The Innovation Killer:How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine... And What Smart Companies Are Doing About It

Today’s companies face a paradox: They need knowledge in order to innovate. And yet, knowledge kills innovation.

How can this be? Companies and teams rely on “what we know” and “the way we do things here” to speed decision-making and maintain a sense of order. But innovation demands change, risk taking, and sometimes even revolution.

It’s rare to find people within an organization who will challenge the company’s most cherished ideas and assumptions. As much as everyone lauds the concept of “thinking outside the box,” most of us think it’s a lot safer to stay inside the box.

In The Innovation Killer, Cynthia Barton Rabe presents a solution to this paradox. She advocates bringing in a “Zero-Gravity Thinker” -- an outsider to find new ways around problems and identify opportunities that employees can’t see.

Rabe heads Zero-G LLC, an innovation and strategy consulting firm. Over the past 20 years, she has held senior business and marketing management roles for consumer product and technology companies. She was Innovation Strategist for Intel Corporation and was part of the Eveready product management team that introduced the Energizer Bunny.

In this summary, we’ll explore the forces that weigh us down and make innovation so difficult, examine the three ideal characteristics of a Zero-Gravity Thinker, and explain how you can do your own “weightless thinking.”