Innovation and the Walls of the City
The achiever brain naturally wants to safeguard its domain so that success can continue indefinitely. As a result, we’ve created a heavily guarded virtual wall around the city of business.
Inside those walls, companies often treat innovation as something to manage. A division is carved out, R&D is siloed, and the rest of the enterprise continues with business as usual. It creates a pocket that feels “outside the city,” yet it remains within the same rules and safeguards. The allure of freedom is there, and the flow is still controlled.
The whole point of being outside the city is to move free of those constraints — to explore, to imagine, to follow signals at the edge. When innovation is contained in a silo, or worse, when decision-making is handed over to algorithms (AI) that amplify disruption without coherence, the flow between outside and inside begins to break down.
Much of today’s talk about “cultures of innovation” gets the cart before the horse. Innovation isn’t something you can create by mandate. It’s emergent. Sometimes it comes from re-combining what already exists in novel ways. Other times it’s unprecedented, something that breaks entirely new ground. In both cases, awareness greatly enhances the possibility of innovation.
In a time of interdependent, entangled systems, linear approaches to innovation fall short. Our wicked problems are not solved by formula. They require presence to what is emerging behind the obvious.
Innovation, then, is less about building higher walls or tighter silos. It is about cultivating the awareness that allows what wants to happen to flow.If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy microcollection #3: Inside and Outside the Walls of the City
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