A short interview excerpt with Stephen Shapiro in which he reframes innovation not as an exclusively "right-brained" creative activity but as a left-brained, analytical process. Shapiro—an engineer by training—argues that people from any function (engineers, accountants, lawyers) can contribute to innovation by applying structured problem-solving to find great solutions to important problems.
So Steve, your background is engineering and you were with Accenture, Right?
Right.
Now most people would assume that engineering is a left brained function, but you are wildly successful as a consultant and speaker on this whole issue of innovation and looking at things through different lenses. How did that come together?
So I think what happens is a lot of people assume that innovation is a right brain creative endeavor, when in fact it is a left brained analytical process. So as you said, I'm an engineer. That's my background. That's what I went to college for. It's how I'm wired. I was in the math club when I was growing up. So I was just a nerd and am a nerd. And one of the things which I wanted to do with this book is not just bring innovation to every department, but bring it to every individual. Because I do think there are people inside of organizations who feel as though they've not been able to contribute to innovation because they were told they can't. Whether it's an engineer or an accountant or a lawyer, we all have the ability to innovate in our own way. And the way I look at that is through the lens of finding great solutions to important problems.
So what you're saying is if you're a left brain thinker, by using the process, you get to participate in innovation and bring that experience that you have that's specialized in some cases to life in the organization.
Absolutely. And I think that's the key word is a process. So I think when people hear the word innovation, sometimes they imagine somebody sitting on the beach, smoking a joint, looking at the clouds and coming up with some wacky ideas. And that is not innovation. That might be creativity, but creativity doesn't equate to value. So innovation is actually an end to end process that starts with the problem and ends with the creation of value. And when you think about it from that perspective, the identification of the opportunity or problem is a left brain endeavor because we need data and analytics to make it happen. And the implementation are done by the planners. The people are really good at getting the work done. Again, left brain individuals. So to do it right, we need to stop thinking about innovation as this wacky creative thing which is limited to a few people. To everybody contributes. We just contribute in different ways based on our own unique wiring. Pick up a copy today@invisiblesolutionsbook.com.
