In the previous column, we learned what courage means, what types of courage there are, and why courage is essential. But courage is not only a key virtue of top achievers and thought leaders. It is also an essential component of creativity and innovation. In fact, courage is required at every stage of the creative process. In Thinkergy’s X-IDEA Method we call these stages Xploration, Ideation, Development, Evaluation, and Action.

Xploration

Every creative project starts with an initial Xploration of the topic. Can you make new discoveries if you stay in the safety of your office, or in your usual habits of thought? If you look in the same place everyone else is looking? By talking to the same people as everyone else? Deep, insightful Xploration requires real courage. Creative Xplorers must be brave enough to find new paths. They need the courage to head into the unknown, with no map. “I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led,” said the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, about his intellectual approach to Xploration.

Just as the Xplorer Christopher Columbus exhibited great courage in sailing off into the open sea, trying to find a shorter route to India — this at a time when ships stayed in sight of the shore — so does a modern Xplorer need real courage to go against conventional wisdom or corporate culture, and try to discover something new. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go,” said the English-American poet and dramatist T. S. Eliot.

Ideation

“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess,” said Sir Isaac Newton. You need courage to make those bold guesses. You need it to think bold ideas. And you need it to suggest those ideas to colleagues and superiors who prefer safe, ordinary ideas over bold, daring ones. Rollo May had a point when he said: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.” Conformists suggest only ideas that are known to be acceptable, while the truly creative are brave enough to suggest whatever comes to mind, regardless of how wild and crazy it may seem to others. It requires real courage to risk ridicule and scorn.

Development

“Donkeys prefer garbage to gold,” said the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. It requires intellectual courage to design and develop a bold idea so that others — even the donkeys — can see its potential. Imagine how the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus felt when he formulated his heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe, challenging not only the Ptolemaic model, but also the teachings of the powerful Catholic church. Imagine how a brand manager feels, designing a new solution with great market potential, but only if it cannibalizes sales of the products favored by a stubborn, belligerent boss.

Evaluation

Supporting your ideas requires courage. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen,” said Winston Churchill. When evaluating ideas, creators need to have both the humility to listen to counter-arguments and the courage to argue for ideas they believe in, the courage to find ways to make them work. Rapid prototyping helps to understand how to make an idea happen, and the essence of the technique is repeated failure. Continuing to try, despite that failure, requires courage. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Action

“One man with courage is a majority,” said Thomas Jefferson. Although innovation is a team sport, those innovations are driven by one person with the courage to make bold ideas happen. Think of Apple and Steve Jobs, Virgin Group and Richard Branson, Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos, Microsoft and Bill Gates.

Taking action on a bold idea, despite the odds against it, requires the most courage of all. This is why, according to Rogers’ Innovation Adoption curve, 17 out of 20 people will initially reject a bold, game-changing idea with derogatory comments like, “I don’t understand the value of the idea,” “it won’t work,” “it’s too risky,” “don’t rock the boat,” “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” “this is impossible,” or even “this is completely nuts.” It takes a forceful, passionate, persistent and, yes, courageous creative leader to find ways to make an “impossible” idea possible.

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties,” said the German philosopher Erich Fromm. Even if you approach creativity and innovation systematically, there is no certainty that your big idea will succeed. This is a frightening aspect of innovation for managers and business executives who strive for predictable, reliable results. Creativity and innovation require business leaders to replace their doubts, worries and fears with courage and belief. That’s easier said than done, but in the next column, we’ll explore how to cultivate courage, in business and in the rest of life.

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2012. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the title “History shows only the courageous innovate” on 13 September 2012.