Sou Chef Research
If you had to guess where to find a higher percentage of innovators than the average, where would they be? A lot of people would assume that they are lurking inside research labs, slugging back Diet Cokes and turning pizza into warp drive and cancer eating nanobots.
Nope. ThreePercent. That’s what we see. About three percent of the scientists we have observed are actually engaged in what we would call innovation.
Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia entry on innovation: “Innovation occurs when someone uses an invention – or uses existing tools in a new way – to change how the world works, how people organize themselves, and how they conduct their lives.”
If this is a good way to understand innovation, then the ‘perpetrators’ of innovation show up in the same percentages on the benches of physics labs as they do on the assembly line of a tractor company. No kidding.
Fact is that most scientists are a lot like Sou Chefs. They come into work, look up a recipe they have been given, cook the dish, and wash their hands before they head home. Nothing wrong with this. Needs to happen. But let’s not confuse it with innovating. Let’s not mix up research with creativity, creativity with invention, or invention with innovation. These are all different things, and TheThreePercent is about that last one….just because.
So when TheThreePercent interviews researchers, scientists, and other lab animals, you are going to get something different. Anyone can get the publicity pack from a lab’s communications department and gush about the potential of quantum computing or the latest drug target. What is hard is finding the two or three innovators in a lab of a hundred researchers and getting them to spill the beans about how they intend to shake things up.
If that sort of thing is interesting or inspiring to you, stay tuned.
TheThreePercent
TheThreePercent is a support network for innovators.
It is based on the notion that only about three percent of any population is actually innovating – as opposed to inventing, improving…or watching the clock to get home in time for The Simpsons re-runs.
Inventors have their own societies. Improvers – people who make the existing game work better – are well accepted. But innovators, the three percent, are often isolated and misunderstood. We don’t solve problems so much as we pioneer new ones. Innovators don’t just invent new tools - we use them to change how people organize themselves, do business, and live their lives. That might be great in the long run, but it’s usually trouble for somebody in the short run.
Management gurus might tell you that anyone can be an innovator, and we wouldn’t argue with that…but if innovating involves changing the rules of the game, then perhaps it’s a good thing that only a few souls happen to be doing it at any given time. What makes things interesting is that they can be anywhere – from the mailroom to the lab to the boardroom – and you can never predict where the great ones will appear.
TheThreePercent is about anyone who finds themselves in the odd position of trying to change the rules. And for the habitual innovators, the creative misfits of corporate life and research labs everywhere – you’re home now, so kick off your shoes, relax, and tell us about your day.
ThreePercenters can help each other by:
- Finding resources, capabilites and support for making ideas real;
- Helping those of us who can offer good ‘innovator’ jobs find good innovators to fill them;
- Telling our stories on this blog.
We will be interviewing notable ThreePercenters here on this blog. Let us know if you’d like your story told by posting here or signing up for our live skype forum at:
thethreepercent hosted by jdwolpert.
Chat about what’s on your mind. More about public chats.
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