There’s not nearly enough airspace afforded the opposition that innovation faces inside of established organizations. That’s not to say that the word’s not out — folks generally acknowledge that “the organizational antibodies attack” when they try to do something new — but it seems to me that few individuals are prepared to face resistance to their new ideas. This is probably because virtually every organization in existence insists that innovation is one of its pillars or principles or objectives or values. This is almost always not true in practice, though.

And yet, what a costly orientation! A good friend who’s a serial CEO observed, “Most explorers leave an organization once it becomes clear they’re only interested in efficient execution.” Can any organization afford the loss of the individuals who are naturally inclined to exploring the frontiers?

One practical implication for an innovation-oriented individual is to expect opposition, and not be discouraged by it.

A good friend is the director of a nationally-acclaimed summer camp and retreat center. He told me the organization had a company-wide employee “idea suggestion competition”… for all of three months. The gist was that they’d offer a $500 spot bonus to an employee with a great idea each month (as an aside, $6,000/year is hardly scratching the surface of “sufficient funding”: Pioneer Fund’s Anton Schilling suggests that “Corporates need to invest 0.5-2% of their pre-tax earnings into new ventures.”) The program, however, was quickly cancelled, because most of the ideas came from only a few people. They actually publicly named the “usual suspects” who were responsible for most submissions - to the supposed-offenders’ embarrassment.

Nevermind that it is a well-established feature of networks that very, very few individuals constitute the vast majority of contributions (eg, the 1% Rule); such a treatment of the folks ostensibly participating in the very direction the organization was hoping to incentivize is exactly the wrong message!

The truth is, most folks are uncomfortable with ideaflow. The more conventionally-minded they are, the more they’ll bristle at the new. I’ll never forget hearing Joe Galli’s (who, prior to being the almost-John Sculley of Amazon, had an famed run as a product leader and President of Black & Decker (he was responsible for highly successful launch of the “DeWalt®” Brand heavy duty power tools)) observation of what made the fledgling company different from a more conventional environment:

“Most companies have priority lists of forty-five good ideas and triage is easy. At Amazon there were a hundred and fifth good ideas all the time and Jeff was capable of developing a new one every day.” He obviously did not mean that as a compliment, any more than the leaders of the camp who called their leading idea-contributors.

A few things make opposition easier to abide. One is having a partner, or even better, a cohort. Another is a passion for the user. My friend Doug Dietz often speaks about how a passion to see different outcomes for children going through traumatic procedures gave him the courage he needed to combat resistance on the road to launching GE’s famed “Adventure Series.”

I’d be curious to know: what else have you seen helps innovators deal with opposition?

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