Innovation… disturb the water

There’s something oddly satisfying about skimming a stone across still water.

You find one with just the right shape, judge the angle and let it go.

Sometimes it sinks without trace. Mostly it skips once or twice. And occasionally it dances across the surface, leaving a trail of ripples behind.

Right now, I’m about to throw two pebbles into the LinkedIn pond.

Two different articles, boosted a few days apart, deliberately overlapping to see what happens when the ripples meet.

There’s no great science behind it.

It’s simply an experiment that will help me understand how I might approach a product launch I’m planning.

What I like about the experiment is that it mirrors how I work.

Every idea, wherever it sits on its journey, is already creating its own unique set of ripples.

So I ask myself a simple question:

Do we need to calm the water, or disturb it just enough to see what becomes clearer?

Innovation is rarely tidy. It’s a messy pool of ideas, assumptions, questions and possibilities.

That’s part of the joy.

Challenge is valuable. It’s healthy to bring another perspective into the conversation and see how that impacts the path ahead.

I’ve experienced the benefit of that myself.

When I entered the competition that eventually led to BiKLOX, a layered cycle-security product, I knew very little about the industry.

Oddly, that helped.

I approached the problem as a cyclist rather than a cycle-security expert. I wasn’t anchored by how things were normally done and that freedom of thought helped me create something different enough to catch the judges’ attention.

In that instance, I was the outsider disturbing someone else’s pond.

Another perspective doesn’t have to overturn everything. It might strengthen something you already believe, loosen an assumption you’ve become attached to or simply send the conversation somewhere you hadn’t considered.

Rarely does that drag a project backwards.

The purpose isn’t to apply the handbrake. It’s simply to make sure you’re still on the right road.

In Skiing Uphill I describe the easiest way up a mountain as a traverse. You deliberately change direction to explore different angles, not because you’ve abandoned the summit, but because charging straight towards it isn’t necessarily the best route.

Innovation feels much the same.

The important part is that you don’t pivot simply because another route exists. Equally, momentum has a habit of making the path you’re already travelling feel more certain than it really is.

Often, taking the path less trodden is where innovation becomes particularly interesting, as you emerge from that messy pool after your idea has been challenged and allowed to evolve.

Which brings me back to those two LinkedIn pebbles, and what happens when their ripples meet, before I throw a rather more important stone into the water with a new product.

The pond will never be still.

The trick is making sure the ripples have purpose.

Would skimming a stone across your pond create clarity? Connect with me