A Call for a Joint New Year’s Resolution: Banish The Great Stifler

I am a technical professional – a techie, if you will. Through Actuan, I help marketers use technology to improve the performance of their marketing programs. Over the course of years in my chosen profession, I picked up a nasty habit from which I’ve worked pretty successfully to separate myself. Technical folks like myself (including engineers, computer programmers, scientists, etc.) tell ourselves we’ve acquired the habit because others outside of our profession don’t understand what we do. That’s an excuse; it’s not a reason. The habit to which I refer is saying “not” instead of “how” when asked to achieve some goal.

I was reminded of this habit today after reading an article in the New York Times about NASA’s difficulties creating a new vehicle to replace the space shuttle . I can’t help but think some of those challenges are the result of that great innovation stifler, “not.” Usually, The Great Stifler is manifested in language such as “This canNOT be done because …” or “We will NOT do this because it’s always been done this way…” or “We do NOT have enough resources to…” To my mind, it’s the reason one of the most recent space innovations came from Ansari XPrize winner Scaled Composites and not from NASA. Bart Rutan, the found of that company, pointed out a flaw in NASA’s ideological approach when he, while on a panel at CalTech, postulated NASA stifled innovation by telling young engineers “No, you can’t take new approaches, you have to use this old technology.”

This problem is not unique to NASA, unfortunately. An increasing aversion to risk has led to an unprecedented dearth of innovation in our country. Automobile companies have almost ruined themselves because of an unwillingness to develop more innovative, more fuel efficient vehicles. It was easier to say ‘Not’ than ‘How’. Computers, for all our excitement about them, are for all intent purposes just faster versions of the computers we’ve been using for twenty or so years. Again, it’s easier to say ‘Not’ rather than ‘How.’ Future generations of our society will face monumental challenges with garbage, global warming and food supplies. Yet, there’s little change. The focus has been on ‘Not’ rather than ‘How.’

It’s time to change. 2009 is but a few days away and today is as good a day as any for all of us to resolve to banishing The Great Stifler. Innovation is pivotal to the strength of future generations of our society. It’s imperative we begin to approach the challenges we face with the question ‘How’ rather than the declaration ‘Not.’ In equation form, the innovation equation would be:

‘Not’ is the difference between ‘How’ and innovation. Developing solutions for the problems we face necessitates banishing ‘Not’ to the annals of failure, opening our minds and accepting that innovation and, hence, ‘How’ are the keys to our future.

Let’s let 2009 be the beginning of that very bright (and innovative) future. Happy New Year!