A farmer’s approach to innovation.

Lisa Smith

Slide1

My father was a a great farmer and through his life trained also to be an amateur in many fields. He was an engineer, a mechanic, an agronomist, a vet, a meteorologist and many other things – and all these skills were obtained through the lost art of experimentation (what he would have called necessity).

His skills were gained when problems arose and he needed a solution, he watched experts and learned from them, he tinkered with things that weren’t working as well as they could, he learnt on the job – and as a result (combined with a lot of very hard work) he created a very successful business.

With such a large focus on innovation the big question is “how do we get our people to innovate”?

Well I think Dad’s approach to innovation is a pretty good method.

Your people should have access to experts, people who are good at what they do and are prepared to share their methods – not people who come in to fix a problem and depart leaving no deeper understanding to your people.

Your people should have the freedom to tinker with things – experiment to improve processes, develop better products and generally take the business to the next level – not be so busy that they can barely complete their day job let alone think about potential improvements.

And all this takes time – if you’re not prepared to budget ‘learning’ and ‘tinkering’ time you’ll never set your teams free to innovate.

Want to keep reading?

More Articles about Innovation

Creating a Monster.

Why do otherwise brilliant people fail to grasp the full potential of their own idea?

Getting innovation wrong.

Jerry Seinfeld famously asked ‘Why do dogs chase cars? If they ever caught one… what would it do with it?’

Breeding ideas.

The history of humanity is the story of us tinkering with whatever was lying around at the time.

Dare to Fail.

Failure is not only an option, it’s the key to learning.

Flippin’ Brilliant.

When everyone zigs, the innovator zags.

Innovate or we’re toast in 10 years!

With innovation we often look for a magic formula - and in the end we eliminate the magic altogether.