Coincidence or genius?

When heart medicine becomes Viagra and strong glue turns into post-it notes

Mistakes and coincidences within innovation and creativity often result in new and better inventions than the originally intended ones. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, CBS Professor Robert D. Austin and two of his research colleagues explain how managers can encourage their employees to be inventive and how, by making mistakes, employees learn to think beyond their habits and boundaries.

How do you become better at making mistakes?

In the article titled "Oops", the three researchers, Robert Austin, Lee Devin, and Erin Sullivan give good advice on how to encourage these coincidences instead of trying to avoid them.

For instance, they explain how managers, by putting together members of a team with a mixture of different backgrounds ensure that they get the best ideas from each area. Companies and managers can also come up with strategies and technologies (such as simulation) that allow teams to make mistakes at lower cost.

In addition, it is important to think beyond the company and make sure that the employees get away from their normal surroundings, so that they can think more creatively and thereby see the possibilities in their mistakes.

For instance, it was this openness towards new possibilities that resulted in the great successes, Viagra and Post-it notes, which, originally, should have been two entirely different products, namely heart medicine and strong glue.

Managers restrict innovation

Nevertheless, the possibilities of unplanned innovation are often restricted because of company managers. The problem is that managers often do everything they can to try to avoid mistakes in order to reduce unnecessary additional costs, which ultimately restricts the possibility of development and innovation.

Therefore, it is essential that the mistakes are not considered as failures, but as an important part of the company's product development and that all ideas are considered qualified and are not swept aside, just because they appear unrealistic. Therefore, it could become an important part of management strategy in companies to incite employees to make mistakes in order to be at the cutting edge of development.