He walked backwards to work. He was carrying a backpack. Gray, with an embroidered banana on it. I still remember it clearly, what a nutcase. Or did someone make a joke that it’s good to walk backwards, to see how many people take on idiotic tenders?
Of course you wonder: “Why does he do this?” At first I laughed. Then I got more curious. Probably more curious than I should have and finally I asked the question: “Why do you do this?”
He smiled and replied: “To remember that progress begins with moving, even if it feels backwards at first.” I laughed again and walked a few steps backwards with him.
Later that day I sat in another Teams meeting. Again with people who said the right things about innovation. The PowerPoints were nice. Everyone was “aligned”. We talked about “impact”. But my coffee had time to cool down several times before anyone actually took the first step, either forward or backward.
Innovation is not just about thinking up something new.
That’s where most people get lost. We think things will get done just by attending a meeting. A strategy. A nice PowerPoint slide.
But it’s really about taking a pen and writing down something provocative.
Building something half-baked and showing it anyway.
Asking a colleague for help before you know what you need or have thought it through.
Innovation is not just a noun. “An innovation”.
It’s primarily a verb. “To innovate”.
It’s about doing.
Innovation is primarily about doing
I remember when we ran a development program. We had the green light, a budget, great expectations. Everyone said it was “innovative”.
Ideas came from all directions: “we can do this”, “we can do that”.
Then Gudrun said: “I’ve fixed that thing you talked about, the carpenters are coming on Wednesday and building.”
No one had asked her. She just did. And it became the most sustainable change in the entire project. Common sense, recycled materials, innovative solutions were implemented while it was being built, everything was in place in a week.
And there we sat with our visionary ideas and our models. There was no box for “Gudrun does something unexpected and brilliant.
That’s when I started to question our working methods deeply. We valued planning more than the practical. We talked about innovation as if it were a goal, not an action.
And now we stand here. In a time that screams for action.
A time that screams for doing
The planet is hot.
Schools are being torn apart.
Healthcare is on its knees.
And we sit with our innovation strategies as if they were safety nets.
But real innovation is not sitting.
It’s standing.
Doing. Testing. Failing.
And redoing.
Do something before you know exactly how
Lay out the half-finished.
Start from the back.
Let a janitor, a child, or a passerby be your co-creator.
Let go of the idea that it has to look nice. Innovation is the shaping of a lump of clay, not a finished sculpture. It is a chafing from new shoes. It is walking backwards, in order to truly move forward.
And you may wonder what happened to the man with the banana backpack?
One day as he was walking as usual, he turned to me and said:
“You know what the best thing about walking backwards is? You can see people walking in the same direction in their eyes.”
Then he moved on, and I had something new to think about.
