Amol's Innovation Blog

Most radical ideas are flawed. Know that you will be wrong and be open to letting go of an idea that you may have fallen in love with. Knowing and being comfortable with being wrong is essential to keep generating new ideas. Ask for feedback around why this idea won’t work and listen with the intent of trying to kill your own idea. If your flawed radical idea has caused a ‘perspective shift’ in experts in that fields, you have made progress.  For more such lessons,  click here.

From your perspective, you are trying to add value, but you may come across as ‘nuisance’ or ‘distraction’ to others who are heads down trying to keep the lights on.  You must genuinely respect their work and contribution and act in a fashion that they can tolerate you. For more such lessons,  click here.

Understand that you will be short on resources and know that your Organization does not owe you any special treatment. As we are a big organization, most of the focus and resources will be on ‘keeping the lights on’ and rightly so. But don’t make lack of resources an excuse.  Instead, try to figure out how you can use existing resources while continually exploring ways to acquire new ones.  Instead of focusing on lack of resources, think about what can happen if everything went well and optimistically plan for that.  Be ready when the opportunity shows up. For more such lessons,  click here.

Most of the times ideas that you have will fall outside of your comfort area and ‘day job skills’. You may be thinking about ‘transplanting’ what you have learned in one area and trying to apply the same in a different area. After the initial excitement, you will realize that you know very little about the other area in which you are venturing. Instead of fearing such situation, you should be ‘comfortably excited’. Here are 2 reasons why: You will have an opportunity to learn about this new area. Not knowing all details about this new area is an advantage, and not a handicap. This naivety allows you to not be bounded by assumptions that people with thorough knowledge and experience of this area have. This allows you to bring in a new perspective. Take ideas, data, experience and inspiration from your current experience to the new area. For more such lessons,  click here.

Just because you have figured out something and are convinced of an idea, does not mean others will get onboard quickly.  You need to be patient and persistent. You need to give others some time before they see the value that you are seeing.  You should also try different ways of sharing your message, figuring and developing better ways to communicate along the way.  Just be patient and know that it will take time and it is ok for it to take time. For more such lessons,  click here.

In this process of taking an idea from conception to reality, you are going to have moments when you think ‘what was I thinking?’  You are going to be misunderstood, people may even question your motivation or just plain write you off.  These are the moments when you need to be kind to yourself and not put a lot of pressure on yourself.  This is when you look back and remember all the other things you thought you may never be able to do, but eventually you did them. For more such lessons, click here.

Having an idea is an inspiring moment. You feel the excitement of being able to solve something or change something for better. You share your idea with everyone and they all encourage you to ‘Just go run with the ball’. And then the difficult part begins. Having an idea is just a tiny portion of ‘doing something new’.  It’s a lot of work to take an idea from conception to reality. It becomes even more difficult when what you are thinking about and excited about is radically changing the way something has been done or it is creating something people are not familiar about.  Other way to look at it is – if people are already familiar with it – it is not something that radically different. Here are a few things we should do while trying to take an idea from thought to reality: Be kind to yourself Be patient Be Comfortable with you Naivety Plan for best outcome Make yourself tolerable by the Organization Know you will be wrong