Dissemination, Education, Value-creation – How Parmentier turned the potato from failed idea into successful practice

In a recent article Peter Denning questions the common conception that organizations need to invest more in generating ideas to foster innovation. Instead he emphasizes the notion of practice, noting that we may actually be ‘idea rich, selection baffled and adoption poor’.

In extreme cases, our obsession with the idea idea leads us to look backward into successful innovations to reinvent the ideas that would be at their core, failing to recognize that experimentation and practice may have been the dominant success factors. An emblematic example that comes to mind is that of the BMX bike, which gradually emerged through the adhoc experimentations of a community of practitioners, rather than born out of a grand vision of a fully fledged BMX.

Emotionally, Rapid prototyping is a confidence unlocker

Functionally, Rapid Prototyping is a critical step that enables ideators to turn what they picture in their mind (or on paper) into something that can be physically manipulated or experimented by others – colleagues, customers, manufacturers.

Emotionally, Rapid Prototyping can be a powerful confidence unlocker – for self or others. Let me put forward an example: