Seeing the elephant

Some see innovation as a solo heroic trek, others see the assemblage of efforts from multiple sources.

One of my favorite stories for discussing the nature of complex creativity is "The Blind Men and the Elephant" in which blind men each encounter a different part of the animal and then argue that each completely understands reality. 

There are two opposing lessons that can be taken from the story.  One is that one should explore each of the aspects and become an expert on the whole elephant - to open your eyes.  The other is that by listening to each other, the blind men can share their knowledge, develop a synergy between their individual experience and a shared image of reality to take effective action to manage the elephant.

These are also two different visions of innovation.  In the heroic model, an individual possesses a unique mix of knowledge (if it wasn't unique, everyone would see the possibilities) and takes action to make something new.  Often the story is about how the innovator had most of the knowledge and then became aware of the last element and made things happen.  In others, the hero had a vision and called on other experts to deliver the needed components.

But I am more intrigued by a co-creative vision of innovation in which the equal participants learn to listen to each other and share a basic understanding of each others perspective, then work together to accomplish a goal which requires the synergy of their detailed knowledge and abilities.  It seems to me that the first model is limited to the size of the hero's head, but the co-creative model, while limited by communication capacity, has the potential to manage extremely complex goals and solutions.

 Going further, in The Knowledge Creating Company, Nonaka points out the hyper-text nature of teams, the idea that a team consists not just of its members and their abilities, but of all the resources they are connected to, like the links on a hyper-text web page.  With good process, such a linked network can handle much greater innovation both by contributing more elements and by learning with the innovation team the perspectives that will make the value of the innovation obvious.

So as I attempt to contribute to improved process for innovation, I am more attracted to the innovation than the idea, more attracted to the group AHA than individual creativity.