IDIC

Here’s what we usually see: Management decides that they need to innovate. Individuals and teams form a working group, establish a charter, and set out to work on innovation improvement initiatives. The results are usually a rehash of something they are already doing, perhaps with some improvements on the margins, all complicated by Gantt charts, red-yellow-green dashboards and issue logs. If, after some time, these “innovation” teams paused and reflected on their efforts they might even feel some sense of accomplishment — because anything other than achievement would indicate that their efforts were a colossal waste of time.

Incremental change through recombinations.  Idea sex, when you get down to it, follows the same principles as the more physical kind.  What's key to this evolutionary process? 

Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.

X marks the spot.