Innovation (and design) mean challenging the status quo

I was reminded about the status quo when listening to Michael Arena in the Friction podcast talk about innovation as he said “Challengers break through the status quo.”

To be honest, I don’t hear much talk about the status quo in the Swedish innovation community. Which is odd, because everyone is subtly pushing for it, without actually saying it.

For example, here is SKR, the lobby organisation for Swedens Regions and Communities (think states, counties and cities in the U.S.) from their latest report “Vägval för Framtiden 5” (Choices for the Future):

1. First, we need to understand and deal with complex societal challenges in new ways

2. Secondly, we need to develop new ways of working to deal with societal challenges.

3. Third, we must devote more time to the future

Clearly a call to action for change, right?

The status quo is generally the way we do things, the way we are organized, and the internal rules of how we act, both explicit and implicit. The status quo provides us an expected result or experience within specific boundaries.

We could be more specific. The status quo is your job title and role. The status quo is how you deliver service and products to your customers and citizens and it is how your boss treats you and how their boss treats them. It is how much money you earn.

Yikes, do we really want to change that? If you ask most people, they would probably answer “no.” Sure there are a few things they would like to change, but changing the status quo feels risky and scary and dangerous.

It reminds me of when serial entrepreneur Paul Budnitz gave a guest lecture to my YALI design driven entrepreneurship students at Dartmouth and told this group of talented changemakers from Africa “Fuck the Status Quo!” The way they reacted showed that maybe they were a little hesitant at making big changes.

But Paul’s message and energy is critical for innovators and designers. Innovation and design fulfills its purpose when it challenges the status quo rather than nibbling around the edges. Nibbling around the edges is continuous improvement. Nothing wrong with that. But if we are truly honest as how we can deliver sustainable innovation, or meet SKR’s stated goals for meeting challenges in new ways and changing the way we work, we need to do a better job of challenging the status quo.

This doesn’t mean we need to be aggressive and obnoxious about it. The problems with change are human ones — when we want to significantly change something — i.e. innovate — we need to expect lots of resistance and pushback and fear. We can work through those with the proper support and openness within leadership and organizations.

But we shouldn’t shrink from the challenge of changing the status quo. Every region, county and city in Sweden is scared to death of the trends they are all facing: lower revenues, greater aging populations, smaller birthrates and fewer citizens, lack of qualified workers. Oh yeah, add climate challenges on top of that. They know that their status quo is unsustainable. Yet none of them are completely honest about changing the status quo.

That’s something that we innovators and designers need to shoulder. We need to help leaders and managers understand that changing the status quo benefits them too — it is not a zero sum game. We need to help organizations relax their unquenchable thirst for control to allow challengers the time, space and freedom to explore and create completely new ways of working and meeting challenges.

Here’s a question for innovators and designers:
How much of your recent work challenged the status quo? Did it significantly change the way things work or the product or service you delivered? Or did you improve some things slightly?

Challenging the status quo is an exhilarating exercise when you are in the middle of it, and a scary one for people looking in from the outside. We need to balance this exhilaration/fear quotient. But most of all, we need to be clear that we are indeed looking to challenge the status quo.

Who feels uncomfortable now?