To innovate or not to innovate?

A couple of months ago, as I was reading through headlines related to the topic of innovation in the workplace, I couldn't help but laugh and cringe at the following succession of articles:

Article #1 dealt with the need to innovate more in the workplace.

Article #2 dealt with how being an innovator and thinking outside the box could be career-limiting.

So - which do you ascribe to? Innovate more? Or keep your innovative ideas to yourself to keep from rocking the boat?

An example in innovation

One of the topics I have heard about and spoken about often with others is the lack of innovation in the United States compared to the rest of the world, and compared to the nation's own history for innovation. In a daily summary of articles on leadership I receive, one section is dedicated to articles dealing with innovation - primarily, how to encourage innovation within your team.

An article came up that gave me a chuckle, though. In it, baseball is used as an example for a practice in innovation using attribute dependency. Basically, attribute dependency, as explained in the article, simply means listing all of the attributes of a given process, finding the links, and looking at how either creating new links across attributes or breaking links across attributes might affect the process.

I chuckled first because my husband has discussed baseball before, and things that might make it more interesting. The changes that are outlined reminded me very much of his own proposals.

But here's an interesting observation that might have something to do with why innovation doesn't happen as often as we might expect: even though my husband is often playing around when telling people his ideas for things like making baseball more interesting, the majority of the time, those listening will just shrug off the ideas as silly, drastic, or even flat-out crazy. Baseball is baseball; the game has been played the way it's currently played for years. Sure, it can be a bit boring at times, but changing the game? That seems pretty drastic!

However, in business, regardless how long a process has been in place, and regardless how long "it's just been done that way," perhaps taking a step back and looking at ways to truly change the game is just what needs to happen. It's tough to convince people to do that, though. Why? Often, the feedback to a proposed change runs along the lines of, "Why change what has been working well enough for so long? Sure, there have been pitfalls in the process, but, for the most part, it works." In essence, "Why change something that isn't broken (even if cracks are showing)?"

Too often, I think groups and businesses get stuck in a rut because there is fear of change - fear the change will over-complicate things, fear the change will require more time rather than less time (especially if it's a change intended to create efficiency), fear the change simply won't work and will mean wasted time.

I think innovation is often overlooked because we are worried what the results of implementing innovative ideas will be. In a nutshell, we fear failure, and have had ingrained in us the idea that innovation must always succeed. If there isn't guaranteed success, we don't want to take the risk.

So, the real question is: how can we overcome these fears and be more open to innovative ideas to begin with?

GAP and a new logo

Gap released a new logo recently, and it seems to have fired up a storm. It's also become an interesting case study into the changing world of brand development and use of social networking tools.

I'm not necessarily a huge GAP follower, but an article about the negative response to GAP's new logo caught my interest. I should also note here I'm not a branding expert, but I've been involved in a couple of brand roll-outs and the area intrigues me.

From the experiences I've had with branding, a lot of thought, time, energy, and, of course, expense, goes into creating a new brand. Items we take for granted, like whether all caps was used, bold font, italics used or not, etc., are taken into account, because to the average consumer, they actually can make an impact. This logo change was no exception, I'm sure - they spent two years working on it. I'd be surprised if, during that two years, they didn't have focus groups, test cases, etc., that they used to fly the various designs past people. One thing about a follow-up article regarding the negative response to the new logo that caught my eye was the comment that people internal to Gap, Inc., were really excited about it. It made me wonder how much work they did with groups external to Gap, Inc. And, apparently, with the feedback Gap has received, so do a lot of other people.

But aside from the new logo, why Gap felt it needed one, and why they decided to go with this design, there's a larger impact that their response might have on the general advertising and branding industry. Most companies, I think, when receiving poor feedback about something like a new logo, would either ignore the public's feedback, or else they'd respond with reasons behind their new logo. (Apple's response to the backlash of the iPad is a recent example. Plenty of comments made, but Apple didn't change the name of the device.) Gap, however, seems to have put their logo roll-out on hold and potentially gather input from the general public.

Smart move? I'm not sure. It's hard to ignore the fact that social media is affecting business. And while business is still wrapping its head around how to take full advantage of the power behind social media, making a move like reacting to negative feedback on a logo change to the point that you're inviting logo designs from the public might be going too far in terms of harnessing that power. However, how much is too much, and how much is too little? Here are some ideas on better ways to have approached this.

• Communicate early, communicate often. Gap acknowledges its changing audience needs. In this case, though, I think that acknowledgment may have come a little late. One of the keys to social media seems to be communicating frequently with your audience in an effort to be a bit more transparent about what's going on. In this case, perhaps letting the social communities know they were in the process of making brand changes, and why they were making the changes, may have helped. Sure, there would likely still have been backlash, but Gap could have leveraged some of that into their communications plan for their new logo.
• Educate. I often think a little audience education can go a long ways in communicating changes. Letting people know there is a change in the works is one thing; educating people about the change itself is another. In this case, a little education about logos may have helped in the reaction to the negative feedback received. The trick would be communicating that education in such a way as to avoid the appearance of justifying one's actions.
• When things go bad, acknowledge where you went wrong. I read awhile ago that a large pizza chain used the widespread results of a taste test where they scored horribly to their advantage. They leveraged that information to say they improved their recipe to taste better. In Gap's case, however, the way they acknowledged the feedback led to more complications (now people think it was just a social media experiment). It comes back to a seeming expectation for transparency, though. One way to accomplish this better may have been to simply say they had gathered feedback from focus groups, etc., assuring their audience that this effort wasn't completely bottled up inside the company. Then, instead of opening things up into a free-for-all logo design submission forum, give people an opportunity to sign up if they want to participate in future online focus groups when the need exists.