eckert, 9 yrs old at the time of this story.

Challenge:  Growing Luke’s self esteem, entrepreneurial skills and trust of his father.

A High-Flying Secret for Selling New Concepts

Not long ago I saw Steen Strand, Cofounder, COO and VP Design of ICON at a design conference talking about the new ICON aircraft. He was talking about the design criteria of creating an amphibious aircraft that looked "badass."

And while the plane was cool, I noticed that he was selling a radical new design that is paradigm shifting. And he wasn't selling like a badass, or like a pioneering innovator. 

The Secret of Rewarding Innovation

When working with groups to help them figure out how to bring more innovation into their organizations, we can predict what they will suggest first and what they will usually select for moving forward: a system for rewards and incentives for innovation.  We're not saying it's always a bad idea, but it's a very delicate balance between rewarding innovation and creating disincentives for innovation, which are bad. 

Fortunately, Dan Pink's new book, "Drive," about which we've written before, does a great job of (yet gain) debunking the notion that rewards and incentives work to create the behaviors you'd like to see by pointing out that what research says and what organizations do are very, very different.