From idea to innovation: making creativity real

Abstract

This article by Bolko von Oetinger, a senior vice president and director of the Strategy Institute for the Boston Consulting Group, is the first in a series of three articles that distill the ideas in the book, A Passion for Ideas: How Innovators Create the New and Shape Our World, edited by Heinrich von Pierer and von Oetinger (Purdue University Press, 2002). The book includes interviews with and articles by successful innovators from many areas: business, politics, the arts, the sciences, psychology, education, advertising, architecture, universities, and schools. Dr von Oetinger has blended comments from the experts with his own experience to offer five patterns of behavior needed for corporate innovation. This article provides many quotations from the book while presenting the first two behavioral patterns: (1) finding something new is not the problem; getting rid of the old presents the real threat; and (2) since innovation creates anxiety, you have to open up your organization