How we use our language has more impact on innovations then you might think. Poetry, words, metaphors has an important place in the process of innovation and there are some rules of thumb to learn and use. Even if we have all the new smart pads, apps or phones at hand, we still need to fill them with our expressions, ideas and most important – words. So, let´s dive into the amazing waters of metaphors and discover the poetry of innovation.
The possibilities of information and marketing offer no guaranteed boost for communicating innovations. From ideas internally at a company and in the process, up to the marketing of finished products, services or other offerings, there is more to it than using modern megaphones.
It is not clear that new tools like social media, advertising, PR people, journalists or marketers are up to the task of communicating innovations in such a way that other people understand and embrace great new opportunities instantly or easily.
So what is affecting our decision making?
Several articles have recently dealt with different aspects of language for how we perceive the world. It’s not new but in the context of innovations – it is exciting. The significance of metaphors is striking. Not in terms of how advertising, social media and marketing are designed but how people convey innovations for and among each other in order to innovate and drive innovation to success.
Author James Geary writes in his new book “The I is an Other” about how we use metaphors in everyday life without thinking about it. The sports metaphors are obvious. ”The ball sailed over the net like a swallow”; “He sank like a stone”. In the financial context stock prices are likened to human mood swings: “stock market opened sour”, “price increased by comet speed.” The power of metaphors cannot be mistaken. President Obama’s slogan “Fired up – ready to go” is a powerful sample of metaphors that literally made a change. Metaphors help us understand complex contexts with multiple senses and provide insights that would otherwise take more time and effort to bridge with more actual words. Complex sciences need poetry and metaphors as powertools to bridge knowledge and understanding.
Recently Senior Researcher James Wilson wrote in the Harvard Business Review about Language of Innovation and the importance of using metaphors in the language to describe innovations and during innovation processes. Wilson and his team at Babson Executive Education found that people described new technological innovations and why they were successful or failures in certain ways.
They found that people with no real facts were describing innovations with three different kinds of linguistic tools.
• Metaphors – replace facts with figurative descriptive terms, words and sentences.
• Exaggerations – driving the language with focus on its impact, not facts.
• Revisionist rhetoric – simplified, inaccurate and self-fulfilling descriptions designed to support someones own arguments and experiences.
Wilson’s team came up with some rules of thumb that successful communication of ideas and innovations should use.
- Use metaphors to support with facts – not to replace facts with metaphors. Understand how and when the metaphors used in presentations, internal / external communications.
- When there is a good idea but no clear evidence that supports the idea – start out by making prototypes and experiments. Many people start talking about the idea but then lose power and motivation to make prototypes or to implement the idea.
- Learn how to use metaphors effectively and at the right time. In organizations with many involved simple metaphors can help to disseminate and communicate ideas faster, build interest and support. Although the organization is mostly using quantitative way to evaluate ideas, many individuals still rely on aesthetic terms and qualities as a yardstick.
- Use excessive and revisionist rhetoric only in its proper place – small groups. Only the teams that know each other well benefit from this kind of language. Expression is discarded naturally. Wilson’s studies show that about 30% of innovations occur in small teams of high level of trust among members.
So, it’s really not enough to bring in PR people, marketing people, social media, apps, resellers and “smear on” a facade of words and images in the final stages of innovation processes or to products launched on a market. In every part and point of innovation there is a story to tell and the way will determine whether the idea will be a “flip or flop”.
The Poetry of Innovation, the need to drive and communicate innovation from an idea that manifests itself in reality – is important in every step. When companies and individuals realize the potential and understanding of using metaphors properly – there are opportunities to realize more ideas, more companies and more entrepreneurs, that will create a growing economy. Furthermore, if innovation is to succeed, we need to understand that innovation is carried by more than the idea – namely, our common language and how we shape the world with every word.
A richer language – creates a richer world.
/ Anders Bjers
