Innovation and Comfort Zones--Insight, Common Sense, Common Practice

Innovation is challenging for many reasons.  Amazingly enough, even though many people claim to want innovation, habits, comfort zones, and common practice all form an effective barrier to innovation.

Common practice is different from common sense (which may not be as common as the words indicate).  Common practice has people use elevators to get to the upper floors in high-rise buildings and to come back down.  In the event of an emergency (fire, explosion, etc.), the instructions are to use the stairs.  Common practice and habits often have the people waiting for the elevators as usual, even in emergencies.

Common sense may tell us not to use cell phones or text messaging while driving, especially in school zones and construction zones.  Common practice has us communicating all the time, often opposing common sense.

Innovation, at least in my experience, is frequently connected with insight.  As I approach a challenge--learning design, for example, insight lets me see into the process and to identify a different way of working that generates better results.  (See the Integrative Learning Design Jump-Start Workbook for an example.)  The Meta-Models I have created and posted on one of my websites all represent insight and innovation.

Getting others to accept these innovations and to work with them is a separate challenge.  When I began this blog, my intention was to begin to publish my work.  I felt that having the discipline to do a daily blog might give me a head start toward publishing.

I hope to publish this blog in book form soon.  If I wait for a year of entries, that might be too many pages in the book.  I'll have to think about that more to see what I have and what I need.