Innovation for the Fatigued summary

Rehn was once asked to assist a struggling med-tech company in the US with its innovation plan. Once he’d settled in and given his first presentation to the leadership, he asked the company what they wanted to achieve. He found their answers troubling, to say the least.

The heads of this med-tech company spouted all of the fashionable innovation jargon of the moment. They spoke of “disruption” and “mavericks.” They spoke of creating med-tech products with “in-app purchases,” which made Rehn imagine the absurdity of having to swipe a credit card to upgrade a pacemaker to a functioning level. 

The title of a book by Fredrik Erixson and Bjorn Weigel – The Innovation Illusion: How is so little created by so many working so hard? – perfectly summarizes what’s happening at many corporations today. 

In many businesses, there are plenty of well-educated, talented people who spend a good deal of their time on pointless tasks and in pointless roles. Whether it’s on checkbox bureaucracy or on superficial corporate “targets,” their creative potential isn’t properly utilized. 

Many people in the corporate world who look forward to a future where artificial intelligence is able to do all the real work. As long as profitability in ensured, what does it matter who does the work? 

However, the certainty of a technological future where humans are redundant, is misplaced. This belief is not new; in the 19th century it was a common fear that industrial machines would make the broader population jobless. And the idea that human employees will be replaced by advanced robots has been around for a while. But in relation to real innovation, it doesn’t look like robots will be surpassing human beings anytime soon.

You know the competitive rough-and-tumble of office politics, the endless gibing, the one-upmanship? Or, on a grander scale, the departmental rivalries that dominate organizations? Unsurprisingly, none of that is very useful when we want to innovate. 

Innovation is often associated with terms like “maverick” and “dynamism,” but it neglects nurture. There is a kind of machismo about certain aspects of corporate culture that isn’t conducive to the kind of open, reflective environment where innovation can flourish.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boy’s Club Of Silicon Valley – The title of tech journalist and author Emily Chang’s book alone offers a revealing insight into the world of tech-innovation. It’s a man’s world. Or more accurately, a white man’s world.

Steve Jobs is the archetypal image of the great innovator. If it’s not him, it’s Elon Musk or Bill Gates. So many innovators that dominate our collective consciousness are white men. Although we can all easily picture Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck as the icon of tech-innovation, we should just as easily be able to think of Hedy Lamarr – the Austrian-American actress and inventor, who designed technologies that made things like Bluetooth and WiFi possible. Or Gertrude Belle Elion, who created the first treatment for leukemia, the first successful drug for treating herpes, and the first medication to treat and prevent HIV. But we don’t.

In 1986, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote an essay entitled On Bullshit. He argued that it wasn’t simply an inappropriate word, but an accurate description of something that isn’t exactly intentional lying but that is “unconnected to a concern with the truth.”

There is an increasing amount of what can very bluntly be termed “bullshit” in the corporate world. One example the author describes involves a British consultant, who was hired by a major retailer to help develop their innovation strategy. 

If “bullshit jobs” and corporate jargon lead to apathy and a decline in real innovation, then purposefulness is surely the antidote.

Take the example of one German company called Anti-Germ. Founded in Memmingen in 1938, it is now a leading international company in the business of culinary safety. It provides detergents, disinfectants, and other services for dairies, farms, and the food and beverage industry. But rather than remain in the “safe zone” of the domestic food industry, CEO Matthias Kötter likes to emphasize that the company, through its subsidiary Medintech, created a truly revolutionary product called Aquatabs.