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Jack Anderson, Innovation Specialist with San Ramon, California-based oil giant Chevron, explains how to get at your company’s hidden innovation.
“The thing I’m most worried about, and I mean this with all my heart, is the inability of people who have great ideas to express themselves in a way that other people can understand.” Jack Anderson, Innovation Special...
Jack Anderson, Innovation Expert at Chevron talks about managing for innovation. “There’s a great quote by Suzuki that says, ‘In the mind of a child or a beginner, all things are possible. In the mind of an expert, only a few.’ A corporate culture that wants to be perfect will keep going back to the same people who are proven experts… But there is conflict when you bring groups together.” Jack Anderson, Innovation Specialist with San Ramon, California-based oil giant Chevron, on why innovation is best kept messy. View more experts discussing strategy innovation. Watch more videos from the Chevron Innovation Specialist.
Jack Anderson, Innovation Specialist, Chevron
Jack Anderson is a former innovation specialist at Intel Corp. and current program manager for Global Innovation Services at Chevron Corp., the San Ramon, California-based oil giant is experimenting with ways to make innovation a repeatable result. One of the first steps was building a 2,000-square-foot ‘innovation zone’, where select members of Chevron’s 62,000-strong workforce are literally walked through spaces that are designed to get creative juices flowing.
Yes, absolutely, you want a divergent, diverse, robust, open way of communicating so that you don’t get bound by the tyranny of the experts. There’s a great quote by Suzuki that says, “In the mind of a child or a beginner, all things are possible. In the mind of an expert, only a few.” So what I find in a corporate culture that wants to be perfect, they keep going back to the same people who are proven experts. So to open thing up, to have a well-rounded perspective, your communications or marketing person can give a very different point of view than your technical expert might give. But there is conflict when you bring groups together. There can be people who can dominate because they have the position, they have the title, they have the influence, and other people might have great ideas, but they’re inhibited. Or you get multiple groups together, and who gets the credit when an idea comes up?
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