Valuing the ICE-breakers (innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship)

This week has seen the loss of two innovative, creative and entrepreneurial mentors who showed that real jobs are based on vision, values and ventures of founders of smart companies.

As W H Chong says of Diana Gribble: “She was a pole star to her family, friends and colleagues; her influence, her soft power, was immense and deep. She was the probity of friendship. She was a legend in the book world, instrumental in creating two Australian beacons of independent publishing: McPhee Gribble and Text.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook paints a similar picture of Steve Jobs: “Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”

This week also saw hundreds of business and leaders confer on how to find ways to get someone else to set up more committees, task forces and mechanisms of mass deferral on payroll tax and job creation.

The gap between those seeking subsidies and support for vested interests and those building platforms for growth of new ventures emerges as the significant difference in the media profiles of the events of this week.

Steve Jobs’ social history, lifestyle, rebellious youth and willingness to come back and try again show that it is people’s commitment to making a difference that makes a difference. Steve summed it up: “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”, “Creativity is connecting things” and on entrepreneurship, “We figure out what we want. You can’t go out and ask people, ‘What’s the next big thing?’”

Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregerson and Clayton Christensen (The Innovator’s DNA) ask two key questions:

• What if Jobs hadn’t decided to drop in on the calligraphy classes when he dropped out of college (the biggest innovation since McLuhan’s Guttenberg Galaxy)? Steve points out that the design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. “To design something really well, you have to get it”.

• What if Jobs had never visited Xerox PARC to observe what is going on there ( the mouse, GUi and OSX)? Steve said, “What we saw was incomplete and flawed, but the germ of an idea was there… within 10 minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this.”

Meg Whitman, of eBay who has just taken over the renewal of HP was asked how these folk differed from other executives and replied, “My experience is that they get a kick out of screwing up the status quo. They can’t beat it. So they spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about how to change the world. And as they think and brainstorm, they like to ask, ‘If we did this, what would happen?’”

Smart companies will continue to be the source of growth in our economy but the people on the tax and jobs committees need to get out of Canberra and visit with the start-ups to see where real jobs come from. Then they would see the necessity for scrapping barriers to innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship such as payroll taxes, under-investment in research and development and regulatory constraints on small business expansion.

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Dr Colin Benjamin is an entrepreneurship and strategic thinking consultant at Marshall Place Associates, which offers a range of strategic thinking tools that open up a universe of new possibilities for individuals and organisations committed to applying the processes of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. Colin is also a member of the global Association of Professional Futurists.