Principled Innovation LLC

More garage, less living room

January 23rd, 2007

In my continuing quest to understand why associations find innovation such a profound challenge, I have hit upon a fundamental insight that I think is at least a partial explanation:

Associations prefer the living room to the garage.

In recent weeks, I’ve been re-reading “A Garage an an Idea: What More Does an Entrepreneur Need?,” an article (available for purchase) from the Fall 2005 issue of California Management Review. The article, written by Pino G. Audia and Christopher I. Rider, argues that the legend of the garage and its role in American corporate entrepreneurship is inaccurate. The authors contend that in contrast to what we know from the now-famous stories of H-P and Apple and their humble garage beginnings, entrepreneurs aren’t solitary figures who use only their own wits and guts to succeed. Instead, Audia and Rider see them as products of the organizations where they work prior to launching their ventures, people who depend heavily on the social networks and personal attributes they develop in those earlier jobs to propel their new enterprises forward.

Despite their concerns about the accuracy of the garage metaphor in corporate entrepreneurship, the authors nevertheless concede that the garage is a powerful cultural icon that effectively captures the essence of how entrepreneurs think and act. As they write,

…it is a symbol that conjures up some common images of entrepreneurship, including the inspirational generation of innovative ideas, old-fashioned hard work and American ingenuity, bootstrapping resources to chase a dream, a rejection of the status quo, and the freedom of working for oneself.

It is on this symbolism of the garage, rather than the fact of it, that I want to focus in this post. I have no specific dispute with the authors’ conclusions, but I consider them to be only tangentially related to the world of associations. My deeper concern is that most organizations in our community are far more comfortable with the “be on your best behavior” expectations of the living room, than the messy creativity of the garage. And while I don’t anticipate any association will ever move out of the house entirely, it would contribute mightily to the success of our cause if we could infuse some garage thinking into our staid living room mindsets.

What memories do you have of the living room in your childhood home? In mine, it was not a place for play. While my parents occasionally used it to entertain their friends, mostly I remember the sofas being covered in plastic out of the fear of those twin menaces: dust and stains. The large glass table in the middle of the room was a constant source of danger with a kid in the house, as was the large breakfront filled with figurines, coin sets, medals and commemorative plates. My father’s model ships, enclosed in free-standing wood and glass cases he also built himself, were a constant reminder that running too fast through the house could lead to disaster. In short, it was a pretty traditional living room in a pretty traditional house.

The traditions of the living room sit in stark contrast with the opportunities of the garage. Garage thinking places no limits on what we can accomplish and challenges us to adopt what Marissa Mayer of Google (a one-time garage company itself) describes as, “a healthy disregard for the impossible.” Garage thinking pushes us to do more than develop great products, services and experiences. It inspires us to make a difference in the world by rejecting the constraints of static and out-of-date traditions in favor of building a dynamic new pattern of creativity, invention and innovation. As Guy Kawasaki argues, the garage is “a state of mind,” and it is precisely this way of thinking that we need more of in the association community today.

To facilitate garage thinking in your organization, let me offer a few questions to provoke meaningful conversation:

• What do you like best about status quo thinking?
• What will it take for you to embrace “a healthy disregard for the impossible?”
• What one association tradition would you jettison today if you could and why?
• What big idea would you like to act on right now and why?
• What prevents you from acting on that big idea?

These questions are simply a starting point for a process of bringing more of the garage into your association’s living room. While it may be a little uncomfortable at first, it is a necessary part of leadership in the post-modern association. And besides, you never know, a small grease stain on the sofa might look good!

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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way, Google