Nilofer Merchant, CEO of Rubicon Consulting, argues that if organizations want to be innovative they should stop hiring the same type of people just to meet the requirements of the job position:
It seems to me we ought to also know how to get diverse points of view into the system, because that is what allows us to see things from different angles and fundamentally shift our approach from seeing the problem the way it’s always been seen (and thus unsolved, one could presume) and see it afresh to create the shift in viewpoint that allows for a new creative act.
I think she makes a very important point, hiring an outsider or bringing in someone who is hasn’t worked in your industry, who has no experience in what you do can bring in a fresh perspective that can yield new insights. For example Henry Ford West Bloomfield is a well known hospital in the Detroit area, they recently built the first hotel since it’s founding in 1915. The new hospital is anything but a hospital, it was built on a set of ideas meant to redefine what’s possible in healthcare and to do this they brought in an outsider to spearhead the project:…