Scott D. Anthony is an author and managing partner of consulting firm Innosight.
I'm suggesting that principles meant to deal with uncertainty that occurs naturally can be useful to manage the uncertainty that characterizes any new idea.
It's very easy to skip steps when documenting an idea.
The need to be thoughtful about experiment design is particularly acute within large companies, since some of the behaviors, such as having small teams and tapping into low-cost resources to maximize flexibility, won't come naturally to many people inside huge companies.
Now, I worry a bit about the TEDification of the world where style trumps substance, so hopefully you have a good blend of both!
I think the most important thing to do is to recognize the fundamentally different circumstances of pursuing growth.
Small teams move faster than big teams.
Every great idea emerges out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation.
People who copy what exists copy a point-in-time artifact, and if you are managing the process correctly you are already hard at work on the next thing.
Good innovators are careful observers, network extensively, run experiments, ask lots of questions, and find ways to bring diverse ideas together. Overarching all of this is an intrinsic interest in working through puzzles.
When you are motivating people to do amazing things, you have to win over both their rational side and their emotive side.
I think it is only in hindsight that you can determine whether something is a mistake or not.
In the face of uncertainty, many companies will default to asking their innovators to study and analyze, which can't actually ever provide a definitive answer.
If you are a large company and you want to do something unique, you almost by definition have to tap onto the core business in some way. Otherwise you are going into a naked fight against startups, and that's just a tough place to be.
In my mind, so-called "cultures of innovation" really boil down to one word: curiosity.
The number one thing I urge people to remember is it is all about being scientific about managing strategic uncertainty, while striking the important balance between being thorough and being flexible.
Leaders today face challenges for which they are utterly unprepared.
Data about an innovative idea is rarely crystal clear.
Seeking chaos is at least one way to develop the skills and mindsets to tackle ambiguity.
We fool ourselves into thinking that the spreadsheets that capture our financial projections are something different than what they are.
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is to embrace the idea of spurring creativity by letting hundreds of flowers bloom. I've never seen that lead to anything other than cynicism and hundreds of dead flowers.