Innovation's Dirty Little Secret by Larry Osborne

Author:Larry Osborne [Osborne, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310494522
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conventional Wisdom

Another example of herd mentality at work is the unquestioned authority that we give to conventional wisdom. It, too, can lead to some really bad decisions.

Some conventional wisdom is spot on. That’s why it’s so widely accepted. It has been proven over time.

But there are also plenty of urban legends that are widely believed but patently false. And they don’t just have to do with alligators in the New York sewer system, airheads drying poodles in the microwave, or some crazy guy with a hook sneaking around Lovers’ Lane. They also have to do with our day-to-day assumptions about how life works.

Unfortunately, most of our false assumptions are buried deep within conventional wisdom. There’s no way to know they’re false until something happens to expose them. Which explains why everyone once believed that bloodletting could cure disease, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that doctors didn’t need to bother to sanitize their hands before performing surgery.

It’s enough to make me wonder what aspects of today’s conventional wisdom will make us look silly and foolish to future generations.

It also explains why committees and focus groups are innovation’s worst nightmare. Groups have a hard time escaping the gravitational pull of conventional wisdom. They tend to reject outright anything that doesn’t fit their standard paradigm or hasn’t been done before. Worse, there’s no way to convince them otherwise, since there’s no hard evidence to point to when something hasn’t yet been done.

It’s no wonder that serial innovators generally seek permission to field-test their ideas rather than seek an opportunity to sell their ideas. They know that it’s much easier to get a group to grant them permission to try an idea than it is to get permission to launch an idea. Once their idea has been field-tested, they know they’ll have a few facts with which to push back on conventional wisdom. And if the test is successful, they know there’s a chance the herd might actually listen to what they have to say.

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