By Fredda McDonald
The speed of change has reached a velocity that is creating unprecedented levels of stress on businesses and increasing the competitive pressures in the marketplace.
So, it is more important than ever that your organization answer today’s challenges with breakthrough innovation -- but to paraphrase Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, sometimes you don’t have to look any further than your own back yard.
This approach is illustrated by one of the most innovative organizations in history as it faced a major crisis that became legendary.
NASA, April 13, 1970
Two days into their mission and just minutes after a live television update was sent back down to Earth, a sudden violent explosion rocked the tiny metal cylinder carrying the Apollo 13 astronauts through outer space. In an instant, their mission to the moon was scrapped, and the odds of the astronauts coming home safely looked pretty slim as they scrambled into the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) for safety.
Houston did, indeed, have a problem. As harsh as it sounds, crisis is often the starting point for breakthrough innovation. If an idea, an invention or an innovation does not fundamentally solve a problem – perceived or as yet unrealized – then it is just an idea. It is not truly an innovation.
In the case of Apollo 13, the problem was real, as Americans sat paralyzed in front of their televisions watching a real-life drama unfold before them. The round carbon dioxide scrubbers in the LEM began to fail, sending C02 levels in the spacecraft to dangerous heights. But the scrubbers from the Command Module could not be used to replace them because they were square. So back on Earth, the experts on hand at Mission Control dumped all of the available materials from the LEM and the Command Module out on a table to find a solution. This is all they had to work with, and they had to work fast. The folks in Houston were under intense pressure, and the world was watching their problem solving abilities in real-time.
Fortunately, they were able to improvise a new filtration system by adapting a round filter from the square Command Module filter using an oxygen hose from the lunar landing suit – and attaching it with good old duct tape to the LEM. To this day, their innovation is still called the “Square Peg in the Round Hole” at NASA. Thankfully, the ingenious fix kept the astronauts alive long enough to get home.
Far from being just an interesting retrospective, there are several great lessons here that you can use to drive meaningful innovation in your business today:
Embrace Your Constraints
The limited resources NASA’s team faced were both a constraint and an asset. The one thing that the team in Houston knew for sure was that they could only work with the materials that were currently in the hands of the astronauts. Interestingly, that limitation combined with a life-or-death timetable proved to be a driver for the focus that fueled their creativity.
Look to Your Ecosystem
Often the innovations that make the greatest impact are born from using existing tools and technologies in new and unusual ways. Just like the engineering team on the Apollo 13 mission found out, our resources are sometimes there in front of us – we just need to look at them differently. You may not be facing life-and-death problems in your business today, but you can still drive innovation by starting with what you have as a powerful and enabling business principle when approaching challenges.
Create Meaningful Innovation
The bigger lesson that NASA took from this crisis – the truly meaningful innovation in the long run – was the necessity of having interoperable parts between components of future spacecraft. That insight has now become a mantra for design engineers in many industries, making manufacturing more productive and economical. So, don’t forget to carry the learning forward when you find a solution to a problem, because it will likely fuel future innovation, if you do.
Great innovations happen when organic ideas spring from the collaboration between individuals; however, you don’t need to wait for a crisis to enable your business to innovate. Enablement can come every day. You just have to create an environment to nurture it, use a process to support it, and then have leaders to empower it.
Fredda McDonald is with Lydian Management Consulting. The article above is an excerpt from her recently published book, “BoxBreakers.” It is available from Paradies Publishing on Amazon.com. Visit fredda.leadpages.co/innovation to download the first chapter for free now.