How to unlearn - a key to innovation

Once again the Blogging Innovation site has come up with another gem. This time the topic emphasises the importance of the 'unlearning' process to innovation. Blogger Dennis Stauffer is an award-winning author of Thinking Clockwise, A Field Guide for the Innovative Leader but in this blog he discusses the need to be able to 'unlearn' what we already know and believe to be able to free up creative, and therefore innovative, thinking.

He has a 'stop doing' list to become more creative:

1. Stop immediately passing judgment on our ideas to allow ourselves the freedom to use our imagination as a child does.
2. Stop inhibiting ourselves, by becoming more playful and finding the fun in the task at hand.
3. Stop using prior knowledge to reject new ideas. Our knowledge is a powerful source of possibilities to explore and pursue but too often we use our knowledge to reject possibilities that don’t fit our prior assumptions and beliefs. The effect is that our knowledge slows rather than enhances innovation.
4. Stop looking for the one right answer (as we were taught to do in school) by making a point of considering multiple interpretations of what we observe and experience.
5. Stop avoiding risk and start managing it. It’s essential to achieving innovation.
6. Stop trying to always get it right, by testing the boundaries instead. As we learn what doesn’t work, we gain a clearer understanding of what does.

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