Never Criticize Creative Thinking

The other week while visiting on-site with one of my contractor partners I spent one late evening at the office with some of the more senior leadership of the company.  We somehow began discussing ideas that some of their more junior developers had floated.  I remember that during the discussion that we all out of hand dismissed some of their ideas concluding that while they certainly had creativity, there were real business reasons why they most likely would not find legs to stand on.

That night back at the hotel it occurred to me that in our discussions we had been too fast to pass judgment.  I actually thought of similar situations where I had experienced the same where my ideas were "poo-poohed" by senior management.  While experience in the real world can provide a more realistic outlook on what is possible to implement at the same time it can breed pessimism that in fact leads to less creative thinking.  I would say even in IT there is something magical about the innocence of youth when it comes to dreaming up truly innovative (and sometimes disruptive per an earlier post) ideas that are worth exploring.

As an example, about ten years ago at my last wireless start-up I had one of these ideas that received similar dismissive treatment.  My idea was how cool would it be to stream content from my cable box over the net to my desktop at work or wherever.  I remember vividly the reaction I received from many of the senior engineers at the company.  "Your idea will never work!" they told me, "there won't ever be enough bandwidth to support your idea".  Several years later the SlingBox was born and today a company called Aereo is taking on the network giants allowing consumers to stream over-the-air broadcasts.

That evening we also had a discussion about the usefulness of patents.  Put aside the argument of whether patents by in large are defendable - our discussion focused purely on the usefulness of them with regards to forming new ideas and lines of business.  Take a company like Yahoo for example.  If one spends time reading what they are patenting many times a typical reaction even from someone who is even seasoned from a technology perspective might be "well that is the craziest, dumbest idea I've ever heard of -  why would you even want to patent that idea?".  And sure, maybe some of them are crazy and stupid but it occurred to us that just going through the patent process itself can lead to great ideas that are not so far out of left field.

Ultimately, criticism or immediate dismissal of anyone's ideas usually results in that individual shutting off any further creative thinking.  When this 'tune-out' effect occurs it means that future great ideas are being lost from that individual.  One of our responsibilities as leaders in IT is to build environments that in fact fosters and even encourages this type of "crazy and stupid" thinking.  We always have to always ourselves that for the dozens of ideas that while they may be creative but are not unique or realistic there is that one gem of an idea that is truly original.