~ ~~

Issues & Observations 5

INWIRY Feedback and Innovation Stanley S. Gryskiewicz Director of Creativity Development

This past October, while waiting for a de- layed flight, I uncovered in my briefcase the August 1981 Issues B Observations and read the Iquirj piece by Morgan McCall. His musings began with a quotation from Lewis Thomas: “The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.” I was intrigued that a flaw, a gap in information, resulted in a new creation. McCall speculates that “maybe we should relax a minute and consider that gaps allow things, often un- expected things, to roll through them.”

I have been working on developing or- ganizational structures that facilitate inno- vation and McCall’s article suggested an idea that has clear implications for design- ing those structures - namely, that in- complete information is a fertile environ- ment for innovation.

The mechanism that offers daily guid- ance and direction to organizational ac- tivities, the organizational analogue to DNA, is feedback. Feedback is used to monitor systems, to adjust systems, and to guide systems by comparing data to some standard. Feedback is used to fill up the “gaps.”

Where innovation is concerned, a feed- back system that fills all the information gaps can be counterproductive. Too much information calling attention to “the standard” limits the vision and originality of innovative work. This happens because traditional organizational standards such as the budgeting process are applied to re- duce risk to a minimum, using the crite- rion of the least expenditure for the greatest gain. This criterion can be, and usually is, too short-sighted to encourage innovative activity. Information without gaps, without room for taking risks, stifles innovation because by its nature innova- tion is risky. The more information you have, especially “hard” data, the less likely you are to take a risk. Information breeds caution. As Peter Drucker pointed out in

a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Innovative companies know that returns on innovation behave radically differendy from returns in the ongoing business. For long periods, years in many cases, innova- tions have no ‘returns;’ they have only costs.’’

mation, it also frequently comes in styles that are inappropriate for innovation. The style of information that is used in in- novative thinking is imagistic, imprecise, and intuitive. Specific details, rigid guide- lines, considerations of risk are irrelevant and, worse, they clog the works. The grand design is all important and it is con- ceived of intuitively, not by analysis. If or- ganizations want innovation, they need to limit the “hard” qualitative data they use to control innovation. They need to de- velop information systems that encourage the intuitive use of information. It may even include flexible, non-formalized or- ganizational structures to obtain the infor- mation. Such an information system would tolerate incomplete, even ambigu- ous, information. It would encourage problem solvers to gather highly diverse bits of data from all over the organization and from outside. It would encourage peo- ple to share apparently irrelevant expe- riences and information. In short, such an information system would be hopelessly inadequate a5 a way of controlling organi- zational operations, but it would allow disparate pieces of information to bump unexpectedly together, like flints sparking creative ideas.

Not only is there often too much infor-

40-

_ _ _ ~ ~

INKLINGS David P. Campbell Executive Vice-president For Me To Be More Creative, I Am Waiting For .. .

1. Inspiration 2. Permission 3. Reassurance 4. The coffee to be ready 5. My turn 6. Someone to smooth the way 7. The rest of the rules 8. Someone to change 9. Wider fairways

10. Revenge 11. The stakes to be lower 12. More time 13. A significant relationship to

(a) improve, (b) terminate, (4 happen

14. The right person 15. A disaster 16. Time to almost run out 17. An obvious scapegoat 18. The kids to leave home 19. A Dow-Jones of 1500 20. The Lion to lie down with the Lamb 21. Mutual consent 22. A better time 23. A more favorable horoscope 24. My youth to return 25. The two-minute warning 26. The legal profession to reform 27. Richard Nixon to be reelected 28. Age to grant me the right of

eccentricity 29. Tomorrow 30. Jacks or better 3 1. My annual checkup 32. A better circle of friends 33. The stakes to be higher 34. The semester to start 35. My way to be clear 36. Black people to be free 37. An absence of risk 38. The Japanese to leave town 39. My uncle to come home from the

40. Someone to discover me 4 1. More adequate safeguards 42. A lower capital gains rate 43. The statute of limitations to run out 44. My parents to die 45. A cure for herpes 46. The things that I do not understand

47. Wars to end 48. My love to rekindle 49. Someone to be watching 50. A clearly written set of instructions 5 1. Better birth control 52. The ERA to pass 53. An end to poverty, injustice, cruelty,

deceit, incompetence, pestilence, crime, and offensive suggestions from my peers

service

or approve of to go away

54. A competing patent to expire 55. Chicken Little to return 56. My subordinates to mature 57. My ego to improve 58. The pot to boil 59. My new credit card 60. The piano tuner 6 1. This meeting to be over 62. My receivables to clear