Good Innovation Doesn't Require Demolition
For those whose hearts do not beat with the rhythm of Silicon Valley, the word innovation can cause alarms to sound. Some hear the word and start looking around for TNT expecting someone to be looking to fire off charges that will implode everything they hold dear. That is not how innovation works.
Good innovation learns from what has gone before, takes stock of the problems, and imagines a new path forward. The iPhone is a great example. When Apple began working on the iPhone they had a host of existing devices (including some of their own) that they drew from. They looked at the difficult to use keyboards of the Blackberry, the styli of the Palm and Handspring PDAs, and the clunky texting interface with phones that just had a number keypad. They also looked at their own products like the iPod with its revolutionary click-wheel interface for navigating a music menu system.
Apple took note of the assets and the problems. The click wheel was intuitive but ultimately not usable for texting, the tiny keyboard of a blackberry was precise but easy to mis-click, and the stylus was great for interacting with a screen but handwriting with it was labor-intensive and required learning new letter shapes.
All of that was fuel for their innovation. It revealed a set of problems that needed to be solved as well as a set of solutions that had been tried and found wanting in some fashion. They developed several innovative solutions including an actual click-wheel dial interface for dialing phone numbers (not all innovation is ultimately positive).
They finally settled on the best of all worlds. They would have a touch-based keyboard that would be controlled by software that could predict which key you intended to hit whether or not you hit the correct one. The iPhone wouldn’t require a stylus but would allow you to have a touch interface like the stylus enabled. And, though the click-wheel was not coming with it, the iPhone would be able to store and play music just like the iPod did.
Then when apple released the iPhone, nothing changed to their product line except that this new item was added. They didn’t tie a bundle of dynamite to the iPod that was generating 70% of their revenue. They just released the iPhone.
One thing they also didn’t do. They didn’t hinder or limit the iPhone so that it wouldn’t compete with other products. That is key. Often, organizations will limit innovation that threatens to change or undermine existing business. That can seem wise in the short term, but stunts growth in the long term. The goal is to be your own best competitor so that you keep your customers instead of losing them to someone else’s innovation.
That is how good innovation happens, good innovation releases alongside existing products and as it succeeds, it supplants the older products.
That is what has to happen in the church: good innovation. It is not helpful to try to blow up the existing models for serving our existing members. Those models can and should continue as long as they are serving the needs of those people. However, the fear that something might supplant that model cannot cause us to hamper or stop innovation.
Instead, we need to take what we know worked in the past, what we know is not working, and where we see everything headed and begin trying new things. Yes, some of those things will look like a rotary-dial iPhone, but some of the things will be the predictive-text keyboard and the full-color touchscreen.
As we release these new forms of church and worship and preaching and social action, some will rise above the rest and, hopefully, supplant our existing models out of their success not because someone pushed down a TNT lever like Wyle E. Coyote.
Let’s get innovating on how we recruit, equip and train leaders. Lets reimagine how we tell the story of Christianity. Let’s find new paths for fighting for justice and serving those in need. I’d love to help you navigate those conversations. If you’re interested, send me an email:
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