Get Creative

And now for the hard part

Maybe it's just me.  Maybe it's just the tone of the reporter and the event wasn't actually like that.  But Zach Lowe's report on the recent innovation forum held at the New York offices of Allan & Overy makes it sound like just another episode in the continuing saga of lawyer bashing.

Mr. Holman, my high school principal, was fond of sharing the classic definition of "expert."  "Drip under pressure!" he'd roar, then laugh while we figured it out. It also brings to mind the HR classic, "Don't motivate 'til you educate lest you frustrate!" All too often the law practice pundits seem to take a little bit too much glee from the opportunity to bully and bash lawyers. . . . to shame them into buying the services of this or that consultant who brandishes the latest "all-ya-gotta-do. . ." answer to what ails them.  Just pushing. . . just shaming. . . just criticizing and mocking. . . . doesn't get the critical changes made.  But it does raise the temperature in the room and set partner against partner when they get back home.

I'm here to tell you that getting the great new ideas isn't the hard part of business innovation in a law firm.  Frankly, great ideas are a dime a dozen -- as are consultants who lob them at self-selected audiences of lawyers eager to self-flagellate for business practices that obviously aren't functioning. 

The hard part comes in implementation.  We don't stand in awe of DLA-Piper's concept of world-wide pro bono.  We stand in awe - actually breathless - that such a firm could convince itself to donate the millions and millions of dollars necessary to launch and maintain New Perimeters' effort to do good in parts of the world that haven't seen "good" for a really long time.

When the College of Law Practice Management's InnovAction Awards judges bestow this year's awards it won't be because some particular creative genius thought of something really cool.  It will be because that genius and the rest of the firm saw its value, resisted the temptation to pick it apart and did the hard work to get it past the naysayers and into the world.

P.S.  You've got four more days.  The deadline for entries to the InnovAction Awards is Monday, June 2.

It's not too late - yet.

<img src="http://www.blawg.com/claimscript.aspx?userid=astintarlton&LinksID=7394">

June 2 is the absolute deadline for submission of entries for the 2008 InnovAction Awards.  If you, your law firm, or someone you know has been doing something extraordinary -- something never been done, or been done in quite this way -- go to www.innovactionaward.com to learn more and to access the simple entry form.

If selected for an award, you'll join some awesome company -- DLA Piper, Mallesons, Holland & Hart and more.  While you're checking out the entry information, click on "Hall of Fame" to read about winning entries and enjoy some helpful Q & A about how these pioneers got it done.

The myth of the solitary genius

"This phenomenon of simultaneous discovery -- what science historians call "multiples" -- turns out to be extremely common." In 1922, when William Ogborn and Dorothy Thomas put together their first comprehensive list of multiples, they found 448 major scientific discoveries that fit the pattern of being made by several individuals at more or less the same time. 

Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain at the same time as they were invented by Joost Burgi in Switzerland.  Evolution?  Charles Darwin and, separately, Alfred Russell Wallace.  Color photography?  Charles Cros in the UK and Louis Ducos du Hauron in France.  Oxygen?  Joseph Priestly in Wiltshire and, a year earlier, Carl Wilhelm Scheele in Uppsala.  "'There were four independent discoveries of sunspots, all in 1611; namely, by Galileo in Italy, Scheiner in Germany, Fabricius in Holland and Harriott in England,' Ogburn and Thomas note(d)."

Malcolm Gladwell's fascinating article in this week's New Yorker, In the Air: Who says Big Ideas are Rare? takes a look at the phenomenon of multiples as well as the role of collaboration in innovation. In it he suggests that ideas actually aren't all that rare.  That, with the right intellectual stew and ample time and stimulation, ideas are literally a dime a dozen.

Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures process of "invention sessions" serves as great inspiration for anyone looking for profitable new ideas.  And, for me, it is far too tempting to resist comparing this process with the all too frequent mass killing of ideas that routinely takes place at law firm management committee meetings.

Read the article.  It isn't short, but you'll be glad you spent the time. I guarantee it will leave you hitting the "send" button to convene an invention session of your own. What could be more fun?

Or profitable.

I double dare you

Our culture has long looked to the creators of science fiction to blast us through the stasis of thinking-as-usual.  Scratch the surface of many professionals who are charged by their day jobs with thinking conceptually, creatively, technically . . . . and you're sure to find there beats the heart of a Trekkie, Dune fanatic, Steam punker or clandestine gamer.  From H.G. Wells' Captain Nemo to Gene Rodenberry's Captain Kirk, the artists and writers who create science fiction have tickled the minds of inventors, strategists, technologists and innovators for eons.  Want an example? Take a look at my fellow legal conceptualist, Rick Klau, in this month's issue of WIRED.  He's commenting on Leinad Zeraus' self-published Daemon, the story of a terminally ill game designer who "unleashes a diabolical, self-replicating Web entity that enlists disaffected Netizens in its mission to destroy civilization."

From Jean-Luc Picard's assimilation by the wiki-like Borg to William Gibson's Neuromancer introduction to the cyberhabitats we've learned to love as social networks, we are schooled by their prompted imagining to try on ordinarily frightening ideas in the relative safety of our (their?) imagination.  And by trying them on, grow accustomed to. . . .even addicted to. . . .thinking and doing differently. Even Shakespeare used the device of directed imagination to prompt more open thinking.  The Tempest introduced many a tattered resident of the Globe Theatre's "gods" to the possibility of cultures and worlds who thought and worked differently than their own. 

This week at the Science Museum in London a new exhibit opens. The focus is Dan Dare: Pilot to the Future a 1950s cartoon hero who inspired a wave of scientific innovations immediately following World War II.  For those of us who sometimes stop mid-Blackberry to muse sentimentally on our cereal-box Dick Tracey wrist-radios, it will feel very much like home.

So what am I thinking?  I'm wondering where we must look now to find the "science fiction" that will guide the practice of law through this stage of internecine resistance to an evolved future profession that serves to resolve conflict, protect property, preserve agreement and defend the rights of individuals . . . but in a new way that serves all who are involved.  Isn't it time someone started drawing pictures of what could be. . . . . .instead of whining about what has "always been?"

Just a thought.