Host Justin McMenamy and Jim Weber continue their conversation on fostering a culture of innovation including methods of preventing it from being killed by pessimism and process.
This episode covers innovation’s overlap with creativity and art, and how nearly every company markets themselves as innovative, sometimes despite objective evidence to the contrary.
Justin introduces the “Trellis and Vine” analogy: provide enough structure to support creativity without choking it; warning that well intended leaders can smother innovation through noble pursuits of synergy, globalization, metrics culture, governance, and project rationalization.
They emphasize a willingness to self-disruption, R&D to customer proximity, market competitors managed as “worthy rivals”, project pipeline prioritization, and competitive prototyping as key ingredients to a company hoping to curate a culture of innovation.