The Black Hat Is The Great Killer Of Innovation--Here's Why

Innovation is a disruptive act--it's about creating something new that will upend your competitors, or provide a solution to a nagging problem. 

In my experience, having worked in many teams seeking innovative solutions (from global think tanks to small groups of social entrepreneurs), I have found one common thread that is an innovation killer--the black hat. 

Suppose you want to grow a plant--say basil. You take the seedling home, then set it down on the floor and crush it with your foot. This is what the black hat does to a new idea--it kills it, and thus prevents it from growing to its fullest realization.

A great book on the black hat syndrome 

Many people don't realize this. They want to be practical. They want to be matter-of-fact. They want to be rationalists. But when it comes to innovation, you don't want that in the early stages of the play--and indeed innovation is a kind of play (and as such it can be fun too!). 

You can pin-point those who are good at innovation--they're the ones dipping into all kinds of areas of research; they're the ones who bring copies of Wired Magazine and Adbusters to strategy meetings; they're the ones who ask, "What if we...," and don't care how crazy or out of left field the suggestion is; they're the ones who are ridiculed for having their head in the clouds, for being dreamers, for being unrealistic. 

The problem is, there are very few people who can really occupy this space of innovation. Why? Well, it partly has to do with education. Education has traditionally not taught innovation, but rather conformity, complacency, and compliance. As a child, you entered the education 'system' highly creative, and graduated with very little creative functioning. That's what the system was built to do: manufacture people who can take orders, find the glitches in the system, and remove them. 

Innovation requires not conformity but a kind of cognitive dissonance--a way of breaking out of conventional thinking and solutions to find and embrace something new. But don't lose heart if you're one of those no-nonsenec conformity types, you can become a better innovator. 

The first lesson is to throw out the black hat. I've worked with many groups who immediately go to black hat thinking just when a new idea comes up. The most flabbergasting word that I hear during an innovation session is "No," followed up with "We can't do that," or "That won't work," or "That's not possible." When you have a group of people functioning that way, innovation is nearly impossible. 

What you need are different' kinds of statements: "Let's try it," or "It might be crazy enough to work," or "We can find a way to make that happen." When you have people with that kind of attitude in your innovation session, it's amazing what can be created. 

What is at the root of the black hat? Failure. People are averse to failing--it's how they were educated. You remember getting questions wrong on the test? Was anyone there congratulating you on the super-awesome attempt at an answer? Nope--you were given a mark that determined your future. And from that and other experiences, you developed a tough skin--failure was not an option, even if it meant opening up new possibilities for your life.

And that's another thing you've got to do to get innovative: create a culture of failure. You've got to allow people to fail. You've got to allow yourself to fail over and over again. It doesn't mean you become unscrupulous in your decisions, but you try to push your creative boundaries to the point where you are not afraid of making a mistake. If you make a mistake, you try again; if you fail, you try again. Failure is a detour to success, not a death sentence. 

When people are free to fail; when there is a culture of acceptance around failure, then people will be freer to jump into the waters of innovation without pushing the black hat down over their eyes. When people are free to fail you won't hear the word "No" as much; when people are free to fail, statements like "Let's try it," or "I think we can make that work" become commonplace. 

These two things--black hat wearing and fear of failure--will kill innovation. If you want to jump start your business or your project team, talk to you people about these two innovation killers, and come up with strategies to suspend the black hat and enhance the tolerance of failure. 

Then, when you've got the idea and it's growing and you're ready to take it to the next level, you can call in the black hat wearers; now you need them, because having analytical people who can delineate risk and loopholes, are very important--but not too early in the process. And you need to at this stage push the solution to failure and see where you need to strengthen it, because that's how you're going to make it solid and robust and efficacious--but not too early in the process when it's merely a seedling. 

These are just a couple of observations I've made when working with creative teams, and how you and your organization can enhance innovation and begin to create solutions beyond your wildest dreams.