If you think outside of the box, working within established organizations can be tough. Especially when it’s a fairly large business, academic setting or a nonprofit. And we all know why. You want to move on new opportunities and learnings pretty quickly, whereas many of these like to move -10 miles per hour.
Anyone looking for new, cool ways to address a problem (without getting bureaucratic cooties) might look into the concept of an incubator. Not in the grey hoodie and La Croix startup incubator sense (because I’m not about that life). Same concept, but think of this more as a warm and cozy nest sense.
So many established organizations fail to stay with consistent creative problem solving because they get stuck with a big case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Finally manifesting Drake and making it to the top the inclination is to become super risk-averse. Internalizing “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” they slowly settle into small, incremental tweaks because it’s easier and safer. Honestly, if you’ve previously been relegated to ramen noodles only to grow into a champagne life than you understand why someone wouldn’t want to jeopardize what doesn’t work with what may work.
To that end, you probably have heard the word “disruption” bandied about. It’s when another player (usually smaller, more nimble, and a bit of an outsider) comes into a previously established space and blows it to pieces. Netflix is typically the one people use as an example.
The thing about disruption is that the disruptors usually fall suspect to be disrupted themselves. It’s the….Circle of Life *cue 3 part Sub-Saharan harmony*
If you want to disrupt, or don’t want to be disrupted, and find yourself hampered by Risk Adverse Ronnies the best thing to do is have the organization create a nice, warm, separate environment OUTSIDE of the status quo to nurture new ways of thinking, problem-solving, testing, and measuring.
Doing this work integrated within a business line or program is difficult (and typically fails) because it becomes a slave to the bottom line, groupthink thinking, funder pressures, efficiencies or other static ways of being. The key to disruption is creative brainstorming and to let things breathe without constraint or limitation.
People need space to come up with incredibly crazy and new ways of doing things to slowly test and refine over time. It’s easier for me to come up with a bunch of ideas and then brainstorm ways to make it them more cost effective than it is for me to try to brainstorm within box. Then it isn’t a brainstorm. It’s more like a brainfog. A braindrizzle. Those don’t sound exciting.
Big corporates like GE and AT&T have their own little incubators, but there’s no reason your organization shouldn’t. This could be a totally lo-fi arrangement (like a week set-aside each month outside the office) or a completely different department. I always recommend keeping as much separation between the incubator and its host organization as you do when hunny bunny has the flu. Too much touch and your incubator is infected.
For those who have a whopping staff of three and are thinking, “Erin, how the **** would we run an incubator” no worries. I’ve recommended to these types of clients they run their own “Startup Weekend”. Choose three days where you’re out of the office, in a whole new and exciting environment to come up with ideas. But of course, you can’t end there. Your old fuddy-duddy risk-averse brain will try to jack up the new mojo. So account for time to revisit the ideas, test, experiment, and follow up meetings. Put actual dates on the calendar. Then run these periodically throughout the year.
Of course, you’ll need to put together a program for the incubator (what’s the purpose) and process for testing and measuring. So there’s more to it. But start with committing to do something.