One of the great barriers to innovation for the manager is that it is easy to keep in your comfort zone concerning maintaining contact with those that you are used to being with.
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It takes a great effort to break away from this and move into to territory.
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Innovation Tools mentions this and calls it, “samethink” which “creeps in, and limits the aspiring innovator's access to thoughts and viewpoints different than his or hers.”
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Chris Trimble, writing in the FC Now agrees and has this to say:
“This takes time. A colleague of mine, Zia Khan, a leading thinker on informal networks in organizations, pointed out to me that there are vast differences between communication networks and trust networks. Communication networks are the kind that are useful at the front-end of the innovation process because they enable the sharing of ideas. The back-end of the innovation process depends on trust networks, which require much heavier investments in time, energy, and goodwill.”
“Managers are trained to operate through formal organizational structures, policies, and processes. This is effective for making a proven business ever-more efficient, but not for driving innovation. For the latter, managers must operate through informal networks. Leaders that have a simplistic model of the innovation process — those that equate innovation with idea generation — will find ways to enhance networks and create new connections in their organizations. Those that understand the full innovation process will move deliberately from enhancing networks to breaking them, and then to rebuilding them.”
This is an excellent way of putting it. I have participated in these types of moves throughout the years, and have been amazed at the fresh ideas and creativity that comes about as a result. So move out of your comfort zone and see the amazing ideas that come from it.
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