Rabe left her position as an Innovation Strategist for Intel Corporation in early-2006 to found Zero-G, LLC, an innovation and strategy firm. Over the past 20 years, she has held numerous senior-level executive positions for both consumer product and technology companies. While with consumer packaged goods company Ralston Purina (and its then subsidiary, Eveready Battery Company), she was a member of various product management teams, including the team that originally introduced the “Energizer Bunny.”
Rabe defines innovation as “an application of an idea that results in a valuable improvement.” Her definition emphasizes that the ability to think innovatively should be a goal for every function in an organization–not just the new product or technology team. As she correctly observes, there is a process by which ideas become reality in most organizations. “First there is typically a challenge or opportunity to be addressed. Then someone comes up with an idea for addressing it. A stage of development or fine-tuning typically follows (this can be very short or, in the case of some product or technology innovations, very long) in order to apply the idea. The final result? An innovation.” One of her most interesting–and most valuable–concepts is what she calls “Zero-Gravity Thinkers.” The title of her book refers to the most common barriers to innovation: practitioners of GroupThink (“the strongest force on earth”) and ExpertThink (“GroupThink on steroids”). They establish and then vigorously defend all manner of “filters” to diminish if not “kill” any perceived threats to the status quo. Rabe concedes that Zero-Gravity Thinkers aren’t a “magic solution” to such barriers because “there is no cure-all for a stuck-in-the mud organization.” However, they are a high-value tool when recognizing and then responding effectively to the aforementioned “filters.”
Of special interest to many readers is what Rabe has to say about the leadership required when “going where no one has gone before.” She does not limit her attention to leadership at the senior-management level. On the contrary, she convincingly explains why innovation leadership must be present at all levels and throughout all areas of an organization. Moreover, given the well-entrenched and highly-efficient “filters,” the nature of the leadership required must itself be innovative. It must take into full account, for example, the perils of challenging traditional chains of authority and channels of communication. This is precisely what Jim O’Toole has in mind when discussing (in Leading Change) what he characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.” The power of GroupThink and ExpertThink must never be under-estimated. When necessary, effective leaders of innovation initiatives are courageous enough to ignore convention and act on their own intuition and rational arguments of those outside the given organization. Also, they are prudent but not risk-adverse. They never state or even imply that innovative thinking is acceptable only without the possibility of failure. What Rabe offers in this volume is a rigorous and thorough examination of who and what can “kill” innovation…and offers practical advice as to how to respond effectively and productively when opposed by them.
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