In Praise of Irrational Innovation

by Anthony Scott

I love my three young children immensely. So it's hard for me to be fully rational about them. Of course they are the smartest, the best looking, and the most athletic. I'm not alone — all parents are irrational. We lose sleep worrying about things we can't control and take pride in ridiculously small achievements we had nothing to do with.

A similar type of irrationality affects innovators. Talk to an entrepreneur or a scientist about the idea they are working on — it's just like talking to a parent of young children. They feel unduly proud when their team does something without needing their help. They endlessly worry about things that are well beyond their control.

It's hard to understand these types of feelings until you actually experience them. Actually, I'd even go a step further. As much as I love my kids, it's hard for me to have the same connection with them as my wife does — for obvious reasons — but with innovation ... well, it's the closest a man can get to giving birth.

Irrationality can be a strong asset. Sure, a vast majority of new businesses fail, so a fairly rational person could easily justify maintaining the status quo. But our world is — unquestionably — a better place because people take risks that don't quite make logical sense. Of course, irrationality presents challenges too. It can blind innovators to real problems and to important signals telling them to do something different. Yes, perseverance may be an underappreciated skill, but when paired with passion, it often leads to fanaticism.

So how can you toe the line between irrationality and fanaticism without pursuing a doomed idea?

1. Find a Devil's Advocate. While many innovators hate the term, a devil's advocate plays a very healthy role in a creative process by presenting plausible, alternative (and often less positive) explanations of observed phenomena. Experienced board members often play this role for young start-ups. But remember: the point isn't to disagree for the sake of being difficult.
2. Embrace the discipline of testing. W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, had a wonderful quote that described the essence of waste-reducing processes and procedures utilized by companies around the world: "In God we trust; all others must bring data." As detailed by Steve Blank, Peter Sims, Eric Ries, and others, innovators should follow this mantra as well. Turn proclamations into testable hypotheses. Run experiments. Be honest about what you find.
3. Follow the selective scarcity principle. In Chapter 4 of The Little Black Book of Innovation, I describe how the seven deadly sins serve as a good reminder of common innovation pitfalls. The most surprising sin? Gluttony. An abundance of time, money, or people would seem to accelerate innovation, but it often leads to slow, overly linear efforts. Setting early deadlines, consciously constraining funding, and keeping teams lean can help to force necessary course corrections.

So next time you hear a wide-eyed entrepreneur talking about what sounds like a prosaic-at-best accomplishment, cut them a bit of slack. That irrationality — if it's properly contained — might just help launch a world-changing business that would not otherwise exist.

Fuente: Harvard Business Review