So, Saul Kaplan wrote this book about innovation. And I'm thinking if we are so inclined to take it in, act on it, we could have the cities, the communities, the world, our souls crave.
Saul’s book is a story of humanity, of being alive, of mindfulness, of spaces of permission.
As I read his words, a resonating repetition made the story incredibly alluring. It made me want to live it out.
Saul encourages us to play in the grey spaces between the silos, to notice and connect with unlikely suspects, to create spaces of freedom where people have nothing to prove. He tells us it is there we will see brilliance, ongoing innovation, aliveness.
He writes of when he first thought of innovation through the lens of a community:
We must create a wholly new vision and experiment our way to its emergence. Tweaks won’t do it.
The system change we need must be directly relevant to real people in real neighborhoods.
It is essential to get out more.
Cities should be living labs.
He writes of the freedom needed to experiment and presents connected adjacencies as just that type of platform:
Serial entrepreneurs will tell you it’s a waste of time writing a fancy business plan that details all of the components of a proposed new business model. What is contained within the initial plan will have little to no bearing on what business model will ultimately gain traction and work under real market conditions.
So agency leads are stuck continuing to do work they know isn’t the most important or relevant work they could be doing.
Those working in the adjacencies must be empowered to borrow and flexibly deploy capabilities and technologies from inside and outside the organization in novel ways.
He encourages us to disrupt ourselves:
Intrinsic motivation is what counts today and most companies are still focused on managing external motivation factors.
We must find a way to move beyond our cynicism.
We must play offense.
What are we waiting for?
If we don’t learn how to reinvent ourselves we are at risk of being disrupted.
Saul Kaplan, ..gracing us with a work of love. Imagine if we dared to take his lead, and act on it.
at amazon
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