Principled Innovation LLC

There are no dumb ideas

January 26th, 2007

Image by Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid

Since I’m here at the Great Ideas Conference, I feel a responsibility to offer a different perspective on Scott’s post today on Acronym. While I understand the point that Scott is trying to make, I must respectfully disagree with his conclusion that there are dumb ideas. In fact, there are no dumb ideas.

Sure, there are impractical ideas. There are poorly-executed ideas. There are ideas that are ahead of their time. But there are no bad, stupid or dumb ideas. New Coke was judged to be a dumb idea by a fickle public that preferred Coke’s traditional taste, even though Pepsi had been gaining market share over a period of years prior to New Coke’s introduction. The idea to experiment with a change in Coke’s original formula actually increased Coca-Cola’s sales of “Classic Coke” so much that people assumed New Coke was created as a gimmick to push people back to the company’s core product. The idea wasn’t dumb, it simply didn’t work out as expected. (Actually, in the long run, it worked out better than expected from Coca-Cola’s point of view.)

Scott mentions the 3M story. You could argue that Spence Silver’s “adhesive that did not adhere” (just stop for a moment and think about that) is one of the dumbest ideas ever conceived. And Spence could have just thrown the stuff in the trash and moved on to something with greater promise. But he didn’t. Why?

Because have ideas have lives of their own, and those lives demand our continued attention and engagement.

The lives of ideas animate and energize knowledge-based organizations, which means that all association stakeholders, including staff, volunteers and members, need to work together to create an idea-friendly environment in their associations. Call it the “ideaspace,” a cultural and intellectual context in which all ideas are developed and explored appreciatively, receive a fair hearing and are evaluated on the basis of success potential and not value judgments or politics. If associations can successfully create this context and make it both visible and meaningful for their most important contributors, we can begin to make innovation a genuine priority for the future.

QUICK NOTE: While there are no “dumb” ideas, I there are DUMB ideas: decisive, unique, meaningful and bold. Where are the DUMB ideas in your association?

If you're new here, I hope you will consider subscribing to the P.I. Blog. Just click on this link to add it to your RSS reader. You can also receive e-mail updates by subscribing via the box located on the blog itself. Thanks for visiting!

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