The top 3 innovation myths you need to remove in a team culture

Everybody wants to be an innovator. Right now, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of startups are racking their brains for a way to produce the ‘Next Big Thing’.

Innovation is great. Innovation has cured diseases, improved our quality of life, helped us to respond to emergencies, and changed the world. We definitely need more innovation.The problem is that there are a lot of myths around innovation. And those myths hold us back.

To be the innovator you want to be, you need to jettison these myths. Here, we’ll go through the three biggest myths about innovation, and why you need to ditch them.

1. The ‘Eureka!’ moment

Of all the myths about innovation, this is probably both the most common and the most damaging.

We all know the trope - the genius who has been mulling over a problem suddenly and unexpectedly has a lightbulb moment. The solution leaps, fully-formed, into their head.

The phrase ‘Eureka moment’ comes from an old, old story about Ancient Greek philosopher and inventor Archimedes. Archimedes’ king, Heiro, suspected his goldsmith of defrauding him by using silver in his golden crown. So, Hiero challenged Archimedes to figure out how much of his crown was gold, and how much was silver.

This was a tricky problem, as Archimedes couldn’t break the crown up. The story goes that, while musing over the problem in his bath, Archimedes realized that the amount of displaced water could, if measured properly, indicate the exact volume of his body.

As gold weighs more than silver, a similar water-test would accurately show whether or not the crown had been diluted with silver. Archimedes was so thrilled with this brainwave that he leaped out of his bath and ran naked through the streets yelling ‘Eureka!’ - ‘I have found it!’

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The unfortunate goldsmith was found to be dishonest, and probably suffered a terrible fate as a result. But what history remembers most about the story is the ‘Eureka!’ moment.

• Eureka moments make for great stories - and the history of innovation is littered with them. Other examples include: Isaac Newton developed the Theory of Gravity after being hit on the head by an apple.
• Sir Paul McCartney supposedly ‘woke up one morning’ with the fully-formed tune of ‘Yesterday’ in his head.
• Charles Goodyear discovered the process of vulcanisation (rubber-making) when he accidentally dropped a mixture of Indiarubber and sulphur onto a hot stove.
• Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when mold accidentally contaminated one of his petri dishes

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The thing is that there’s more than a whiff of myth about all of these stories. The truth is that most innovation doesn’t come as a lightning-bolt from the blue. It comes gradually, as the result of a lot of hard work, project management, research, testing, failing, and learning.

The concept of ‘Eureka!’ moments can make innovation very tough. People think that if the solution hasn’t leaped into their heads after a certain period, it’s never going to happen. So they give up.

When the fourth automation test fails, or the app glitches, or the operational model doesn’t work, we get disheartened. We think that it’s not to be, and we give up. In fact, what we should be doing is taking each failure as a learning experience, and keeping at it.

Rather than waiting on Eureka moments, the key to innovation is to keep grinding away at your R&D. Who knows - maybe one day you might be lucky enough to have a Eureka moment! But if you don’t, that’s fine. You’ll get there in the end, with or without a Eureka.

2. The eccentric genius

Did you notice something about all those ‘Eureka’ stories? They were all about one person.

A major innovation myth is that there is a specific type of person who has innovations. You know the kind - a genius with eccentric habits (and probably weird hair). From Nikola Tesla to Steve Jobs, society loves the idea of a strange loner, devoted to their craft, blessed with a brain that strobes with lightbulb moments. 

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The problem is that this is a trope. It’s not even slightly based in fact. Practically nobody has come up with a useful innovation alone. Tesla, Einstein, Jobs, Musk - all of these innovators worked (and continue to work) with huge research and development teams.

Take Gordon Matthews, for example. Upon visiting a friend’s office, he saw trash cans overflowing with message slips. Wouldn’t it be easier, he thought, to send a voicemail? So far, this sounds like the traditional eccentric genius story. But Matthews never pretended to be a lone genius. When inventing voicemail, Matthews worked for years, with a huge team and A LOT of failed experiments.

His first attempt alone required “64 telephone lines, 114 Intel 8086 microprocessors, and 4 refrigerator-sized 200-megabyte hard drives”. Plus an entire team of skilled researchers.

The ‘eccentric genius’ figure makes for a great story, but that story can be damaging when it comes to real-world innovation. Why? Because it promotes the idea that only a certain person can be an innovator. In fact, anyone can be an innovator. Especially if they’re working in a team with an innovator culture.

Innovation isn’t about your characteristics. Sure, some characteristics can help, a good work ethic, for example, and the ability to work well in a team. But, most of all, innovation is about hard work and dedication.

It’s also pretty much impossible to do alone. You will need a team to help you. For a start, other team members provide valuable alternate perspectives. It’s the combination of expertise, extensive research, and plenty of differing perspectives that produces the greatest innovations.

So, ditch the ‘eccentric genius’ myth. Instead, build a great team with a strong culture of innovation. Work hard, collaborate, and you will achieve great things together.

3. Problem-solving requires innovation

There’s a common misconception that innovation is all about solving problems. Let’s say your calls keep dropping, for example. Is this the opportunity you need to get innovating? Well, it could be. But you don’t need to wait for a problem to start innovating. Similarly, not all problems need an innovative solution.

Albert Einstein once said “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”.

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The takeaway here is that, while problems can be a great driver for innovation, that innovation shouldn’t be your endgame. It’s far, far more important to properly understand a given problem than it is to be innovative.

Let’s return to that call-dropping example. Sure, you could run straight off to the drawing board and design an innovative new business phone system. But is that really what your customers need? If your aim with problem-solving is to be innovative no matter what, you run the risk of reinventing the wheel.

Instead, focus your attention on the problem itself. What is actually happening? What’s the source of the issue? What would your customers like to happen instead? In this case, you will almost certainly find that your customers just want a simple fix for the issue, not an entirely new innovation.

When your problem-solving focus switches from innovation to the problem itself, you may be surprised at what you find. Perhaps there’s a really simple fix. Perhaps the problem isn’t a problem at all, but a training issue that can be solved by simpler instructions. Or perhaps you really do need to get innovating. The important thing is that you aren’t innovating for innovation’s sake. Instead, you’re tackling the actual problem at its root.

The classic example of this kind of thing is the old story about the space-pen. It’s an urban legend, but still illustrates the point. It goes like this: In the 60s, NASA realized that conventional pens would not work in a no-gravity environment. So, they spent millions of dollars inventing a special pen which would allow their astronauts to write while in space. The Russians, meanwhile, simply used a pencil.

As we said, this is mostly a myth (the ‘space pen’ was actually invented by an external corporation, and would eventually be adopted by both NASA and the Russian space program). However, it shows how trying too hard to be innovative can get in the way of effective problem-solving.

So, when you come up against a problem, don’t think ‘Innovate!’ Instead, think ‘Understand, and solve’. Track bugs, dig into the issue, ask your customers what they need, and leave the urge to innovate until it’s really needed.

4. Innovation doesn’t have rules

Innovation is a strange thing. It doesn’t have set rules. You can’t wait around for a Eureka moment, because Eureka moments are rare (and unreliable). Being an eccentric genius doesn’t guarantee any kind of innovative power. And not every problem requires an innovative solution.

Don’t think that you have to be a certain type of person to innovate. Don’t treat innovation as a magical bolt out of the blue. Innovation usually comes as a result of an engaged team, hard work, and a lot of perseverance.

If you’re struggling to build an innovator culture in your team, dispelling innovation myths is a good way to begin. You could also start affiliate networks with innovative members, having innovation training days, or joining innovation webinars.

The important thing to remember is that anyone can be an innovator. Every member of your team has it in them to be a part of something great. So, ditch the myths and get innovating!

Need more help? Check out the Zentao blog. They have more articles on project management, software management, building cross-functional teams, and so much more.

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Author bio :

Jessica Day - Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad

Jessica Day is the Senior Director for Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern business communications platform with special features of Dialpad's VoIP phone system that takes every kind of conversation to the next level—turning conversations into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts, for both company and client campaigns. Jessica has also written articles for great sites such as Ranktracker and Polly.

Here is her LinkedIn.