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Slow innovation movement

 There are many scholars and consultants whose massage is that everything is changing faster, and faster and faster… According to their minds, in the global competition those who innovate faster will win. I disagree.

Innovation is often linked to such time related concepts as sudden, fast, serenpidity and unforeseeable. Although such characteristics are peculiar to moments of invention and idea, they are seriously misleading. Innovation is based on previous experiences and existing knowledge.

And it takes time:

Gilette Sensor Razor 13 years of development time

Boing 767, 5-12 years of development time

Wireless Fidelty 19 years of development time

Xerox 914 14 years of development time

Transistor 10 years of development time.

We see that in developing radical technology innovation is a mature result of long standing previous accumulation of knowledge and experiences. Often, innovation is an answer to question posed by the need to find better solutions related to clients demand or productivity.

At the beginning there was a question… A good analysis of this kind of question-answer-model of innovation is presented by Alexander Manu in his book The imagination challenge (2007).

I propose to call this notion of innovation slow innovation. Naturally, slow innovation is seen in gradual innovation but it’s relevant also in the case of disruptive innovation. At least, disruptive innovation is a negation of prevailing technologies and operating models and as such it’s not possible without prevailing practices. I

n sustainable innovation the concept of slow innovation is directly related to the principles of participating and continuity of innovation. Slow innovation is linked to slow learning. Deep and important things are learned with time – it’s a process of digestion and reorganizing neural connections in Brain. One could not accelerate deep learning processes artificially.

I claim that important, disruptive and radical innovations are often results of slow learning, maturation, long standing asking questions. Take an example.

A famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed his Three-legged stacking Stool three years. He created a classic, a furniture with eternal beauty.

I don’t say that all innovations are or must be slow. I’m saying that it’s stupid to belief that by pressing people to innovate faster and faster a real success will ne reached. In the opposite, people need time and space to innovate and create new thought and insight. There must a turn in management thinking. To enable innovation, organizations must adopt a well-being leadership, where the happiness of personnel is a key to success.

We need a slow innovation movement!!  

Comments: antti@sustainableinnovation.fi