Interview w/Jared Spool, on Innovation (Podcast)
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be interviewed by Jared Spool, industry legend and CEO of User Interface Engineering, about innovation, management and doughnuts. It’s a fun conversation, as both of us are fond of wisecracks and sarcasm. and I’ll be speaking at UIE 13 this October in Cambridge.
You can listen to the podcast (MP3), subscribe to UIE’s podcasts or read the text transcript.
Here’s an excerpt:
Jared: So, one of the questions that we got on our blog recently had to do with measuring risk, or measuring innovation. I think, they asked something like, “How do I track how innovative we are?” I hear that on a quarter to quarter basis.
Scott: [laughs] Which is terrifying to me! I was terrified of this person. Just imagine, right? Think of all the great innovators. Think of DaVinci, Edison, Picasso, Van Gogh. Could you imagine someone sitting over their shoulder saying “So Vincent, how innovative have you been in the last hour? Five? OK, great. I will come back in an hour and I will ask you how innovative you have been.” It just doesn’t make any sense.
Jared: Exactly. Just like the idea of Leonardo Da Vinci filing quarterly innovation assessment reports.
Scott: Exactly. Yes. Da Vinci, you know, your innovation ratio is down this month. With your performance evaluation, sorry, you are not going to get that bonus. Give us another Mona Lisa. Can you give us another Mona Lisa please?
Indeed!!
Though… do measures such as the number of patents per year count as good or bad?
Good in some ways if you encourage innovation to be captured and protected.
But bad if you get judged on how many there have been. Everybody goes through dry years…
Reminds me of when I used to work for a large (government) research lab. We were judged on the number of papers published in journals. God how I hated that!!